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IT Managers Are Aloof Says Psychologist and Your Co-Workers
dcblogs writes "IT managers see themselves as 'reigning supreme,' in an organization, and are seen by non-IT workers as difficult to get along with, says organizational psychologist Billie Blair. If IT managers changed their ways, they could have a major impact in an organization. 'So much of their life is hidden under a bushel because they don't discuss things, they don't divulge what they know, and the innovation that comes from that process doesn't happen, therefore, in the organization,' says Blair."
And you still wonder why everybody hates them!!!
"They despise stupidity wherever they see it, and they see it everywhere."
Kryten 2X4B-523P
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Worked in the IT field for over 30 years. Seen things and learned things about people I REALLY didn't want to know. But the not sharing of information from IT management to direct reports is very common. Even worse in government IT. But gossip does exist in IT. It is just not as useful. Most of the gossip is personal stuff and not what is going on in the organization. But then again, most organizations never share information with IT (maybe distrust?). So IT is the last to know about changes happening.
"Aloof" in this case is a euphemism meaning, "obedient, emotionally-stunted lapdoggies who got whatever they wanted and were never subject to discipline as kids, and think they can play with their subordinates like they played alone with their G.I. Joes."
When baby doesn't want to share his knowledge and is difficult with people, then he should not be allowed to supervise others and even the most ignorant of HR screeners should have prevented this.
Speaking for myself, when I try to describe IT projects that I find really cool to non-technical people (say 75% of the organization), they're just not interested. Not saying they're too stupid to get it, not saying they're too stupid to understand its significance, but they've been conditioned to think of IT as something that other people do. There is a problem on both sides of the culture divide. I don't know, nor do I particularly care which side "started" it, but to overcome it, IT people are going to have to share, and non-IT people are going to have to be more willing to engage.
I'm a software developer in a company with a six-figure-ish headcount and in almost twenty years of working here, I have never met anyone from IT.
Flip Side -- we need to be proactive about communicating with the retards who break our system. How many times have you pushed a patch that breaks something, intentionally? Usually a security threat. You've got the power, send an email to all that explains why you're fixing something, and what liability the company has if it's not fixed. This is called propoganda, and it's good. Also, send out good propaganda when you can. The fucking marketing drones didn't sell anything. Your website sold $300M of product. Make IT look like a profit center, and you look like a god. Make it look like a bunch of dick-bags and you'll be an easy cost center to target.
...with people whose eyes glaze over the second they realize you're talking about computers.
I don't know anyone who didn't start out as an ever helpful enthusiastic talkative person, and they all become jaded over time. People just don't want to hear about it. They have their job, they expect you to do yours without bothering them about it.
Sums it all up perfectly. Why the base was hacked, and why the base commanders did not find out until after it was published in Wired.
The fact that this claim is coming from a "psychologist" should be enough for any reasonable person to automatically disregard whatever he's saying. It's barely even a pseudoscience - why the hell would a company employ an "organizational" psychologist? Is there really such a huge need for people to be told that all their problems come from their subconscious repressed sexuality or whatever flavor-of-the-week bullshit is being spewed out these days?
Fucking cretins, the lot of them.
Present a better idea and it doesn't get a fair hearing. Get brain-dead unappealable policy decisions because the system is geared to the lowest common denominator. Being TOLD what the best UI is.
You end up serving the fucking data, rather than the data serving you.
Read TFA. Another ComputerWorld consultant trying to pass themselves off as an "IT expert/journalist" so they can be hired by some gullible executive who doesn't care to invest the time to listen to their own IT staff.
IT Managers Are Aloof Says Psychologist and Your Co-Workers
The wrong people always get promoted. This is not news for nerds. This is reality.
Give me a story where somebody intelligent and thoughtful gets into management and this would be news. Even on Slashdot, you've got a lot of Managers getting up-moderated for basically telling people that they only promote hard working people (I think we all know this is a lie). Of course Managers and supervisors think of themselves as fair and intelligent, and as rational as Adam Smith's invisible hand. If only they knew!
References:
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/12/28/0058250/ask-slashdot-handing-over-personal-work-without-compensation
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2593454&cid=38510268
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2593454&cid=38510098
yep, i can vouch. in my world they see you as requiring the minimum amount of information that they can possibly provide - no matter what your experience level. they respond only to people who have the power to fire them, and everyone else is ignored. requests that are in any way perceived as impinging on their territory, or that they don't want to deal with, are treated smugly or ignored. No project matters to them unless they have ownership of it, and if they have ownership or a project, then no-one can possibly provide any information or support or input, as all non-IT people are ancillary to the goal of keeping everything under the gnostic control of the IT people. If they include others in their important business, it is only to require them to regression test their work. The worst part is that all this private, petty knowledge and control allows them to develop a sense of supreme superiority over their co-workers - they are gods, lords of all they survey, and you are a peasant. And indeed, it is quite easy for a competent IT manager to block whatever project isn't in their best interest, if the administrators have no clue what is going on.
So F*CK those controlling bastards, is all I'm saying.
i say all this with respect for certain IT people. My workplace however, is particularly dysfunctional and has fallen under the control of IT contractors. So to that particular IT bureaucrat: being in the "IT" crowd doesn't mean you automatically know more than everyone else, it makes you a smug ass who will eventually get theirs.
Wow, what a ridiculous pile of pseudo science. I've been in IT for 20 years now, and worked with three or four organizations in very different industries. Each time I start out with a really positive attitude, a "this time it will be different" approach. I'm going to be interested, and helpful, and friendly, and communicative. After about a year I can't do it anymore. It's not for lack of interest or trying, it's because the average user approaches the technology they must interact with daily as either a black box or an inconvenience or both. How a person can know the intricacies of double entry bookkeeping but fail to understand why opening every single attachment they receive is verboten is beyond me. Learn a little - just a little - about the tools you need to do your job and then pay attention to what you're doing. Your computer is not that complex to use, and essential to your job. You know the rules for arbitrating a marital dispute in Iowa, but you can't remember not to Save As the document you insist on using as a template?
