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Ask Slashdot: Biggest IT Management Mistakes?
snydeq writes: Sure, nobody's perfect. But for those in charge of enterprise technology, the fallout from a strategic gaffe, bad hire, or weak spine can be disastrous, writes Dan Tynan, in an article on the biggest management mistakes in IT. "Some of the most common IT gaffes include becoming trapped in a relationship with a vendor you can't shake loose, hiring or promoting the wrong people, and hiding problems from top management until it's too late to recover." What are some other career- and company-destroyers you've witnessed in your years in IT?
The big one I've seen with my current employer is that they've failed to expand their IT staff as the organization as a whole has expanded. The predictable result is that nothing but the most urgent requests gets handled promptly, and minor problems fester indefinitely.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I recently worked for a startup with a real big asshole brogrammer who never was in the office and always was misunderstanding what was going on. Eventually I caught on to these charades. He was also lying to investors about our startup actually containing AI when it couldn't have been farther from the truth. To cover my own ass I sent a text message to the CEO warning him that we were committing fraud. After that the mark was on my head. Our "brogrammer" calls me into a room and says that I'm toxic. I counter by asking him his working hours and if he understands what fraud is. Over the next few weeks regardless of what happened I was ripped into a room and told how toxic I was.
Of course I was let go shortly after because the dumb CEO who always called me "his brother" was well aware of the sham and apparently didn't care. The crazy sociopath actually thought that I would still be friends with him after being fired. He also thinks it's some point I will come back to work for him, likely whenever that brogrammer finally leaves. I wonder if he knows that I'm planning on telling the FTC and his investors about this "AI" company. It's a bunch of regex matching natural language to appear as if you are speaking to a digital assistant. They're actually telling customers that this is a real AI system.
I would call this a serious mistake because their entire future is essentially in my hands. Since this Psychopathic CEO thinks I'm his friend and going to keep the lid on this, he's just plodding along blowing his money on other endeavors. I'll just let him build a little bit more of a paper trail for me before I strike. That's what you get for listening to the brogrammer.