Making IT Visible to Management? 52
frustrated Dilbert asks: "We are a very small IT dept where the manager participates in the day-to-day operation of IT services. The problem is that he almost never talks to upper management and doesn't get involved in the business side until someone gives him a specific project to handle. The result is that IT is considered to be firefighters when things fail, and generally plumbers that fix stuff when other PHBs create new projects. We run all the mission-critical stuff in a line of business that can not work without technology. The IT PHB fails to see which sides of the business we need to support and which are second in line. I end up doing my stuff and a lot of his duties of picking up the direction of the business and making strategic decisions. The company is actually great to work for, but I was not hired (or paid) for teaching my boss to run his shop in addition to tech stuff. He simply wasn't made for it and got promoted into something he can't cope with. I'm getting really tired of having to do management and not get any credit and would love to have him replaced, but I hate having to rat on him too. How can I get a more organized workplace when my boss isn't capable of thinking ahead?"
Just stop (Score:3, Interesting)
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Yes, easier said than done, but it doesn't hurt to polish that resume and start looking around.
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Anyway, it's time to move on.
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In the meantime, his boss can no longer get his job done without someone to do it for him, so upper management fires him.
His boss get a new job, as his new boss.
Life has a cruel sense of humor.
KFG
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That is your job (Score:1)
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Welcome to the working world. (Score:4, Insightful)
We all have to do things that we didn't expect in our jobs. If that's all you have to do, then go home and spend hours being thankful you're not digging ditches or working for bosses that constantly insult you or that you have a job that pays for a place to live and heat and water and electricity, or that you have an education that allows you to work in a well paying job, or that you're healthy enough to go into work each day instead of spending most of your time seeing doctors to deal with cancer or MS or something else.
I don't think I've yet heard of a job where the person in it ended up doing exactly what s/he expected or wanted to do.
Honestly, that is a small problem in the scheme of things. If it's big enough to make your life that miserable, do one of two things: find another job or step into the Total Perspective Vortex.
Maybe instead of Ask Slashdot, this should be, "Whining Slashdot."
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If something is wrong, it should be fixed, not ignored. Whining here won't fix it, but asking for advice might be the first step in the right direction.
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A lot of things aren't right. Who told you life is fair? Your Mother?
A business is run by those in chare of it who have the ability and, more or less, the right to run it their way. They don't won't it fixed and in many companies, trying to fix it will only cost you your job and any good reference you had.
That's life. That's reality.
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So either you get everything you want, or you have cancer? Get a grip. The solution is not to be grateful for what scraps you're given. The solution is to take your bosses job, since he doesn'
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Bzzzt! Wrong. Logical fallacy: False Dilemma. I did not say there were only two choices or extremes. You decided to limit your choices to that out of infinitely many. Why would you want to narrow everything down, unless you needed to set up a straw man argument so you could feel manly when you attacked it.
As for being grateful, you may not have everything you want. It could be better. It could be worse. You can complain about thin
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Sorry, bud, it's your false dilemma. This guy wants to improve his situation and you bitch at him for being ungrateful. Not very helpful.
As for taking your bosses job (and again, you use the logical fallacy of a false dilemma: it's all one or the other), that rarely works, but, then again, you must know that since I'm sure you're running some mega corp by [blah blah blah]
Speaking of fallacies, you used a strawman (I suggested a course of action) and a pointless personal attack. I recently switched bosse
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Go troll someone else.
Manage your Manager (Score:3, Informative)
2. Decide to forget your place in the hierarchy and look to your place in the team.
3. ??
4. Profit.
It's not ratting (Score:4, Informative)
This sounds like a textbook case of the Peter Principle [wikipedia.org]. Good luck dealing with it, but realize that if he doesn't have the guts to say he can't cope with his position, someone should, or you may not have somewhere to work for very long.
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Ask who manages Support ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Based on the subtext, I doubt the answer is a). However, if it is, it means that management have determined that you are their workaround. It is worthwhile asking for more money, or at least finding how high they'll go in terms of cash and / or other perks (like training, days off, etc)
If the answer is b), then the problem has been solved, but you've either been left out of the loop or never were in it. Maybe you (specifically you) are not as important as you think you are.
