IT Managers Are Aloof Says Psychologist and Your Co-Workers 378
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."
Not surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most People are Uninterested (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking for myself, when I try to describe IT projects that I find really cool to non-technical people (say 75% of the organization), they're just not interested. Not saying they're too stupid to get it, not saying they're too stupid to understand its significance, but they've been conditioned to think of IT as something that other people do. There is a problem on both sides of the culture divide. I don't know, nor do I particularly care which side "started" it, but to overcome it, IT people are going to have to share, and non-IT people are going to have to be more willing to engage.
It's difficult to discuss things (Score:5, Insightful)
...with people whose eyes glaze over the second they realize you're talking about computers.
I don't know anyone who didn't start out as an ever helpful enthusiastic talkative person, and they all become jaded over time. People just don't want to hear about it. They have their job, they expect you to do yours without bothering them about it.
bossy control freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Present a better idea and it doesn't get a fair hearing. Get brain-dead unappealable policy decisions because the system is geared to the lowest common denominator. Being TOLD what the best UI is.
You end up serving the fucking data, rather than the data serving you.
Re:and you wonder.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"We must find more ways to break down the defensive walls of IT. You know, the ones they built for themselves by spending their whole lives learning, instead of just exploiting the hell out of people around them and casting them aside. Once that's done, we can kick them around like your average receptionist (we call them customer service reps, to give the illusion of respect). We want swappable cogs we can throw away whenever we want! We 'productivity specialists' are sure that's how you foster, 'innovation'."
Er, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, what a ridiculous pile of pseudo science. I've been in IT for 20 years now, and worked with three or four organizations in very different industries. Each time I start out with a really positive attitude, a "this time it will be different" approach. I'm going to be interested, and helpful, and friendly, and communicative. After about a year I can't do it anymore. It's not for lack of interest or trying, it's because the average user approaches the technology they must interact with daily as either a black box or an inconvenience or both. How a person can know the intricacies of double entry bookkeeping but fail to understand why opening every single attachment they receive is verboten is beyond me. Learn a little - just a little - about the tools you need to do your job and then pay attention to what you're doing. Your computer is not that complex to use, and essential to your job. You know the rules for arbitrating a marital dispute in Iowa, but you can't remember not to Save As the document you insist on using as a template?
If I had wanted to be a cat herder or a kindergarten teacher, I would have pursued those options. I went into a field where I had assumed I would be dealing with adults who even if they didn't understand exactly what they were doing they would at least take responsibility for their actions. You can only endure "I didn't click anything" or "I know you've told me before, but how do I...?" so many times. Eventually you really start feeling like you're not being listened to or appreciated, and then you start wondering why you bother talking at all. Nobody I know in this business wants to keep secrets or appear aloof, but when it becomes apparent that nobody is listening to you when you talk, why bother sharing at all?
Nowhere was the question "Are they justified... (Score:5, Insightful)
to that aloofness?"
In other words, this whole article biatched about IT workers, but never even bothered to look for one moment at the other side of the coin: the users who habitually refuse to change habits, who blame IT for every mistake they make, make demands on the IT guys and girls that are not reasonable, and then wonder why IT sees themselves as beleaguered and under siege.
Instead, she boasts that she knew how to tame IT when she was a dean by bullying them with her position---exactly the reason why IT people see themselves as abused and reviled.
key logging (Score:4, Insightful)
Or perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not unique to IT (Score:5, Insightful)
In a large organization, I see other folks behaving the same or worse as IT managers: ...
- Human Resources, ever try to reason with one of them that their policy needs to reviewed or does not help in attracting talent?
- Finance; yes, once I have the PR, the sole source agreement, the market analysis, I'll get a PO and the invoice will be paid in six months after the vendors berates and tells me that they'll never do business with us again
- Legal or Privacy department; seriously, never ever try to disagree with them or propose a different point of view
- Researchers; full of primadonnas; the leadership is even worse
The article is BS; most of the items could apply to any other area or field
Responsibility without power (Score:5, Insightful)
The IT (in US terms, not technical professions in general) guys are there to enable everyone else to interact. They aren't given much power - only what is minimally needed to give everyone else what they want.
I can empathize with your typical IT guy attitude - you strive to help every day, and do help a lot of people - but end up seeing the same self-inflicted wounds over and over again. At some point, the only way to meaningfully care for people is to take a zen attitude, point them to resources, and accept that most will refuse to take even the simplest steps towards understanding how things break as they misuse them.
