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Tech Vs. Business?
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Sep 15, 2008 11:29 PM
from the two-towers dept.
from the two-towers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I've recently found a spot in a large company, and I'm noticing that here a lot of people on the technology side are very anti-business. Tech makes up about 40% of the total line of business staff, but the whole LOB is only a tiny percentage of the larger company in the financial industry. I personally haven't seen this before in prior jobs, but I'm told that this animosity is commonplace. So I come to Slashdot to find out if others have experienced this adversarial relationship between business and tech, and if so, what was the effect on the overall success of the business?"
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Submission: Tech vs Business? by Anonymous Coward
[+]
IT: IT Workers Cushioned From US Economic Downturn 357 comments
DontLickJesus writes "According to the AP, technology has been the least hardest hit by the U.S.'s recent economic downturn. Quote: '"Overall technology employment is up in America and the wages associated with it are up," said John McCarthy, a vice president with Forrester Research.' The article goes on to say that companies realize the worth of their [IT] staff. This paired along with a recent article regarding the value of data centers when selling a company leads one to believe that the business world, while historically not fond of IT workers, is showing its true opinion of the sector."
[+]
IT: Defusing the Threat of Disgruntled IT Workers 401 comments
snydeq writes "According to computer forensics expert witness Keith Jones, for every logic bomb on the network or Terry Childs case that makes it into the press, there are 98 other incidents of disgruntled IT pros damaging company assets that you never hear about. And though most IT workers are too professional to take out their grievances on the systems they've worked so hard to maintain, unless management takes note of the growing discontent in the IT workplace, it may fall victim to the unspoken 'ticking time bomb' lurking within its call for IT to do more with less, InfoWorld reports. Drastically understaffed, battered by interminable hours and impossible demands, many IT folks are being pushed to the brink by management that neither trusts nor supports them."
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common place (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:common place (Score:5, Insightful)
I've often considered tech to be like plumbing. The users of both have no idea how it works, basic knowledge of how to use it, and only care when it stops working. Users expect it to work like magic all the time, and the tech/plumber always has to put up with the disgruntled user's shit. Both are looked down upon by most people in society, yet both are absolutely essential to today's way of life.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Interesting)
I think part of that 'works like magic' mystique is due to how reliable the electric grid, water and sewer pipelines and telephone and data networks have been. it's more profitable for the utilities if the system never fails, or as close to never as is possible. companies probably don't understand why they need an IT department at all, they don't understand why all the utility they need can't just come from an outside company. after all if a company is going to smelt aluminum they don't go around building an atomic power plant to run their smelters, they find a cheap source of electricity preferably reachable by major shipping lanes, and let the utility company worry about where the power comes from.
computers are still relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of IT gurus to keep a network up and running, when a basic desktop computer can get rid of every moving part, there is less to replace and maintain, thus less IT workers needed... large websites and databases will get easier to manage, eventually, the only thing that won't go away is the need for real security. because hacking is getting more and more economically promising in many places in Africa and former eastern block nations. so security is where real IT growth is, computers will get more reliable and software easier to manage, but hackers are getting smarter and more skilled every single year.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Informative)
after all if a company is going to smelt aluminum they don't go around building an atomic power plant to run their smelters, they find a cheap source of electricity preferably reachable by major shipping lanes, and let the utility company worry about where the power comes from.
Minor nitpick unrelated to your argument: A lot of aluminum smelting plants and large paper mills have their own power generation facilities or have entered into some sort of co-op for generating the power they need rather than paying a power company.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Interesting)
Some time ago, there was a news article on how an aluminum smelter plant had signed a long-term contract for electricity supply at a bargain low rate. When the cost of gas went up, the management found out that they could make more money reselling their electricity than they could by smelting aluminum.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Insightful)
computers are still relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of IT gurus to keep a network up and running
I like the rest of your argument but this I have to slap you for. The amount of people I come across in my day to day work (I'm a contract network administrator) who run "MS SBS" or "Red Hat ES" and think they can "network" and be a helldesk is phenomenal. There will always be a need for IT, just like there is always a need for plumbers. The whole concept of making the systems easier to manage is what is killing us properly - home users think they can do it because they hooked their TV up to their laptop just fine, so why should it be hard when they're at the office.
