What the CIO Wants You to Know (Part III)
"It's not my job to make you happy..."
The CIO's words reverberated off the back wall, bouncing back onto stunned employees assembled for an MIS departmental meeting. I waited, thinking he might be using the statement as some sort of rhetorical device to get our attention. I pondered, "What about a happy employee is a productive employee?"
While staff were still reeling from that unexpected blow, he followed it up with another: "It's not my fault if you always wanted to be a poet but needed to make a living and settled for working in an MIS department."
Wow, I thought, he sees into my soul. No, I didn't exactly want to be a poet. (I did go through a period in high school when I wrote some very bad, dark poetry, conjuring the spirit of Edgar Allen Poe reincarnated as a southern, teenage girl. Even I could recognize I shouldn't pin all my life's aspirations on that.) Yet, I suppose I'd somehow imagined a Technicolor career and saw it unfolding in the various shades of safe, nondescript gray forms that a Microsoft shop is proud to propagate. Just the other day I heard one developer pine for a career as a nurse and another say she'd considered being a dental hygenist.
But now that I was a manager, I had some notion of what he meant. It's bad enough to wrestle with your own doubts and discouragement. It's quite another matter when someone else plops theirs like a pile of steaming doo on your lap and expects you to do something about it.
What do you do when an employee tells you he doesn't enjoy project management or interacting with coworkers...that he really likes solitary coding...but he'd been promoted several years back out of a straight coding position (and didn't want to accept the pay-cut that would be inevitable if you shuffled him back into his old position)?
What do you do when an employee says, "I thought we could choose our own projects"? (Um, yes, we do encourage you to express your interests and we make an effort to accommodate, but sometimes certain (unpopular) work has to be done.)
What do you do when someone says their passion is X [insert any sort of specialized work here] but even after being sent to multiple training classes, they exhibit no ability in that area?
Some days, even as a manager over technology staff, you get an ear-full of complaints and requests: "Why can't we all have 21-inch, flat-screen, dual monitors? Why can't we get an automatic pay increase if we earn a certification? Can't you do anything about climate control? Can't you do anything about that annoying background hum? Why can't I have an office with a window? I have an office with a window and there is too much glare on my monitor."
I can only imagine how many the CIO must hear, considering the multiplicative factor.
The complaints are often legitimate. Should someone have to work while wearing an overcoat because they have the misfortune of working in an old building and no one seems capable of correcting the heating and air problem? Maybe some staff really do need dual monitors due to the nature of the work they’re doing.
But by the end of that staff meeting, the CIO elaborated on his initial shock-statement further, and this is what he wanted us to know:
"Don't bring me your problem: bring me your solution."
"Don't expect your job to meet all your personal needs. You might be happier if you pursued some of your outside interests as hobbies."
"Realize that outside factors (such as family problems) can sometimes affect how you feel in general, and you may be blaming it all on your job."
"Don't act as if you have no choice—that you're being forced to do a job you hate. If you are truly unhappy with your job, realize you have the option to leave."
The words might seem harsh. It should be noted that the CIO in question does take great pains to provide a climate where staff can enjoy their work by offering training opportunities, staying current with development tools and hardware, sending staff to professional conferences, offering flex schedules, hosting team events, etc. Yet, the fact remains that a job may not be what an employee expected, or perhaps the employee has aspirations in an area where no opportunity is immediately available. The CIO's words were a reminder that ultimately we need to take ownership of our own fulfillment.
Two perspectives
Guest, you're right that there are two perspectives and you have highlighted (in a vivid way) the very real gulf that exists between developers and upper management. I had in mind to post some blogs from the other perspective: "What You Want the CIO to Know." Looks like I've got some colorful inspiration to begin.
To be honest, I was a little afraid that the CIO perspective might not be wholly welcome in this forum, but I thought it might be helpful to have an inside glimpse. I do think CIOs could benefit from hearing the perspective of the non-CIO (in-the-trenches-developer) as well...and often that doesn't happen in real life due to fragile nature of job security and the possible ramifications of being as direct as you were in your comments.
Bitching and moaning
One of my coworkers in the 1970s was a brilliant man with many tics such as are encountered in the programming field.
A music lover, he couldn't stand it when Mexican guest construction workers would play *disco ranchero* on the job, and he liked it even less when the drywall hangers would play country music.
