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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
I know this first hand. I was an IT admin who was taking care of things with very few problems. I had a poor review from the business manager due to what he said was low productivity. In other words, since I was not running around all day fixing things it meant I was not doing anything. He never saw the preventative maintenance and testing that I performed that kept it running well.
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.
At my company, there is a strong belief that if it ain't broke, you don't fix it.
So you basically have to wait for the customer to file a trouble ticket for you to fix something, and push a change control for approval, in order for you to fix something you knew was going to go wrong.
What we end up doing is developing the fix and keeping it in dev, until that fateful day when the user happens upon the bug. The we look all mighty because we can fix it insta-magically.
Actually, we no longer do that. We let our managers take the blame now. We say, we knew about it, and we were ready to fix it, but it was low-priority for our boss, so we never did.
Come to think of it, that's exactly how management likes it.
"Piter, too, is dead."
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".
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.
In other words, since I was not running around all day fixing things it meant I was not doing anything. He never saw the preventative maintenance and testing that I performed that kept it running well.
That doesn't only apply to IT. I heard a similar story about the maintenance staff at a manufacturing company.
Back in the 80s the president of the company went on an unscheduled tour of the plant (a very rare occasion). While on the tour he comes upon two maintenance workers standing by their tool carts having cups of coffee and chatting.
Furious that the two workers weren't fixing something at that particular moment the president asks, "What are you doing?"
One of the maintenance workers replies, "Well, the line is running perfectly, and since it's running we have to wait until the operators go on break to do any preventative maintenance."
The president of the company then goes back to his office with a great idea to save some money. Since these two maintenance workers are standing around, he clearly has too many of them. So he proceeds to fire half of the maintenance staff.
Ten years later, the board of directors notices that the profits are decreasing substantially. So, they fire the president and hire a new one. After 6 months the new president has to make a report to the board. This is what he found:
We noticed that our sales went down so we performed as survey and that indicated that our sales were down due to a perceived decline in quality of our product.
We also noticed our manufacturing costs have grown exponentially in the past ten years.
After speaking with some of the foreman and the manufacturing engineering staff, it appears that the uptime of the line has declined. Ten years ago, the uptime was 92% and today it's 63%. Additionally, the majority of the tooling can no longer produce parts within the designed specifications, sending the scrap rate up to 42%. This means that our plant is only 37% efficient. They all cite a lack of preventative maintenance as the cause.
It appears ten years ago, the president of the company fired half of the maintenance staff. As a result, not all of the preventative maintenance was performed as required. This decision has saved us, $500,000 on average annually for the past ten years. However, due to the increase in the scrap rate, the quality control department has increased their inspection staff. This has cost the company $500,000 on average annually over the past ten years.
This decision to cut back on maintenance has cost the company 1 billion dollars in down time last year alone. This figure does not include the decline in sales, and increase in warranty claims, and scrap rate due to lower product quality. In total, this decision has cost the company 10 Billion dollars, last year alone.
In order to get this company back to where it was ten years ago, the entire production line will have to be retooled. This has been quoted out by several companies, and is expected to exceed $900 million.
Even with these changes, the damage that has been done to our company's reputation is irreparable, and we may never recover.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".