That rant, however, is for another time.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know exactly what a "helldesk" is, but I'm pretty sure I've had to call there a few times. There was always the faint odor of brimstone when I hung up the phone.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Insightful)
The power company supplies exactly the same product to every one of their customers. And the product never changes. And they only concern themselves with delivering it to your meter, past which they have no concern. You have to hire separate support to deal with every change of your building layout, usage patterns, equipment, or anything else that might change where and how much electricity you need.
Or think phones. Essentially any business with more than a handful of employees buys some form of site connectivity and a bunch of DIDs from the phone company, and then pays someone else to manage the internal phones as a separate system.
You could easily do the same thing with IT -- hire someone to make changes and then leave. In fact, I sell that very service. I charge an hourly rate to come in and make changes to your computer systems. When I'm done I leave and don't charge you again until you want to make another change. Just like an electrician I guarantee my work and will fix mistakes, but I'll charge you for any changes that weren't part of our original agreement.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Funny)
And the product never changes.
oh yeah, it changes. it's all over the place. 120V yesterday 116V today in fact this morning it was 58.9hertz instead of a solid 59.99 I usually get. I bitched that lady out hard for 20 minutes that my clocks will now be 1/2 a second slow all day.
Once it dropped to 114 volts.. but that is another story.....
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Informative)
computers are still relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of IT gurus to keep a network up and running, when a basic desktop computer can get rid of every moving part, there is less to replace and maintain, thus less IT workers needed...
Cars are relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of .... No wait that doesn't work. We have mechanics.
Plumbing is relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of .... No wait that doesn't work, we have janitors and if they can't fix it we have plumbers. Oh and plumbing is old
Electricity is relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of .... No wait that doesn't work, we have electricians.
Science is relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of .... No wait that doesn't work, we have janitors and if they can't fix it we have scientists.
Do I need to repeat with other professions? Anything that requires specialised expertise will require professionals. It has nothing to do with how new a field is. It has to do with the knowledge to operate in the field not being common knowledge. It has to do with how badly things go if they go wrong.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Insightful)
...computers are still relatively new, and eventually you won't need a whole staff of IT gurus to keep a network up and running,... thus less IT workers needed...large websites and databases will get easier to manage, eventually, the only thing that won't go away is the need for real security...so security is where real IT growth is, computers will get more reliable and software easier to manage...
Let me just say, after 26 years in this business, of hearing this every year, the systems just keep getting more complex and harder to maintain, rather than less and easier.
Windows NT was supposed to make it so anyone who could use Windows could manage a server.
How many MILLION MSCEs do we have in the world now?
Storage systems with Petabytes of data are complex things. Cloud computing is a complex thing. Supercomputing clusters are complex things. World-spanning networks are complex things.
No offense intended, but the only people who think things are getting easier are people who don't know how they work in the first place.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Interesting)
No offense intended, but the only people who think things are getting easier are people who don't know how they work in the first place.
Part of what I did coming into a new CIO position was simplifying the IT environment. A big component of that was stopping Windows development and moving Windows out of our server mix. The complexity of the whole Windows ecosystem adds overhead and expense without much value...except to MCSE's. The old arguments about it costing more to find qualified developers and support is just tripe. We haven't had any problems replacing our Windows-only staff and vendors at competitive local market rates and saved big on license costs.
We can also match or beat application development times in a FOSS environment. I'm sure those heavily invested in Windows development are seething to tell me how wrong I am, but I prove that every day. We're building big systems on a LAMP stack and pushing the envelope for time to market. I came from a Windows shop, I am...well, used to be...a Windows developer. It's all FUD. You don't need Windows, Windows developers, or all the overhead it takes to keep that ecosystem running in some kind of decent shape. You can deliver enterprise services at a fraction of the cost and at competitive turn-around times. Simplify your environment and you'll save yourself a lot of money and stress.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Computers aren't that new. The first ones appeared in the 1930's and 1940's. Argueably people like Babbage ( and Lovelace ) and Leonardo DaVinci could have "built" mechanical computers - if they had the resources.
2. Cars have been around for more than 100 years, and we still need mechanics.
3. Working parts has very little to do with it, outside of the fans and harddrives, computers don't have any moving parts. Most of the "headaches" I think are around designing, building, maintaining, and supporting software.
