Slashdot Mirror
Tech Vs. Business?
An anonymous reader writes "I've recently found a spot in a large company, and I'm noticing that here a lot of people on the technology side are very anti-business. Tech makes up about 40% of the total line of business staff, but the whole LOB is only a tiny percentage of the larger company in the financial industry. I personally haven't seen this before in prior jobs, but I'm told that this animosity is commonplace. So I come to Slashdot to find out if others have experienced this adversarial relationship between business and tech, and if so, what was the effect on the overall success of the business?"
i've found this to be true in almost every company that i've worked for. tech workers are looked down upon, because people only ever come to us when things go badly and most of us literally "sit on our asses", which they dont see as working. so we're seen as lazy and bad at what we do, because if we were any good at it, they wouldn't be having whatever problem they're having. the best way i've found to combat this is to be honest with your departmental managers and hope that they can spread some love
> First pizost.
So is that pro-business or pro-tech?
So I come to Slashdot to find out if others have experienced this adversarial relationship between business and tech, and if so, what was the effect on the overall success of the business?"
Yes, it is extremely prevalent here! On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have had any negative effects. Actually, standing in the way of various technologies seems to have made our business more successful!
Opinions here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, Exxon Mobile Corporation.
Netbooks, they come with Linux or a $3 copy of Windows. Either way, Microsoft loses.
Luckily, the department I'm in has a great relationship with the business, relatively speaking. They say we cost too much, we're too slow, and we're "vague", but I'll take those as compliments when they could just call us assholes (bankers aren't really known for mincing words).
With that being said, I know that certain departments within this massive company have a very different relationship and there is a lot of animosity between the business and the tech side. Incidentally, those are the departments which are currently being outsourced to India (not saying that I can't be next).
IMHO after years on both the tech side AND the banking side, I can say that the two cultures really aren't compatible. After all, our range is stoned hippie/crazy genius and there's is buttoned down tightwad/midwestern church going Republican. There's not a whole lot of overlap there - there will always be culture clash.
However, this is not an excuse to treat your business people badly. They are the ones writing the checks, they are the ones to whom you must explain what is possible and what is not, and they are the ones that are ultimately doing the work that is paying your salary (yeah, they couldn't work without us - but we definitely couldn't work w/o them).
If you are working in a polluted atmosphere where people talk terribly about the business, I'd suggest you change it. And if you're not in a position to change the culture, I'd find another job. Not only is it soul-crushing to work in a hostile environment, but your department's days may be numbered anyway.
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One problem that facilitates animosity between the business side and the tech support side is that if you do everything right and are a little lucky nothing will happen to the network. I cant tell you how frustrating it is to see an IT admin who dosnt do their job get praised for fixing something that never should have happened and is ultimately their fault.
... by "anti-business"! There are about a thousand different things you could mean by that, and frankly I have no idea which of them you mean.
Do you mean they are "anti-giant-corporate-monopolistic-practices"??
Do you mean they don't want to see your company make a profit?
Do you mean they take a stand against certain business practices engaged in by this corporation?
There are many, many more. So: WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN? Your post was about as clear as mud.
Since it's the financial industry you probably won't be working there long :P
Blank until
I worked at a very simlar place except I worked for the business.
IT had so much influence within the company that the actual business suffered enormously.
If it involved anything other than Excel or Word then it was considered an IT problem.
I'd like to know what you mean by anti-business. Many suits have no knowledge of anything technical, and so make requests and demands that violate things like 'logic' and the laws of physics. When the tech staff attempts to point this out, they are often told that they are being needlessly obstructive. Pleas that it is the universe that is preventing them fall on deaf ears.
Is this what you mean? Is an insistence on following the laws of physics "Anti-Business"?
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
My business boss is not good at connecting the dots between cause and effect. He is not a logical thinker yet thinks he is.
Therefore both blame and praise (to a tech team member) are given incorrectly, and seemingly based on level of financial pressure and mood swings.
We on the tech side are seen as slow-delivering and obstructive. The boss has no understanding of the process of producing good, maintainable and well-fitting software, so he thinks we're wasting his time and money. He basically thinks we are laying out a website and why the hell does it take so long?
Needless to say, projects and priorities are interrupted and re-jigged on a bizarrely counterproductively frequent basis,
Why does someone like that try to manage a business a large part of which is predicated on software development?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Business tends to be "presentation oriented". It's controlled by sales, and the sales culture permeates the entire building for good or bad such that perception is everything. Techies tend to distrust salemanship as too superficial, and like to instead focus on building a better mousetrap. The thing is, paying more attention to presentation gets one promoted and recognized more. Thus, techies are forced to choose between focusing on a better mousetrap or "playing the game" to advance.
A compromise is to find better ways to communicate technology to non-techies. Find analogies to common items, such as say laundry when talking about the difference between sorting and filtering. And don't talk down to people: respect their specialty. Show interest in their specialty when you can; or at least aspects of it that interest you. The more you learn about their job, the better you can help them.
Also, even if you can't outright fix something, find a decent compromise or alternative. Don't tell them "no", but rather "I'll have to ponder that one". Show that you are not ignoring them, but putting your Sherlock Techie cap on."
And for every "that's too hard" or "takes too long", throw in enough, "oh, that change is easy, it'll be right up". If you always delay, you'll lose trust.
Table-ized A.I.
And frankly, we don't really have any dealing with the IT department, outside of them wanting to order this, upgrade that. And them occasionally coming up to fix something.
Not the closest relationship.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
And, "Welcome to IT."
I am a consultant, so I get to see many different businesses. I have also worked for many prior to consulting.
I can say that those that do not understand business fare poorly. On the flip side, those that understand business, but not the technology that they are supposedly in have problems as well. I have seen both.
Both of those businesses are neither failing not advancing. They are just sort of hanging on. The businesses that understand both do quite well of course.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Back when mainframes were King, the 'operators' wore white lab coats and worked in their own cleaner-than-average, air conditioned rooms - if you needed a 'job' run, you had to meet with the programmers and negotiate your place in the queue.
I called these types 'Programmer Priests'. Their style seemed reminiscent of history lessons that described Incan temple rites where the head priest would routinely trundle up the local pyramid, telling the villagers and King to wait while he consulted the Gods concerning whatever tragedy needed divine intervention that month.
Outside of a good view and a supply of virgins, nice clothes and fresh fruit from the village, of course the Incan priests had nothing to do at the top... beyond theater.
The early white coated programmers felt this same power. Everyone was at their whim - even their superiors. 'Be nice' or you'd wait for an eternity before the computer gods sent your answer back with the priests.
That particular IT style persists today.
I make it a habit to kick dirt on those types every chance I get...
Seriously, tech and business really are two different worlds.
The techies want to learn, deploy, do "cool things", etc. Whereas the business people want to make assloads of money. The problem comes in when these two worlds collide. The business people don't understand that when they change there mind with a complex (software) project, that it really isn't as simple as altering a pie chart on a presentation and takes some (if not a lot) of time. This makes them mad and then they come down on the IT people like they're just being lazy.
The IT people know why things are the way they are, but the typical business person doesn't listen to explanations because in the business world explanations tend to be excuses and CYA. They don't understand that things are different in the IT field nor do they care. Nor do they realise that throwing money at a problem doesn't make it go away. As in, a bug doesn't care how much you're paid, it'll hide as long as it wants to.
But, most of these problems occur because of poor project management. Back in the day, project managers were there to protect the people that they were managing. They were there so the IT people didn't get screwed. But, more and more over time, the project manager has become an extension of the client.
No-one really seems to care that changing there minds constantly (sometimes back and forth) costs a profound amount of time and money. After all, why plan something out when it will waste someone (or someone else's company's) money and not yours.
I'm serious when I say the company I work at is more anti-tech then its tech department is "anti-business". People hate change, simple as that. Fortunately time takes care of those people, albeit slowly.
I view my users as just that, users. I support them. They do their job. They support me financially. I appreciate and recognize this symbiosis. Without them I wouldn't have a job and without me their job would be all but impossible.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
There's always been a difference between people doing things and poeple talking (and doing business) with things.
Of course, only the former rule.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
First, if you work for a company in the financial industry, polish up your resume. Stock up on office supplies as well. You might be in for a tough ride, and be ready to jump ship.
Secondly, if you do IT, work for an IT company. Forget about adversaries, and other BS. Have you ever seen the IT manager promoted to run a financial institution or a hospital, or a become partner in a law firm?
NO.
But try out a tech company, and you will find that your bosses boss is a tech guy and that there is no ceiling for promotions.
The whole culture at a tech company will also be much more to your liking. Go have lunch at Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo or many other, and you will probably know what I mean.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Correction, I'm anti-YOUR-business. My company is GigantoMegaMonopoly Inc. and we're going to EAT you.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Technical people often get overinflated egos about their importance to the overall business.
Non-technical people tend to treat technical people like dirt.
I think the single biggest reason for the conflict between Business and Techies is one of motivation. Those on the business side are typically there to make stupid amounts of money. The technology is there to make money, end of story. On the other side of the coin, is the techies who are there to do "cool shit" and generally have fun and learn. While the money is nice, and they usually wouldn't do the work for free, it's not the primary motivation. This leads to the natural collision of worldviews. The techies want to do cool stuff, get it done right, and then maybe sell it. The business folk want to get it out the door for as littl emoney as possible.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
In a past job I worked for a small, $million+/year company with only about 12 employees. I was the IT department of one. I sat in a A/C room with a single rack of servers. Even at this small scale the managers and owners had feeling ranging from apathy to naked disgust for what I did. None of then understood it. All they knew was I was costing the company money and not 'making anything'. I would try to point out that nearly all in revenue the company made was dependent on my systems working properly.....but it was to no avail. Despite getting paid well after about 9 years I was done. They paid me well and handed out bonuses like water, but I finally ended up going to work for a non-profit last year. It's amazing how much more pleasure I get from my work when providing excellent service, not maximizing profit, is what I strive for.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I've found this to be true in large companies as well. But I think it's healthy. One of the reasons why I like to work for a large company is so I can focus on tech issues and ignore the rest. I don't want to know what marketing is doing!
Wouldn't it be simpler and better to contract that out? Here are the benefits:
Cost. There's no need to hire and maintain unnecessary staff. If there's an emergency, the contractor can bring in more people to handle it, but most of the time they won't need to dedicate even one full-time staffer to your office.
Versatility. The contractor will work with many clients and many environments. That means that they will have a diversity of experience that will allow them to deal with problems quickly. They will also have the experience to point out better solutions.
Employee satisfaction. The contractors personnel will need to be respectful and courteous to your staffers, or else you will find a different contractor. They will work to find solutions (and charge you more money) rather than making excuses about why your problem can't be solved so they can stay in their budget.
Come to think of it, maybe I should start a business doing this for people.
In my experience the biggest driver of tech's disdain for business is the farcical nature of some managers' attempts at quantifying certain aspects of their business.
