9 Reasons Why Developers Think the CIO Is Clueless

Esther Schindler writes "Finally, a Forrester analyst who understands the attitudes of software developers. Mike Gualtieri identifies nine behaviors managers need to steer clear of or risk being labeled 'clueless' — from control freak tendencies to being a vendor puppet. My favorite, however, is point #8: 'the CIO collaborates to death,' in which Gualtieri opines, 'And, if you never watched Star Trek then you shouldn't even be a CIO.'"

Comments

Re:Well, this is timely

[Captain DaFt]

"Vendors are a problem. Relentlessly annoying. Going to have to come up with a system to keep them from bothering me all day."

Do what they did at a previous job of mine appoint a "Procurement Advisor".

Basically, when the secretary announce that "Bill from Wonderful widgets is here", Our Boss would say "Tell him the Procurement Advisor is on his way up." Then check to see who's available, and send him. (We were all briefed on the procedure, but good BSers were prime pickings for Procurement Advisor.)

PA of the day would then meet with Bill in an available office/conference room/whatever and listen, nod, and accept freebies.
Then when Bill tries to close the deal, say "I'm just the Procurement Advisor, I'm not authorized to make this decision, but I will pass my recommendations up the chain. Thank you for your time."

Some weasel.. er, vendors caught on after awhile and tried to circumvent the system. They were politely, but firmly told "I'm afraid you'll have to talk to our Procurement Advisor, this is his job."

Where I worked at - CIO was a control freak

[COredneck]

First, I don't want to say to much on the location. It was a Civilian Agency/Research Facility located within an Air Force Base in Colorado's front range. The CIO of the facility has a Ph.D. also graduated from West Point and retired as an Army Colonel. He was considered a "ring knocker".

When he took over when he was an Army Colonel, he cracked down on various items. When he retired from the Army, a slot was made for him to remain there. Below are the list of various items he did:

• Implemented a strict dress code including NO casual Fridays and no blue jeans, period rule
• Cracked down on hours you put in where they wanted you to be there basically from 8 to 5 and to make it difficult to work alternative hours
• Implemented strict rules on your desktop PC such as not allowing for alternative web browsers like Firefox. You were required to use Internet Explorer. Also, you could not change the settings either such as being able to block pop-up ads
• Implemented a highway traffic safety program where there is cooperation between the local police and the facility. If you get stopped for speeding going to/from work, you are reported to your workplace. Within several days of getting stopped, you get an e-mail directing you to report to the Deputy Program Manager's office to explain yourself.

On the dress code aspect, when he took over as colonel, he made an example out of a couple of Sys Admins when they showed to a meeting in blue jeans and sandals. He had them fired on the spot and escorted of the premises and off the base. A friend who worked there prior to when he showed up mentioned the place was fun to work at. When he did nights and weekends, they didn't care if you showed up dressed for comfort. When the colonel showed up that changed ! He also took away the traditional Hawaiian Shirt Friday as well. He also cracked down on people who left early on Friday, another "tradition" in the DoD contracting world.

When the colonel took over, he didn't consider the culture of the place at the time plus the culture of Colorado which is considered very casual like in dress. One thing not mentioned until now, his additional degrees are from East Coast schools like U. of Virginia. With formal rules being more important than getting the job done, the dynamic changed for the worst. I really don't to go back to that facility as long as he is there. I still keep in contact with some people who still work there. One day, there was a water problem where all the bathrooms were shutdown but people were told they could NOT leave for home early and to keep working. The basement of the building has been converted to "cube farms" from basically storage. One thing not included was more bathrooms. Even for the men you have to wait 5 or 10 minutes for a toilet stall to open up. A lot of times there are several people waiting for each stall. Complaints have so far been ignored.

From my experience...

[Moraelin]

From my experience, when someone seems clueless or illogical, it's just that they're not saying which problem they're really trying to solve.

E.g., if I were to come and say that my team needs a pony, and it would be great for team morale, and double as company car too, you might think, "WTF? Is he that retarded? Who rides a pony through town to a meeting with the customers?" The issue is that I'm not solving the problem I'm claiming to. The real problem might be that my daughter wants a pony, and I figure, maybe the company can pay for it. But of course, now I can't go to a management meeting and say, "I want the company to buy my daughter a pony." So now I'll work backwards from the solution I wish ("the company should buy a pony that I can use") to an acceptable problem it would solve (e.g., "we need environmentally friendly transportation!") And maybe I already have a second phase of that plan in mind, but I'm not telling it to you yet, either.

The same applies to a lot of seemingly retarded managers. It may be just that they're not solving the problem you think, or that their job title says they should solve.

E.g., if he comes up with a vision towards "massively distributed MVC, ROR, multicore Web 2.0 social applications", maybe really he's just trying to play bullshit bingo with the CEO or the investors. You're not the one he's trying to impress, the guy signing his paycheck is.

Or maybe he's got a second phase in mind too, like that next he'll need more hardware for that, and he's already bribed by some vendor. Or that he already knows which graphics company he wants to outsource some of that to and what bribe he'll get.

Literally, I've seen one project where their visionary wanted to have at least 1MB graphics in an applet, and that was back in the dialup and ISDN days, just because his best buddy had a graphics design company, and he wanted to outsource those graphics to that. Corruption by any other name, but there you go.

Or maybe he just wants more budget and a bigger team under him, because that raises his perceived status and importance.

Or maybe he just wants to be able to keep the current team, in the face of some retarded budget allocation which would otherwise have him fire everyone now because there are no projects in the pipeline for July, only to re-hire them in August when the next projects kick in. So he's creating some grand task as some make-work solution.

Or maybe he's just strategically gaming the budget rules in advance. In a lot of places they have retarded processes like that if you didn't use all your budget this year, you get a budget cut next year. So people end up turning the heating on in March, because the winter was mild and otherwise they'd get no heating budget next year, when maybe the winter will be worse. Same here. You don't really know what you'll have to do next year, so you essentially have to burn some money in advance to be sure you'll get a budget for it next year. A case of "massively distributed MVC, ROR, multicore Web 2.0 social applications" is something so overachieving and nebulous that it can burn any amount of money you want it to burn.

Etc.

Firing everyone competent and hiring the cheapest burger flippers, well, again I've seen it done for strategic reasons.

E.g., because with the same budget you can have more people under you, which raises your own status. And some places also have rules for what your job title and/or salary can be, based on the number of people under you. Ok, it wasn't at CEO level, but I do know someone who raised from a minor team leader to mid-level manager just by having his team inflate like a blowfish. He kept hiring incompetents and still needing more... and got rewarded for it.