If the answer is c), and the substance of your story is true then I'm sorry, management have decided that you (and your unit) are just not as important as you thought. They have actually thought about this, so if you decide to stay, you need to find out who made the decison and why. It may turn out that while it sucks from an IT perspective, it is actually a good business decison. After all, from their perspective, they are still getting the work done...
Do your job first (Score:4, Insightful)
A big problem I see at nearly every company I've worked at is, concentrating on how to do your own job well is about the last thing people think about. You'll have tech support people making marketing suggestions, marketing people trying to dictate IT policy, etc. The issue is, you'll always make a terrible contribution that way, if you even manage to turn it into more than daydreams.
That may seem like something of a tangent, but hear me out. Just do your own job well. Do that number one, and if it looks like things that need doing aren't getting done, if they're not your job at all, then don't worry about it until you have your own job completely taken care of. The problem is, doing your own job is usually boring, a lot more work than daydreaming about what somebody else should be doing, and doesn't seem like it affects much. That couldn't be farther from the truth. If people always know that your job is done, they'll start leaving you alone; that's when you can branch off into other things. Special projects that make everybody else's life easier will get big notice. Here's the big (huge) thing though: make sure it's related to your job as closely as possible. Nobody knows how to do your job as well as you do, you spend 40 hours a week (if you're lucky) doing it--no one else does. Sure, work on managing the IT department better, but only once you have your own job done as well as it can be under the current management.
If you run into a situation where the people above you aren't giving you the support you need, leave as soon as possible, and stop worrying about it otherwise.
Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I dunno. I wish I knew more specifics about your job and what your boss is failing in. These things happen. Maybe it's the sort of thing a little more communication would help with. I mean, if you became buddy buddy with him and got to where you could converse informally, maybe over time you two could build trust with each other. From there you could get him to realize the problem and either learn how to cope or maybe hire an extra person to help him out. It's hard to say. I agree with your view about not wanting to rat him out, though. Sometimes it's necesary to do that, but exhaust your other options first.
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Do you want to advance? (Score:4, Insightful)
Job Description (Score:5, Insightful)
It is likely that you have a line in your job description that reads 'and other tasks'. Many of us have it. Well, honestly, many of you have it since I helped my boss rewrite the job descriptions of my coworkers and me. This includes educating your boss. Here is the trick, if your boss is an idiot, what makes you think you are not? There are several essential skills needed for management, some skills are more important then others depending on position. These skills are technical skills, managerial skills, personnal skills, and networking (suck up) skills. Your boss has to have some technical skills to manage you, but not as great as you have. His level should be enough to make decent decisions based off the information you give him. He should have better managerial, personnal, and networking skills, but not as good as his boss, who would be offset by lesser technical skills. You discuss your perception with you boss and learn his perspective on things.
On a side note, most IT workers expect for some ungodly reason that their bosses have equal or greater technical skills. My manager has an ETL and BI expert (me), two ERP and business process experts (my cohort and me), several SQL experts (7 of us including me), two EDI experts (my cohort and another guy), two pc experts (another guy and me), web programmer (me), a server expert (me), 3 HR process experts (3 other people), and 9 cobal programmers (don't look at me, I don't do big iron). Add in the fact that he also has 3 records retention technicians, their manager, and two archivists (in the traditional sense), one would get the idea how diverse his staff is. How the hell could he be expected to have this skill set? Now he needed to be educated on how we work in some instances. He viewed script programming easy, yet he had never seen complex scripting for business apps on the web before. It is my job to fix misperceptions that would make his decisions wrong and it is his job to ask for information in my area of expertise before shooting his mouth off.
Work on your aditdue. (Score:4, Funny)
1. It keeps IT visible on the IT radar, even during the development process.
2. It puts more responsibility on management for bad decisions. So for the case the manager says he want 2 while they really need three you can point to the manager for that fault.
3. It creates a personal connection to you and management so after a while they know how you thing and you know how they think. So after a while the line of what is your job and what is their jobs get better explained.