And you have to rely on humor over time. The net appearance may be 'aloof' - but it's difficult to help the sometimes aggressively and willfully ignorant often looking to place blame and not end up with the eyebrow-raised incredulous look coming up.
It would be lovely if we could all have a Carl Sagan friendly sage look about us in every difficulty - but we won't. Even Carl Sagan probably looked perturbed and sarcastic at some points along the way - same with Gandhi and Mother Theresa too.
Better aloof than full on BOFH.
Ryan Fenton
Re:She needs to tell us about the people ,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
Be glad they are stupid. Their stupid is paying your bills.
Phasers on kill (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not someone who is offended easily. That said, the author of this article and the 'subject matter expert' that was interviewed have offended me greatly.
Three pages of stereotype. Here, let me summarize and save you wasting 5 minutes of your life. . . . . . "IT people are not the best communicators." oh, wait, this comment was made by someone with an advanced degree in in psychology, I guess it must be legit.
Here is the rest of the article in a nutshell -
IT managers are aloof, technical people with a skillset that an organization cannot do without. They have been 'gifted' since childhood with a technical mindset and they believe that the world is against them. They want people to bow to them as the come into the room (direct quote) and it is difficult to get anything out of them.
I had to laugh when the sme stated that as a dean she could "force them off their high horse". From experience, when managers "force" technical people to do something or provide something, the end result is a piece of garbage that doesn't work right, upsets the customers, makes the IT department look bad and does the "forcer" get blamed for the poor results? No, the IT department loses credibility in the end.
This person doesn't get that most of the reasons IT folks "don't communicate" with those outside of IT is for a very basic reason . . . . . we start talking and we get BLANK STARES as a response!
I love her definition of 'c-level' folks.
The final straw in this article is the last paragraph. Steve Jobs was a BUSINESS MANAGER, not an IT professional. He ran a company and and 'forced' the technical people to dance for him.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Ha - "aloof" (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Flip Side (Score:5, Insightful)
we need to be proactive about communicating with the retards who break our system.
Nope. Nobody would ever think somebody who says shit like this is aloof, insular, or difficult to get along with.
Re:Let me explain the opposite... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the first IT jobs I ever had was working for an IT manager ... 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.
And that is the EXACT purpose of a manager. One of my recent managers was very similar to this guy - and probably the best manager I have ever worked for. He didn't know didly squat about the technologies we use, couldn't write a SQL statement to select 1 from dual, but he freely admitted to it on day one. He went to all the senior management meetings as prepared as he could be. If he didn't have an answer, he asked us after the meeting and then followed up with our recommendations. The senior management team loved his work because they were getting real answers and our team worked very efficiently. We enjoyed working within his team because he was always on top of things, had a well organized plan for our work - but most of all because he interjected himself between any business user and us when they came bearing work or requests.
Our teams profile rose greatly because we were able to provide a LOT more work to the rest of them due to this single manager. Sadly for us though, he has moved on to bigger and better things (though good for him) and our team is now being led by three managers who combined are no-where near as good as him. Shame really.
Re:Not surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
Take up smoking. It's amazing what you can learn from your fellow outcasts.
Re:Nowhere was the question "Are they justified... (Score:3, Insightful)
to that aloofness?"
In other words, this whole article biatched about IT workers, but never even bothered to look for one moment at the other side of the coin: the users who habitually refuse to change habits, who blame IT for every mistake they make, make demands on the IT guys and girls that are not reasonable, and then wonder why IT sees themselves as beleaguered and under siege.
Instead, she boasts that she knew how to tame IT when she was a dean by bullying them with her position---exactly the reason why IT people see themselves as abused and reviled.
Guy at my last job is your classic IT person. Hates doing support, acts like a jerk to people he deems to not be on his level. But he also manages most of the internal servers, the NAS, backups, what have you, and if something goes down - because he's an ass to everybody when everything's working 99.99999% of the time, they come down hard on him the 0.00001% of the time it doesn't. And it drives him bananas because he doesn't understand that you get what you give. I called the customer service manager from this guy's desk phone once and had just about the coldest reception I've ever gotten on a phone call because she saw his name show up on her phone. Shocked the hell out of me because I'd never heard her act that way before in all the years I'd worked with her.