4. Having been in IT for 16 years, I would have to say that things are actually more complex now than ever. There are more software tools, programming lanugages, databases, report writers, operating systems, networking protocols, etc than ever before. And all these tools have a lot more features than they used to. Its getting increasely harder to know "some" of them well. Gone are the days when just knowing DOS, UNIX, MVS, VMS, and OS/400 would bascially give you knowledge of 90% of the hardware running. Or knowing just Assembly/C/Cobol/C++ would allow you to read and maintain most of the source code being used. So I would argue that the need for IT staff is going to continue to increase.
5. True Hackers are hard to find. Most people that consider themselves "Hackers" are just downloading and using the tools other people wrote to crack systems. I'm not a hacker, but I would say that a true "Hacker" would have intimate knowledge of the internals of the Unix kernal, Linux, Windows, be a "decent" C/C++ programmer, know script programming, understand Firewall rules and configuration, and have an in depth knowledge of TCP/IP networking protocols and routing, and the "social" skills necesssary to call and poke around to get information about logins and passwords. 80-90 percent of the people I know in IT don't even have these skills... Hacking is much harder than it used to be. It used to be you just called a "number" using your 1200/2400 baud modem and poked around.
6. Security is just a small sub-set of the big picture. Its important, but I would say that software engineeers, database admins, sys admins, and network engineers are all important and going to continue to be important...
I think you have missed this point. As the speed of microprocessors has increased ( per Moores law ), I think we have seen an increase in the complexity of operating systems and software. Which is requiring more and more IT knowledge and resources.
I think the "disconnect" between IT and Business has a lot more to do with the fact that business "knows" they depend on IT, but they are frustrated that IT can't seem to deliever what they want when they want it. On the other side, IT has to deal with more and more tools and IT staff has to learn more and more skills. And to increase frustration in IT, business users frequently don't deliever clear requirements or they "change" their mind in the middle of projects....
I think moving forward, the disconnect is just going to get worse, not better and the requirement for IT workers is going to continue to increase....
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
They also apply different standards (Score:5, Interesting)
This was an important financial system, and I know that if it had not worked as required there would have been hell to pay.
Six months later someone decided to check our test data against the live configuration and found a very odd rule, giving people with worse credit histories better interest rates. We queried it and they said it was wrong but "why was the system so hard to understand".
We brought up the original specifications, page diagrams etc. given by business and showed them that it worked in exactly the way they wanted it to. The "difficult to understand" argument was never done again. In fact the whole thing was put down to "just one of those things".
The ID manager suggested that we could query the database and find out how many people were given a rate inappropriate for the risk - and maybe flag the accounts for quick follow up if they had arrears. Almost unbelievably we were told that on "under no circumstances were we to query the database for this information, as the results could be seen as unfair to the business unit concerned". This came from a board level director so we really had to comply.
Again, had an IT problem lead to people being given the wrong rates we all know the first question would have been "How many people are affected and how much money is involved?". The second would have been "who was responsible?".
I believe that the business see the IT department as a car and them as the drivers. If they take a route that leaves them crawling in traffic at 20mph its "one of those things". If the car only crawls along at 20mph its "totally unacceptable".
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Funny)
We can't all work for your parents.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Insightful)
tech workers are looked down upon, because people only ever come to us when things go badly
If I had a nickel for every time I've heard of an IT guy being [sacked|not replaced after leaving] because some ass in a suit reasoned thusly:
"What do we need an IT guy for? We never have any computer problems!"
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Funny)
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you exclusively talking about tech support?
I got the impression from the question that he's talking about tech in general. In which case I can count myself. I work for $BIG_CORP as a software engineer and there's animosity here. On our side a lot of it stems from -
If our software does really, really well in the marketplace then we might get a reasonable payrise, whilst some of the guys on the business side get to retire from the profits, buy sports cars etc.
If our software does badly then there will be layoffs.
We tend to be ignored and dictated to, as if we're an inconvenience, not actually, you know, the guys that design and procude everything you goddamn sell.
We're smarter than them. In the geeky, pure-intellect, tough-maths-problem way. Many of them are overly loud, arrogant and annoying. Somehow they make more money and are always travelling places and have great cars though...
They're always telling us not to do fun techie stuff (otherwise known as innovation) in favour of endless interface tweaking and repackaging (otherwise known as making software actually usable).