All businesses manage to quantify a few things extremely well -- payroll, revenue, taxes, and so forth. There are many other things that can be quantified in a useful way. However, many business types engage in persistent fantasies about quantifying things like programmer productivity, ROI on buying software tools, and the effect of different business methodologies. Quantifying things is an excellent idea, but it's so overwhelmingly difficult to measure things like management productivity and (God help us all) "project velocity" that 98.6% of all attempts to do so are essentially fraudulent -- just as dishonest as if I pretended that number I just read off my rectal thermometer had any meaning more precise than "most."
Engineers are likely to feel a little twitchy just looking at the number "98.6" because they associate it with the classic overprecise and somewhat incorrect statement that normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees fahrenheit. If that number annoys us, what do you think we feel like when some business type says we should use Scrum because 87% of all enterprise-scale software projects come in 50% over budget, while only 63% of Scrum projects come in 50% over budget? Whenever engineers and business types speak in a common language (mathematics, logic, statistics, controlled studies) it turns out that the business types come off as STUPID, GULLIBLE, OVERCONFIDENT, AND FULL OF SHIT.
Which is not to say that business types are stupid. There are honest and intelligent managers who aspire to quantitative precision and may work very hard at it, but they don't go around waving numbers and graphs because they know the results are extremely difficult to interpret -- more "food for thought" than "results." The guys who make a big deal out of numbers like the ones in the last paragraph are either con artists or victims of con artists. They think that making quantitatively precise comparisons of programming methodologies is a strategic managerial decision that you implement by repeating numbers you read in [blog summaries of] management journals, just like creativity is a lifestyle choice that you implement by your choice of haircut, clothing, and a certain brand of digital accessories. It never crosses their mind that it might be something intrinsically difficult that you can work really hard at without ever producing anything worth sharing -- that's how poorly they understand it.
But it always seems like it's the guys who make up bullshit numbers who write the papers, run the consultancies, get the attention of upper management, and get put in charge of things they don't understand. Business types may have enough patience and faith in management to sit back and watch the pretenders rise meteorically and flame out, but engineers are used to calling bullshit on bullshit when numbers are involved.
Anyway, I could go on, but you get the picture. Engineers accept that not everything can be quantified, and every business decision must, of necessity, rely heavily on guesswork, folklore, and intuition in addition to hard numbers. We can't accept that the business world is full of people who pretend otherwise, without any reasonable justification, and somehow escape being laughed at by their supervisors and peers.
Yes I have seen it, and it makes me sick to my stomach (I'm a tech dude too).
Tech, IT etc are all functions of the business... the business does not exist for the benefit of IT!!
In my opinion you can break any business down to three categories of people: Production (make it happen), Finance (fund it happening) and Management (making sure it happens roughly on time and budget). Each of these three sectors have their own vested interests.... what makes a harmonious company is when each sector respects the other's desires and goals FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF THE BUSINESS!!
OTOH well, if you find (say) a good auto mechanic, see what the difference in your bill looks like depending on (a) how expensive a car you drive in with is, and (b) how close to peonage said mechanic is treated by said customer.
I think independence may be the key -- if you work within the firm as a permanent (or long-term contractor) then the perception of your technical skills are diminished as time passes, as familiarity dilutes your apparent value. From outside the company, well, they may treat you like the auto mechanic in the above example or they may treat you like a saviour, the person who recovered their email / payroll / customer database.
If they're rude, you have the option of legal retaliation when you give them the next quote -- if you don't want to deal with them, raise your contract rate to an absurdly high level. Either they'll ignore you or you'll be paid commensurate with the aggro involved (they can sneer at you all they want if you're driving the Porsche while they're driving the clapped-out 1972 Pinto, no?)
That said, with the skills crisis here in Australia, engineers and skilled trades of any type are pretty well regarded due to the tight market, and that's probably why I don't see a lot of Tech-Business animosity.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
The business guys want it fast, cheap, first.
Engineering want it correct, perfect, however long it takes.
There's the struggle.
Any good business needs to strike a balance between the two. The tension is inevitable, and healthy.
The opinions expressed here are those of this individual, and may not reflect the policy or practice of the collective
Tech makes up about 40% of the total line of business staff, but the whole LOB is only a tiny percentage of the larger company in the financial industry.
Don't worry. You should be laid off in the next few days when $large_financial_company goes bankrupt. Problem solved, partially. I understand that the homeless guys who use cardboard don't like the ones who use plastic sheeting and sticks.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Nah, you guys work way too hard. Highly regulated industries are where it's at. I am a very small cog in a very large wheel, and I like it like that.
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In my experience, it is best to just nod and say as little as possible, even if you are at a nice place having dinner with an exec. Simply pass pertinent info along to a manager (Well the reason they can't copy that 7GB database to a win98 box is because fat32 does not support files that large.) and leave it at that. Do not pipe up in conferences or meetings because you are not the type that the company buys lunch for, and if you happen to be there at the meeting take that into consideration. Don't speak your mind because that's not what you are there for or they would have told you so. It sucks but that's the way life is. And most of all don't laugh when you are on a conference call with IT and corporate and some more important person asks a stupid question. Their job is to make money, and to outsource your job if it will be cheaper. Yeah it might be lame, but tell someone who is sitting fat and making 80k for doing non-technical work and demanding that IT do it yesterday and $20,000 under budget to do it right and you will be looking for a new job. Your argument has no weight there unless you are very special. Nod, say please and thank you, and do your job to the best of your ability and things will be "ok". Just my two bits*.
*inflation
All my life I've heard the phrase "healthy competition" used by leaders, educators, social scientists, etc. I think it's unhealthy, but I've rarely heard it challenged. Perhaps some people are very competitive by nature, and if someone doesn't channel it and give them an outlet (but never let them know it's a ruse) they become even more aggressive, anti-social, etc. So I think to some extent you will have competitive behaviour in any company, unless you take steps to filter out aggressive people in the hiring process, and get rid of any aggressors who make it through the process. Certainly don't reward aggression. Of course you will need at least 1 aggressive person to be the cop.
When I was a kid, business-types stayed on their side of the fence, and tech-types stayed on ours. They didn't pretend to know a lot about what we did, nor vice-versa. We complained about each other, but didn't get as specific and detailed as the culture has become. I remember in the 1980s seeing engineers reading the Wall Street Journal, and very non-tech managers using tech terminology heavily in conversation as if they knew what they were talking about. I knew things were turning bad. (See: Fire Your IT Boss ) The competitiveness has no limits.
I'm not so competitive, and would thrive and be very productive in a cooperative environment. Even in casual team sports, like volleyball, I find most people compete with their teammates far too much (and the team loses, duh.) I've played on teams of all mediocre players, but we kicked butt because we stuck together, encouraged each other, and played as a team, not 6 individuals. The same goes for companies I've worked for.
Anybody know of any companies that screen out competitive people?
The reason business people hate technical people - engineers of all flavors - is because they are typically qualitative and their focus is on solving problems and making things work, NOT on advancing profit at the expense of everything else. In a sense, I think, engineers are far less greedy and much more egalitarian or socialistic than "business" types, who are inherently selfish. Engineers are focused on creation and maintenance and improvement.
I take that back: suits don't hate technical people, they're scared of them. Imagine what would happen to the world and the suits' place in it if we actually had our way and a Technocracy emerged?
I've seen business people treat IT like crap, but I've also see IT do the same.
A former coworker would always force business into doing this his way, because was the dev lead he knew more about the business and how they should be doing their job than they did. There were always problem with his stuff because ultimately it didn't help the business to accomplish it's goals.
But basically we are all here (pick your company) to help the business. I know it is easier said than done, but listen to each other and leave the attitude at the door (Business *and* IT).
It really pisses me off when either side blames the other for failures.
Silly, it's Tech vs. Magic.
http://glest.org/en/index.php
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Maybe you could clarify what anti-business refers to.
I also work for a large financial institution (in the IT department). You point out that 40% of the staff are on the IT side converse to that you fail to point out that probably 95% (or more) of the business processes are driven by IT - bringing us back to the point, what do you mean bu anti-business?
Nothing says Pro-Business more than opening up the source code to your profit making software.
And nothing keeps customer satisfaction lower than buggy software made by a company that can't keep up with bug fixes nor customer suggestions. And nothing keeps company profits in as much distress as the infinite money drain that is software maintenance.
What was your point again?
I think it's anti-bullshit.
captcha: riddance
To grease the skids between them. :D
So by the above, shouldn't this story be titled "Janitorial vs Business"? Or "Secretarial vs business"? How about "Motor Pool vs Business"? After all tech isn't the only one people go running to when the shit hits the fan, nor is it the only ones that "sit on their asses".
"My business boss is not good at connecting the dots between cause and effect. He is not a logical thinker yet thinks he is."
Sounds like you may want to grab one of those books about personality types and how to deal with them.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Maybe it's just natural, but to me there is a dichotomy between business and operations in most companies today and fosters ignorance in both directions. Managers in most companies haven't a clue how things are done in the operational side, and to some extent the same is true in reverse for the operational people.
My theory is that this is almost solely attributable to the general lack of ownership in business today. Almost everything is corporate now - even the managers don't own the place. When the owners leave, so does the clue-train. The tech's may still know how to operate things so the customers still remain happy, but its a long shot if the non-owning managers will ever have a clue beyond who they're trying (this week) to sell out to. They just pray that sales or ops (or both) doesn't melt down before they sell out.
-Matt
IMHO, it's for a few reasons. Within the relationship, both sides use heavy amounts of jargon. IT comes across as being condescending and confusing, which can irritate the business. IT also doesn't have as detailed a knowledge of the business's operations, and so can get frustrated when the business becomes impatient and / or misses things when describing their processes and activities.
If you look at it from the business's perspective, people who don't have anything to do with the business problem are getting to make the decision about what to use. That can be extremely irritating when the business has already made up their mind (rightly or wrongly) about what their preferred approach is.
And, if you look at it from IT's perspective, it's can be extremely irritating that the business just doesn't understand or care about all the other things that are needed, such as maintainability, architectural integration, and so on.
The other side is that IT is almost always a cost centre, while many lines of business are profit centres. This really dictates a certain culture - cost centres tend to focus on cost minimisation while profit centres focus on opportunities and growth. There's an inevitable cultural clash right there, but it's not limited to IT - it also happens with the accountants in finance and the sales team, for example.
There's plenty of other reasons, but those come to the top of my mind.
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
The "tech vs biz" feuds are an extension of the conflicts between management and labor. Tech divisions, though they have their own managers, are responsible for doing the production work of the company, while the biz offices are responsible for managing the company (and, ultimately, the tech division).
The management vs labor conflict is as old as the division of labor. Tech vs biz is probably at least as old as the first person to market the inventor of the wheel's widget.
--
make install -not war
dont want joe blow walking in and having access to the bank accounts and cc#s of 100,000 people.
And when they're users like you, does that really come as much of a surprise?
you will find that your bosses boss is a tech guy
Don't count on it. Microsoft and Sun, to name two, are run by suits.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It is very rare to find 'business' people who understand technical issues, and yet they quite often tries to control deadlines, features etc. for technical projects, quite often against the recommendations of the technical people.