If I had wanted to be a cat herder or a kindergarten teacher, I would have pursued those options. I went into a field where I had assumed I would be dealing with adults who even if they didn't understand exactly what they were doing they would at least take responsibility for their actions. You can only endure "I didn't click anything" or "I know you've told me before, but how do I...?" so many times. Eventually you really start feeling like you're not being listened to or appreciated, and then you start wondering why you bother talking at all. Nobody I know in this business wants to keep secrets or appear aloof, but when it becomes apparent that nobody is listening to you when you talk, why bother sharing at all?
... who ask for utterly stupid things. For example the secretary that called IT for support because she was required to change her password and it wouldn't let her change it to the same one she had been using for the past year. Please, Billie Blair, why is it that WE IT people have to deal with such stupidity.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
to that aloofness?"
In other words, this whole article biatched about IT workers, but never even bothered to look for one moment at the other side of the coin: the users who habitually refuse to change habits, who blame IT for every mistake they make, make demands on the IT guys and girls that are not reasonable, and then wonder why IT sees themselves as beleaguered and under siege.
Instead, she boasts that she knew how to tame IT when she was a dean by bullying them with her position---exactly the reason why IT people see themselves as abused and reviled.
How but they install all the same monitoring and key logging software they install on the worker bee employees computers onto the it managers computer then they will be able to see exactly what he/she does or doesn't do.
Rocket Surgeon.
IT subordinates don't like the business decisions passed down from non-IT workers and non-IT workers don't understand the technical implications of the business decisions they make. The IT Manager sits right in the middle of this clusterfuck.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
In a large organization, I see other folks behaving the same or worse as IT managers: ...
- Human Resources, ever try to reason with one of them that their policy needs to reviewed or does not help in attracting talent?
- Finance; yes, once I have the PR, the sole source agreement, the market analysis, I'll get a PO and the invoice will be paid in six months after the vendors berates and tells me that they'll never do business with us again
- Legal or Privacy department; seriously, never ever try to disagree with them or propose a different point of view
- Researchers; full of primadonnas; the leadership is even worse
The article is BS; most of the items could apply to any other area or field
Wearing pants should always be optional.
The IT (in US terms, not technical professions in general) guys are there to enable everyone else to interact. They aren't given much power - only what is minimally needed to give everyone else what they want.
I can empathize with your typical IT guy attitude - you strive to help every day, and do help a lot of people - but end up seeing the same self-inflicted wounds over and over again. At some point, the only way to meaningfully care for people is to take a zen attitude, point them to resources, and accept that most will refuse to take even the simplest steps towards understanding how things break as they misuse them.
And you have to rely on humor over time. The net appearance may be 'aloof' - but it's difficult to help the sometimes aggressively and willfully ignorant often looking to place blame and not end up with the eyebrow-raised incredulous look coming up.
It would be lovely if we could all have a Carl Sagan friendly sage look about us in every difficulty - but we won't. Even Carl Sagan probably looked perturbed and sarcastic at some points along the way - same with Gandhi and Mother Theresa too.
Better aloof than full on BOFH.
Ryan Fenton
I am not someone who is offended easily. That said, the author of this article and the 'subject matter expert' that was interviewed have offended me greatly.
Three pages of stereotype. Here, let me summarize and save you wasting 5 minutes of your life. . . . . . "IT people are not the best communicators." oh, wait, this comment was made by someone with an advanced degree in in psychology, I guess it must be legit.
Here is the rest of the article in a nutshell -
IT managers are aloof, technical people with a skillset that an organization cannot do without. They have been 'gifted' since childhood with a technical mindset and they believe that the world is against them. They want people to bow to them as the come into the room (direct quote) and it is difficult to get anything out of them.
I had to laugh when the sme stated that as a dean she could "force them off their high horse". From experience, when managers "force" technical people to do something or provide something, the end result is a piece of garbage that doesn't work right, upsets the customers, makes the IT department look bad and does the "forcer" get blamed for the poor results? No, the IT department loses credibility in the end.
This person doesn't get that most of the reasons IT folks "don't communicate" with those outside of IT is for a very basic reason . . . . . we start talking and we get BLANK STARES as a response!
I love her definition of 'c-level' folks.
The final straw in this article is the last paragraph. Steve Jobs was a BUSINESS MANAGER, not an IT professional. He ran a company and and 'forced' the technical people to dance for him.
It might help to understand where the "typical IT manager" goes wrong by seeing how it can be done right.
One of the first IT jobs I ever had was working for an IT manager of a ~150 user organisation. He was relatively new himself, which wasn't unusual because all of his predecessors were fired one after another. They just couldn't get along with management, couldn't make their needs understood, etc...
This new guy is still there, over a decade later. Why? Because he talked to managers in their own language. Instead of turning up to monthly board meetings in jeans and saying some buzzword-laden crap, he'd turn up in an expensive suit, put on a gorgeous powerpoint presentation which very clearly showed simple charts and graphs of things like "this is going to hit zero in a month, and that's bad because it'll stop our business". Half the time, he didn't even explain that it was disk-space he was talking about, or put numbers on the graph axes. Every month, he'd turn up with nice consistent reports full of simple charts printed in colour onto glossy paper, ending with a simple multiple-choice business decisions with dollar figures and pros and cons.
In the eyes of senior management, he turned IT from a dark pit where money is burned into a clearly separated set of projects and ongoing expenses that made sense to them. Yes, we have twice as many people now, so we're going to need twice as much storage. Obvious if stated right, not so obvious to someone who doesn't even know what "storage" really represents, why it runs out, and who uses it for what.