The only reason he's even still employed is because the department manager would rather run interference at the managerial meetings than waste time and money training somebody else.
And you can tell none of the rest of us in the department have problems... the "lusers" (as some of you knuckleheads call them) will actually talk to the rest of us at the Christmas party! Imagine that, conversation with a human being, all because I didn't roll my eyes when the billing software spit out an exception.
Bottom line, it's all chicken-and-egg stuff. Maybe you're an ass because you're the least popular person in the building... maybe you're the least popular person in the building because you're an ass. But who the fuck cares. You can change that real easy. You don't need to grovel or kiss anyone's ass, just say please and thank you. Don't lean on the "I'm in the IT department, and this is how it is" crutch.
That's not submitting to bullying... that's doing the stupid shit your parents taught (or should have taught) you that you threw out the window 3 weeks into your first internet tech support job.
And go do something unrelated to your job off the clock (on-call hours permitting, obviously). Go get laid. Go take a liberal arts class at the local community college. Just do something that takes you away from whatever it is you already do 10-12 hours a day. A little balance goes a long way.
Signed,
Somebody in IT who isn't at war with the rest of his company.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
A pseudoscience with a lot of power is still pseudoscience (sorry L. Ron). Since you mentioned fallacies, that's the "Argumentum ad Baculum".
Not a great pick-up line unless you own a Ferrari? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Where'd my mod points go!?)
Any conversation with someone you've just met will eventually get onto the subject:
Q: What do you do for a crust?
A: I work in IT
Q: Oh - I need another drink, be back soon (yeah right)
Nobody outside the field understands it. They don't care (& why would they) unless their poxy PC has problems.
Of course IT are going to be somewhat insular.
This is not just for IT managers. (Score:5, Insightful)
It struck me hard in in Aerospace, when management went to "training seminars" and came back all holier than thou. I was more concerned with stability of phase-locked loops at the time, and I became very concerned over the lack of concern our managers seemed to express about our products. Everything became "the bottom line". Cost centers. Profit centers. Presentation. What is the minimum amount of effort that will result in getting paid. Suddenly, "Pride of Workmanship" became a bad thing as it was an inefficient use of manpower.
Well, we banged around for a few more years riding on the reputation the guys before us earned.
As we "redefined the organization", our clients re-evaluated what our name meant.
Things dried up.
Being one of the noisier ones bemoaning the micromanagement I had to take, I was one of the first dismissed..
Yes, I have studied "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram. I would urge everyone to read his book. Its tiny. Its a research paper by Stanley Milgram of Yale University, a psychology major, doing a thesis on what got into the German people to do the things they did to the Jews.
I found the book very shocking. What he did was set himself up as an "authority figure" by wearing a white lab coat, and he would see just how far people would go in obeying him. People would actually electrocute others they did not even know once they had shifted responsibility of their act to someone else. Stanley called this state of obedience as "agentic", as being an "agent" for someone else, who was - as you know - Stanley himself.
Some of us have a moral compass that will not let us do such things. Stanley noted that. There were a few that simply would not obey when they were ordered, no matter what he did. He did not label them "not a team player", but I am sure today's "leadership types" would.
This crap even got into my church.
I have pontificated on slashdot long ago on my spiritual beliefs, why I believe there is a creator, and my frustration with religion.
I sat through one "leadership" lesson, and was told things like "if you need them, you can't lead them".
That goes against everything in me. I have got to make those under me feel worthless and dependent so they will follow me? I call bullshit.
If they are going to follow me, they will do so if they believe I know how to do it and have all of our best interests at heart. More down the line of the of the leader of Terra-Nova. Not because I threaten them with bad performance reviews and layoffs. I've been there. No way I want to inflict this bullshit on anyone else. This kind of crap is for the kids who like to pull the legs off of bugs. The worst leaders I have worked under were the ones who placed great value on "being the leader", not "doing the work". I work best with those whose prime ambition is "doing the work".
This new stuff sounds like some greedy industrialist trying to staff a 1800's style sweatshop with the cheapest possible labor, Its the form of capitalism that gives the whole concept a bad name.
Re:Phasers on kill (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this a perfect example of the problem?
Not all stereotypes are accurate, and they are certainly unfair to just blanket apply to all members of a particular group, virtually guaranteeing whatever accuracy they may have had has been diluted to nothing. At the same time, they do not tend to appear out of the ether. A stereotype exists for a reason.