This more often than not leads to delays (sometimes years!) which the business person then tries to blame the technical people.
Essentially, most business people tries to put limits on all of these in projects: Resources, Features, Time, Quality Where technical people knows you can only limit 3 of the 4.
So, in general the reason for the animosity from us techies is pretty simple. Most business people don't know what they're talking about, but pretend to know our area better than us (when they don't).
If you think anyone is "anti-business" then you probably have a flawed idea of what "business" means.
It is not a single cohesive thing, you can't look at a something and say "that's business" or something else and say "that's not business". It pervades and influences everything, a bit like the force, except not always good.
Ask these techies "Do you like getting paid?" They will say "Yes" and that is part of "business"
Ask them "Do you want to produce good products?" They will say "Yes" and that is part of "business"
On the other hand ask them to follow some half-arsed "business" process that you've read about in a book and they may well tell you where to go.
The fact that they are disagreeing with you doesn't mean they are anti-business, it means they are anti-you.
It is a very common phenomenon, in my experience; in most companies management seem to fawn upon the sales staff and the technical staff are just workers that can be replaced at a moment's notice. Which is of course nonsense; it would venture to say that despite appearances, the production staff are the one part that a company can't do without. And in the case of technical staff - it certainly takes something like up to a year before a developer is fully up to speed and delivers their full potential.
The problem is one of respect - which is really a two-fold problem. One thing is the attitude of management - they need to fully realise how important the techies are and work towards integrating them in the decision processes of the company. They need to learn not just respect, but also how to show respect. As an example from a company I've been in: Management decided to introduce a reward scheme - your colleagues could nominate you to be a "Star" and the reward was... a horrible, star-shaped perspex sculpture. The sales and admin people loved it, but as I think you can guess, the techies did anything to avoid getting one of those. Now if the reqard had been something like the latest gadget, a technical manual or a TTY concole from the sixties with a built-in tape punch, that would have been great. Management hadn't learned how to communicate their respect to the technical staff, so they ended up feeling left out - again.
But perhaps the more important thing is self-respect. Technically minded people are very often introverts, who easily feel left outside. Social skills don't come as easy to us, so we will often end up expecting failure in situations that are not withing our professional area. We need to learn to respect ourselves and realise that we are immensely valuable, not just for our technical skills, but also on a more personal level. The thing about being introverted is that you think about things. A lot. We are the kind of people that are willing and able to think about what people bring to us; you wouldn't believe how rare that actually is - we have a lot to give to people around us, if only we believe in ourselves. It takes a lot of courage, though - I know, because I have been through that process. I don't know how many times I have felt like I had put not only my foot in my mouth, but thick socks, slalom-boots and skis as well; you just pick yourself up, say never mind and laugh with people when they laugh at you.
At one place I worked, there was enormous animosity between IT and Sales/Business Dev. It stemmed from them selling services and guaranteeing delivery dates on software that hadn't been created yet.
So... it was a constant treadmill trying to play catchup to meet those ridiculous deadlines, which caused a lot of animosity from developers to sales.
Camping on quad since 1996.
(I see the tag already there for Dilbert).
Originally you had the Peter principle: that everyone is promoted until they can't do the job - and that's where they stop. And then the Dilbert principal (which I present here as a serious conjecture) that everyone is promoted to the position where they can do the least damage.
They're similar, obviously, but without a doubt my experience is that the Dilbert principal is the more correct - certainly in Dilbert like organizations.
It leads to a problem of a "ruling" class of idiots - and the worst thing is that they equate "success" with ability. Hence, you have a manager, who, at best, knows the buzzwords within the technical group - but has no idea what he's talking about (I'm actually thinking of real people). They will generally then impose their will on the technical group, believing their own press, and make really terrible commitments. Now they have been promoted to the position where they can do least damage - so the tech group can ignore these commitments, and clients will equally treat them with contempt once they realize that the PHB has no power to deliver on them - however, there is a lot of goodwill lost in the meantime.
Occasionally, you come across those who are governed by the Peter principal, and those guys (and gals) are really good. They also know when to shut up. But the larger the company, the more likely it is to be a Dilbert organization.
If you need to know if you work for a Dilbert organization, just read some - it's absolutely terrifying how accurate it is sometimes.
Bitter? Me? Naaaah!
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I think often this si run over and over, with no effective discussion on Why it occurs...
Most of the posts here are on People becoming undervalued due to diligent work, and of examples of Business staff being unable to appreciate the work of Technical staff.
The important factor here is that Business staff aren't technical staff. As such, they don't understand what you are doing, or why what you do is important.
Instead of bleating about it, become constructive, provide some metrics that can be used by business staff to judge your performance on. Develop KPI's, develop a reporting scheme, even as little as a giant whiteboard with a list of things you are doing, and crossing off what is done.
People don't want to have to understand tech to use it, most people don't understand how cars work, but can see the direct result of a mechanics work by driving their car to work with a greater than 95% success rate. They can see and appreciate it because there is a metric: Walk to work in the rain, or not walk to work in the rain...
Two rules:
1 - Real World spins because of money, not gravitational forces, and businessmen control that flow of money. IE, they have the power techies have not.
2 - A techie manipulate things while a businessman manipulates people.
Conclusion: when problems occur and a techie has to defend him/herself against the businessman, usually it's the businessman who wins. This explain the frustration among techies.
But...
A techie can screw the businessman in multiple ways just by manipulating his gadgets. Just be sure not to be caught because the same energy that moves our world also fuels the justice system.
Similar to my frequent dilemmas as a sound tech for live shows, balancing the needs of the musicians vs the needs of the venue/promoter. Do NOT get me started.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Reconciling the distinct, sometimes conflicting needs of different groups is where good managers are priceless. If you've got that kind of antipathy between your tech people and your business people, someone has been doing something wrong. Tech is supposed to _enable_ people to do their work, not get in their way. And it can be fun in and of itself, which is why many of us do it.
But they don't often pay us to have fun of our own, they want things to work well and not cost too much. As soon as your tech staff starts calling people 'lusers', and the secretaries leave things broken because it's just too much trouble to come to us for help, then our company or department should start looking for a new leader. Not just a new IT person: a new leader to help create those relationships.
Business people lack it. They seem to care about things which we understand have no real importance. So we deal with it and build cool stuff anyway. I've had this everywhere to some extent.
Your answer is in RFC 1925, point (2) 7a:
Good, fast, cheap - pick any two (you can't have all three)
As techies our instinct goes to "good and fast". Almost without thinking. Business people, on the other hand, really are the exact opposite: "cheap" is the fixed value for them, and then they pick either good or fast depending on the specific project.
The most common scenario is that the techie builds something, but isn't happy with it, rebuilds it, improves it, tests it, fixes bugs, continues on and on and on. You can see that very well in security. Techies hold entire conferences about which obscure, rarely encountered problems could under which very special circumstances provide a small chance that technology X could be circumvented.
For business people "does the job" is all they need. If there's a 0.1% chance that a hypothetical attack can go straight through, say, your firewall, a techie will consider it broken. A business person thinks "let's get an insurance, at that failure rate the premium will be very affordable".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I left IT because I got tired of being blamed for problems the user caused. All they do is randomly click buttons , downloading everything, clicking I agree to whatever pops up on the web, think AOL is a good program, wonder why thier uber software from 1987 wont install on windows xp. They cant take responsibility for anything with an almost narcissistic attitude. The least you can do is confess as to why your comp is full of spyware. I can clearly see you have been looking at bestiality porn and CP. So just fess up instead of trying to blame me you stupid shit. I must not dwell on the past. It is not good for me. lol
During my career I have been on many side of the fence and it all boils down to what we think is important to get the job down and a lack of understanding of the other guy's role.
... screw him.
I have been a tech, developer in a software house, and the internal fight with the sale dept were daily occurrence. Some promises to a customer or some awful technical wording made it so we (tech) had to step up to the plate and "fix" something or implement some dumb feature overnight bypassing QA and all other SOP.
I hated those guys.. can't they have their fact straights?
Then I ended up in pre-sale and sale. I started with perfect technical speak, and it failed, message didn't register with the customers, so I dumbed it down, focused on the great colors, business efficiency, ROI, all that crap. It worked. And if you've done sale you know that every customer has a wish of x features your product can not do, so you try to explain to him how he could do otherwise with what's already there. Sometime the customer will be dead set and you know the concurrent can do xyz, and it's a 5 million dollar project and crap the profit will still be good even if you factor in tasking a dev for ten days to implements it. So you say yes. The company needs money and if it means annoying a guy in the dev team, well
As an IT admin, there is nothing more annoying that a user who thinks that opening port xyz because he wants to use so and so application or doesn't understand why he cannot bittorent the latest whatever. As a non-IT admin, I don't really care what's your problem, if it gets in the way of me making money, you're a problem, not a solution.
Having been on both side, I think it's all a matter of misunderstanding of how a company work and what makes it proficient. I think everyone should try to assess the question in term of "Is it good for the company" (efficiency and risk).
And for their sake techies needs to take business classes and be able to lay down their analysis in terms someone from management can care about and cut on the tech speak.
We once installed a configurable system, and did months of testing to ensure it worked on all configurations, boundary cases, etc.
This was an important financial system, and I know that if it had not worked as required there would have been hell to pay.
Six months later someone decided to check our test data against the live configuration and found a very odd rule, giving people with worse credit histories better interest rates. We queried it and they said it was wrong but "why was the system so hard to understand".
We brought up the original specifications, page diagrams etc. given by business and showed them that it worked in exactly the way they wanted it to. The "difficult to understand" argument was never done again. In fact the whole thing was put down to "just one of those things".
The ID manager suggested that we could query the database and find out how many people were given a rate inappropriate for the risk - and maybe flag the accounts for quick follow up if they had arrears. Almost unbelievably we were told that on "under no circumstances were we to query the database for this information, as the results could be seen as unfair to the business unit concerned". This came from a board level director so we really had to comply.
Again, had an IT problem lead to people being given the wrong rates we all know the first question would have been "How many people are affected and how much money is involved?". The second would have been "who was responsible?".
I believe that the business see the IT department as a car and them as the drivers. If they take a route that leaves them crawling in traffic at 20mph its "one of those things". If the car only crawls along at 20mph its "totally unacceptable".
Managers do nothing significant, most of the time. If they do not push papers around, then they just talk and talk and talk...we, on the other hands, work our asses out 12 hours a day, doing real work, solving problems...
There are few managers that really work: they think of new ideas, they manage, they lay out plans...most of the managers are fluff.
From my point of view, there's only a small number of companies where the Techs have a good relationship to the Business People or even Managers.
The main reasons are, in my oppinion, management, and respect.
As many others pointed out, the Tech doing his job best is the one you'll never see working because there are no problems with the IT infrastructure at all.
The problem is: In most companies I know or worked for, the IT departement is managed by a business man -- not by a tech. This is a fundamental (management) mistake.
Just do make it clear to everyone: Would you as business man like to discuss your great business plan with a non-business Tech, who then decides which way to go? No, of course not -- he'll hardly understand what your point is at all.
