Why shouldn’t IT people look different?
Sunday, October 19th, 2008quick post: I think I need to reply to Computer Weekly’s blog entry - The IT Professional’s Survival Guide. I think it’s heading in the right direction but got sent off at a terrible tangent at some point…
Firstly, the most important thing is not to “flatter“, or understand “where you fit in” it’s simply to learn how to communicate properly. Many IT staff are proud of their logical outlook on life and rejoice in “simple” answers.
For example, years ago I was working with support engineers, a “request for change” ticket came in saying “can you help me organise my files better?” to which the reply was “no”. That’s neither helpful, nor useful (even if it may be correct in some cases), and it’s not answering what the user wants and needs. People remember good service and those that try and help them (and some evolutionary biologists claim that we “like” to help others - even if the computer business is a good model of the reverse!).
What the engineer should have done was simply ask for more specifics, it takes 10 minutes to do so, and even if you can’t help you can point them in the right direction (”sorry, I think you need to speak to Ted about this - he’s the head of Business Process re-engineering”). It costs nothing and you’ll have a better relationship with the non-IT staff.
Secondly, “Dress like your peers” - I disagree almost as strongly. As a young man (with hair) I was often sent to customer sites and heard the users say “thank god, he looks like a freak: he must be good” (not every time, but often). Non-IT staff expect computer people to be nerdy and geeky, and often the nerdier and geekier they look, the better they must be. In contrast, even IT staff have probably been concerned when a beautifully suited and presented individual comes in as a star “consultant” - it just doesn’t fit the mold.
Also, we’ve all seen engineers who wear a suit and yet look worse than if they’re in a bin-bag.
So, am I advocating looking terrible all day and wearing T-shirts with expletives on them? No, really no. But, dress to match your style and finesse and remember it’s not London geek fashion week - nobody will love you for a T-Shirt that says “all users are idiots” regardless of how much Geek kudos it grants you.
lastly, understand the business you’re in (regardless of your position). When you’re in a marketing department’s IT team then ensure you understand what they’re marketing, how they do things and, at the least, the outline business processes. That way when a user contacts you then you ask sensible questions related to what they do, they’ll respect you for it, and you’ll achieve more.
You’ll be amazed, even if you’re not a programmer (then you have no excuse for knowing what they do and you should hang your head in shame and make for the door with your head bowed) and you’re doing server support then the setup of the machines is still related to the business itself. Even for a support engineer there are places where you can help that business run (or stop that business running better) by your actions: there’s no point you pushing windows OS if none of the software runs on it, but if the users need a document store with some workflow then you can ask if it makes sense to include Windows Sharepoint or IBM Portal or similar as part of the standard build, or alternately if the machines never do any high transaction work/high IO then why is the business paying out for RAID1+0 local disk arrays when it could be using a (relatively) low latency SAN solution and sharing disk between all the machines.
In summary, IT does have a place in businesses, but arrogance, laziness and ignorance of IT staff doesn’t. Do yourself a favour, find a nice big mirror and take a long hard critical look at yourself, it’ll be not just good for your current job/contract/assignment, but it’ll help your work ethic (and your job satisfaction) more in the longer run too.
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