Here's the thing though: He couldn't solve a computer problem to save his life. That didn't matter, because he just hired competent underlings to do that work.
No sh*t says I. They ought to put this on weekend update!
Every job description has a jargon/meme base and many share a common experience.
That's why you can tell the sales guy from the IT guy, "generally speaking".
Different values inherent to the job description.
Some people just clean latrines better than others.
The question is, does the job make them that way, or does the job attract people like that?
If more women would sleep with us, we'd be nicer people!
project. its really , really, cool... you see we take the general account ledger, and we balance it based on the length of time the charge has been on the current report, whereas before we were simply going line by line ,
im sorry, .. are you ok? it almost looked like you fell asleep there. my brother in law has narcolepsy -- horrible disease. did you know that the first person to discover narcolepsy was sinus grimbald in 1823, when he happened upon a lemur collector in guernsey.. .
I used to work in IT back before I went to college. Without fail, every single coworker I ever had had some sort of weird fetish with being "in charge" of everyone else's data. Regular venting is normal of course, but I found myself constantly having to remind people that we existed only as janitors to support and digitally clean up after everyone else. It seemed to just be some huge inferiority complex.
And from time to the users have earned that ALOOF or BOFH response. (not really saying that I would kill anyone or cause major injury). But what I have done is gone to management, with documented proof of violations of policy attached to the policy and asked what action they would like me to take. **I only do that for termination offences. Where I work IT can have someone fired. And I have accomplished that task on more than one occasion. Management knows I will take action "only in defensive measures". Most of the time, when I ask management (note non IT management) what action they would like me to take, the response is first silence followed by - "I will make sure this doesn't happen again". But.. then I am labled aloof or not a team player. It wears off after a while, and the older management respects me for defending IT and the policies THEY set. Do they pay me enough for that? HELL no. Am I aloof, not at all! But if it's going to be me fired for something they did... I am not going down alone.
...what our co-workers think.
It's called scope creep. IT isn't all that much smarter than most of the workers in an organization, they're just a lot smarter than management. Management, for some odd reason, are the stupidest people in most companies. I think it must take a special kind of idiot to "go along" with upper management, so the best idiots get the best management positions. You mention to an idiot that it's "possible" to get their most favorite software onto a smartphone and the next thing you know you're the project lead on the next doomsday project: "In Q2 everything will change!!!" And you curse yourself for ever opening your mouth as you hear the iceberg scraping down the side of your career.
(from the article): "They view the world in terms of "us against them" and see others in an organization as pests or threats to their IT universe" I have seen this attitude over and over again, both from IT managers and regular IT staff. More of them need to learn to think of non-IT employees as customers. Patience, basic customer service, kindness, and an ability to teach are important traits to have when working in an IT department. NEVER make the end-user feel stupid.
I can't be bothered anymore to focus more than a tiny bit of my brain on users. As soon as I would do so to try and educate them even a little about the machines and software they work with inevitably I can see the circuit breaker cut out usually in less than 30 seconds, and I consider myself fairly skilled at talking at their level.
Two things I hate: Computers and people. This is why I'm an IT manager in an ISP.
He'd change his tune pretty fast if he ever had to work a single day in IT.
A "cooperative" IT guy can bring down the whole company if "cooperative" means letting jane and joe install software and attach devices to the network willy-nilly, and this is what "cooperative" means to non-IT people.
"What do you mean I can't play angry-birds?"
At one point, the company I worked for had to blackhole nfl.com and associated fantasy-football stuff because fantasy-football was eating up productivity when people should have been working.
Fuck them.
--
BMO
Research confirms what IT managers have long suspected, organisational psychologists are perceived as "manipulative" and "self serving".
"I really don't like talking to them," says 20-year IT veteran Charles ("Heap Space") Edwards. "They always seem to have some agenda on their mind, but they can never tell you what it is short of wooly motherhood statements. I want precision, but I've never seen a decent spec come out of the OrgPsy team".
According to the report, 9 out of 10 IT managers "wouldn't piss on an organisational psychologists if their keyboard was on fire".
(Where'd my mod points go!?)
Any conversation with someone you've just met will eventually get onto the subject:
Q: What do you do for a crust?
A: I work in IT
Q: Oh - I need another drink, be back soon (yeah right)
Nobody outside the field understands it. They don't care (& why would they) unless their poxy PC has problems.
Of course IT are going to be somewhat insular.
Yup, I am a smoker. And yes that helps to some degree, but less as the years pass and the taxes on the cigs goes up here. over 6 bucks a pack now, so we share lot.
I have been around since the 50's, and have observed management styles change like fashion.
It struck me hard in in Aerospace, when management went to "training seminars" and came back all holier than thou. I was more concerned with stability of phase-locked loops at the time, and I became very concerned over the lack of concern our managers seemed to express about our products. Everything became "the bottom line". Cost centers. Profit centers. Presentation. What is the minimum amount of effort that will result in getting paid. Suddenly, "Pride of Workmanship" became a bad thing as it was an inefficient use of manpower.
Well, we banged around for a few more years riding on the reputation the guys before us earned.
As we "redefined the organization", our clients re-evaluated what our name meant.
Things dried up.
Being one of the noisier ones bemoaning the micromanagement I had to take, I was one of the first dismissed..
Yes, I have studied "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram. I would urge everyone to read his book. Its tiny. Its a research paper by Stanley Milgram of Yale University, a psychology major, doing a thesis on what got into the German people to do the things they did to the Jews.
I found the book very shocking. What he did was set himself up as an "authority figure" by wearing a white lab coat, and he would see just how far people would go in obeying him. People would actually electrocute others they did not even know once they had shifted responsibility of their act to someone else. Stanley called this state of obedience as "agentic", as being an "agent" for someone else, who was - as you know - Stanley himself.
Some of us have a moral compass that will not let us do such things. Stanley noted that. There were a few that simply would not obey when they were ordered, no matter what he did. He did not label them "not a team player", but I am sure today's "leadership types" would.