From their side, we're probably moody, have over-inflated senses of entitlement and our own importance, get in the way of "corporate direction" whenever we can, mutter about unintelligible and unimportant stuff all the time, spend all our money on stupid gadgets, are usually passive-aggressive and are nearly always lazy.
Swings and roundabouts. Been the same way in every company I worked for.
Parent
Re:common place (Score:5, Insightful)
also Most everyone in IT intimidates the rest of the employees very hard. What we do in IT is looked at as "magic" to the other 98% of the employees and executives. People are intimidated when they are around someone that is massively better at something than they are. If your IT people are lacking in social or interpersonal skills this increases the intimidation factor.
You can stand your ground and be polite and warm. I have said many times NO to an executive and they were happy about me saying NO to them. It's all how you word it along with your demeanor and candor.
Plus if you can say, "Sorry but NO, the CTO signed a rule banning that. IF you get him to give you a waiver I'll gladly set that up for you!" Pass that buck hard. Make the overpaid management earn their salary by sending all executive requests to go against police directly to his desk.
Finally, any IT manager or Director worth a damn will buy out of HIS /HER own pocket doughnuts or bagles every friday morning and feed his staff and then have the staff each take a small platter of them to a different department each week as a "thank you for being our customer" and put that on the platter that it's from the IT guys. Give your guys credit for that.
That goes a HUGE way to fix the problems in the workplace.
Parent
The effects here (Score:5, Funny)
So I come to Slashdot to find out if others have experienced this adversarial relationship between business and tech, and if so, what was the effect on the overall success of the business?"
Yes, it is extremely prevalent here! On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have had any negative effects. Actually, standing in the way of various technologies seems to have made our business more successful!
Opinions here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, Exxon Mobile Corporation.
I work for a large financial firm too (Score:5, Insightful)
With that being said, I know that certain departments within this massive company have a very different relationship and there is a lot of animosity between the business and the tech side. Incidentally, those are the departments which are currently being outsourced to India (not saying that I can't be next).
IMHO after years on both the tech side AND the banking side, I can say that the two cultures really aren't compatible. After all, our range is stoned hippie/crazy genius and there's is buttoned down tightwad/midwestern church going Republican. There's not a whole lot of overlap there - there will always be culture clash.
However, this is not an excuse to treat your business people badly. They are the ones writing the checks, they are the ones to whom you must explain what is possible and what is not, and they are the ones that are ultimately doing the work that is paying your salary (yeah, they couldn't work without us - but we definitely couldn't work w/o them).
If you are working in a polluted atmosphere where people talk terribly about the business, I'd suggest you change it. And if you're not in a position to change the culture, I'd find another job. Not only is it soul-crushing to work in a hostile environment, but your department's days may be numbered anyway.
The golden rule applies... (Score:4, Interesting)
OTOH well, if you find (say) a good auto mechanic, see what the difference in your bill looks like depending on (a) how expensive a car you drive in with is, and (b) how close to peonage said mechanic is treated by said customer.
I think independence may be the key -- if you work within the firm as a permanent (or long-term contractor) then the perception of your technical skills are diminished as time passes, as familiarity dilutes your apparent value. From outside the company, well, they may treat you like the auto mechanic in the above example or they may treat you like a saviour, the person who recovered their email / payroll / customer database.
If they're rude, you have the option of legal retaliation when you give them the next quote -- if you don't want to deal with them, raise your contract rate to an absurdly high level. Either they'll ignore you or you'll be paid commensurate with the aggro involved (they can sneer at you all they want if you're driving the Porsche while they're driving the clapped-out 1972 Pinto, no?)
That said, with the skills crisis here in Australia, engineers and skilled trades of any type are pretty well regarded due to the tight market, and that's probably why I don't see a lot of Tech-Business animosity.
Parent
One thing I have noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One thing I have noticed (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:One thing I have noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you need to sit down and explain your perspective and try to understand what you are being compared to. You may have to agree to write up a progress report/log that shows all the activity you do and what kinds of things it prevents. If you keep people informed, they are more likely to trust you. Whether that's "fair" or not is another thing. Life isn't always fair, but communication can go a long way. Most managers hate being in the dark.
Parent
Re:One thing I have noticed (Score:5, Interesting)
At my company, there is a strong belief that if it ain't broke, you don't fix it.
