Hi, I'm an IT professional and I hate you....

Got your attention didn't I....

Well folks, that's what a whole lotta people think of IT these days and the problem lies with 2 things.  Bad attitudes and bad management.

I found this article the other day and I was moved to respond.  I got kind of long-winded but that tends to happen when I'm calling out BS.

See if you find something you recognize in your own organization....

Blah, Blah, Blah, a bunch or words nobody will ever listen to.  The problem with IT's image is the same as it's always been and I've been in it for 25 years.  IT is looked at as a necessary evil precisely because that's the role IT management has accepted.

I can count on one hand the number of IT managers that had any idea of what the company they were supporting actually did or even cared, for that matter.  People know when you're just going through the motions and act accordingly. 

You might as well be an appliance repair tech not a partner...

Many organizations just hire career managers with little to no IT experience and no concept of how to effectively manage an IT team.  They're either just occupying space before moving on to the next job between seminars or buried in busy work because it's the only way they can justify their own job. 

Worse, they make poor  hiring decisions based on skill checklists and nothing more.  Ability and attitude rarely come into the mix because their hiring process is akin to choosing a combo meal at Mickey D's.  Ultimately you end up with a team populated by people that are just there to collect a check and do the bare minimum to get by.  Most IT people I've met hate their jobs because they get overworked, underappreciated and have no support and no direction from their management. 

End result, poor service and bad attitudes towards their users.

I find it amusing that Sears Holdings is held up as a stellar example of good IT.  A bankrupt company that had to spin off a tech subsidiary to provide anything of value to the parent company.  I can remember many a line I stood in when the POS systems would go down in the stores with IT indifferent to their plight. 

How could you possibly expect any kind of direction from a disinterested IT leadership anyway? IT managers are supposed to set the standard but all too often that standard is pretty low regardless of how many ITIL plaques grace their walls.  If there's no foundation, no belief in the job then why should the subordinates be any different than the leader?

There are far too many people in the field that forget that IT is a service business.  A profession that exists at the pleasure of those it serves.  I could care less what a whizbang you are with AWS or Azure or how you can quote the OSI Layer verbatim if you can't apply it to the people you serve.  Tech is amorphous and ultimately irrelevant outside of its use as a tool.  But for too many the tech is more important than the job it's supposed to be doing and we only realize that when someone from the C-suite is inconvenienced by it.

End result: A vicious cycle of IT's own making.  Shrinking budgets and poor perception of their value.

As an IT professional you're defined by the level of service you provide and if your heart isn't in it, it's going to show.  The job is too demanding to not be invested in the people you serve.  Their success is your success because you make the magic happen.  Attitude ladies and gentlemen, is the key and most of the IT organizations I've seen have a poor one.  

No wonder the perception is negative!

You get what you give, that's how life works.  If IT's attitude is adversarial you will get treated in kind.  If you're giving your all and people know it, their attitude towards you will be positive.  I've seen this and put it into action everywhere I've worked and the only trouble I ever had was with those seat warming managers I mentioned earlier.

Put the right people in the right places, get rid of the chair warmers and watch the magic happen.

The crime of Avarice....The 2018 AZ primaries and bad IT

It seems that perhaps the laissez-faire attitude toward corporate IT training may finally be coming home to roost.

In the recent 2018 Primary elections in Arizona there was a serious issue with the deployment of voting technology in Maricopa County.  As many as 62 voting sites were affected with estimates of over 100,000 voters being inconvenienced or worse.

For the project, Tempe's Insight (A large IT products and services company) was chosen as the primary contractor.   After looking over this article and supporting sources it seems fairly clear to me what went wrong.

In short....  

Inadequate training, bad management and an over-reliance on outsourcing led to a debacle that will likely end in the courts when all is said and done.

The passage below from the cited article states what I believe to be the crux of the issue.  It relates what a contracted tech experienced during the deployment.

"... training of subcontractors mirrored Insight's "regular" employee training consisting of watching a 15 minute video and a multi-page instruction sheet that was to be printed out.   In addition technicians were required to view another video on the use of Insight's  SmartPhone APP which was clearly identified as being in BETA.   In other words, not in final WORKING form.  This "APP" was to be the "preferred" means of communicating and managing assigned jobs.

At no point in this process was any other training provided to the subcontractors meaning technicians unfamiliar with both the equipment and Maricopa County election procedure were expected to somehow "magically" set up a site without ever having touched the equipment they were responsible for.  The backup plan, that same printed instructional document and vague references to a support hierarchy which as we now know was insufficient."

It's fairly obvious in this all too familiar accounting of the technician's experience that  training was woefully inadequate to the task at hand.  Not to mention support and communication channels.

I've seen this movie so often over the past few decades that I won't even pretend to be surprised.

It takes me back to the days of the "paper certified" IT professional whose training was limited ( by design ) to little more than was necessary to pass the certification exam.  Leading to individuals ill prepared for the challenges they'd face outside of the ideal scenario.

Yes, education is a personal responsibility but when your business model depends on having people ready for what you're going to throw at them you don't leave it to chance.

Or a training video...  IBM started doing that in the 90's and guess what, they don't sell computers any more.

If it's that important you'd better be sure everyone's on the same page.  Unless what Maricopa County saw on Election day is your idea of success.

I'll be honest, my personal opinion of Insight has never been very high.  They evolved from the same swamp that birthed 1000 other flaky computer part vendors back in the 80's.  By the time they became "legitimate" and changed their name to Insight I was just beginning my professional IT career and already wary of them.   

My every brush since has been an experience in either frustration, arrogance or incompetence.  Sometimes all 3 at once.

But then, what can you expect from a business founded on the principles of undercutting the competition at all costs.  

Google Hard Drives International if you want a history lesson on the company's roots.  Not exactly shining.

In any case it appears to me that Insight was once again more interested in profit than doing the job right.  Their defense?  "We're not responsible." 

Look suited morons...

You don't send a tech to something as important as a polling place armed only with inadequate training from a 15 minute video and flaky smartphone app.  

Add to it inconsistencies in the command hierarchy, failed communication channels and scheduling chaos and you get the mess we see here.

All the tenets of a company that puts no value in training, planning or project management.

What's ironic is that such "training" these days is actually considered generous compared to the status quo. 

Worry about nothing but the bottom line and you get bottom of the barrel.  

Insight, don't expect quality if you aren't willing to invest in what it takes to get the job done and that ISN'T a 15 minute video and abandonment of your field techs.

What it IS, is investing in adequate training that includes hands on labs and a firm grasp of the escalation tree (among other things) long BEFORE election day.