This crap even got into my church.
I have pontificated on slashdot long ago on my spiritual beliefs, why I believe there is a creator, and my frustration with religion.
I sat through one "leadership" lesson, and was told things like "if you need them, you can't lead them".
That goes against everything in me. I have got to make those under me feel worthless and dependent so they will follow me? I call bullshit.
If they are going to follow me, they will do so if they believe I know how to do it and have all of our best interests at heart. More down the line of the of the leader of Terra-Nova. Not because I threaten them with bad performance reviews and layoffs. I've been there. No way I want to inflict this bullshit on anyone else. This kind of crap is for the kids who like to pull the legs off of bugs. The worst leaders I have worked under were the ones who placed great value on "being the leader", not "doing the work". I work best with those whose prime ambition is "doing the work".
This new stuff sounds like some greedy industrialist trying to staff a 1800's style sweatshop with the cheapest possible labor, Its the form of capitalism that gives the whole concept a bad name.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
After twelve years in the IT industry, working for four different companies, three large and now one small business, the most important thing I've learned is this:
Users don't listen and they don't want to learn.
Sure, the idea of educating users and management about what we do sounds great and we all start off trying to do just that but after a year or so it becomes clear that 99% of your users don't listen to you. They find it boring, they don't think they should have to learn because it's not their job to know that crap, it's my job to know that crap. It's not their job to learn to fix their computer, it's mine. Trying to explain to them that there are very simple things they can do to prevent their computers from needing to be fixed is a waste of time, they don't want to hear it. They say they do, they might even mean it when they say it, but when it comes down to actually doing it, they won't. They never do.
The company I work for now does only IT and we do it for more than one hundred businesses. All of them are the same as I've described above. ALL OF THEM. So it's best for us to explain as little as possible, just enough to placate them, do what we can behind the scenes, restrict as much as we can get away with so they have less ways to hurt themselves and present everything in the form of dollar signs.
"Here is how much money you spent with us this year. Here are the disasters we averted/fixed. Here is how much money it would have cost you if we hadn't done our job or will cost you if we don't do it."
That's something they do understand.
It is possible that the real purpose of the article is to do a psychological study on how IT people respond to a baseless attack / criticism. Or not. :)
A badly structured IT department will end up being a bad IT department. A typical scenario is that nobody knows what exactly the IT department does and ignores it until it explodes. Then they rain fire upon the heads of IT. How many IT people have done the heroic all night'er putting out some huge fire because the company was basically non functional while some system was down. These IT departments then become highly risk adverse and become the "Department-Of-NO!!!" This is a reasonable reaction to this structure.
The problem with this reaction is that you end up with IT departments that get locked into IE6 and other legacy problems that only increase the risk and effort required to make the leap into the modern age. Also you end up with the staff doing end runs around the IT department such as outsourcing their own solutions. I have witnessed a situation where a local cable internet connection was secretly brought in on a weekend as the Internet policies were so completely bonkers.
The solution is actually quite easy. The IT department needs to realize that they aren't management. They are a utility. Thus they need to provide a basic set of services such as internet and working machines. Like a real ISP the assumption must be that the customers are going to screw up as much as they can. Thus you create a bulletproof internet connection/email system/whatever common systems available where the individuals can't ruin the whole system. Then when a department wants to switch to Apple products you tell them that they won't be able to turn to the IT department for help as IT doesn't know Apple. The department will make this decision themselves. If a department wants to install a new accounting system the IT department should give advice and maybe a quote if the system is going to be say difficult to back up. If the department doesn't like your quote then they might make a different decision or decide to proceed anyway. That is why companies hire people to run other departments; the company trusted them. Companies don't hire the IT staff to run the company they hire it to run IT.
A great example of this sort of paternalistic crap is why RIMM is dying. I was using a CEO's blackberry the other day. I clicked on twitter to see how the app worked but it said that that I needed to ask permission from my administrator to run this app. Holy crap this was the CEO's phone. I can see IT departments loving RIMM if it allows them to reach their power tripping right out into people's pockets. I can also see why people want iPhones for work to replace their Blackberries. Freedom.
Seriously Slashdot, it's like the site's been taken over by someone who had their dog kicked by an IT person.
I'm not aloof. I'm just an asshole. Get it right!
And get the frack out of my office!
What does it mean to 'reign supreme'? It means whatever you say is gospel, and whatever you say that needs to be done is carried out by whomever, your superiors and your subordinates. There aren't many hurdles to what you want to do and what you expect to do.
If this is what she believes "reign supreme" means - then yes, IT departments reign supreme. If this is not desirable, why does the rest of the business allow this to happen?
Because the answers to IT questions, much like other engineering related professions can not have "feel-good" or "mostly right" answers.
Many other professions have the luxury of being able to occasionally get things wrong. Marketing programs can be "mostly effective". A product design can be less than optimal and still sell. Food products can be somewhat good...etc..etc..etc.
In IT we need to get the answers right or stuff breaks - sometimes with devastating consequences to the business. If IT departments do the wrong things, bank accounts get hacked, flight control systems fail, emergency communication systems don't work when needed, pharmacies can't fill prescriptions..etc...etc...etc.
Engineers and Doctors probably have it worse than we do in this respect, but at the end of the day EVERY company needs IT to do its work. IT departments are expected day in and day out to provide the systems that make this work possible.
If IT departments "reign supreme" it's simply because the business requires it to be so.
Just because you can't understand the BOFH, doesn't mean his knowledge is secret. If you can't understand him... how do you know he didn't already tell you everything????
They don't divulge what they know because it would most likely be a security breach if they do so. Why do the user community in a company feel that they need to know the details of how the corporate IT infrastructure operates?
Think of any job in terms of customer service. The 'customer' may change: an actual 'paying' customer, the user, the boss or whatever it may be.