So, why do they force the Techs to discuss new hardware, network expansions and other, highly tech-related stuff with a business man? He won't understand why, won't see the connections, the big picture in the background.
The business people often tell the Techs that's part of the Tech's job to explain it in a way so the manager understands. Would you like (or even able) to explain your business plan to somebody knowing nothing about marketing and management at all? Giving him a crash course in Management/Marketing? And every time from the roots up, because next time he doesn't remember what you did talk about last time.
No, you won't. So, don't force the Techs to do it the other way around. It's useless -- you'll perhaps get a little window where you can see a part of the big picture behind, but you won't be able to see it in total.
By managing IT departements in this way, with a business man doing the decissions who has not the Tech background, you'll make a lot of false decissions. And the Techs are the ones having to deal with. No wonder they get fretted.
If you want a smooth, productive IT departement, look for a Tech with some business/management skills and help him to tighten them. Ensure that the head of the IT departement is a Tech. Because he's accepted, he has the background, and he knows what he's talking about when he talks about your IT. And give him financial responsibility. He must be the one deciding which hardware to buy.
I know a company here in Germany where the CTO and member of the board of directors at first a Tech and then business man. In the early days, he was one of the upper sysadmins. It's a big internet provider/hoster over here.
I whish this would be the common situation in most companies.
The slighly overweight penguin.
Some of them are. I wish I could find that clip from the BBC's "The Office" where Tim comes back and finds an IT worker "fixing" his computer. Brilliant!
America, Home of the Brave.
In my experience, an animosity between 'business' and 'tech' can grow from both sides.
The most common cause, I think, is a tendency of 'tech' people to bury themselves entirely in their own comfort zone, to do their IT stuff and not look at anything else. This is only too natural, especially when IT is organized as a separate department at high level, but it tends to result in a IT framework that is often irrelevant to the business and sometimes positively harmful. (Particularly grating on normal people is the Religion of IT Policy, according to which things need to be done purely because they are Policy.) Anyway, responsible IT people should always keep an eye on the overall picture and their mind focused on the company objectives.
But it also frequently happens that the business side dismisses the technical side as mere infrastructure, and refuses to believe that doing the technical side better can actually be of benefit to the business. In the extreme case, if you put twelve managers in a room and feed them enough coffee, they will evidently conclude that the only thing that really matters is management, and everything else can be outsourced. Of course including the IT department. Now, if you are selling sandwiches or coffee, IT probably is mere plumbing and you don't need to care much, but in the financial sector or in anything high-tech neglecting IT is dangerous.
Both hostile trends have a strong tendency to reinforce each other, and they can have a very damaging impact on a company. Ignoring the contribution the technical side can make to the company is probably the least harmful; it will lead to a bog standard tool set but that is going to be damaging only over the longer term. An IT department that is blind to the business impact of its decisions can actually do very serious damage on the short term, because it can very effectively (if unintentionally) sabotage key activities and have a strong negative impact on employee morale.
While I agree with some here who have shed light on the fact that business team members usually have a poor opinion of technology team members but sometimes I've seen this is the fault of the tech person. In my experience tech people tend to leave business causes and methods at the door either because they aren't familiar with them or the are more involved in their own missions that may or may not align with the business as a whole. I've seen IT architects that are more concerned with pushing out their upgrades and/or their infrastructure "upgrades" (usually to prove to the organization their position in the company) that the neglect to take into account the real mission and goals of the organization. In my opinion IT exists solely for the business, not the other way around. And I'd like to see some IT managers come up with a vision for IT that involves seeing ways to improve or support the business FIRST and then coming up with the solution (instead of having a technology and then finding a way to fit it into the company).
I did some work for a big Australian telco (yes, you know who) for six months and noticed significant demarcation issues between the software department and the customer service divisions. It was so bad that the customer service divisions were writing their own programs on the side, because it was too difficult to deal with the software people. And the software people were caught up in their own infrastructure projects.
I suspect it is common in large businesses because each department becomes a little community, with an 'us and them' attitude to other departments.
Personally I don't think software/IT should be a separate department; it would be better if IT people were assigned to work on particular projects within the department that was running the project. Not only would that help software people to understand better the business implications of what they are doing, but it would help reduce the competing priorities which IT people are subjected to.
Obviously there are some IT roles that have to be centralized (especially if there are large server systems or the like). But I think we place too much emphasis on the efficiency of centralization at the expense of company morale.
falling into the trap of hating the business i work for. its inevitable because IT is very rarely in line with the same goals management is (profit, corporate citizenship, etc... i could care less about.) IT just wants it to run right, and keep them out of the office on a saturday.
my old boss once insisted IT was a part of the business, lock stock and barrel. however I once read on slashdot that IT was a service to, not a function of most businesses. keeping myself aligned with "service" has helped me to avoid alot of workplace animosity.
Its all in how you spin it i suppose, but without a customer, none of us would be here. its tough to have visibility.
Good people go to bed earlier.
somewhere, he says that whenever you demo prototype software to higherups, have an obvious problem, like a mis spelt word, so they have something to point to and feel important about
same thing about the it dept: every week, something that is easy to fix only if you are an admin but looks hard and is clearly the users responsibility should break
I think the situation is quite natural. Business is about reality, tech is about perfection. The two groups have quite different interests and goals. The art is to unite the two for a good result.
Businessmen everywhere are about as close you can get to jungle law, they live to maximize profit, seek out new enterprises (to maximize profit), and their gadgets are mediocre at best, because frankly they could not care less as long as GSM works, and it looks presentable. Presentability is very important for them, so they wear expensive effective wristwatches.
Tech people sacrifice pretty much anything to perfect the technology they work on. They look like their mother dresses them, do not pay as much attention (as others) to their appearance and most of their energy is spent on the thought process and its application.
Of course the described above is extreme examples, but such polarization between the two groups is quite common, and that is what IMO gives rise to the perception.
When you put the two together, if the two must cooperate for common good, like a chemical reaction they start productive fighting over the balance between the real delivered product sacrificing anything else but sell-value (which the businessman decides alone what is) and a pure concept and its development as the tech person sees fit. Since business is what seemingly runs the company, since it is all kinds of businessmen, project managers included, who run and shake hands at meetings, tech people are ignored most of the time as labour ants, however in all my experience this is the most common and gravest mistake the suits ever make. They take themselves far too serious and important to understand that the very platform they are trying to sell is made by anyone else but themselves. Businessman without a developer is like a conman on the street that sells you all kinds of promises and service you do not immediately see, only they do it with flashy and impressive Powerpoint presentations (albeit really lame). A developer without a seller (businessman) is equally useless, however inspiring it may seem, because with all the bright ideas and started development, unless he has some financial support elsewhere and is backed up, needs such financial interest and investing from someone, otherwise it all ends up like helicopters Leonardo Da Vinci drafted in his sketchbooks (albeit pretty well drafted).
Stop thinking about making it all work smoothly. Give up on the proactive vs reactive approach. The trick for me was to give the business people "presents." I put them on their own subnet with a (fairly useless) firewall, so they all felt cozy and comfortably isolated from the "lower workers." One day I gave them all cheap web cams and shortcuts to our remote offices, telling them to cut their phone bills (the head of finance almost kissed me for that one.) Pick someone who bad-mouths the techies and give them some report that they never knew they could get that fits their job well. Look for influential people and influence them. I gave a CEO a "speedometer" that showed running totals of accounts payable, accounts receivable, total $$$ on orders placed, and $$$ on orders shipped for the day, week, and month. He loved it, and I got a new PC. Business folks don't see how hard it is to maintain the status quo, so don't bother showing them. Give them bangles and neat toys and data for their job that makes them go "Cool" and they'll see you as a friend.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
My general experience is that companies tend either to be sales driven or technology driven. If they are sales driven (which ultimately most companies seem to become), then there is resentment on the tech side. This is because technology is the thing that enables the sales - but the sales side of companies tend to be populated with... well ... technical buffoons filled with buzzwords. The sales people are often paid much more - this is often perceived as unjust.
My take is this;
I work for an HMO and service diverse departments. I deal with Finance, Claims, Call Center, and even other IS groups.
The better the the group can describe their problems and their solutions to the problem the better I can work with them- it gives me a baseline to build my solution from. Even if I agree with their solution, I usually tweak it for the idea that in the future something is going to change.
The worst group that I deal with is sadly the one that does not understand their own processes at all. And sadly I have to deal with them everyday because they need a huge amount of hand holding to get their business done on a timely basis. The most interesting fact of this group is that they've organically grown their solutions to their problems, thus it's a hogepog of intertwined Excel and Access data sets with data going back 14 years. They have no idea on where to even begin to understand their own business or even how to improve their efforts. It's a complete nightmare everytime, and honestly I don't want to deal with it anymore. Well at least the Sr. VPs are involved this time, so perhaps a few heads will roll in that group and some change will happen.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Definition #3
One thing tech folks tend to overlook is that in any organization that is not a technology company directly (Hardware/Software/SaaS), the IT staff and everything about it is considered a cost center. It does not generate any revenue.
Of course most of us recognize that most of the businesses we work for could not make revenue with out the technology, but quite often the IT staff and infrastructure is viewed in the same light as having to pay rent or power bills. A cost of doing business.
This often times leads to many of the issues between techies and business types. Techies will make suggestions on new ways to meet needs, but the business types will over rule based on cost. This makes it appear that the business "just doesn't get it" regarding technology, when it maybe that the technologists "just don't get it" regarding the costs. Nearly every decision is based on cost analysis.
Whereas technologists will look at these issues and tend to think "yeah, we need to do it because it is the right thing to do", or worse "we need to do it to be on the cutting edge", the business side looks at it from the balance sheet perspective.
The primary reality is, companies have IT because they have to have it, just like electricity, but just as a company will continually try to negotiate lower rates with the power company, they also do what they can to keep internal costs down in non-revenue generating areas.
The management sometimes wants things tech decides are foolish so there's a source of friction. Same thing for users. It's present in every collective human endeavor. I call it 'politics'. The thing you have to remember is the pet rock. Sometimes a stupid idea is really great and sometimes it's just stupid. You won't always know which is which so don't get too complacent in your own judgment.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
Face facts, big business is corrupt. Business doesn't work with us, mostly it cheats and steals from its employees and customers.
The real problem is lack of corporate responsibility and reform.
I was recently let go from my IT job at a small company. Before I was laid off for being an "unnecessary expense" I was setting up their entire website, ftp and email on an inhouse server on a T1. Additionally, I had maintained 11 offices and ~60 systems including 5-10 smaller (but critical) servers.
Though the website was up, no one ever bothered to learn how to use it, configure it, fix it or even log in. After being let go I was barraged with emails asking about the system including "What's the password? I forget."
I told them I could come in and help for $150/hr. They stopped emailing me.
...that IT people are, in general, smarter than average; whereas the people on the business side are generally dumber than average.
And before you all flame me, I'm talking generally. Let's face it, what percentage of all the Marketing/Business Administration majors would you call really clever. Now compare that with the IT side.
