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Ask Slashdot: Intelligently Moving From IT Into Management?
MightyMartian (840721) writes "I've been working for an organization now for over seven years, my best run yet. A couple of years ago, the company went through some major changes and I bought in as an owner and as a managing director; my responsibilities encompassing administration, finance and IT. It's a small (20 employee or so, plus nearly that many with subcontracting companies) organization so needless to say I retained my direct IT responsibilities.
My fellow board members have decided that I need to detach myself from the day to day IT operations and take over more management duties; in particular in the finance and budgeting end of things. Right now I'm in the process of interviewing a new IT system administrator who will, over time, take on most of my IT roles. However, since this has been a one-man shop for seven years; namely my shop, I confess some reservations about handing over the keys and moving permanently up to the top floor.
Does anybody have any suggestions on the level of permissions for servers, networks and infrastructure I should start with? Do I, for the moment, retain some of the critical functionality; like superuser passwords, and slowly move the new system administrator into his or her role, or do I move more quickly, give him the basics and then let him fly on his own?"
My fellow board members have decided that I need to detach myself from the day to day IT operations and take over more management duties; in particular in the finance and budgeting end of things. Right now I'm in the process of interviewing a new IT system administrator who will, over time, take on most of my IT roles. However, since this has been a one-man shop for seven years; namely my shop, I confess some reservations about handing over the keys and moving permanently up to the top floor.
Does anybody have any suggestions on the level of permissions for servers, networks and infrastructure I should start with? Do I, for the moment, retain some of the critical functionality; like superuser passwords, and slowly move the new system administrator into his or her role, or do I move more quickly, give him the basics and then let him fly on his own?"
If you can't trust your sysadmin, you shouldn't have hired them in the first place. Anybody capable of doing the job, with a reasonable background, should be given the opportunity to show their mettle without being arbitrarily restrained.
Be there for him, but not looking over his shoulder. Also remember that he'll make mistakes, just like you have over the years. It's difficult but you'll find yourself more effective when you learn to delegate.
Do you have ESP?
You hire someone and hand over a COPY of the keys. Rule #1 is that you ALWAYS know admin passwords and whatnot. That's not only for your comfort, it's part of due dilligence as your new guy might be hit by a bus on the way home after his first day. Then you step out of the way and do the important job of running the company. If you're not comfortable with this, reexamine your career path. It's time to let it go.
I maintained my role as IT Manager, with full responsibility, the entire time. But you shouldn't. Senior Mgmt + IT - Proper Support = job sucks. It does sound like you will have the proper support... we never replaced my position in the IT department.
.252, you are really cooking. Now you have all the non-conforming parts. Took about 15 minutes. Knocking out queries like that made people around me think I was some sort of genius. Yes you can do that in Excel if you can get the component items in the time frame, but it's not as easy. You know your company and the business processes, the data structures, the nuances of the data, etc. Your new guy won't get that for at least a year.
I would however, keep the title. You need it to keep the passwords and system access. Maybe in that small of a company it won't be a problem. If you are like me, then you probably don't feel you are the best manager in the world, but you have the ability to access data better, faster, and more aptly than your manager counterparts. You do not want to lose this edge. You want to be able to run a quick query to pull: all component items from all 123ABC parts produced in the past 6 months with a serial number that starts with 2, of class 43, and started on second shift. That's impressive, but when you combine it with the inspection system to determine which ones had a hole that was reported as less than
Also, you want to be in on the projects going on in the company. You have no idea how much insight you gain into the various departments because IT reaches all departments and those projects that cross departments are a great place to find poor processes and figure out what's really wrong with the department. Also people talk to the IT guy (even manager) much different than the other managers/bosses.
There is quite a bit of precedence for you climb. There will only be more in the future for the reasons stated above. It used to be the CFO that was involved in every department and was a shoe in for CEO. It's now the CIO that is the shoe in.
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
Intelligently Moving From IT Into Management?
