CIOs under pressure to produce

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But they can write.

It is interesting to read your drivel. Capitalists are in business to make money for the owners of the business by supplying a product to meet a demand, period! They are not in business for any other reason.

Another thing ?K jargon and buzz-speak do not mean a thing: "I have delayed my deployment of my media commercialization for a while for an unexpected tangent, and it's cost me a month." Plain language will help upper management and those "Capitalists" you rail against, understand the importance of your project/product. "Due to management not ordering the necessary servers to deliver the new enhanced video compression application, we have lost a month and quite possibly allowed our competitors gain on our 'first to deliver' date.", would be much more impressive to both your readers and, if presented to management, them , also. Oh, and about the delay ?K unless you are a one-horse shop and you suffered a debilitating injury, your manager wasted the company's time and effort by not helping you produce on time.

It is the job of the CIO to inform management (their peers) of what it will take to produce the desired results. If IT has a reduction in budget, then it is the CIO's fault that they have not prepared a convincing argument to be supplied at a level necessary to do the job they are tasked with.

Something I learned a long time ago ?K businesses (and departments for that matter) fail because of bad management! If the organization (or department) is undercapitalized, it is due to bad management, period. If the company (or department) suffers a setback, it is due to bad management, period. If the company (or department) does not have the necessary talent to do the job, it is, you guessed it ?K bad management.

And in reading your last paragraph:

" I got news for students: a college degree don't make you no programmer. And when something new comes along, what's your job? Do you study it like you're supposed to? Being a programmer has nothing to do with university sheepskin. So corporate hires their friends and family, bestow all the big money to them, and then have like nothing left to hire people who can actually do the work. And these are few and far between."

I would surmise three points:
1. You do not have a degree and therefore do not understand what a degree means to management in the first place.
2. You feel that your talents more than make up for your lack of education.
3. You feel that your are grossly under paid for the fantastic skills that you have.

So, here are the answers to your points:
1. Management gauges how good a person will be in the future by looking at what they have done. A degree means that the person was able to stick to something for a period of 4-6 years and has also come away with a more broad understanding of how things operate in the world.
2. Your communication skills, combined with ever increasing levels of responsibility, show what you are worth. Most of management believes (right or wrong) that anyone can sling code. But, a person that can articulate, in written and oral reports, how a project is doing, and able to analyze and project possible issues (with solutions) that may cause the project to come in over time and/or budget, will get management's attention. That is the person that will rise up and can compete on equal grounds with those that already have a degree. By the way ?K most companies equate 2-3 years of experience for each year of college. So someone with an MBA comes to the table already with 12 - 15 years of experience (in management's eyes). You will need the same 12 - 15 years of experience to match the MBA.
3. I have been slinging code for over 30 years (started with Intel 8080 and Mot. 6502's writing assembler). I have written code that, 20+ years later, is still being used because of the uniqueness of the processes (why mess with perfection ??) In all that time, I have only known a handful of programmers who make more than what I do. I went back to school and obtained both my undergrad and Masters (I finished my MBA 3 years ago). I have just received my largest pay raise and bonus in all of those 30+ years. The reason is not because I am such a great programmer. It is because I can talk to management and help them understand what it will take to make the changes to the systems to implement the changes they want.

You can rail all you want against the Capitalist Machine. It does not hear you. Only when you can speak their language (just like talking to a computer), does anything occur.

A suggestion to you: Go and get an education. Learn about Business and how it works. Then, try to make your changes from that point of view. You just might have a chance.

JC Williams. MBA/TM

Posted by: jc williams   Posted on: 04/09/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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