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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
> 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'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.
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!
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!
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...
If it involved anything other than Excel or Word then it was considered an IT problem.
You got one up on our shop!
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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.
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
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
"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
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
And when they're users like you, does that really come as much of a surprise?
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.
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
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.
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
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".
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.
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 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
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
This is an example of one of the many ways that "business" seems evil, to some of us.
Finding out they can make more money reselling electricity is 'evil'?
It's evil for the company to make a profit?
It's evil for them to earn money and make a profit that helps the people with retirement plans invested in their industry?
It's evil for them to make a profit and use their new profit to employ additional workers--to give the jobless jobs?
It's evil for the company to make more money which usually means more taxes which help pay for things like roads, schools, welfare, and all the BS welfare programs the liberals love?
Wow--I can totally see why companies are evil. We should just do away with them entirely.
Of course I don't know how I'll get food for my family. I know nothing of farming, and my food is provided by various companies.
Maybe the farmer that lives a few miles away will let me exchange some sort of good or service for some of the food that he gr--oh shit! That makes him a company. We'll have to kill him.
</sarcasm>
f*cking hippies.
There's no place like
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.
That is a very elementary definition of a business. While in practice that is what most businesses are, essentially, the largest and most powerful business are actually Entities, consisting of Shareholders, a Board, Directors/Managers and employees. Because these huge powerful corporations are beholden to their investors, the board directs its management to employ bean counters and will lower the bottom line, *regardless*. And it is *regardless* because, in the cut throat nature of business, any possible slight advantage over a competitor must be pursued. This often results in squeezing the employees, squeezing the environment, and thus squeezing society as a whole.
Make no mistake, I am not against business, profits, or any such thing. I actually run my own business. However, when shareholders enter the picture, things change. Appeasing shareholders become the end-all of the company, instead of profits flowing back the employees that make it (essentially, a pyramid scheme). Add to that the massive size and power, these large corporations have the potential, in a heartbeat, to either uplift or drag down humanity. Due to their "bean-counting" nature, it's generally the latter.... at least without some form of regulation to prevent it. (Think 50 to 100 years ago... our cities would be worse than Beijing if pollution ordinances never went into effect. I live in North Country, and back in those days, the snow was black, not white.)
On the other hand, in my business, I know my actions directly effect my employees, my environment, and myself, and thus I make balanced choices that will benefit them all. I'm not tied to some nameless "shareholder" that demands I make profits increase by squeezing anywhere I can. Not as efficient? Maybe. Better quality product, service and employees? You betcha! And I sleep well at night knowing I am successful because I have helped others become successful.