Take your response as an example, an attempt to deny and refute the article. Let me do the same to your quotes above as you did to the article: "IT people do not communicate with others because when they do the others don't understand and every time somebody else tries to get involved they fuck it up and produce garbage!" Isn't that exactly the attitude the article you're dismissing refers to? "This is my fiefdom and I don't want you involved because you clearly can't do it right" is a pretty damn strong case for saying that IT managers are aloof and poor communicators.
Let me give you the perspective of the dean and other upper-level management folks: If you try to talk to them and you get blank stares in return, you are doing it wrong. If an IT manager is a highly technically competent person, that is an amazing advantage -- but they are, first and foremost, a manager. If their primary function was getting into the nuts and bolts, their position would not exist or at best would be called a "team leader." This person is a manager, and part of that is the ability to talk to those above them in terms that they understand. They do not need a boatload of technical details, they need a business case for what you are proposing. Why do we have to spend more on System A than System B? If it is physical interoperability, just say so. They do not need the specifics, and they will certainly understand "we need this set of features to talk to the systems we already have in place." Understand that they are not technical people, that is why they hired you, but that that does not mean they are not capable or should not be kept involved in the process. They like fancy charts and powerpoint presentations, not technical specification sheets.
If the IT managers are not willing or capable of filling that role as a go-between between upper level management and ground-level workers, they are in the wrong position. That happens a lot, particularly since a lot of organizations see a managerial position as something you promote a good worker into as a reward for that work. That does not make them good managers, not by a long shot. Luckily, it also does not take a lot of effort to figure out how to talk to non-technical people such that they understand what is going on and are involved in the process. A lot of IT workers want IT to remain a mysterious black hole that nobody quite understands in some attempt at job security, but the reality is that if they do not see the value in what you do you're going to be the first ones out the door if times get tough. Possibly to their great detriment, but that is of small consolation to a swath of suddenly unemployed workers.
A great IT manager is a good manager and a good technical person, able to liason between those two groups. A good IT manager is a good manager who isn't great with IT -- somebody able to keep upper management happy and, more importantly, off his workers' backs but who might not be technical enough to avoid his staff putting one over on him. A bad IT manager is somebody who can't manage worth a shit but is good with technology; they just end up micromanaging and getting in the way of the people actually hired to do the work, helping neither side at all.
Re:and you wonder.. (Score:2, Insightful)
because managers often don't have a clue how computers work, IT can bullshit their way out of any disaster and create a level of job security for themselves that many other professions can only dream of.
Heh... except when your manager has done your job before, and proven him (or her) self in order to get that managerial position. Unless you know that manager's background, tread very carefully when trying to bullshit them, because I can guarantee you that I know enough about your job to see through it (I was a trainer for third line helpdesk before I moved into my current position), and if you try that crap with me your job will be at far more risk than if you simply tell me the truth. Everybody screws up from time to time, even me, but I have no tolerance for people who think they can slack off and lie their way through life. And the real bitch of it? You probably won't know why you lost your job, because if you tried bullshitting me, I would smile and nod and act like I believed you, and then post the opening for your replacement as soon as you left my office.
BOFH magic (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you can't understand the BOFH, doesn't mean his knowledge is secret. If you can't understand him... how do you know he didn't already tell you everything????
Re:BOFH magic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
You had me until that line. Any doctor, neurosurgeon or not, who would decide the worthiness of a patient by his station in life or whether or not he is an addict, is not fit to be called "Physician". One of my best friends in life was the head of surgery for a major US teaching hospital. She was the first woman to perform a heart & liver transplant in the US. She testified before Congress numerous times on various issues regarding health and medicine.
She would never hesitate to "take splinters out of some crackhead's big toe" and she actually spent a lot of time treating people who others might consider society's dregs.
I know it was a throwaway line for you and you were just trying to make a point, but to be honest, that attitude seems to have informed your notion of "IT" as well. That IT workers would need to "gear down" their brain to translate things to "normal" people in order to not "snap and take a claw hammer to peoples' faces".
It' doesn't take a "lower gear" to communicate with people who don't spend their time with information technology. In fact, there's not much harder than explaining things simply. It's a skill that few people have, and very few who work in IT. Being able to communicate without condescension is an amazing skill, to be treasured and cultivated. Even (or especially) if your some "Redhat Certified IT Pro".
