The Success of Mediocrity in IT
April 30, 2007 By The IT Skeptic
From top to bottom, the IT industry is overrun by fakers and phonies, according to The IT Skeptic. Do you fit any of these profiles in mediocrity?
The IT industry is a settling pond for mediocrity, in people and tools. The IT Skeptic will save tools for another day, and look now at the success of mediocre people in the IT industry.
Here is a stereotype:
IT worker: systems or network “engineer,” support technician, programmer, vendor pre- or post-sales, consultant (well, contractor really). The older ones are architect, analyst, expensive consultant, or senior anything.
No formal IT qualification/certification that took longer than a few days, or weeks at most. (A degree in computer science does not count: computer science is as relevant to business IT as metal shop is to mechanical engineering. Nor does any training count that everyone passes.)
Changes employers on average every two or three years
Nothing in the CV that relates to responsibility for any specific project delivered, just general “experience” with various technologies
No references from direct reports and few from direct managers. Most turn out to be friends.
“Accidental” entry to the IT industry:
- worked as a clerk and started playing with the software, then got moved into IT; - a user poached by a vendor; - started at the loading dock: an operator or IT clerical worker who moved up; - nepotic appointment; - hired by a desperate company, straight out of college with a degree in something irrelevant
Holds the IP keys to some key bit of technology that allows them to do very little most of the day
Ducks accountability
Prima donna expectations of their own importance
You just know they are bluffing (let’s not mess about: they are shovelling it) but they seldom get caught because no one knows enough or monitors enough of what they do to be sure. They survive because their managers aren’t smart enough to spring them
When the façade starts to crack they move on, with a CV now that much richer in “experience”
Here’s another:
Much the same background as above, but they stay in one company producing very little business value, screwing up not quite often enough to be fired (after all where will we get a replacement?). They do a job for $70,000 per year that any smart college kid could learn in a solid month’s training if someone could be bothered teaching them. The extreme example is Dilbert’s colleague Wally.
Or another:
IT line manager or “team leader” (same crap, less status, no extra privileges)
Came up through the ranks from geek
Management training consists solely of an in-house course with no examination or other verification of its effectiveness or the students’ capability
Inter-personal skills (Emotional Quotient) at the lower end of the scale
Stressed, overworked and unhappy. Can’t motivate staff and can’t manage superiors.
Poached from a competitor, so they are busy for months spilling the beans about how the last company worked and what deals they are chasing
Do everything asked of them, work hard
Are out at clients a lot: usually only one contact per client, someone they get on with and visit constantly. Struggle to get access wider or higher in the decision tree
Lots of prospects but struggle with qualified pipeline and seldom close anything [even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut]
There is always one big, high profile deal on the brink of closing
They miss quota badly the first year but resolve to really go for it the second: talk their way into a second chance, usually based on the work invested in that one big deal
As the second year draws to a close, they go to work for a competitor, who thinks they have pulled of a huge coup by poaching them.
Take a look at those around you. At yourself. How often do any of those stereotypes come close?
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