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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."
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.
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
Perhaps, but more often than not the IT manager is not directly involved in either the day-to-day operations of the IT department or the said business decisions. It's all budget planning, vendor relationships and issue escalations for them... and thus the disconnect between the business decision makers and IT grunts having to live with them.
Bow before me, for I am root.
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.
There is a flip side to that coin.
I walk around a good portion of my day talking to users and seeing how things are going. I am the opposite of aloof and quite approachable. However, I have been told on many occasions, "Why do you have to make things so complicated?". Drives me nuts.
They literally cannot tell the difference between bullshit and the truth. Both makes their eyes gloss over and they stop listening.
Do you think doctors are bullshitting you? Do you expect them to explain things to you in technical terms as if they were talking to another doctor?
So why IT?
That's the problem. Everyone expects computers to not be that complicated and that we are just overrated janitors. They have no idea just how complicated it can be, and no real appreciation either.
We are damned if we do, and damned if we don't as far as explanations go, and nobody wants to take any responsibility.
How about the famous line, "But you touched it last?!"
everyone WANTS computers to be easy, but I don't think they EXPECT it. in fact, they often expect that things will go wrong at every upgrade. the IT department is always at the receiving end of a long list of expletives from all and sundry, so to man the trenches of IT you have to be hardy enough to brush off the insults and realize that it isn't really you personally that they are swearing at, but the system itself (hardware, software, procedures, etc). a lot of people hate being dependent on an IT department, particularly if they are a little savvy and reckon they could fix the problem themselves in half the time, but most people also realize that an IT department is a necessary evil. in many companies there is a mystique about the IT people; many don't even know what IT people do on a daily basis. ask some people and they would be convinced that they look at porn or play solitaire all day (especially if they haven't heard of UT or Battlefield). to a lot of people computers are to be feared, holding them at ransom, a threatening menace that will destroy them should they do something wrong, or that they will get dragged off to prison if they trigger an "illegal exception".
the only other profession that comes close to IT in its ability to baffle the common folk would be the various fields of professional engineering, with all their respective hodge-podge of numbers and symbols.