Just remember, IT pros, there's a clock running on your specialty. Every day it becomes a little less special. If you don't take the time to broaden your approach a little bit, and learn how to communicate, you're going to find yourself about as useful as an IBM card-punching machine in the 21st century.
Re:and you wonder.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Actually, yes, I do, or at least fairly close. Maybe I'm weird, but I learned enough about anatomy in my education somewhere that simple terms like "fibula" aren't going to trip me up, even though I'm not in the medical field myself. Even if I don't understand everything the doctor says, I'd rather hear it all and ask for clarification if necessary, as I understand enough to know if he's bullshitting me or if he really does know what he's doing. There's enough incompetent doctors out there that I want to make sure I found one who isn't.
Everyone expects computers to not be that complicated and that we are just overrated janitors.
Actually, they think of you as overrated auto mechanics, and they think computers should be just as simple. The problem with computers is that in many environments, you're dealing with not only something that's enormously complicated and to be quite honest, not very well engineered, but you're also dealing with something that's quite opaque as all the source code is secret and you have little idea of what's really going on under the hood, and little to no way to find out. At least with cars, everything is highly modular, each module is engineered and tested, and if you're a dumb mechanic you can just swap in a "known good" part until the problem goes away to isolate the problem. There's no real engineering in most software.
Re:Most People are Uninterested (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are going to remove >30% of their daily responsibilities then you'll need to work with leadership to help them understand how it allows the affected group to make the company more money with the same work (which will positively impact their bonuses).
You're kidding, right? These advances never let "the affected group make more money with the same work". They let the affected group make more money with fewer people and the same work. And the only bonuses that are positively affected are those of the executive staff.
I understand the need to move technology forward, but until the people at the top start understanding the need to give people a means of living, I see no reason to help them out any more than I'm obligated too.
Re:and you wonder.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I see the hatred towards IT from non IT comes from the companies higher management.
When IT and upper management get together, they seem to agree on purchases, directions, procedures, levels of security, SLA, costs, goals, and expectations.
These "things" that are agreed on are never explained to the non IT people or managers in the company and it seems these other managers that do know don't tell their own people what they agreed on and why or do not want to take the responsibility for admitting they agreed to the plan. The IT department staff from the bottom up is left to fend for themselves and try to explain the reason we are doing what we are doing and why, often times, you are explaining this while you are in their office under a desk replacing their KB or while in the elevator coming back from lunch. Does everyone think that a Tier 1 or system administrator is responsible for the company IT policy and budget or that even the IT manager sets his own spending and policies without input from non IT company managers?
I see this in my own company daily. I work in a law firm. Our tech committee works with our CFO to form the IT budget. The tech committee is high level IT management and different high level attorneys. They want to reduce costs and agree to cut back on staffing, the CIO tells them we can only do that by only staffing the support center until 9PM instead of 12 PM. Everyone their agrees. Oddly no one tells the other people in the firm and they get pissed when they call the support center at 10 PM CST and no one is there and they have to wait for the on call person to call them back. They complain to the IT department that "this is unacceptable". They should be complaining to their own technology committee person who agreed! IT does not make rules, policies, or buy things at will. They follow agreed terms and guidelines that they were given.
Re:and you wonder.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad fact of the matter is that to users, IT is just a bunch of computer janitors.
With attitude.
Re:and you wonder.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most newbees in IT want to tell everyone what goes on. What happens, we get yelled at. Because each silo doesn't care what the other department needs they only care what they need, and they get mad because they think IT is giving special preference to the other guy. Your system went down, we got it working, but we don't know why it went down, is not a good answer. Your system went down, we got it working, and we found out why here is why, is not a good answer because then they will point fingers left and right and trying to figure out why IT didn't think of this department use case that they were never told about nor is in their scope to know it will exist. When we do try to explain the problem, most of the time they don't care so they will cut your short.
The reason people hate IT, is because we cannot say Yes all the time. If we did then we wouldn't be doing our jobs. We need to come up with issues and problems to be worked out before hand and make a process for it. Other Departments hate dealing with this level of granularity and think of us just being a bunch of no men. That and because of all the things we need to deal with, we need to stay calm when everyone else isn't, so we just seem cold and impersonal.