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 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...
As IT people, we look at the world logically; we know that if A follows B and B follows C then A must also follow C. We know that if the user wants to view the balance on an account, they bloody well better have the account number before viewing it.
But business people don't seem to have that same view. We assume they aren't interested, or that they're illogical when they say "why do I have to enter the account number to view the account balance?"
The problem I find is usually one of language. For example, in the question above I figured out the business person wasn't being ignorant of the need for an account number. They simply wanted to *scan* it, not *enter* it. To us IT people, there's absolutely no difference how the number gets into the system, but to them that difference seemed so great they had to point it out that they never wanted to *enter* it again.
Yes, there are obstinate and stupid people out there, but not everyone with those questions is either. And the moment we respond to a question like the one above with a groan or a "duh!" comment, we do become condescending and anti-business. The best way to deal with these questions is to keep the dialog from degenerating. Rephrase the question, restate your problem with their assertion, and get them to confirm it again. Something such as "well, we need the account number before we can show the account balance, so where do you want us to get the account number from?"
Keep the discussion friendly, don't get patronizing or condescending, and try not to sound like Scotty ("I canna' break the laws o' physics!") Try hard to discover the real root of their issue. It's critical to treat them like peers, and not talk down to them. Remember that they must bring some value to someone in the business, so try to respect that. And yes, sometimes it's harder than others, and sometimes it's just never, ever going to sink in. Try bringing in other people to moderate the discussion, or to bring alternate suggestions.
John
after all if a company is going to smelt aluminum they don't go around building an atomic power plant to run their smelters, they find a cheap source of electricity preferably reachable by major shipping lanes, and let the utility company worry about where the power comes from.
Minor nitpick unrelated to your argument: A lot of aluminum smelting plants and large paper mills have their own power generation facilities or have entered into some sort of co-op for generating the power they need rather than paying a power company.
There's no place like
...like it hasn't been tried before?
Nice try, but the downsides include:
Cost - not cheaper over the long term
Consistency - who is your go to guy/gal? I dunno, I think he's just been replaced
Uptime - hey our server's down, let me call - wait, how much does this contract dude cost after hours?
Quality - The contractor said Apu Nahasapimapedalan knows exactly what he's doing, and they're only charging $200/hr. I don't think he speaks any English though.
Overpromising - Well, anyone that's worked in IT for any length of time and has worked with an outside firm knows what I'm talking about here. 'Nuff said.
Those are just off the top of my head. If you're talking about a network admin or something along those lines, complete outsourcing may work for very, very small offices, but when you get over, maybe one person, you really need your own.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Maybe I was lucky, but more than a dozen years delivering major financial market projects and our project managers were always the good kind you describe above and the client always understood the time (and sometimes money) impact of Changes.
HOWEVER, this was because we had, by this time, always established the trust between client and IT provider that meant;
a) If we say "that's hard/expensive" it's because it is "hard" or "expensive"
b) We did everything the client wanted to the extent that it did not compromise the success of the project. Success is a great motivator for the most flakey of clients
In addition since we were an outside vendor (not just an internal IT department) we had the luxury of using price to focus the mind of those that would otherwise be changeable.
What is intersting is that many of the clients in question had professional project managers themselves and despite the trials and tribulations along the way it was always a case of everyone being aware of what was necessary to get the project over the line.
These project invariably would make front page news in the country in question in the event of a failure (finance pages at least :-) so the incentive was high.
I think that is the key. Incentivise everyone to get the project live and it becomes more feasible that the project will succeed
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
computers are still relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of IT gurus to keep a network up and running, when a basic desktop computer can get rid of every moving part, there is less to replace and maintain, thus less IT workers needed...
Cars are relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of .... No wait that doesn't work. We have mechanics.
Plumbing is relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of .... No wait that doesn't work, we have janitors and if they can't fix it we have plumbers. Oh and plumbing is old
Electricity is relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of .... No wait that doesn't work, we have electricians.
Science is relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of .... No wait that doesn't work, we have janitors and if they can't fix it we have scientists.
Do I need to repeat with other professions? Anything that requires specialised expertise will require professionals. It has nothing to do with how new a field is. It has to do with the knowledge to operate in the field not being common knowledge. It has to do with how badly things go if they go wrong.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
So you've never had a hard disk failure, or a problem with a CD/DVD drive?
The parent post means when the hard disk etc are replaced with flash memory or something similar.
America, Home of the Brave.