So you basically have to wait for the customer to file a trouble ticket for you to fix something, and push a change control for approval, in order for you to fix something you knew was going to go wrong.
What we end up doing is developing the fix and keeping it in dev, until that fateful day when the user happens upon the bug. The we look all mighty because we can fix it insta-magically.
Actually, we no longer do that. We let our managers take the blame now. We say, we knew about it, and we were ready to fix it, but it was low-priority for our boss, so we never did.
Come to think of it, that's exactly how management likes it.
Parent
Re:One thing I have noticed (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, since I was not running around all day fixing things it meant I was not doing anything. He never saw the preventative maintenance and testing that I performed that kept it running well.
That doesn't only apply to IT. I heard a similar story about the maintenance staff at a manufacturing company.
Back in the 80s the president of the company went on an unscheduled tour of the plant (a very rare occasion). While on the tour he comes upon two maintenance workers standing by their tool carts having cups of coffee and chatting.
Furious that the two workers weren't fixing something at that particular moment the president asks, "What are you doing?"
One of the maintenance workers replies, "Well, the line is running perfectly, and since it's running we have to wait until the operators go on break to do any preventative maintenance."
The president of the company then goes back to his office with a great idea to save some money. Since these two maintenance workers are standing around, he clearly has too many of them. So he proceeds to fire half of the maintenance staff.
Ten years later, the board of directors notices that the profits are decreasing substantially. So, they fire the president and hire a new one. After 6 months the new president has to make a report to the board. This is what he found:
We noticed that our sales went down so we performed as survey and that indicated that our sales were down due to a perceived decline in quality of our product.
We also noticed our manufacturing costs have grown exponentially in the past ten years.
After speaking with some of the foreman and the manufacturing engineering staff, it appears that the uptime of the line has declined. Ten years ago, the uptime was 92% and today it's 63%. Additionally, the majority of the tooling can no longer produce parts within the designed specifications, sending the scrap rate up to 42%. This means that our plant is only 37% efficient. They all cite a lack of preventative maintenance as the cause.
It appears ten years ago, the president of the company fired half of the maintenance staff. As a result, not all of the preventative maintenance was performed as required. This decision has saved us, $500,000 on average annually for the past ten years. However, due to the increase in the scrap rate, the quality control department has increased their inspection staff. This has cost the company $500,000 on average annually over the past ten years.
This decision to cut back on maintenance has cost the company 1 billion dollars in down time last year alone. This figure does not include the decline in sales, and increase in warranty claims, and scrap rate due to lower product quality. In total, this decision has cost the company 10 Billion dollars, last year alone.
In order to get this company back to where it was ten years ago, the entire production line will have to be retooled. This has been quoted out by several companies, and is expected to exceed $900 million.
Even with these changes, the damage that has been done to our company's reputation is irreparable, and we may never recover.
Parent
Re:One thing I have noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
This delusion is typical of engineering majors in general, and EEs especially. EE is regarded by nearly everyone as the hardest discipline offered at the undergrad level. It goes to the EE majors' heads, and they get to thinking they can do anything, and that CS problems are trivial. You will be amazed at how they will be struggle with a fairly simple problem such as the elevator problem, and then upon figuring it out (or being told the answer), will forget how it stumped them and think that it was actually very simple (it's not especially difficult, but it isn't entirely trivial), and dismiss all of CS as similarly simple. They are constantly underestimating the difficulty of CS, and fail to grasp that algorithms are not just another kind of mathematical formula. You can't apply a Fourier transform or a Laplace transform or any other sort of mathematical transform, or a series expansion, or a linear or quadratic or whatever approximation to a CS problem and expect a solvable formula to pop out. But EEs think that way, and persist in applying that sort of thinking to CS problems. What programming they have done is all short assembler programs to run controllers. The programming is not seen as much, it is just a small unimportant part of the "real" work of creating devices. In such work, they might never encounter a situation where they actually have to know something about algorithms.
I first ran into this decades ago. I thought perhaps the EEs had expanded their viewpoint over the years, but from an encounter about 5 years ago, I'd say not. The EEs have an astonishing amount of trouble appreciating the difficulties of CS. If the EEs have trouble, just think how bad it is for the poor business major.
Parent
You could at least explain what you mean (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you mean they are "anti-giant-corporate-monopolistic-practices"??
Do you mean they don't want to see your company make a profit?