Even if the one who uses the service provided by you does not directly pay your pay check. They may not fully understand the service, they may not even have any clue other than their expectations of what they want and how things will happen - this can sometimes be very far from real life.
I hook up cable for a living - very basic IT. Do you have internet once I'm done or not? The task itself is not quite so cut and dry. On any given day there are many people who have DSL, and point to the phone jack to 'help me out'. So I might ask something like 'is there a cable jack in this room?' And get an answer such as 'What is that? There is the phone jack.' "Now that I have canceled my internet service from some other provider, do I need to change my email?' - Another frequent question.
This isn't the crack head in the ghetto either, these are intelligent people, with good jobs. They simply do not know the difference.
Bertok is right - it's all about presentation.
When trying to explain things to them, if their eyes glass over, I change the subject briefly. I then come back with the same information, in a new manner.
If you constantly get the 'eyes glassed over look' you are probably presenting the information incorrectly. It's 'customer service' - if you don't have a 'customer' your user or your boss is probably it. Do them right – In the end, they kinda sign your paycheck.
If managment would give me enough policies, money and people to do the job I would have more time to talk to people.
As it is I'm in a constant state of putting out fires and fixing the mistakes of others .
The only hard-nosed "dictator" manager I ever had was actually my shop-floor customer in one of my early jobs working at Northern Telecom. But it turned out it was just how he measured people's skills and knowledge -- if you weren't willing to defend your ideas against his "attack", he felt you hadn't thought things through and needed to go back to the drawing board.
Once you earned his respect by arguing your ideas successfully a few times, he became a real joy to work with because he respected your opinion without you having to prove you were willing to defend it again.
Maybe if more IT staff took and applied their courses in logical discourse and philosophical arguments, they'd be better prepared for dealing with such management styles. Too many of my co-workers over the years were lousy speakers and presenters, and couldn't convince anyone they were right about anything, so they were always frustrated and claiming that everyone was against them.
Try Toastmasters or sign up for some philosophy courses at your local university. If you need the practice at presenting an argument, it's invaluable and a lot of fun.
Don't blame people for "not understanding" if you don't know how to express yourself.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
As a retired IT manager of 25 years... albeit I was a dino even a decade ago, I don't agree with this assessment. 1) I was never aloof, always super friendly to all, and made my mark by being open with non-IT folks, going the entire 9 yards to explain and communicate - YET- 2) I don't think I was all that successful. I am not sure non-IT folks ever understood (or could) no matter what the effort, and 3) this gained me no respect within the IT community, which would have rather had me keep my mouth shut and spend my time helping them get ahead instead. It was a rough situation.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Identifies the necessary character traits for CIA, NSA and other intell service employees.
Dont blame it.
I am an it manager. I seriously deal with oneidiot in my job whodoes not own a computer and does not use the internet.
How the fuck do you expect usto deal with numptys like this, day in, day out?
No,really.think.
When phrases like "web browser" result in blanklooks after a decade, i am going tobe difficult towork with.
And if you don't like it, then fuck you. Iwonder how these idiots manage to feed their kids let alone breathe.
If one more person rudely interrupts my answer to their question by proclaiming their ignorance for the Nth time, I may just snap.
Many times I've imagined interrupting someone's unwelcome narrative by making this proclamation. Considering it's usually a one-sided broadcast, tuning them out is an easier choice. Choose your battles and all...
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
There's a reason they have parachutes.
Often the best way to make money is to milk the company for all it's worth and then bail out with a suitcase full of stock options before the plane crashes.
You're generalizing.
Someday there will be a sea change. I thought it would have happened already, but it will happen. It has to. It's the only thing that makes economic sense; and the first companies to realize it will crush the competition.
IT will take over.
What job of any consequence does not involve being proficient with a computer? Or if it does not require computer proficiency, would not benefit?
The techno-illiterati would like to believe IT skills are something they could just pick up if they had to. Or maybe they think (we all know these people) that they are already proficient. They are not. Nor will they ever be. Real honest to goodness IT literacy is hard; Apple smoke and mirrors not withstanding. And having those skills allows you to do things much more efficiently than people who do not.
The Asperger's kids will have a tough time no matter how IT literate they may be; but not all IT workers are so socially challenged. They know how the financial systems work better than the financial staff. They know how to promote the company better than the marketing staff. They know more about the detailed operation of the company than the CEO. The rank and file are afraid of IT for good reason: IT will make them obsolete.
Imagine a company that doesn't need an IT department because everyone in that company is computer literate. That day will come. It will come because such a company will have such a competitive advantage that other models will fall by the wayside.
"The computer people think they know stuff I don't."
-Billie Blair
I am a reasonable IT guy. I am one of the new ones whom accepts personal devices in the network.....as long as they are safe. I want to be put under this test!!!!
"That's right...I said it."
This is the 3rd It whine artile in a week. I think this is a deliberate pattern by people trying to get hits on their articles by touching on a sore point within IT.
I did not read the article, dont care what it says, and will not respond (even to post something like this) to such articles in the future. I advise you all do the same.
Psychologists talking "data" as if they have any idea what that really means. Their idea of "data" is, "well, we saw some things, and inferred some things, and this is our data." I love how she covers herself with, "well first, they get angry." Well, when you shovel a pile of pseudoscience in someone's face which ostensibly says, "you people suck," what do you expect, Einstein?
That's actually extremely interesting to me.
How is the different order helping?
p.s. lemurs are cute.
The problem here is that stupidity is so widespread that one just can't avoid meeting headlong with it.
"Non-IT workers see IT managers as 'computer janitors" in an organization, and are seen by IT managers as difficult to get along with, says anyone who has ever taken a call at the help desk. If non-IT workers changed their ways, they could actually have a working computer once in a while. 'So many of our sins are hidden under a bushel, because they are moronic, embarrassing, and illegal, that it is a wonder the IT manager ever leaves my counseling office without a fresh bottle of pills and smelling of Ripple', added Blair."
they see technology as a irritating magic black box, they also see IT as that irritating black box.
example box:
user: computer broke fix it!