The fact is, most of the soft jobs in a large corporation - Marketing, junior management, etc. - are almost entirely unnecessary; yet the same cannot be said of the IT jobs.
Am I the only one to notice that TFA asked about techies being anti-business, yet most of the comments here were about the business side (businessies?) being anti-tech. Are we not self-centered?
The company I work for was recently (2 years ago) bought out by a more tech oriented company. Now at least 3 VPs out of 30 odd and the Pres. are all former tech/programmers. They put all us programmers in the far off top corner of one building and tell everyone else to leave us alone. Works out pretty well, except some programmers always seem to be chatting nearby. Tech is on the first floor of the building directly below us. They never seem to be doing anything, but that's a good thing. I'm still pretty new here, so I haven't talked to the higher ups much.
Slashdot Quote:
Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.
Personally I'd prefer reese's pieces and hot pockets, but I'm fine with the former.
In my tech career, I've seen:
- sales guys (driven by bonuses) promise features/deliverables that didn't exist, with a commitment to deliver them "next week". It then falls on the tech folks to either deliver those, or take the blame for losing the sale.
- account managers promise a customer that "sure, we can import your product list that is currently scattered across multiple Excel document, text files, and Post-It notes. Our tech people will get started on that immediately and have it done by tomorrow". It then falls on the tech folks to drop everything else and figure out how to pull this off, or take the blame for upsetting the customer.
- after an audit revealed that we were not 100% PCI compliant, we launched an initiative (with support of senior-level management) at the beginning of the year to become fully compliant. There have been major changes in infrastructure, application features, etc. Some people have lost rights that they previously had. Certain data is now "off limits" to all but a few users. It's no longer acceptable to run Access on your local machine to do ad-hoc database queries. One result of all of this is that there is a layer of people between Senior Management and IT who have been "inconvenienced", and they blame US (the tech staff) for that. They won't complain to SM and risk looking uncooperative, but they go out of their way to bitch and whine and generally make life difficult for us. Snide comments are commonplace, some friendships have suffered, etc, etc, etc....
So, yeah, there does tend to be some friction between tech folks and business folks. They're in different worlds with different responsibilities and different priorities.
I work in Radiology Healthcare. More specifically, implementing IT solutions to enhance workflow productivity. Yes Im one of those dreaded people who 'enhance' your productivity (ie: either get you laid off or make you work harder), while attempting to make sure no one does that to my job ;)
At any rate, the conflict Ive noticed between IT and the business half of the companies I implement solutions for (and some are very large) is more on the lines of a power struggle between the IT group and the business Administrators (often times doctors or investors). There is an ever present struggle in these companies between what the end users want (techs, Rads, transcriptionists etc) and what the IT group wants. The IT group often wants a scalable solution which is easy to maintain, and is not overly burdensome with bugs, glitches or manual intervention. What the end user wants is often a very user friendly piece of software that is intuitive and, as a second requirement, stable. From my experience, these two rarely coincide.
Ive seen companies where the IT group acheives 'power' and they will literally rip out an entire IT solution to implement something more friendly to the IT group. Ive also seen the reverse, where the end users clearly drive the company and will force a crappy back end solution on the IT group in order to have 1 or two less mouse clicks (because in healthcare its all measured in the number of clicks dontchaknow).
This pervasive power struggle is quite entertaining to watch I must say. Personally I dont really care which way the pendulum swings, as long as I can get in, implement the solution in a timely fashion and get out. Im curious as to whether the same thing happens in companies outside of healthcare. From the original post, it sounds like it probably does.
I've been in consulting for over a decade, have seen this at almost every large company I've been in contact with. At varying degrees of course, from the mild annoyance with business to the total refusal to talk to the business side.
Funnily enough, the business side is usually the one with the funding, the tech side with attitude and trying to enforce questionable best-practices.
That sometimes leaves a consultant caught between scylla and charybdis ;)
can someone tell me how this post is not just a poor troll?
I run a successful software company and I have to deal with large-company IT departments all the time. I can state with authority that:
1) No two IT departments are the same. Some are great, some suck.
2) IT departments often get in the way of business progress. It isn't necessarily their fault, because they've been nailed with security mandates, "thou shalt not crash my PC" mandates, "thou shalt cut your datacenter support team by 50%" mandates, and so on, that cause them to have to resist (or at least point out potential problems with) almost every new initiative. So IT gets cast in the role of obstructionist, whether they are actually obstructionist or not.
3) IT departments often think they know "what's best" for the business, and they really don't. This can prevent the business from acquiring technology (like ours) that would help them deeply. I've been in many meetings where IT stands up and says, "we already own [this generic product from some large vendor], so why do we need this new thing?" That's the kiss of death for the business, for me, and for everyone else -- because the business people will NEVER use [the generic product], not in a million years, not ever, yet the CFO (always looking to save money) sees an opportunity not to spend. End of initiative.
Apparently he's never read a Dilbert strip.
Proverbs 21:19
I have seen this conflict between IT and Business in every company I've worked for. We speak a different language. IT people need to learn to speak the business language, otherwise you will always be an outcast. Respect from the business must be earned, if you can't communicate on a business level, that will not happen. I can say in each company I have worked for, I have progressed extremely well due to my knowledge of both IT and business, and my ability to communicate about IT at a level suitable to the business.
IT is a business tool and business enabler. Conflicts come about when the IT team is not able to effectively communicate the benefits of the IT systems and staff, in a way that makes sense to the business management. You can't just go in to a board room and say I want $100,000 to install security. You need to quantify that in terms that the business can support. Essentially, how much will it save the business and/or what risks does it mitigate.
Just hold'em down for a second, I've got the dykes.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I've generally found that people on the business side of stuff respect me for my competence in an area where they are weak. The only time I can think of that this wasn't so was in my first tech job -- an on-site contracted help desk job -- twenty-some years ago. The non-IT staff had had several years of poor support from the previous contractor, and they expected more of the same when I started. I learned that actually solving people's problems and treating them with respect goes a long way. Even the most flaming, arrogant ***hole in the organization respected me after a year or so, and this was the same guy who cussed me out on the phone in my first week. The thing is to not get wrapped up in office politics. Everyone brings some value to the organization, or he wouldn't be there. Someone found enough merit in each staff member to offer the job.
I think the bottom line is that we need to deliver two things:
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
1) Many comments posted did not even understand the core point- "An anonymous reader writes
"I've recently found a spot in a large company, and I'm noticing that here a lot of people on the technology side are very anti-business."
Right out of the box the Slashninnys began commenting on how "techies" are "looked down upon" and the discussion went from there, thats not what the core argument.
You idiots are not understanding, if you want a clue come to accept that the membership on Slashdot is a good representation of "the technology side" and that the socio-political opinions espoused here by both members and moderation is very leftist, enviro-whacko, open source, anti-energy and is evidenced by its left wing bias and unwavering Democrats are great Republicans bad themes here
These positions are anti-business and with the Slashdots obvious bias against Republicans who are pro-business, it is fucking obvious.
Your ushering in your own demise dimwits and I am having fun watching it go down, your San Fran hypocrisy is eating away at your insides.
In a nutshell, you tech geeks for all of your "intelligence" dont have a fucking clue as to how the bread gets buttered you dumbshits and its obvious when you dont even get the central point in a post, your too busy lamenting your plight to pay attention to the bigger picture and maybe you need it spelled out for you
1) ENERGY- we must end the leftist prohibition on its production
2) ECONOMICS- socialism and higher taxes is not the basis for a robust economy
3) SECURITY- we must take action unilaterally when necessary to protect our far reaching interests even if the action seems obscure, leave the machiavellian to the experts not the public and especially not the democrats
4) OPEN SOURCE- is utopiast drivel, its dieing on the vine and why, no one fucking cares except you here, its socialism for software and no one owns it so no one cares when it really matters, it doesn't make REAL money
5) MICROSOFT- come to the obvious conclusion your sitting in some chair with a cushy button pusher job versus what you could have been doing, laying brick because of and not despite Microsoft
6) POLITICS- Leftists Marxist Socialists dont do business unless its to line only their pockets
7) DEMOCRATS- they fucked up the 1st 3 points above and we are all paying it for it today and its taken 8 years to restore security, will take another 8 to get Energy on the right pro-biz track and the economics will follow
But your obvious love for Obama and the Democrats here make it obvious, most of you just dotn fucking get it and probably never will!
This is an example of one of the many ways that "business" seems evil, to some of us.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Can't be anywhere near as dangerous as snow snakes. Poisonous little buggers are attracted to body heat, y'know. Worse, they're almost impossible to see in their natural environment during the winter unless you happen to notice their black eyes.
Their reversal of the normal reptilian cycle of hibernate during the winter and active during the summer means that they're only dangerous for about 8 months a year. They're also pretty sluggish until the temp drops to about minus 20 degrees C. They're only really dangerous when it drops below minus 40 C. Fortunately, that only lasts for about six weeks or so here in Minnesota.
They breed like crazy, too. It's a good thing that our fleets of swamp mosquitoes like to dig them out of their nests to feed on them during the summer or we'd be overrun.
I feel it has a lot more to do with trust in the company and their services than access to the actual source files. Access to the source files is just another way of saying "We know we are excellent, but just to make you more comfortable buying from us, here, have a look for yourself. Should we make a move that is not good for your business, you have the sources and won't be locked in. Should we be bought out by a competitor they can't just withdraw our software from the market since you'd still have the sources and some other company would be more than willing to help you with fixes."
Imagine if Microsoft open sourced all their products. You could then get this software for next to nothing to run your corporate infrastructure. But would you really want to get this software from an unknown guy down the street with all kinds of backdoors preinstalled for your convenience? No because you would be kicked out of your corner office in no time for endangering the business.
Ok. Perhaps you would buy it from a somewhat more repectable source, but for just 20% of Microsofts original price. You would get the same software as that other guy sold, but without the backdoors.
Now some of your competitors would still buy their software directly from Microsoft, paying just 50% of what Microsoft charges today. These competitors are betting their reputation on having the best, most efficient and most stable business infrastructure available. Your competitors trust Microsoft to allways support them and not to do anything against their interests. If these customers need help, Microsoft responds to these needs just like any market oriented business would. In comparison a communist organisation would make up a plan for the future, releasing software according to a fixed schedule, regardless of market needs or the quality of what was released. If Microsoft would not take care of these needs quickly, a number of small and faster software houses would pop up instantly to take care of this need (and a large amount of money).
Microsoft could start selling support packages giving access to their patches instantly, seriously increasing the rate of fixes and patches since they actually make a lot of money from this. They could then let these patches trickle down to less fortunate players after some time, creating excellent good will, still keeping Microsoft in pole position with more trusted and secure software services.
It is my opinion that software copyrights should only be valid for a single digit number of years. Comments are welcome.
She made the willows dance
I'm going to assume you're in America; what you're talking about seems part-n-parcel of what I've found here all my life; the two roles of consumer versus producer.
America needs both; once upon a time most people could be either: farmers who buy goods- that kinda thing. But in the last 30-40 years the whole games has become slanted against the producers. The top of this spectrum are the 'Celebutards' who couldn't make up their minds, much less anything to sell, or even the concept of running a business.