Do you mean they take a stand against certain business practices engaged in by this corporation?
There are many, many more. So: WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN? Your post was about as clear as mud.
Re:You could at least explain what you mean (Score:5, Insightful)
The Business are "supposed to be" experts in deriavitives, swaps, banking, finance or whatever and they ellucidate requirements to the IT folks who concentrate on building the systems. In smaller firms, or tech based companies, this distinction rarely exists.
There is always a degree of tension between the two departments because the IT folk think the business are stupid (because the IT folks generally become more expert at the financial business than The Business) and The Business believe the IT crowd to be slow, expensive and pedantic.
its because IT folks do not communicate the degree of difficulty that non-functional requirements are to deliver - because we think that The business are too stupid to understand.
also, in finance, it is The Business that get the big bonuses and on more than one occasion, I have heard business units say "They built the systems" when all they did is deliver a sub-standard list of untested requirements and manage some ill thought out user acceptance testing.
Parent
Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since it's the financial industry you probably won't be working there long :P
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Funny)
Since it's the financial industry you probably won't be working there long :P
Well, someone has to be there to shut off the servers and sell them for scrap on eBay...
Parent
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Funny)
What servers? We never had any servers *whistles nonchalantly while walking to brand new Mercedes*
Parent
What do you mean, Anti-business? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to know what you mean by anti-business. Many suits have no knowledge of anything technical, and so make requests and demands that violate things like 'logic' and the laws of physics. When the tech staff attempts to point this out, they are often told that they are being needlessly obstructive. Pleas that it is the universe that is preventing them fall on deaf ears.
Is this what you mean? Is an insistence on following the laws of physics "Anti-Business"?
Re:What do you mean, Anti-business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What do you mean, Anti-business? (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, exactly the reverse is true.
Most techies (because our curiosity is one of the reasons we ended up techies) take a lively interest in how their business works even if they don't need to. If you're an in-house software developer, you *need* to understand how the business works in order to be able to write software for it.
But the business folk have no clue how IT works, and no desire to ever find out. As others have said, it's like plumbing to them.
Part of the animosity I've experienced is caused by this very problem. IT people understand how the business works (and all the business, not just one department), and also understand how the tech works, so actually have probably the clearest understanding of the business in the entire organisation. They then have to deal with morons in suits who don't understand anything past their next departmental meeting, and the morons resent being treated like morons.
Parent
Re:What do you mean, Anti-business? (Score:5, Insightful)
And will often be quite condescending about it as well; after all, they're the wizards. Users are just muggles.
Parent
Re:What do you mean, Anti-business? (Score:5, Informative)
As IT people, we look at the world logically; we know that if A follows B and B follows C then A must also follow C. We know that if the user wants to view the balance on an account, they bloody well better have the account number before viewing it.
But business people don't seem to have that same view. We assume they aren't interested, or that they're illogical when they say "why do I have to enter the account number to view the account balance?"
The problem I find is usually one of language. For example, in the question above I figured out the business person wasn't being ignorant of the need for an account number. They simply wanted to *scan* it, not *enter* it. To us IT people, there's absolutely no difference how the number gets into the system, but to them that difference seemed so great they had to point it out that they never wanted to *enter* it again.
Yes, there are obstinate and stupid people out there, but not everyone with those questions is either. And the moment we respond to a question like the one above with a groan or a "duh!" comment, we do become condescending and anti-business. The best way to deal with these questions is to keep the dialog from degenerating. Rephrase the question, restate your problem with their assertion, and get them to confirm it again. Something such as "well, we need the account number before we can show the account balance, so where do you want us to get the account number from?"
Keep the discussion friendly, don't get patronizing or condescending, and try not to sound like Scotty ("I canna' break the laws o' physics!") Try hard to discover the real root of their issue. It's critical to treat them like peers, and not talk down to them. Remember that they must bring some value to someone in the business, so try to respect that. And yes, sometimes it's harder than others, and sometimes it's just never, ever going to sink in. Try bringing in other people to moderate the discussion, or to bring alternate suggestions.