IT: fine, here do this, like last time
user: it works! but the it guy is a ass.
examples reality:
user: *le surfing porn
user: *le plunging in out side drive full of porn and werz
user: *le installing non supported programs and "entertainment packages" from the internet
user: *le derping around online
user: *le working
user: computer is slow and not doing work properly
user: *le call IT
IT: discovers habits
IT: fixes problem from third time this week
IT: tired of their crap and overworked from BS problems caused by derp employees
IT: provides some quick instruction to solve problem
IT: leaves knowing they will be back again
user: it works! (with no understanding of how or why repaired or broken in first place)
user: *goes back to le derping
cycle starts again with IT & derping users growing more and more irritated.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-27
Everyone in the organization with a lot of personal responsibility is going to be that way. IT managers are under a lot of pressure.
They also often don't have enough power or influence to meet those responsibilities. So users will screw things up and it's the IT manager's fault for letting it happen. How do you stop that? Well, you try to increase your status within the organization. That might mean acting like you're better then everyone else in the hope that people will treat you that way and possibly someone will listen to you. Because if the users think you're not better then them then they can do whatever they want. And that means the whole thing is going to get screwed up, no one will listen to you, it will be your fault, and everyone will hate you... and you're fired.
As to the IT workers... similiar situation. Those people need to represent the interests of the IT department and keep everything under control.
IT is not an easy profession. It has two conditions. Condition one, no one knows what you do, no one respects you, no one notices you exist. Condition two, everyone hates you because something isn't working and it's all your fault. That's it. Those two conditions.
Now try being the manager of that department.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
...the money for his dog food.
Who want to hear, what an IT manager (or any IT person) has to say? At least 75% know better anyways: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect/. The rest does not care for the one or the other reason.
In my experience, 90% of the users want to do the impossible or not work related stuff - and don't give a damn about understanding the solution or op restrictions. And most managers are there to sing hymns to all the higher CEOs. And IT is supposed to be magic. Tecnicians get the task of mending the impossible. Work-arounds and slap-jobs become the norm. "Talk in a shrill tone and carry a very big wand".
Don't worry, it'll soon be the 1% vs the 99%.
The US is now in Cameroon territory when it comes to Gini coefficients. That's when heads start rolling.
Deleted
I guess maybe there is something to be said for the completely non IT manager from IT Crowd.
A few weeks ago I asked a railway-technician why my train had not yet departed. As I suspected the engine had broken down. However, this being a real technician and not some kind of manager he did not just say "it's broken" but started explaining that the 2 out of 4 propulsion-units where below 50% of there optimal capacity, or something along that line.
After a few seconds my mind blocked and I presume my eyes glazed over. I thanked the man and made myself scarce.
It took me a few minutes to realize what just had happened. I'm a nerd with a passion for technology. I'm usually fascinated with every machine I encounter. Yet this tiny bit of pressure (a late train) was enough to completely eradicate that and turn me into a "I don't care about your technology, just fix it" zombie.
'So much of their life is hidden under a bushel because they don't discuss things, they don't divulge what they know'
..
Or in a lot of cases, they don't divulge what they don't know. For instance a "Network Engineer" consultant who can't figure out why gmail keeps timing out on Citrix clients running virtual Windows desktops
For some reason there is this weird notion going around in our society that EVERYONE needs people skills to be considered a professional and deserve a position of respect and decent pay. What is wrong with specializing in what you are good at by nature? I hate speaking and presenting but I am perfectly fine putting my arguments on paper in a logical fashion. Why should that disqualify me from so many jobs I might be very good at just because some manager wants to hear me speak?
I don't get it....I get along well with the people I manage IT for. It's not hard to be nice. geez...
From my experience a lot of the people in IT start out as withdrawn kids. After all we did find that little box of electronic parts so fascinating that we were willing to spend hours and hours in front of it instead of going outside. Most us of seem to eventually come out of our shell and join the rest of society. It really isn't surprising to me that some continue along their antisocial path. I think they are the ones that these type of articles are written about.
So much of their life is hidden under a bushel because they don't discuss things, they don't divulge what they know
Is it that they are not divulging what they know and witholding secrets? ... Or is it that they just don't really know anything? Think about it.
In IT, the knowledgable ones never get promoted because funding is slashed to the point where the handful of guys remaining are doing x3 the work they used to, and now they are knowledgable and indispensable in their current roles. In todays world, knowing nothing but how to BS, deceive others, getting an MBA online and being a sociopathic asshole is the only fast track to IT management.
how one sided. Every hostile IT shop I have ever encountered is always run by insecure, almost talented wanna-be s, who believe they are so good at what they do, no one would ever understand what it is they do. and 100% of the time so far, they have been completely wrong. as an old boss of mine said "never believe your own press" the best IT shops go out of their way to show the rest of the company the value they bring to the company, in terms everyone understands, and can respect. The one thing these shops have in common is an understanding that what they do is just as an important as what others in the company do, and take an active interest in understanding what it is the COMPANY does. In other words, IT is one of a very few professions where you can be an insecure ass, and still keep a job. So, keep feeding your sense of entitlement. Keep feeling like IT is the most important thing in your company. I promise you, unless your company makes 'it expertise", you are just overhead to the real job being done there. and it may be painful to replace you, but the smarter managers are learning, they don't have to put up with your attitude to get your so-called expertise, when there are plenty of more well adjusted people out there to take your place.
Maybe the reason is that users say "we don't care about all that technobabble, just make the damned thing work the way I want to". And, of course, users don't discuss things, don't divulge what they know, and the innovation that could come from users sensibly discussing what their needs are doesn't happen either.