Millions of kids in the new slavery of Liberalism grow up into short little lives around 'projects'. No one there seems to have any IDEA that some people work for a living, and others both work and develop their own money being part of the process. No, instead they stand around wondering what to do...until the drugs come around and get pulled down. It's all very sad. FDR was wrong in warehousing these people. They need the same 'pay or walk' lifestyle the rest of us have. And it's our own embarassment that we don't teach them as we should.
These people aren't idiots, they're just unaware. The process worked against them, and they're MISERABLE. We need to stop warehousing folks this way...it's not 'merciful' to give them money and think they're done.
But understand that, despite the Left's ability to pretend to be charming and/or wonderful, they cut through people's lives and bring a misery that makes The Adversary smile. And yet, the producers produce...and sales teams advertise for the rest of us, consumers.
Even so, it's the best system in the world.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
I'm not in IT, I've been on the business side for one of the profitable auto manufactorers for the past 8 years. Our IT group is actually a separate division and will bill my division for work done (our hardware maintenance is sub-contracted out at the discression of each office around the country). There is no underlying animosity between business and IT here, maybe because IT is treated as a segment to the business and not a support function...
It seems like most of the posts that have been modded up, to this point, make it sound like every manager is a baffoon and no one ever respects the IT guy. Maybe if people didn't go in with the attitude of "me vs them" the situation would be better. Our on-site IT guy covers two locations and about 300 users, he's well respected.. and that's probably because he brings a good attitude to work.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
This may be a little off topic, but I am not sure that engineer is the correct term for the IT individuals generally being discussed here. Are they legally responsible to be right? Do they have to take licensing exams before they are allows to practice their skills? I don't disrespect those people at all, but I think that our terminology may have deviated here a little bit. They are systems designers, but not engineers. If they build something and it breaks, there probably won't be a lawsuit.
I was very impressed to discover, when I lived in Toluca Lake, that we actually had 120 volts. Voltage never varied there, either. I'd sure be crying if they started varying my frequency. That's beyond the Pale.
I never measured, but the water pressure was pretty damn high as well.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Tech folks need to be educated on the importance of understanding the business and how that will allow them to do their job better--and in some cases they need to learn and understand that their REAL job is to facilitate the primary activities of the business, not to pulling cables or administering systems.
Yes, Norfolk Southern's President and Chairman of the Board. Previous CTO and Georgia Tech Graduate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Moorman
Unless you work for a pure technical company, then the business is the focus. I have worked for some large companies, whose focus or main line was not tech and ran into quite a few "techies" who can't fucking grasp that the business doesn't exist to keep the servers running. The servers are running to serve the business. This concept is foreign to quite a few geeks who have this "us vs. the business" mentality.
A gin in the hand is worth two in the bottle.
"a lot of people on the technology side are very anti-business"
.. and they know nothing about technology ...
correction, a lot of the business side are very anti-technology, especially if it's a technology company
davecb5620@gmail.com
I recently left a large international company. I worked there in an IT capacity. The problem that led up to it was my boss was a Sales guy/Manager not a technician. He believed we were lazy. He felt me and my coworkers weren't getting the jobs down and wanted to fire us. We were all working 50+ hours a week and some of the team were clocking over 80 hours a week. These people were the hardest working guys I've ever known. Fast Forward to my new job. Company I work for now the Business, Sales and IT departments are all seperate. My boss is a Technician his boss was a technician and the owners were IT people. Now the different departments think we are all useless and don't do shit. Because god help us if one of the laptops go down they can't be told it'll be ready tomorrow morning its fix it now! So it causes some issues. But the real hate comes between the Sales and the IT departments. The Sales team is always OVERSELLING a service. So they'll tell the client we can maintain your systems 100% of the time and we'll do everything, updates, software push downs, wash your car, do your taxes. Then bitch us out when we can't do the impossible. Its quite fun.
People seem to be not getting the point here. Technology in big business settings isn't IT.. that's IT. They are different things, just like QA is not testing. In small companies, those sort-of-similar things get lumped together. In big companies, they are VERY separate.
Think of it this way... let's say you are merging two big customer-facing databases from two vendors into one that you own. Technology needs to plan out how this is going to happen, and make sure that the databases merge seamlessly, that the new one is set up, etc. The business needs to make sure that they contact customers and make sure that they are aware of any access changes. They have to watch the budget on the project, look for the ROI on the project, make sure it's worth it. They have to be in contact with the legal department to make sure there aren't any legal issues with severing contracts with the vendors. They need to make sure that customer support is set up... new 800 numbers are set up and communicated. etc etc.
Maybe not the best example, as it's one I just pulled out of my brain... but those are the kinds of things that go on in big companies. Lots of things to consider that aren't technology. There are some projects that are only technology, some that are only IT, and some that are only business. And any combination in between.
Now.. why is there animosity between the business and technology? Because they are different worlds. One doesn't understand the other, and what they really do. I've been in technology my whole career, and am seeing what goes on in the business side now. You get a new appreciation for what they do.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
ITs of the world unite!!!
When I was in university the commerce (e.g. business) students signed a petition to abolish arts and humanities studies, since they're a waste of time, money and there's no profit to be made from studying such things.
Perhaps, if we were to generalize, we could say on the one hand you have a group of people whose tendency is to not do anything unless it financially benefits them in some way and to impose their viewpoints and beliefs on others. On the other hand you have a completely different group that tends to like doing and learning things just because they can, values privacy and prefers not to impose their values and beliefs on others.
If true, it's no wonder they don't get along.
Can we contract out the business?
"We have great tech, we just need knowledge on how to bring it to market and make it successful".
Though I tend to lean more to the tech side than the business side of things, I find a great many IT folks seem to want business to adapt to IT rather than the other way around. Unless IT is the business, it is merely the tool and needs to adapt. If it can't do that then it should be scrapped entirely and replaced with something that can.
from a cio's perspective, LAMP is interesting, but what systemic qualities does it have that you think will magically improve your SLA's or improve your time to market or reduce TCO? Unless you're going to convince your partners in the business that they can't buy stuff unless it fits in LAMP, then you've actually increased your TCO. The greatest obstacle to all of those things is not LAMP, Windows, Solaris, or whatever, it's the reduction in total number of "things" you have to support. You've got that right, but unless you're a very small shop, LAMP won't satisfy the solutions the business will drag in.
Years ago, a headhunter called me up for a CTO position at a large company and they said "We're interested in going to an all open-source solution to save license costs, tell us your approach to how you'll go about this". I insisted they had the wrong metric, TCO had to be considered, because licensing and hardware costs were for the most part the smallest cost of supporting applications. Unless they reduced their headcount in IT Infrastructure or Applications, the move would likely cost them more.
They persisted, I persisted. And of course, I did not get the job. On the other hand, who wants to work for a company that draws conclusions first and then looks for "facts" to back up their findings. I think they folded a couple of years ago.
Actually yes you would if it involved implementation of technology as part of the plan. You don't want to have a plan that looks good on paper but can't be implemented with current technology.
Just as a tech person should consult the non-tech business man if significant capital is involved. Most tech workers don't have to consult the higher ups if they need to buy some cables, but if they are going to stress available capital or impact how the business runs, then they should be talking
"Hey we just upgraded the database software, it should save us millions"
"The systems were down for a week and we lost all our customers"
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
I've found that in older (10+) companies there is that disrespect. It's fashioned from years of inbreeding and bad soup. In startups it's a direct reflection of the founders' "business maturity" I have no excuse for established companies. Except maybe the business just got caught expecting waaaaay too much.
An old proverb says "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The business is probably large enough to absorb some of the decreases in efficiency that arise from the conflict, so it's not as if the business will collapse, BUT, I think you'll find it will cause your company a significant limp in the long run.
Let me encourage you, as much as it is in your power, to try to keep the focus on business driving technology decisions. Having been in a place where that was not always the case, I know how hard that is to do. Ultimately, after nine years of trying, I decided to jump ship rather than wait around another 20 years to see if the company might slowly alter the way it handled the business-IT relationship.
[I'm thankful for my current opportunity. I'm establishing an IT department in a mid-sized manufacturing firm. I'm doing everything in my power to ensure that we are making technology choices in support of business decisions, and not the other way around.]
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
very much off-topic, though I decided to share...
begger: "Would you have some spare change for a penile enlargement?" ...
begger: "I'm kinda short!"
A friend of mine is a senior hardware/software engineer for a Silicon Valley firm that makes fluoroptic temperature-sensing equipment for (among other things) the big high-voltage transformers found in power stations. Based on what he's described to me of the situation at the company (he's getting laid off -- after over 16 years! -- at the end of the month), this animosity you describe has good reason to exist.
Example: The company used to make process-control equipment (specifically, endpoint control) for the semiconductor manufacturing industry. They had, at one time, an extraordinarily popular and well-received product that, despite pleading from huge customers such as IBM and Intel, was abruptly discontinued because the CEO and board simply decided "We're not going to make those any more."
Essentially, they took a true "cash cow" for the company and killed it for no good reason. All the parts and subassemblies to make the thing were still available, the operating code was proven, and the thing was a big seller. Nope. Can't have success. Gone.
The same thing happened with a particular type of fluoroptic thermometer. These are devices that can (very accurately) measure temperature with a non-conductive fiber-optic probe. This is very important in transformers which may have hundreds of kilovolts coursing through them. The thing worked, it was wildly popular -- and the company dropped it for no good reason, despite all pleadings to the contrary from other customers.
From what my friend has told me, this all happened because the company ceased to value engineering as a skill, and decided to value marketing instead.
When Marketing wanted a product, they'd come to Engineering with a wish-list and ask how long it would take. Engineering (particularly my friend) would tell them that he couldn't give them an answer without doing some research first. Marketing and Corporate would not let the research happen. Ergo, Engineering couldn't give them anything. They didn't like this, but they also didn't seem to "get it" that you can't make something from nothing, and that (financial) risks and outlay are required to develop ANY new product.
Worse, they were in denial that they didn't "get it." Eventually, this turned into a vicious circle and, after a spate of failed acquisitions where the CEO simply tried to buy what he thought the company needed, rather than valuing the company's own PROVEN engineering department, the company went into a death spiral which triggered massive layoffs.
I doubt said company will even last past the end of this year, since they fired all the staff necessary to actually design and build things.
Now, granted the above sordid tale is only one example. However, I also see it as a symptom of a larger problem: "Big Business," as a culture, no longer values engineering beyond the absolute minimum to get a product out the door. Worse, we've been selling off our skills and abilities to actually manufacture things to the Pacific Rim countries for how many years?
How much "tribal knowledge" has gone out the door along with that manufacturing base? How long will it be until we literally forget how to actually MAKE things?
Do I even need to go into the sadder tale of what's happened to Tektronix? To HP? To how many other firms that were once leaders in their fields, thanks to being truly engineering-driven, and that are now pale husks of what they once were (or gone altogether)?