Parent
Re:What do you mean, Anti-business? (Score:4, Funny)
Every time I watch that movie, I think that scene would have been a perfect opportunity to borrow a scene from Hi-Fidelity, where the main character imagines severely beating the guy who his girlfriend has left him for. My version of the scene would go something like:
Female Temp: Uh-oh. Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mo-
Peter Gibbons punches temp in the face
Peter knee's temp in the stomach
Female Temp falls down
Peter, Michael, and Samir all kick her repeatedly
Samir grabs the printer and drops it on her
Peter Gibbons shown with blank expression on his face...
or maybe that's just me...
Parent
Presentation versus inside guts (Score:5, Insightful)
Business tends to be "presentation oriented". It's controlled by sales, and the sales culture permeates the entire building for good or bad such that perception is everything. Techies tend to distrust salemanship as too superficial, and like to instead focus on building a better mousetrap. The thing is, paying more attention to presentation gets one promoted and recognized more. Thus, techies are forced to choose between focusing on a better mousetrap or "playing the game" to advance.
A compromise is to find better ways to communicate technology to non-techies. Find analogies to common items, such as say laundry when talking about the difference between sorting and filtering. And don't talk down to people: respect their specialty. Show interest in their specialty when you can; or at least aspects of it that interest you. The more you learn about their job, the better you can help them.
Also, even if you can't outright fix something, find a decent compromise or alternative. Don't tell them "no", but rather "I'll have to ponder that one". Show that you are not ignoring them, but putting your Sherlock Techie cap on."
And for every "that's too hard" or "takes too long", throw in enough, "oh, that change is easy, it'll be right up". If you always delay, you'll lose trust.
Re:Presentation versus inside guts (Score:5, Insightful)
Techies tend to distrust salemanship as too superficial, and like to instead focus on building a better mousetrap
I tend to distrust sales people because they badly oversell the product. Without proper knowledge of the extent of the technical problem, they will often tell a potential client that a required feature will takes days/weeks when the developer has already told them it's more like weeks/months.
I've seen this problem for the past 8 years, and this animosity between techies and marketroids won't go away until the latter are reigned in. I think I estimate my projects better than the sales people, but the salesperson is only interested in their commission, which is usually paid prior to any support or maintenance contracts.
The net result is that salespeople get paid without any accountability for the actual project. All problems from this point forward are viewed as a deficiency in technical resources rather than a poorly planned sales pitch. I'm not fond of being the scapegoat when I've very carefully explained why the project will take longer than the sales guy thinks it will.
Parent
Prior Experience.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a consultant, so I get to see many different businesses. I have also worked for many prior to consulting.
I can say that those that do not understand business fare poorly. On the flip side, those that understand business, but not the technology that they are supposedly in have problems as well. I have seen both.
Both of those businesses are neither failing not advancing. They are just sort of hanging on. The businesses that understand both do quite well of course.
And you were expecting what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, tech and business really are two different worlds.
The techies want to learn, deploy, do "cool things", etc. Whereas the business people want to make assloads of money. The problem comes in when these two worlds collide. The business people don't understand that when they change there mind with a complex (software) project, that it really isn't as simple as altering a pie chart on a presentation and takes some (if not a lot) of time. This makes them mad and then they come down on the IT people like they're just being lazy.
The IT people know why things are the way they are, but the typical business person doesn't listen to explanations because in the business world explanations tend to be excuses and CYA. They don't understand that things are different in the IT field nor do they care. Nor do they realise that throwing money at a problem doesn't make it go away. As in, a bug doesn't care how much you're paid, it'll hide as long as it wants to.
But, most of these problems occur because of poor project management. Back in the day, project managers were there to protect the people that they were managing. They were there so the IT people didn't get screwed. But, more and more over time, the project manager has become an extension of the client.
No-one really seems to care that changing there minds constantly (sometimes back and forth) costs a profound amount of time and money. After all, why plan something out when it will waste someone (or someone else's company's) money and not yours.
Polish up your resume and look for a tech company (Score:5, Insightful)
First, if you work for a company in the financial industry, polish up your resume. Stock up on office supplies as well. You might be in for a tough ride, and be ready to jump ship.
Secondly, if you do IT, work for an IT company. Forget about adversaries, and other BS. Have you ever seen the IT manager promoted to run a financial institution or a hospital, or a become partner in a law firm?
NO.
But try out a tech company, and you will find that your bosses boss is a tech guy and that there is no ceiling for promotions.
The whole culture at a tech company will also be much more to your liking. Go have lunch at Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo or many other, and you will probably know what I mean.
