How To Succeed In IT Without Really Trying 283
snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia discusses the two ways to succeed in IT: through proficiency and hard work, a road that often leads to unending servitude, or the other way; with little effort or proficiency at all. 'I hate to say this, but a number of people in IT positions work harder to make it seem like they're busy as beavers than doing actual work. Quite often this dysfunction starts at the top: When an IT manager doesn't know the technology very well, he or she may hire folks who have no idea what their job is other than to show up every day and answer the occasional email, passing questions along to others with more technical abilities, or to their contacts at the various hardware and software vendors. People like these populate many consulting companies. They rely almost completely on contractors to perform the actual work, serving as remote hands in a real crisis and as part of a phone tree for less pressing issues.'"
Re:contractor / consultant (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyhow, while filling out timesheets and painfully aware of my per-hour rate doing "admin" work for a not-quite-deployed system, I felt like I should be doing something. With my "developer" background, I wrote all kinds of tools to make my "operations" work easier... pretty my automating my way out of a job, which was my goal, since I was on a 6 month contract. I also did the onerous task of reviewing vendor support agreements and such, and pretty much saved the company my salary in un-needed maintenance contracts.
Long story, short, they offered me a full time senior position at the end of my contract. Alas, the company was still a PITA to work (more about process, sensitivity classes, and other bs, than working.) The employees were all pretty much clock-punchers with no initiative, which is a toxic place to stay if you have any personal ambition. The point is, in this case, the employees were worse than the "contractors".
But I have to agree on "consultants"
Re:contractor / consultant (Score:3, Interesting)
In my experience at Microsoft, contractor is code word for "expected to work more than the blue badges, but still gets treated like dog shit for having an orange badge; finally gets asked to interview for a blue badge, but remembers being treated like dog shit and still feels suicidal as a result; decides to stay as contractor to avoid having to BS through the dreaded manhole / gas station interview; then a month later gets let go with all the other orange badges when the entire product group gets axed because all the blue-badges were too busy doing the 'bored? call a meeting!' routine to get any actual work done."
Yes, I am bitter.
Re:Not limited to IT (Score:3, Interesting)
Work for a Union company :|
Half of my group is competent and knows their sh*t. The other half sits at their desk and drools on themselves.
The former has to work twice as hard as the latter to make up for the loss. Can't possibly fire em because they
spout the Union Mantra "I haven't been trained" because the company views training of any sort as an expense
instead of a investment. What is infuriating is the pay level is the same. Union = top pay once you exceed five
years. Regardless of your level of knowledge. Head -> Desk
You can easily tell which ones are the Union Members and which ones are not. You can draw the line right down
the middle and separate those who know what they're doing and which ones do not. Competent = non-union. Easy
as that.
Honest truth alert:
One of the last Unionites to get placed in the group did not know what a DOS prompt was. Hath no clue as to what
FTP even IS and their computer skills . . . . well. . . let's just say they are the nightmare that Desktop Support is
afraid of.
Re:Not limited to IT (Score:5, Interesting)
You can easily tell which ones are the Union Members and which ones are not. You can draw the line right down
the middle and separate those who know what they're doing and which ones do not. Competent = non-union. Easy
as that.
Funny, where I work it's the reverse. Competent = union. Incompetent = hired and fired every 6 months, non-union all the way. Really Fucking Incredibly Incompetent = Indian outsource or H1-B Indian On Visa.
Re:contractor / consultant (Score:5, Interesting)
I couldn't disagree more; having been both a consultant and an employee.
Maybe my experiences have been unique; but I've been an employee at a large insurance company (Allstate) and a smaller custom software shop (that I currently work out, so name removed). In both cases, there was little motivation to do much more than the bare minimum. I mean, sure, I showed up and did some stuff; but I found very quickly that expectations where low. I didn't have to work very hard to meet them. If the company had a good year and you were doing good - 3-5% raise. If the company had a bad year then 'salary freeze'.
Many people find they get significant raises by switching companies, and this is why. Once you are employed the company figures, 'Well, he worked for X last year, now we give him more than X - why would he quit?'.
I show up late, leave early and surf the web. I've also been pidgin-holed into maintaining and updating a very defined section of the application. Everyone knows, if you have a problem with Y, you talk to me. That's all I do. I do Y. Five years at the same company and after four months of doing good they gave me project Y. I'm still doing project Y. I'll be doing project Y for as long as I work at the company.
When I was a consultant, it was a world of difference. A consulting firm sells consultants. They want to have REALLY GOOD consultants because selling a good product is a great way to stay in business. My current job, we sell a piece of software. They company wants that software to be really good. It's a subtle difference, but it makes a huge difference. The consulting firm I worked for would intentionally rotate us in and out of projects. If you were a Java guy, they wanted you on a .Net project. If you did desktop apps before, they wanted you to do a website. They wanted you to be highly skilled and diverse because that meant they could throw you on any project that came along. They also knew that, after about a year, as a developer on the same project, the learning curve drops to about zero. You don't learn new stuff doing the same old crap. If you were leading a team, it was different, but as far as being a developer, they wanted you to be really good at it.
And, unlike selling software, where your contributions were pretty abstract and subjective; when I was a consultant my time had a very clear value attached to it. The client was being billed for it. If I worked overtime, two things happened. First, I got paid (and my company did too). Second, the client had to pay more. There was an actual expectation of measurable work being done.
Being a consultant was great. I did, at least 2-3 times more work than I do now. I also learned a lot more from people who were really talented and knowledgeable. It was also really hard. I didn't get to spend an hour every day surfing the web and ducking out at 4pm to get an early start on my WoW raids.
Mod parent up. (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA:
If you perform enough miracles when other people NEED them ... pretty soon they think THEY are the ones performing the miracles.
And in IT ... without the risk of death or dismemberment should your design/work crash ... that's just the way things are.
People EXPECT computer systems to crash. Which is the perfect environment for people who know nothing to succeed.
Re:Not limited to IT (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not limited to IT (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, many companies, even small ones, are willing to lose knowledge and talent rather than give a raise. Sure, I left my team at my previous company in a bit of a lurch and a major knowledge drain, but by this point, I hope they have overcome my lose - I left them with as much documentation as I could. I can't help it if upper-management refused to even make a counter-offer.
Of course, now at a large company, another cog in the wheel, bored out of my mind most of the time... but I am getting paid MUCH better. My next position will definitely be a small company where I can contribute a lot.