Given this -- Is it any wonder that there's considerable animosity between common-sense techies and engineers, and pie-in-the-sky bean-counting business? I will freely admit that I feel it as well. It's a big part of what drove me into civil service.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I agree with your argument that most business line folks don't know how to make IT work, and I agree that IT staff are often taken for granted, but allow me to counter your point with my own take on the analogy.
I see the business line as the customer who needs the plumber. They need basic plumbing fixtures in place (e.g., toilets, tubs, sinks, showers), and bring on the plumbing (IT) staff to make it happen.
Unfortunately, here's where things often break down. I've never met a plumber who has been obsessed with the newest technologies in faucets, or one who always wants to install the biggest possible pipes in the walls. The "plumbers" that the business line gets are often like that. Instead of delivering what the customer requested (e.g., toilets, tubs, sinks, showers), they insist on installing (and telling the business line why they need) pressure-assist toilets, bidets, hot tubs, saunas, and even a sprinkler system for the lakefront greenery. The business line pushes back, but the plumbers insist that the business line just doesn't get it--that their trade is too complex to be understood by mere mortals.
The business line walks away from the situation frustrated and feeling that their plumbers are out of control. After all, they didn't want AM/FM radios and 8-track players installed on every toilet bowl--they just wanted basic plumbing. So, as a result, they complain to the big bosses and lobby to have the plumbing department's budget cut, or to have serious restriction placed upon them.
Most of these issues could be avoided in the real world if technical staff, teams, or departments would spend more time learning about the work performed by the business line. Then, as they learn what work is performed, they may see opportunities where technology may help improve the process. Instead of running off and establishing a project team to address this perceived need, the wise tech speaks up and educates the user that a technological solution may be available to help get the job done. Then IT needs to sit back and let the business line make the final decision. Sure, it may make sense to us to sweep in and eliminate triple-data-entry by developing a new system for storing ABC-data, but unless you work through the user base you will likely have little acceptance or buy-in. When you, instead, state, "Gosh, I noticed that you are entering the same data into three sysmtes...would you like me to help your group develop a tool that will let you enter it only once?", you allow the business unit make the decisions about the types of plumbing they want in the building. Then, if you deliver what they requested, you'll have laid a building block of trust. Lay enough of those blocks, and you'll find that the business line may actually give you a longer leash and might let you investigate and experiment with new technologies and systems without fearing that you're trying to cram something down their throats.
Okay, I see the guys in the white coats. I'm stepping down from the soap box.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I've been in this business (IT that is) for 34 years and have worked for a variety of business, organizations and the government. IT generally does not live for its own benefit, it is there to make a business successful and to forget that is build your own little empire of ingrates. OTOH, business that wields IT with the understanding of a cave man is using a bazooka to swat a fly. We need to understand what the business is about and support it intelligently and business needs to quit asking for the shiniest new IT thing because the other guy has it, or making unreasonable and contrary demands without understanding the implications for their bottom line and our sanity.
Be More, Be Manly, The Manly Geek Ubergeek Extraordinaire Blogger: www.manlygeek.com/blog Podcaster: podcast.man
A good example of proper IT/management interaction is available here:
Proper IT/Management Interaction Training Website
Unless your company is in the technology business (ISP, Software co., etc), then you are a service to whatever business you're in. Some would argue you're a service either way. IT staff must think first about the business not what is in their own technical self interest. Let's face it, if the business does not prosper, you don't have a job. On the other hand, if you have a part in helping the business prosper, you should be rewarded. We are in the clinical research business. Our message to the IT staff is that they are researchers with expertise in IT. Obviously we are not qualified to be clinical researchers but the shift in perspective is very powerful. Admittedly, only about 10% of the staff get it. Those 10% are far more effective and seem to enjoy their work much more than the rest. It's scary to think what a full staff could do if in this mindset. If you're not willing to see yourself this way, dust off your resume and find a software company where the world can revolve around you.
Thank you for sharing your demotivating thoughts. You are well on your way to demoralizing many tech-types. A question: do you have naturally pointy hair, or will they fit you with a nice toup?
(ironically the captcha is "tedious")
a Large Financial Company that I have done work for changed the name of their "IT" to "BT", for "Business Technology".
Problem solved!
If you say "I just reduced our monthly communications bill from $80,000 to $8,000, they'll probably get you an office with a window, a trip on the corporate jet and your own personal hooker.
What *will* happen is your immediate supervisor will tell his supervisor that "his team under his direction" just reduced the comm bill from 80k to 8k. He'll be the one to get the jet and the hooker.
You'll get a pat on the back.
Many suits have no knowledge of anything technical, and so make requests and demands that violate things like 'logic' and the laws of physics.
My company made a widget for a customer. We also did the OS. We then passed the widget on to another company, some software people who are writing the application to run on the widget.
The application software people shortly afterwards posted a feature request: They wanted us to make a software patch to the OS that would quadruple the battery life.
Yeah, sure! I'll get right on that. And then immediately afterwards I'll sell my magical physics defying patch to Toyota or Dell and retire as a billionaire.
No amount of explanation has been able to get these software-only guys to understand what an amp-hour is.
Posted as AC for obvious reasons.
...work for Eaton Vance?
People here have been using the term "culture clash", but IMHO it goes even deeper.
Here's the thing -- as techies, we have a great respect for facts. Facts are facts, and our opinion about them doesn't really matter. So we look to the world for objective information, and put that objective information on a pedestal.
For folks on the business side, almost everything is *subjective*, not *objective*. In the Sales world, for example, it's all about the customer's *perception* of the product, rather than the actual objective facts about the product.
Remember that the salesperson's entire goal in life is to overcome the objections of the customer and persuade them to sign the deal. For the salesperson, both by nature and by training, all statements are *subjective* -- they're personal *opinions* and are subject to change.
(As the old joke goes: when asked what is the sum of 2+2, the lawyer asks 'How much do you want it to be?'. I've seen this held up as a *positive* example by published business types.)
So when the techie says to the sales guy "it will take a year to implement"; the sales guy sees this as (a) a subjective statement; (b) a negotiating position; and (c) the *start* of the conversation, rather than the end of it.
Clashes are inevitable.
Express as a percentage your love for your girlfriend.
To business guys, there's only three types of people
1) Sales. They go out and get the money. Business guys like these people
2) Businesspeople. They get the lion's share of the money.
3) Staff. Everyone else. Whether they are support staff or actually building the company's product, they don't make money; they require it. Businesspeople would ideally get rid of these people, but they've found it impossible to run the business without them.
I seen this with company I used to work for. Each side were entrenched against each other but it takes good management and political skills to get each other work with each other and have a proper running company. Tech side have the ideas and products to make the company and business side have the marketing and management skills to bring the ideas and products to market so your company can exist. Neither side is greater than other because both of them are need to exist.
Again peaceful co-existence is need to run any public or for profit company. Wars for who is bigger in the company just waste resources thus no gain for the company.
He wasn't saying that the business folks were anti-tech, he was saying that the tech folks were anti-business. And the whole discussion degenerates into "the users are stupid" and "IT is just like plumbing".
Here's my 2 cents (well 5):
1) There will always be some tension between the two groups simply because the business folks are the service users and the IT folks are the service providers. You have a group of people (who often don't understand the consequences of what they ask for) making demands on the limited time of the people who have to address those demands. If their time isn't limited, then IT is seen as overstaffed (and probably is).
2) This tension can degenerate into hostility if the corporate culture gives short shrift to either side of the equation, or if there is arrogance on either side about which group is more important. Hostility also builds up if either side is under outside stress (for example, the company or project is in danger of collapse or teams are working ridiculous amounts of overtime).
3) In a place like an investment firm, the equation is complicated by the fact that not only do you have the systems techies, the apps programmers and the regular MBAs and management types, you also have the financial algorithms techies and the lawyers actively involved in day to day business. There are a lot of people who are conditioned by their past achievements to think that they are the smartest person on the block.
4) When the tension between the service provider (tech) and the service requester (business) becomes hostile, it will definitely have a negative effect on the company. Hostility can cause people to abuse or ignore processes, resulting in project delays (or badly thought out projects) and lost revenues and opportunities.
5) A company's processes, especially in IT service management, tend to lag behind their growth. So IT tends to be in more of a fire-fighting mode than most other portions of the business. This leads to the classic situation of IT never getting credit when things go right and always getting blamed when things go wrong. Project-management and Service management metrics can be IT's friend in getting proper credit for achievements, even though most technical IT folks see them as a huge pain in the posterior.
The short version: the tech folks being "anti-business" is unacceptable if you're describing it correctly. If you hate your customers, you don't belong in that line of work, at least not at that company. On the other hand, what a business person sees as an "anti-business" attitude from IT may just be rational resource planning by the IT managers. It sounds like the interface between the main business lines and the IT services teams is badly broken there. Either get involved in a big process-improvement activity, propose outsourcing some of the IT functions, or run away as fast as you can.
We are the 198 proof..
This is an interesting subject. I think that IT people must realize that they exist to support the business needs of a company. It is not up to IT to do it their way. It is up to IT to make things work to support the needs of their users and not the other way around. On the other hand, business people need to understand the real challenges involved in rewriting an application or redesigning and implementing a network. Communication and cooperation are the answer and elimination of BS and ego based judgment of each other. The business and the IT are not about you.. that is each individual. The results of business in a corporation are the result of everyone in the company and not just one or a few who think they know better on everything. In America, we have WAY too much individualistic attitude and control going on and wind up with a lot of political infighting and distrust rather than bridge building and honesty that eliminates BS. Someone posted earlier about working for an IT company rather than working for a company that has an IT department. I would say that I have to agree with this. I am a senior at Appalachian State Univ and a CIS major. In the last year I have visited several IT specific companies including Cisco Systems (awesome company). Additionally, while I was in India I had the privilege to visit IBM, Oracle and Perot systems all of whom are primarily IT companies. I think working for an IT specific company would be quite more enjoyable than working for a company whose IT department is despised (despite whatever differences may exist politically between IT, marketing, accounting, management, etc).
According to my old boss, given the nature of what business does, and the nature of what IT does, it is likely for there to always be some head-butting in the relationship. I guess since it's perceived as a normal thing, he thought it was wonderful when I came in and told him that I wasn't exactly getting along with one of our marketing folks (almost came to blows, actually - he still thought it was great).
So I don't know - I've worked in environments where the relationship worked and those where it didn't. I guess all that matters is the current list of new-age management books sitting on your boss's shelf.
My sig sucks.
In almost every company I have worked for but one, the technology group did not share the business goals of the income groups. Most business people seem to see IT as a hurdle rather than leverage, and it seems most IT people see the business end as beggars rather than understanding the partnership.
The true breakdown of a lack of relationship is when business dictates solutions to IT rather than IT managing the decision process.
A working relationship is where business treats IT as a resource, and brings them in early as a consultative resource and ideas are shared openly and a solution reached via collaboration, engineering merit and business needs consideration.
Technology matrices, design groups and other initiatives are steps towards this, but the real key is communication, respect and orientation.