Difference in Motivation (Score:4, Informative)
Why do businesses even have IT departments (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be simpler and better to contract that out? Here are the benefits:
Cost. There's no need to hire and maintain unnecessary staff. If there's an emergency, the contractor can bring in more people to handle it, but most of the time they won't need to dedicate even one full-time staffer to your office.
Versatility. The contractor will work with many clients and many environments. That means that they will have a diversity of experience that will allow them to deal with problems quickly. They will also have the experience to point out better solutions.
Employee satisfaction. The contractors personnel will need to be respectful and courteous to your staffers, or else you will find a different contractor. They will work to find solutions (and charge you more money) rather than making excuses about why your problem can't be solved so they can stay in their budget.
Come to think of it, maybe I should start a business doing this for people.
Re:Why do businesses even have IT departments (Score:4, Informative)
Nice try, but the downsides include:
Cost - not cheaper over the long term
Consistency - who is your go to guy/gal? I dunno, I think he's just been replaced
Uptime - hey our server's down, let me call - wait, how much does this contract dude cost after hours?
Quality - The contractor said Apu Nahasapimapedalan knows exactly what he's doing, and they're only charging $200/hr. I don't think he speaks any English though.
Overpromising - Well, anyone that's worked in IT for any length of time and has worked with an outside firm knows what I'm talking about here. 'Nuff said.
Those are just off the top of my head. If you're talking about a network admin or something along those lines, complete outsourcing may work for very, very small offices, but when you get over, maybe one person, you really need your own.
Parent
Quantitative techniques in business (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience the biggest driver of tech's disdain for business is the farcical nature of some managers' attempts at quantifying certain aspects of their business.
All businesses manage to quantify a few things extremely well -- payroll, revenue, taxes, and so forth. There are many other things that can be quantified in a useful way. However, many business types engage in persistent fantasies about quantifying things like programmer productivity, ROI on buying software tools, and the effect of different business methodologies. Quantifying things is an excellent idea, but it's so overwhelmingly difficult to measure things like management productivity and (God help us all) "project velocity" that 98.6% of all attempts to do so are essentially fraudulent -- just as dishonest as if I pretended that number I just read off my rectal thermometer had any meaning more precise than "most."
Engineers are likely to feel a little twitchy just looking at the number "98.6" because they associate it with the classic overprecise and somewhat incorrect statement that normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees fahrenheit. If that number annoys us, what do you think we feel like when some business type says we should use Scrum because 87% of all enterprise-scale software projects come in 50% over budget, while only 63% of Scrum projects come in 50% over budget? Whenever engineers and business types speak in a common language (mathematics, logic, statistics, controlled studies) it turns out that the business types come off as STUPID, GULLIBLE, OVERCONFIDENT, AND FULL OF SHIT.
Which is not to say that business types are stupid. There are honest and intelligent managers who aspire to quantitative precision and may work very hard at it, but they don't go around waving numbers and graphs because they know the results are extremely difficult to interpret -- more "food for thought" than "results." The guys who make a big deal out of numbers like the ones in the last paragraph are either con artists or victims of con artists. They think that making quantitatively precise comparisons of programming methodologies is a strategic managerial decision that you implement by repeating numbers you read in [blog summaries of] management journals, just like creativity is a lifestyle choice that you implement by your choice of haircut, clothing, and a certain brand of digital accessories. It never crosses their mind that it might be something intrinsically difficult that you can work really hard at without ever producing anything worth sharing -- that's how poorly they understand it.
But it always seems like it's the guys who make up bullshit numbers who write the papers, run the consultancies, get the attention of upper management, and get put in charge of things they don't understand. Business types may have enough patience and faith in management to sit back and watch the pretenders rise meteorically and flame out, but engineers are used to calling bullshit on bullshit when numbers are involved.
Anyway, I could go on, but you get the picture. Engineers accept that not everything can be quantified, and every business decision must, of necessity, rely heavily on guesswork, folklore, and intuition in addition to hard numbers. We can't accept that the business world is full of people who pretend otherwise, without any reasonable justification, and somehow escape being laughed at by their supervisors and peers.
The age-old struggle (Score:5, Insightful)
The business guys want it fast, cheap, first.
Engineering want it correct, perfect, however long it takes.
There's the struggle.
Any good business needs to strike a balance between the two. The tension is inevitable, and healthy.