[clue-talk] Management and Positions of Power: Fewer IT professional and Engineers?

[Nate Duehr]

Jeff Cann wrote:
> rex evans wrote:
>> My view:
>> This has changed at the top, and trickled down
>> to the point that now, many first line managers
>> do not have very much technical training or
>> experience.
>>   
> Well, let's be honest - management does not solve technical problems - 
> that's why they hire engineers.  Also, the big difference I have seen 
> between staff and management is that staff are almost universally 
> technophiles - they are in IT because they love computer-related 
> technology.  Managers may not be in love with IT.  I would argue that a 
> good manager can manage any situation.  It obviously helps to have a 
> technical background, as we know.  But a technical background just gives 
> a manager empathy for his engineers when things don't go as planned.  It 
> also give the manager the possibility to call bullsh*t on questionable 
> engineering decisions when he smells it.

I've also seen managers who weren't "bad" people who USED to be good 
engineers LONG ago, continually shoot down new technologies and new 
processes because "they remember how to do things".  Not a good situation.

> Management's job is to ensure projects completed and run the data to day 
> operations.  They manage people, resources, budgets.  They are 
> responsible for projects, but may not manage them.  It sounds simple, 
> but it's hard to be a good manager.  That's why so many employees get 
> irritated with their manager - only 1 in 5 are very good at being a 
> manager.  And there is the politics which is the root cause of a lot of 
> stupid problems.  Also, the HR factor: you would be surprised how much 
> time a bad employee can suck from a manager.

My belief is that you're far too altruistic and nice here when 
describing what managers ACTUALLY do.  Watch a manager for any length of 
time, and you'll find the good ones spend far more of their time in 
self-preservation (and thus departmental preservation) activities than 
they do managing the details of projects.

The politics most managers live under would make most engineers hurl 
their lunch.

The staff really are smart enough (if the company hired correctly) to 
not only know how to do the tasks of their jobs, but also to accurately 
plan them.  I have a budget at home that I have to keep or I go bankrupt.

If there's truly a manager out there who thinks I can't handle the 
departmental budget and they're better at it... they'd better look 
around, because unless they have a staff member who's filed for 
bankruptcy, the ENTIRE department understands how a budget works, the 
ENTIRE department can easily tell when the department is being shafted 
by upper-management on budget items to pay for some other pet project, 
and the ENTIRE department knows how to balance a checkbook.

As far as "planning" goes, some are better than others, but every person 
in the room at the meeting figured out how to get the groceries that 
week, serve dinner to their family, get everyone up in the morning for 
work/school, wash the dishes, do the laundry, and a million other things 
that require "planning".  The types of "planning" I see at the office is 
SIMPLE compared to running the rest of my life.

The more senior a technical person gets, the more transparent the 
meetings that get called by managers to "plan" any project become -- the 
tech can tell you before he walks in the door of that meeting exactly 
what the time-line will be, exactly what the manager will say, and do 
everything the management books CLAIM the manager is there for.

However, that same senior tech has also learned that he'd better sit 
there and shut up, because his or her manager NEEDS to hold that meeting 
in order to "take credit" for the project in the eyes of their peers and 
upper-managers, so the department continues to be funded, get choice 
projects and new strategic product development assigned to it, etc.

The engineers get moved from one manager to another, and nothing at the 
real development work level changes in the slightest.  The new manager 
holds a "rah-rah" meeting and maybe a couple of "planning" meetings 
where they stress that the "team" will come up with the "plan" for how 
to finish the job (that they already know how they were going to finish 
under the original manager anyway) and a follow-up "rah-rah" 
congratulatory meeting afterward.  Dilbert 101, and I would contend, a 
waste of valuable time.

The reality is, the newly assigned manager did NOTHING, but the staff 
had better play along that they did, because someone further up the 
food-chain likes the look of the org chart better this new way than they 
did before the change.

I've even seen upper managers hand a 90-95% completed project to a 
different manager (usually an up-and-comer) in corporate 
re-organizations just so that new manager who's considered an asset to 
the company will get the "credit" for completing a new successful 
project that quarter, year, whatever.

Some people are simply wired to play such head-games constantly, and 
don't even recognize that they're doing it.  Even worse, they don't 
realize that their staff sees it and knows exactly what they're doing. 
Most of us watch in amusement at the games going on, after we understand 
the players and politics.

There's an attitude in middle management meetings that staff are "dumber 
than us".  Been there, seen it, got out before they gave me the t-shirt.

> Unfortunately, some people who get into power think that they are 
> entitled to make whatever decisions they want.  A good manager knows 
> that he is there to serve his staff and do his day-to-day job of 
> managing operations.

