Managing IT

This is half rant, half seriousness. The world, and particularly the company I work for need to catch up on the times and learn how to deal with technology professionals. I’m going to be making some generalizations here but don’t be offended. The first rule for management is this, understand your employees. IT professionals took charisma as a dump stat, we are not salesmen, and in general don’t communicate with non-tech people so well, one minor exception is those of us who chose tech support as a trade. We have the patience (most of the time) to deal w/ the computer illiterate and can usually come up with some easier to understand lingo. That being said, we still are not sales people and we don’t give a shit who you are or how important your term paper is or how much money you’re losing because your internet doesn’t work. IT people’s thinking is based on logic. We will take the path of least resistance and go to whomever we know will get the job done and beaurocracy be damned. Respect is earned, not based on your position in the company.

Now what can you learn from those generalizations? First, to keep us happy all you have to do is have some simple recognition, a sincere pat on the back or some token pizza party can go a long way. Treat us like adults, don’t micromanage and restrict this and overrule that, just let us do our job unhindered and we will do it. Last, if you want to be respected and if you want us to come to you for help and whatnot you have to establish yourself as a person who will actually get things done. Just because you are a lead or a supervisor doesn’t mean you know shit about anything. If people are not coming up to you to ask questions, chances are this means that those people either know, or think, that you do not have the answers. If you don’t have the answers, you shouldn’t be in the position you are in.

Now with respect to hiring IT, and I’m going to get specific to the company I work for. The art of the interview is outdated for IT. Once again we don’t have charisma, generally speaking, so we are not going to do well in your traditional view of an interview. Generic questions like “where do you think you’ll be in 5 years” or “what would you do in this hypothetical situation that would never happen” are bullshit and you know it. Stick to technical questions, weed out the posers and keep the knowledgeable. Not the other way around. Tech support and logic is something that an IT person just knows in the core of their being, it can’t be learned on the job to extent that we have. In other words, don’t hire someone just because they have a flashy smile and a sliver tongue and believe they will just learn as they go. If they don’t already know, then they will end up being mediocre at best. Don’t hire tech support reps, then treat them like customer service reps. Yes, we do talk to customers; but they are calling us to fix their shit, not sell them new services and doing so is annoying to the caller at best and insulting at worst. I understand the need to make sales, but you already have several sales-related departments that do specifically that, let them do their job and let us do ours.

Now back to the interview process, specifically for internal positions. Stop the bullshit! You already hired us based on our original interview, so stop it with the bullshit hypothetical’s and generic “if you were a part of a bicycle what would it be” questions. We know its all a game, and the answers are made up anyway. You know it, I know it, everybody does it, so just get rid of it. Stick to tech-based questions, and given by other IT personnel who actually understand the lingo. The questions themselves should be directly related to the job, don’t make it a game or a big secret. Its not a quiz show people, it’s a career. If a person doesn’t get the position, then asks later what they could have done better, answer them so they can work on whatever it is they did wrong for the next time. Don’t make it some big secret, because that is going to lead to mistrust (and long blog posts, heh). When someone gets promoted who has been with the company for less than a year, over someone who has been here for years and is also fully qualified….one starts to wonder what exactly is going on behind the scenes. Rumors start, conspiracies fly and you add one more straw to the camels back, maybe the last one that causes your seasoned veteran to bail and go to another company. In the end, the customer is going to suffer.

Anyway, that’s my rant. I know I’m preaching to the choir, but I needed to get it out of my system. Also, if anybody reads this and has recently been promoted *wink* its not directed at you or anybody else.