Sentence does not parse.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My bosses boss was the sys admin here. He's moved up over the years. He still keeps his hands in the sys admin stuff on occasion. You know what happens? He fucks things up in the process! Things have changed in the past 5 years that he isn't aware of and so shit breaks when he tries to help.
Do yourself a favor and do one job and do it well. Give up the keys and let someone else sink or swim. If you don't stand aside, you'll be a liability more than an asset.
Trust me on this. Even when you've interviewed your candidate, the last thing you want to do is hand over the keys to the kingdom and let the new guy have at it to do whatever he/she wants.
Years ago we hired someone who was meant to be part developer and part sysadmin.
His development skills were showing to be so lacking, and some of the things he thought he wanted to do started to make the people who had been doing the admin duty a little nervous. We didn't let him have full access to the systems for a while.
He was describing making some pretty reckless changes, that he couldn't convince anybody of why we'd do them, and kept saying how he disagreed with how we did things, or said things which made us all think he was a cowboy who had no real sense of why things were done the way they had been, and why we couldn't just re-do everything to look like the way he had it at his last job.
Eventually we more or less decided we couldn't really trust him, and he got neither development tasks, nor sys admin tasks from us. Eventually my manager had to show him the door, because he started getting really aggressive and agitated that the people who had been the admins for several years weren't prepared to just hand him the passwords and let him do as he pleased. But, this was based on the stuff he himself was saying, which more or less amounted to "I don't care, as the admin it's how I want it to be". Yeah, no there skippy.
The more he tried to do things, and the more we saw the results of the tasks we had given him, we became quite convinced he had bullshitted his way into the job, and was trying to take the opportunity to prove (to us or him I don't know) just how much he really knew.
You may need to disengage, but don't do it all at once. Because you're just putting yourself and your company more at risk.
Once you're sure you can trust the new person to do the job, and under the constraints/rules you've laid out ... then you can pull back a lot more.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My rule of thumb has always been "What will happen if I get hit by a bus tomorrow?" and so I'm already pretty much set. I could walk out tomorrow and everything would be fine. The new guy might be slower and not get things fixed as fast, but he'd be able to do it. I think you need to take the same approach. The whole "Well, he can just call me if he has trouble" isn't going to work if you're on vacation or something. As a manager you should be prepared for anyone in your company to leave, including yourself.
If you have processes that require personal knowledge to complete, then you need new processes. I think this change will be very good for your company. All the things you're worried about now are things you should have been worried about all along, they're just out in front now. Are you going to hand over super user passwords to the new guy? What if he gets hit by that bus? What if your buildings flooded? You need to think long and hard about these sorts of things.
I read an article years ago while I was in college working at McDonalds part time that said McDonalds had been so successful was because their processes were made in such a way that they could take anyone that was ambulatory and had an IQ above 60, put them behind the grill and they'd be able to do the job. I thought about it while at work and sure enough... how to make the burgers was graphical... you dont even have to be able to read! Now that's a well planned process. This wont work for IT obviously, but that's kind of the way you need to approach it. Also, the easier the process, the cheaper you can hire. Make everything super easy, then hire a smart guy and he'll have lots of time to use his smarts for things other than finding super user passwords.
Management is all about psychology.
Slapping clients on the back.
Getting them to open up their wallets and... SHOW YOU PICTURES OF THEIR GRANDCHILDREN!
Slapping employees on the back.
Getting them to open up their wallets and... SHOW YOU PICTURES OF THEIR GRANDCHILDREN!
As long as you continue to think like a gearhead, you haven't made the necessary mental and spiritual transition which is necessary to become a true manager.
You need to start thinking like a shrink.
Or at least like a father.
What you need are good processes and a common way of expressing how these processes are adhered to. Get yourself ITIL certified and make sure that either the person you hire is certified or that is the first thing you have them do. You don't have to be a big shop for this to be relevant.