Next I find it important to be face to face with management as much as possible. If they are in the same builing as you try to be as much face to face as possible. IT Departments have a tendency of doing things electronically, Fixing the problem of the persons PC over VNC vs. just getting off your but and working on the system. The reason why IT is Invisble is that you don't to much work to make yourself visible.
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Just by your comment filled with "PHB", makes it seem like you have no respect for management at all.
No, just the one boss. The question seems to be "how do I get my boss replaced?" with a subtext of whether he should try and replace him. Increased visibility is a good idea, but I'd want to get involved in finding out what the direction should be for the dept - if the bosses start looking to you for IT stuff, you may just push the other guy out.
Do your best, improve your resume (Score:3, Informative)
I work in a similar position. Our IT shop is split into Apps (my side) and Networks. The manager was a programmer 20 years ago, but I am not aware of any higher education on his part. The two supervisors are supervisors by attrition, neither have any education related to management of people or projects (one has a CS assoc, the other has a HSD). The supervisor on the network side has managed 80% turn over in the last two years. All of those people sited the supervisor as a major reason why they left in their exit interview with the manager. And yet nothing is done.
At this point I'm in a boat very similar to yours. My supervisor has limited project management skills (based on 2 years of failed/successful projects). My manager has no idea what Project Management is, and no understanding of IT Alignment. So I'm putting my education to the test, pushing for a job description change, and if I can get a little more hands on experience to match my management education, I'm headed out the door.
-Rick
Go after yours... (Score:2)
The Practice of System and Network Administration (Score:4, Informative)
1. Read the chapter titled, "Visibility and Perception"
2. Read the "Managing Your Boss" section of the chapter titled, "Being Happy"
3. Hand your boss a copy of the book and ask him to read "Visibility and Perception" and the chapter titled, "A Guide for Technical Managers"
Your question is exactly why we wrote this book.
Re:The Practice of System and Network Administrati (Score:1)
So...MOD parent up.
IT Liaison (Score:2)
Uh oh... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't think it is about me, but maybe I'm just too much of a PHB to even know! Hey, Frustrated Dilbert, if I'm the guy you're talking about just sit down with me sometime and fill me in!
Cheers.
(leaving potentially ironic signature in place)
A 360 review (Score:1)
Many large companies use the concept of a 360 review, where managers are reviewed by all their direct reports and some of their peers. These types of reviews are generally anonymous questionnaires, so individuals are not directly connected to comments.
Make a friendly suggestion to your HR department that they should consider adopting this practice as it offers many benefits and helps employees feel more part of the company since they have a voice, albeit an anonymous one.
I've seen a few ineffectual
Define the problem, then act (Score:2)
It looks you don't know if the problem is if you want a new boss or you create a problem because you want to be the boss. Make up your mind about it and act accordingly.
He's doing his job pretty well. (Score:2, Insightful)
You just need to learn to delegate your job to someone lower down the chain.
How can I get a more organized workplace .... (Score:2)
Let me enlighten you... (Score:3, Interesting)
tread carefully (Score:1)
If the latter, and he really "almost never" talks to upper management, i.e. he rarely schmoozes with the business managers, then he can be end-run around. In that case, even though you're not paid (yet) to do that part of his job, embrace it. Interface with upper management on IT-related strategic business decisions, thereby letting them know that, you at least, are thinking about "the big picture". Preserve your de
Wonderful opportunity (Score:1)
Well first of all... (Score:2)
Go (Score:1)
I've also noticed a trend in America where people seem to be promoted over and over and over due to their skill in an area until they fina
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Work ethic? Yet you see no problem in gleaming lifes lessons from a movie you once saw?
Perhaps what you are seeing is related to people realizing that they are treated as expendable. That the 'ethic' you percieve as having eroded, has simply changed based on more information the individual has about their own place in the world.
Back in the day, people used to work for one company, and get one pension. And they ACTUALLY got that pension. However, in the recent past up to today, most companies use their e
My two cents: Document (Score:2)
But chiefly, as others have said, do your job well despite the problems. If your boss isn't doing anything for you, then ignore him. He is irrelevant. It will be clear to your clients that you're the person to go to, not him, and that will eventua
Partnership (Score:2)