NEVER is a middle-manager allowed to make decisions in a vacuum.  Those 
that do, are shuffled away and shelved.

> Also, many IT guys I know are not cut out for management.  They are can 
> be too introverted.  This often can make them unapproachable and shy.  
> You can't be shy when you ass is on the line, reporting to a VP or the 
> board of directors.  They will crush you like a little toy.  Not because 
> they don't like you personally, but because they have to answer to 
> someone.  Everyone has a boss.

You need a good mix.  If all VP's and upper-management are extroverts 
and have narcissistic tendencies (true in FAR too many companies) and 
got to where they are by stepping on others -- you're correct.  In 
larger organizations this is definitely true, because out of the larger 
employee pool you end up with a larger number of these types of people.

And they DO step on others all the way to the top.  The bigger the 
organization, USUALLY the worst human beings are on top.

There have been numerous studies lately that show that a very large 
percentage of people in "top" positions show serious signs of a disorder 
now known as Asperger Syndrome.  Any system that promotes this, can't be 
completely sane, really.

They have very little true capacity for dealing with other human beings 
on an emotional level, and generally aren't very "good" people or 
well-rounded.  They're not really "out for number one" they just can't 
relate at all or have any empathy for other human beings around them.

> Lastly, the worst kind of manager is the 'brilliant architect' or 'best 
> technical guy who knows *everything* about IT'.  I have run into many of 
> these guys who were unfortunately promoted into management, instead of 
> leaving them in their senior IT position.  One Director I know used to 
> bring his laptop to senior staff meetings and he coded perl during the 
> meeting.  He couldn't let go of his love of technology.  He left the 
> company to be a technical consultant and is much happier.

Ahh, I just got to this part.  Yeah, I mentioned this guy above...

I think more in terms of economics when I piece together the "Why?" of 
why people do things.  Most managers are just trying to save their own 
asses day after day because they're overhead.  Their staff usually 
really does know how to get the job done, but aren't adequately 
motivated through proper use of the huge resources a company could bring 
to bear on such things.

Use money, time off, activities that are actually 
interesting/stimulating, training, on-site and other perks, 
work-from-home, WHATEVER to motivate employees.  Don't just expect high 
performance, dig and claw down and find out what would be so 
motivational to that specific employee that they simply would produce at 
a high level, day after day.  Once you find that, that employee doesn't 
need a manager anymore -- they'll happily manage themselves.

I believe if that is done, an entire layer of middle-management could be 
eliminated in most organizations if the staff were shown the correct 
"carrots" for their particular individual personality type.

The problem is, it makes no bottom line difference to the upper-manager. 
  Those "carrots" would have to be paid for and cost about the same as 
the salary of the middle manager, including bonus and benefits.  So to 
them, what's the difference?

The work still gets done, and the corporation's structure looks just 
like the industrial revolution era structure of companies that worked so 
well in the manufacturing age.  They're comfortable in that environment.

An underling comes in regularly and tells them how things are going, and 
they don't have to listen to or evaluate ideas, projects, or anything 
other than look at numbers on a screen all day to supposedly know how 
their strategy is working.  Even the "metrics" are the same... input and 
output, number of tickets completed, number of bugs squashed, etc.

I think the U.S. as a whole would be better served by investigating the 
possibilities of having a highly-motivated workforce by offering the 
money, power, prestige, whatever... downward, and flattening the org 
chart significantly.  I think engineers might consider going back into a 
mindset of "If it's not perfect, it's just a prototype" that U.S. 
engineering once held dear.  When people WANT to build something great, 
they do, as evidenced countless times in world history.

Motivate people with whatever it is that motivates them most, and the 
performance of the organization shoots up dramatically.  The fact that 
so many people "get" Dilbert is a testament to how badly broken the 
current management systems and methodologies in use by most companies 
truly are.

I think if you take those two goals of creating a highly-motivated 
workforce (managers or none), and flattening the org chart so the 
decision makers are right on top of the highly-motivated workers, you 
get examples like Google.  They're doing exactly that.

Highly-motivated workforce (you have to WANT to work there real bad to 
get through the interview process, even!), flat org chart, and big perks 
and toys and whatever floats each person's individual boat.

How successful are they?

There's a reason most other companies don't grow and succeed to the 
sizes of giants like Google, HP, IBM and others.  And an awful lot of 
that lack of growth success lands squarely on the shoulders of 
traditional management techniques.

To use your phrase, only 1 in 5 managers is good enough to become a 
manager in a multi-billion dollar highly successful corporation.

Nate