> Many, if not most, IT folks are eclectic people. Most office workers > are not. IT folks often do not have anything other than work in > common with the rest of the staff. They get tired of small talk > about sports, American Idol, whatever really quickly, and do not seek > non-work interactions with the staff. > > IT folks are not anti-social - go to any social event that attracts > eclectic folks and you will find IT folks out and about and getting > along just fine with other IT folks, artists, artisans, musicians, > alternative lifestyle folks, etc. Many IT folks are these things > outside of work.
I can only speak for myself, but I don't recognize any of the qualities being ascribed to IT managers. I have no doubt that there are bad IT managers out there, just as there are bad sales managers, bad HR directors, bad marketing directors, etc. There are bad employees, too. Just a hunch, but I bet it has something to do with imperfect people being involved and all that stuff. Bad IT management can come in many forms, depending on perspective. From the user, a bad IT manager could be someone blocks MySpace or that won't allow them to install Skype on a company computer or bring in their laptop from home to work on personal projects. From the IT staff perspective, it could be someone who just has bad people skills (which of course, as we all know, is *only* found in IT managers), or is technically incompetent. From the viewpoint of management, it's a manager who doesn't have a control on costs or has no security scheme in place and the network is rife with malware. If you're the CEO, it's that the IT manager doesn't give you everything you demand, exactly when you demand it. We had an accounting manager a few years ago who was a sociopath, literally. He got his jollies off of bullying his staff and then making up with them, only to bully them again a few days later. He would walk into 2 people's offices, one right after another, and bad mouth the other employee in hopes of the each one giving him dirt on the other. He stabbed me in the back by going behind me to our know-nothing, seagull managing (now former, thank god) president and had me put under his authority (we were peers until then), since the president knew nothing about IT and didn't want to have to deal with IT. He was so bad, that one of our accounting staff, a recovering alcoholic, started drinking again from the constant rain of abuse. Fortunately, the controller quit before one of us could frag him. Am I a bad IT manager? I'd say no, but I'm sure that you could find someone in my company who would say differently, if you caught them on the right day. Everyone knows me and I know everyone. Our .org has only about 125 staff, so it's not too hard to know everyone, but I don't live in my office either. I meet with staff and managers to see what they need. Our help desk has multiple ways of submitting a ticket, which is immediately responded to. I don't block web sites or filter mail for anything other than spam, large multimedia attachments and malware. I treat people like adults and tell other managers that technology can only go so far in managing their own staff. *They* need to make sure that their staff isn't abusing company resources by surfing for porn or shopping on-line all day, before coming to me. Yesterday, our company had its annual holiday competition, where each department competes with the others for bragging rights the rest of the year. There's no budget, so you come up with what you can. Development did a global Monopoly theme, with a life-size Monopoly board and talked smack from a fictitious Yahoo email account. Our Events staff did a Virgin Mary theme, complete with Virgin Mary toast and a full-sized, stand-up cut out of the virgin mother you could go behind, stick your face through and have your picture taken. My department, Administration, put on an abbreviated "Christmas Carol." My boss, the CFO, played Scrooge, complete in a night shirt, wig, nightcap and bunny slippers. I played Marley, with 12 feet of heavy chain around my neck (and received much acclaim for my performance afterwards <blush>). Our controller (a solid non-sociopath), played Bob Cratchit and the other staff in the rest of the roles (we had really good ghosts). We had a blast and so did the rest of the staff. So, are there bad IT managers? I have no doubt. Look at the rest of the company first and you'll probably have your answer as to why. ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************