That are aloof (as visible, but far),
Long time ago in my IT days, I was called by a user who had a problem sending a fax.
You could hear the remote modulated response.
Out of the blue, I picked up the fax machine handset and started vocalizing something like fax parlance: -"pxzrrrbgt rgtbrbrpkt..."
The user looked at me and said: -Wow! how can you do that?!
She literally thought I was talking "fax".
(And I hope she still does)
And you want IT to relate?
I've met I.T. managers at companies that I think would fit the description in this article. What they don't cover is the fact that nobody cares about I.T. unless something doesn't work. The rest of the org has no desire to hear about what I.T. thinks or what it's needs may be. I.T. is considered a barrier to them because someone (usually high up in the org) wasn't allowed to have bittorrent on their work laptop to download music at work, or they couldn't load a copy of their software from home (which they probably didn't own anyway) on their work computer. Now we're the bad guys. I'm more than happy to explain anything I do to anyone but usually it's met with the attitude of umm ok that's nice I've go to go. People don't care about our jobs and what we have to do all day. They only thing they care about is that they get everything that they want.
They don't even care about the rest of their company. I can't tell you how many times I've said something along the lines of...well yes technically I could do that for you but here's the problem, it won't scale up to fit the rest of the company and now I'll have this island system sitting out here for you, and perhaps for another department if they want to do something similar, and then well wind up with all of these disjoint systems that can't talk. We should really do this right and get it funded so we can make it work for everyone. The response I get back? I don't give a **** about everyone else I just want this for our department. If someone else wants it, that's their problem. What they don't get is that it's our problem. We're the ones expected to make all this work and we have to look at things from a full organization perspective. Most department managers could care less about what any other department needs or how what they want will affect the rest of the company.
People look down their noses at I.T. as being under them and then they complain when I.T. starts giving them the same level of respect. Suddenly it's our fault and our jobs to change. It's a holiday dinner, we're perpetually seated at the kids table while the adults talk about adult things and wave us off if we try and add something to the conversation as not being able to understand it or contribute to it and now we're faulted for not being a team player. Look in the mirror guys, you're a big part of the problem. The fix has to come from both sides.
We are like Airline Pilots and Train Engineers. People only take notice of us when we crash!
Basically, they expect our services, and take them for granted.
I'm not only an IT manager, I am also a therapist and get along with all levels of peope.
Cheers!
Far too many IT managers get caught in the "I don't want to know how it works, I just want the magic button to do what I want when I push it" trap in the company. Busy users don't care what it takes to keep their machines or the network running, they just want to do their jobs across the network, and have instant access to whatever they think is needed next. Department heads are among the worst in this light, as they have demands on their time and resources and anything that isn't in their direct control is just an impediment to getting their quota out. Projects they need are based on what it will do for them, and that it will require X resources, or X amount of time, and cost thousands for the server and systems they checked off as "ok" and promptly forgot about while talking to the vendor of the shiny new system until the date they plan to have it all installed (and of course, all installations take 30 minutes or less, including the server.) Eventually, even the most innovative and proficient IT folks stop trying. The lack of technical peers in a small organization, and their efforts to accomplish often quite demanding tasks to make the "magic button" work is not hidden because the IT folks want to keep it to themselves - it of often "hidden" because no one else in the organization has any idea of what it means, and, quite simply, don't care.
(I assume their spy software is reading what I am typing now!)
Every department has secrets they don't share.
Ask the finance manager for a list of the salaries in the company. see what that gets you.
Even the janitor doesn't publish a list of trash pick up dates.
as an IT manager, I've seen stuff that departments don't want to share with other departments, or which managers don't want to share with subordinates. sometimes the best way to keep your IT job is to keep your fat trap shut.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I love my job and I am an IT director with no underlings. I wake up in the night and have to go to work, big deal. My non tech coworkers love me, they know what I am doing if not how. I think the trick is to remind yourself that you need to be a real person and not a robot. Be friendly, don't do everything via remote. Help the peons to not be afraid of technology. In the end you win, they win and your considered a irreplaceable team-member. I still have friends at previous jobs that call me to check in on me, and talk IT which I am always happy to do.
My journey down this road started when I found out I could get paid pretty well for doing something I generally enjoyed and was pretty good at. Turns out, you don't need *any* education to teach disinterested adults. As is said, you only need to know 20% more than the next guy to be an expert. ;) That certainly was enough to get me started.
Fortunately, I am in the same boat as you. I finally found a place where even though the lessons take a painfully long time to teach, they are in fact being learned. This place is making amazing progress for what it is and where it started, and the positively crazy thing is that my boss actually sympathizes with The Plight. I've proven to her I've generally got the right answer, and she takes stabs at spreading the IT gospel whenever she can. The great irony here is that I am in as traditional a business as they come - lawyers!!! - versus the numerous different sides of tech I've been in before. Amazing how a group of non-technical people are trying their best to wrap their heads around technical things whereas previously groups of supposedly technical people (albeit manager types) utterly refused to do.
Whatevs... don't look a gift horse in the mouth!
I had a direct boss tell me to write an inventory system for our computers.
I refused. Told him the only way I was going to do it was if he and a few others were willing to spend time explaining directly to me why the other 5 inventory systems we had weren't sufficient. He got all pissy but I held my ground saying use this system or use that system but that I wasn't going to write a 6th system and have it fail just like all the others.
He finally narrowed down exactly what information he wanted about our computers and I wrote him a miminalist system--already having demonstrated from the other failures that too much info or too many fields is not useful and that if you don't keep it up-to-date, then the numbers are flakey and that's because of the manager and his people, not because of the IT person who wrote the 'last crappy system.'
But he still holds a grudge against me. I made him have to think about the questions he wanted answered instead of just demand answers. Non-IT people hate that shit.
Right about even with janitorial services, but not as important as building maintenance.