On a day-to-day level you need to be the person who is accountable for any and all changes, which mean you must approve them. Yes, you are handing over the keys, but not permission to run roughshod over the environment.
Also, a good manager "inspects" but does not "micromanage". If you keep this principle in mind and establish some good processes, you will be golden.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
I can appreciate your situation and need for advice, but if you are asking these questions here on /., you may need to step back a bit a lay some ground work. I've been where you are and made the transition and here's some hard lessons I've learned.
First, if you are at a point where you are trying to hire a person to replace your technical function, understand that you are on a path to grow beyond a single person. This means that while you were capable to deal with the technical responsibilities, your management function facilitated the ease at which you could accomplish things. Your replacement will not have the flexibility of authority you enjoy. This means that new processes and procedures will have to be put in place to accommodate that. This also means, as you go through that exercise, you will determine that a single person will not have all of your qualities. This means there will be more hiring on the horizon. Plan accordingly.
Second, your instinct is to not allow your baby to be in the hands of another parent. Get over that impulse quickly or you will burn through competent staff very quick. Oversight is good but micromanaging is not. A good sysadmin / network admin is worth the money paid - a mediocre admin can often have a negative value to your operations. You are hiring someone to do a job - hire the best you can find and afford and let them do it. If you don't or think you know best, you are setting yourself up to play with the B-team or worse.
Third, I don't know your line of business, but now is a great time to begin setting up an infrastructure for auditing and monitoring. If you want to be a real company and not fly by the seat of your pants, understand that IT is a solved problem with many best practices that can be adopted and audited for success. IT operations, Software development, information security all have standards associated that can help ease your transition. Once you fully implement that, you will find your IT operations run smoother and you become a much more attractive organization to various clients and contracts.
In short, embrace your role. You are a manager and are in charge of strategic vision. You are not a tactician nor are you a technician. Understand your role and do it to the best of your ability. The big part of that is hiring people who will execute your vision.
"Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion." Sun Tzu
OK, so if you're asking this, there's no way you've done a proper disaster recovery plan--folks that have done those have sufficient documentation in-hand that someone else should be able to pop in and do the job.
So this is a great opportunity to do that. Together. You gain confidence in your IT minion while s/he gains confidence that they're flying right. And any keys to the kingdom are nicely stored where they should be, so any authorized IT person can get at what they need.
The first step is to get the lay of the land and prioritize services. Gather the keys/passwords/whatever together (make sure your AAA story is good, etc). Come up with what your backup/restore stories are. What do you do if you need to restore one file (the "oopsie" moment)? What about a dead drive/server? What if a plane hits your data center? etc, etc.
Make no mistake--you're in the middle of a disaster RIGHT NOW. You're losing your lead IT staffer to promotion :-)
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
It can be very hard to let go, to trust the new person with your baby. I think it's generally true that "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much", so I didn't hand over everything on day one, but I tried not to delay unnecessarily once someone has proven themselves. Maybe give the new person full reign on a NEW project or system, something that won't wreck the company if it blows up. Similarly, maybe a just non-critical systems for a few weeks.
The other thing I tried to do that helped both the new person do the job and helped me feel better was to frequently communicate about how often the new person is asking questions. I try to guide them to ask questions when they need to (don't guess when you don't know), and also trust their knowledge when they do know. So I tell new people I plan to get questions from them. Even if they are an expert in their field, they aren't an expert on OUR systems. Also, experts talk to other experts. I'm part of several groups, standards bodies and FOSS development efforts, where highly competent people discuss ideas. So they should feel free to ask questions when needed - if they didn't any questions in their first week that would signify a problem. Conversely, I had one employee who would keep asking the same questions. She would check with me even when she knew what needed to be done. I had to encourage her to trust her own knowledge.
Knowing that my people ask intelligent questions about the areas they are responsible for, I know what I can trust them with. In those areas where they ask "dumb" questions and really don't know the answer, I know I shouldn't give them that specific responsibility outside of a learning projects.