The cost of not doing it correctly is immense, with unsupportable and poorly chosen solutions that do not fit into a model slowly accreting into an environment which can't be managed or delivered. The cost of poor design is immense, but that is a lesson that's generally not learned for a year after the bad decisions have been made.
So much money flows into the hands of vendors and consultants who deliver something and then scramble, leaving these short term solutions in a long term situation. The toughest challenge in IT is to change this tradition.
"No good deed goes unpunished"
Tech vs. Business is too vague a statement really. Many bits of business can't move forward without tech these days, making tech the biggest enabler of business.
I have worked in software development for both internal-only and commercial projects, and saw differences in approach and treatment of the teams. Some of the differences revolve around how money flows.
If your group or project is seen as a "cost center", then someone has a goal of reducing you as goals for costs are always to make them smaller. (By "cost center" I mean that money is spent with no possibility of revenue. Money is spent to keep things working which were already paid for.) For these projects, being able to say something like "we saved the company X tons of money this year" was good.
If your group/project is seen as a "revenue center" then there is as least a possibility that some product of yours will be used to make money somehow. These projects have pressures of their own, but I was always surprised how much easier it is to justify resources for them. Here the sales staff is almost always on your side.
The dragon cannot appreciate the tiger's position because he is not a tiger. The tiger is in the same situation. This extends not just to professional skills, but to a personal level as well. As one of the few geeks trying to run a small business, I can definitely seen how I've caused some pain to the owners before.
I suggest being a business owner to find out jsut how different it is.
1. Social skills matter.
2. Your product is the best, you have to believe that so your customers do too.
3. You have to worry about costs. Make payroll or get that new gigabit router...?
4. Unless you work for a software company, your IT systems are a cost center, not revenue producing. You need to focus on increasing revenue and limit costs.
5. IT exists to serve the company, the company is a document, a legal fiction to make money for the owners in some business.
From the other side:
1. Business people want to get their money's worth out of you.
2. You are smarter than they are; but they make more money than you do. (See, smarts != compensation. You can be an idiot, but if you can sell, you get 10% or more just by connecting people)
3. Business people are creative in inexactitudes. You're not. You're technical on specifics.
4. You see limitations and flaws in your own product.
5. Business is trying to make money, you're just trying to make your job easier.
Hopefully that will help you see the other side. The other thing you can do is visit your company's customers. See what is important to them about your company. It won't be you. Now realize that your business people care more about the customer than you. Now see your real part in the business.
What you really have is an opportunity.
Be the person who bridges the two. You have an opportunity, and the business people, if you can work with them, should reward you and advance you as a natural consequence of appreciating their position.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Business people are not as bright as IT people who are not as bright as scientists and doctors. Don't believe me? Google back for the vitriol toward techies that came out of Wall Street in the months prior to Google's IPO, when Google was adamant that fairness prevail in the allocation of IPO shares. Lots of red-faced thundering from the suits about these upstart tech weenies... it's kind of funny now, how confident the suits were the GOOG would fail because "they're all engineers, no business skills."
It's called "frame of reference", Einstein.
You didn't mean this as a joke, but it's a good one.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Moving from the US the Australia is like moving from the septic tank to the toilet bowl.
:P
Hey, it's true
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
I see it a lot in businesses with unions, but that might not be the parallel you're looking for.
Never understimate the power of human stupidity -Lazarus Long
I read a news story some time back about a city manager who wanted to the city fire department into a revenue-generating ambulance company because "those guys aren't doing anything anyways..."
Even Sun Tsu noted that brilliant generals who maneuvered the enemy into surrendering before the fight even started were less esteemed than idiots who lost half their men to a clusterfuck, and therefore had a chance to display their "bravery..."
The moral of the story? Even so often generate a horrible "emergency" which you heroically "solve."
Are you exclusively talking about dairy?
I got the impression from the question that he's talking about tech in general. In which case I can count myself. I work for $BIG_DAIRY as a cow and there's animosity here. On our side a lot of it stems from -
If our milk does really, really well in the marketplace then we might get a bucket of oats, whilst some of the guys on the business side get to retire from the profits, buy sports cars etc.
If our milk does badly, then there will be a trip to the slaughterhouse.
We tend to be herded, as if we're an inconvenience, not actually, you know, the guys that produce everything you goddamn sell.
We're smarter than them. In the bovine, don't-start-nothing-won't-be-nothing way. Many of them are overly loud, arrogant and annoying and bark a lot. Somehow they make more money and are always traveling places and have great cars though...
They're always telling us not to do fun grassy stuff (otherwise known as exercise) in favour of endless milking.
From their side, we probably moo too much.
Pens and stables. Been the same way in every company I worked for.
Don't count on it. Microsoft and Sun, to name two, are run by suits.
SUN, not always. The co-founder, Bill Joy, is the author of vi.
I thought I would mention it because of how much I use vi/vim in my everday life.
He left SUN in 2003, however.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/09/1433229
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
The root of the problem is that business groups care about tasking risks and making money while IT groups care about lowering risks which often costs money. Natural conflict emerges.
To improve the perception of IT amongst business groups, I've found the best run IT groups align their project management not by IT functions but rather by business units. For example, IT project managers should be aligned with external groups: one IT PM for marketing, one for sales, another for warehousing, etc. IT and business groups can then discuss their common needs, risks, and concerns together.
Instead, most IT groups align project management by technical function: storage, networking, software, etc. While this may leave a PM as an expert int the area s/he concentrates, it also leaves PMs with fewer resources in their toolbelt, less understanding of those they are serving, and ultimately drives a wedge between IT and business groups.
When/if your technical organization is big enough, align project managers across both dimensions to get the benefits of both structures. But serve your business units first. They pay the bills.
I think a lot of us Techies are not anti-business, we just don't like being treated like slaves after 20+ years in the industry with the continuous oncall duties, weekend work, and not getting any compensation for it.
you ask any IT person what they do for a living and they won't say "insurance" or "car manufacturing" or "banking" they say "computers". in fact that's pretty shortsighted and screws up business function and the amount of money available to pay IT staff. the IT skills and duties of one industry aren't any more closely transferrable to another than the business type skills.
Business people view IT workers as dead weight that can be outsourced. In their eyes, you're just another code-monkey and they could do your job but they don't have the time to take a 15-min seminar that will teach them how to be an IT Guru.
Essentially, they have no respect for you, want to get rid of you, and think you can be replaced at any time. Welcome to the world of IT.
I think, for the most part, that IT only dislikes business because business disregards/undervalues/outright hates IT. Exceptions for cases where business is being overtly sleazy, of course.
In businesses that are not selling software or connectivity -- that is, non-IT businesses -- there's almost always a rift between IT and business because IT is a pure cost center. This makes us a thorn in management's side, a whipping boy, and the first up against the wall during layoffs. (Interesting thing -- most of my work experience was at a company that would have melted in a day without IT, yet they still held these attitudes. They thought they were a utility.)
Where IT is a profit center, there's sometimes still a rift because the salespeople and management don't understand the product. They throw the IT staff under the bus when things go wrong, play political games we don't care to understand. Worst of all, they overpromise our services, and when we fail by their metrics, WE get criticized and THEY get to keep their commission no matter how unrealistic their promises.
In either type of business, there's a problem of "otherness" -- both sides see that the other doesn't look the same, doesn't think the same, and doesn't hold the same values. And operations is universally disliked, because we're only visible when something goes wrong.
This is another instance of a complex issue which is resistant to rational resolution, and why people who disagree with me are yet allowed to live. I used the term "evil" rather loosely here, and I intentionally qualified it with "seems" and "some people". In conversation I generally would use the term "incorrect", as like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. I'm glad we are engaging in this discussion, I waste a lot of brain-waves regarding issues like the dichotomy of legal and lawful, &c. (If I go back to school I'm majoring in rhetoric.)
My own personal "ethical code", which I don't really recommend for any one else, (too hard) is to honor my side of an agreement to a fault, but if circumstances change or something unforeseen comes up, re-evaluate the situation, and if it seems to me that the other party is getting a raw deal, I will adjust what I do to make it fair. My dad used to say stuff like "Buy high and sell low, it keeps you humble." so I've gotten to be quite a contrarian. Occasionally, sharp practice people take advantage of me. As a matter of fact, I boycott many businesses and am nearly unemployable because of my attitude. OTOH, many people seem to appreciate the consideration, and a long and mutually beneficial relationship can develop.
An example of this style of reason would be "The only way to make a man honest is to trust him." The first day I meet someone, I am quite prone to lending them money, or my car, or some such. I have yet to lose my car, (one guy did kind of whack the alignment and wouldn't cop to it once) but probably one in five takes the money and disappears forever. Sad for them, but I consider it money well spent, as I save myself all the time and personal investment that would be lost if I tried to be friends but got backstabbed later.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
All I see here are a bunch of people with egos too big to play nicely. Mostly, anyway.
Run along little guys, and stay away from my IT department. Business is business: come in with a thick skin, and realize that not every criticism is a personal attack. If you don't like it, you can always go and get your MBA, or go live in that Ivory Tower most of you seem to want so badly. Every damn CS major I met in college was a damned conceited jackass, who cared about nothing but coding this or compiling that. My best friend was one, until he became so obsessed with coding that he neglected his *gasp* girlfriend. Who is now my fiance. If you care more about debugging a shit piece of text than asking your "love's" day went, then you don't deserve to have a family.
If CS gets your rocks off, good for you. Just don't take other people down (co-workers, company, family) with you, because you're so obsessed with the "purity" and "innovation" of being a CS boy.
Oh hmm... I think that what I just typed fits for any job: keep a thick skin, and don't take everything personally.
It's also much less work-intensive (resulting in vastly greater dollar turnover per person hour), resulting in higher salaries.
Engineers tend to be fairly interchangeable too, because they tend not to connect to very many others inside or outside an organization. The upshot its that they can be fairly easily replaced by someone with the same specifications. So, yes, engineer types have become something of a commodity. And commodities don't command high margins, don't get much recognition, and aren't in a position to make many demands.
As a result most US students will now (quite rightly from the perspective of making money) prefer a career in business administration and sales over one in engineering, product development, or research. It's easier, the potential rewards are higher, and the competitions from overseas is a lot less because language skills and cultural "fit" are more important. Which is also why businesses need to import ever more engineers from places like India and China. Just have a look on any tech campus in the US. When it comes to Mathematics, Engineering, and Science half of the students are from abroad. Narrow it down to Ph.D. students and you arrive at about 60%-80% Chinese and Indians.
But that doesn't matter much, does it? Demand will be met and slots will be filled. It's just that engineers and scientists will increasingly have an Indian or Chinese background. But that's not a problem either. Their communication skills aren't why they were hired anyway. Once those guys have their greencard they're as American as anyone else. Why produce what you can import more cheaply? As long as the US pays them more than their native country they will be happy to live and work here.
I intern for the head computer tech at a school, and every teacher assumes every problem is with "The Server" which seems to be a magical entity that controls all. Firefox being slow? It's the server's fault. Can't print to a TCP/IP printer? It has to be the server. It would be nice if they didn't think they knew what they were talking about, because then I wouldn't get a headache whenever I talk to them.