That's right, folks, you rank down there with the janitors. Why? Because you get in the way of the 'real work' and most of the people who do the 'real work' think you should do all of your duties after hours, except when they have a significant 'problem'. This is exactly, precisely the same as how everyone sees janitors.
Oh, and they also resent that you get paid so much without doing 'real work'. What is 'real work'? that's what everyone else in the company does to make money for the company. You don't do it, no matter how you spin your job, you don't make a dime for the company. Programmers excepted, natch.
Sorry you got the shaft. But you just gotta trust that real soon, this knucklehead will have to do some computer work on his own and his incompetence will become obvious to all. You may be long gone and unable to swoop back in, save the day, and get the position. But he'll crash and burn and get his comeuppance for sure. And you are probably better off not being paired with a guy who is incompetent and could only slow you down and perhaps make you look bad if your assignments together are riddled with errors. Move on, trust karma, good things come to those with skill, dedication, and patience. A rude kick-in-the-pants awaits the doofus you helped do his work. Good luck! --Josh
"You work in IT? That's computers, right? Hmm. Oh hey, I'm looking to buy a new PC, so do you know where I can find a really good computer for really really cheap? Can you help me find a good deal like this?"
Sigh.
So tempted to respond to these sorts of questions with, "No, but I can sell you some outdated technology for 10 times what it's worth. Interested?"
The movie The Matrix presents this situation metaphorically with the blue pill versus the red pill decision. Fact is, you can't force people to take the red pill, they won't adapt, in fact they will fall apart. My manager is exclusively a blue pill guy, he hands blue pills out like candy on Halloween. So, long as no good deed goes unpunished his most defensible position is to not really know anything, but to simply give the impression that he is in control. He doesn't facilitate communication so much as he is a stopgap that presents the illusion of communication. I'm a red pill guy, like an asperger's type of "that's not true" pain in the ass. It has nearly gotten me fired several times and there are some people where I work that simply will not take the truth for anything, they confuse learning their part, with telling me how to do my job and for that there is no amount of truth that will resolve an issue. It works for me, because I understand he's in the business of theatrics, if I let him put on his show with mucking up the suspension of disbelief it's just that much sooner that I get to go back to technical accuracy. It's like politicians looking for someone to punish for Fukishima as the plant was falling apart, once a technical description of the problem was given, public outrage simply required a scapegoat, forget that the problem still require(s/d) a solution and scapegoating would interfere with that process. The public needed their illusion of control over the situation, regardless of the fact that the only tools available to them were a hammer, some nails, and a cross.
The namby pamby psychologist can fix the f'kin servers then. If he can't then we'll see just how great his advice is when explaining is being done instead of fixing things.
Reminds me of the time IT at work sent an Email to warn people About an MSN Virus. It went something like :
If you get a suspicious message with this link in it "www.malicious_address_here.com" DO NOT click it. It infect your computer and propagate through MSN.
30 seconds later all hell broke loose from people clicking the link in the Email. Not sure weather to laugh or cry at that one.
"commodity trading arm of an energy co."
they probably purposely do not want to comply with SARBOX, so they don't have to get dragged in front of congress and read back their own emails.
you are the boy scout screwing it all up. they cant have plausible deniability when someone is shoving their own crimes in their faces.
yes, makes perfect sense. take one guy make him do 3 guys job. you could hire 2 guys, but that would be 'inefficient' and the shareholders hedge-funds would be unhappy.
of course the traditional solution is to form a labor union. or at the very least, go on strike.
The peasants have ideas above their station!
Let's see... IT problems, in my experience, tend to come in three basic categories... Things that people broke, things they're not supposed to do, and things that wouldn't have happened if they'd Read The Fine Manual...
They're NOT aloof, they're something that's a mixture of bored, disgusted, and amused...
Once in a while you get a real technical challenge... but that always seems to happen when they wanted it yesterday
I've worked with several 'good' IT managers who are worth their weight in gold. 'Bad' IT managers are, unfortunately, the norm. There are several problems I always had with 'bad' IT Managers.
First, is the IT Manager who knows NOTHING about IT. Often they are accountants who have risen through managerial ranks and somehow talked their way into IT positions. They make demands like 'ripping out the firewalls' which they think do nothing and are an 'expense' or 'remove all Linux boxes from the network' because Linux is free and therefore can't possibly work. They're also naturally arrogant sods who think they know better than their underlings because 'they're managers' and if the underlings actually knew anything they'd be managers.
Second, is the IT manager who has risen through the ranks of IT to make it into management. They often know their IT stuff quite well, but due to their 'nerd' nature are often poor communicators, loners with poor social skills (brush your teeth 'Mister Sticky Green Teeth'! Sorry, flashback to an IT manager form 1988), and treat anyone who doesn't know 'everything' that they know like they are idiots, (and with 20-30 years IT experience under their belts, they think they know it all).
BUT the flip side to this is I've also found people don't care / want to know what IT does, so IT managers NOT explaining things sits well with them. Then there are the users from 'hell' - those who like to 'fiddle' with their settings till they break - those who expect computers to 'read their minds' - those who expect the computer software to do things how THEY [the user] wants it to work, not how it was designed to function - users who think you are an expert on every piece of hardware / software etc even invented, (Had a conversation today that went something like, 'Where can I buy a TX75 card? I used to have a TX65, but the manufacturer stopped making it and the TX85 is now out and I can't find it in the store, but my old TX75 stopped working and I thought maybe you'd know where I can get one.' 'Er, what's a TX75 card and what does it do?' 'Oh, come on, you're in IT. You know what it does! Have you heard what specs the TX90 is getting? I heard it was phasing out USB two point zero support and had an internal SATA jack that can be attached from outside the box.' *faints*)
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Most IT Managers are unable to comprehend TMTOWTDI
Casteism
I'd really like it if you finished your stories.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.