The problem is that while "consultant" sounded to me like a cool job circa 1974, like one of Robert Strange McNamara's whiz kids, what it meant in Chicago by then was someone who had signed over his rights to directly negotiate, even one on one, pay and benefits to a third party.
In many such relations, the dimunition of employee power that occurs when a labor union is replaced by the one on one bargaining of the white collar is exacerbated, continued and strengthened, since the "consultant" has to negotiate through his agent. The purpose of the system of agentry, considered as an economic *telos* is lubricating the system by ensuring that the successful Hollywood screenwriter, or ace ventura whizbang programmer, is not emplaced to dictate terms from a position of real strength.
Note the qualitative as opposed to quantitative difference: we give to any man with cold hard cash an unrestricted power to bargain while the man with labor is necessarily alienated by growing chains of agentry.
The programmer's illusion is that his knowledge of Visual Basic is hard money. The trouble with this metaphor is that money is that which the government tries to hold at a fixed value, where the laissez-faire thinker defines the critical success factor of government to be "not debasing the coinage".
Whereas from Day One, the value of the deepest knowledge of Visual Basic was unfixed, a buoy at best and not a light-house.
In laissez-faire, if you CAN bargain, you DO bargain. I snagged me a real nice jacket in Wanchai yesterday during a severe cold spell, because as soon as the proprietress of the shop showed me the price-tag, I grabbed my heart and said ai-yah! I then tendered 175.00 and she said done: but my Chinese friends say this only means I should have started lower.
The problem is that there is a simple relationship between the jacket, its materials and the labor of the Guangdong seamstresses busy hands, and money, a relationship examined in Capital chapter one.
Whereas in the case of an information good, the relationship itself is subject to negotiation. Many Visual Basic experts flunk Microsoft's VB certification test the first time out (I sure as hell went down in flames the first time, to succeed the second time)...because the test tests your Goody Two-Shoes use of Microsoft's favorite approaches, and neglects the fact that I don't need no steenking grid controls, I make my own, damnit, in 15 minutes.
[Grr]
Nor is the "good" objectively good. The white collar employee vends not use value but the exchange value of perceptions and is hired based on whether the manager thinks this will please a network whose telos is not completely disclosed as in the case of Enron.
Our instinct of self-preservation causes us to think we can reify "skill" because validly, we are thieves. We want to gain experience in a job in order to get a better deal using the company's Private Property.
In the straight-shot theory of laissez-faire, this is a doomed effort to game the rules. The cybernetic system and its software remain the private bigod property of the owners and the shareholders and as such the programmer of legend is merely an incompetent safe-cracker.
Which is why I love Open Source, even though to enter this world you have to make like Coyote in the old oad Runner cartoon. You assert your ability to produce without the means of production beyond a personal computer and VB express. There's a certain majesty to Coyote in those seconds before gravity kicks in.
When I wanted To Paint, I knew that working artists in new York City would train up as electricians or plumbers as a day job. I thought computer programming was the same but it's not.
The redneck drywall hangers at Motorola could come in, play Johnny Cash (doawn doawn doawn, in a burning ring of fahr) and split: but the programmer is in our society part of management. The problem is he is a small and infinitely replaceable part.
It's Funny Because It's True
This is just the way things are, which is something I've come to recognize (if not embrace).
As far as the CIO's perspective, that's all well and good to a certain degree. Clearly the concerns of the drones are not the concerns of the hive. This much is clear to anyone who's ever had a "corporate" job in any capacity. And that's pretty much an unavoidable fact.
But the rub comes when the CIO, paradoxically, expects the drones to keep hive concerns front-and-center, accepting that their own concerns are intrinsically less important. Great for bees, ants, Borg, Brood, Spider Guild, and those wicked bugs from Starship Troopers etc., but not so much for actual humans. So while that attitude is understandable, the CIO must also recognize the price of keeping it.
To wit: Employees may not have much power to parlez in the the context we're discussing. You can virtually never get things "fixed" if you have severe or endemic problems with your position. Moving desks is one thing. Changing job roles is another. But the chip they/we do hold, as either contract or permanent drones, is the "Exit" chip. You know, the one that comes attached to a letter of resignation.
Which is the flip side of Edward's comment. My experience of the last couple months says that chip is ready to use anytime for someone of reasonable skill. Coding gigs are pretty much a dime a dozen, again. This despite outsourcing, etc. Sure, you have be able to do more than just breathe and type (unlike the Bubble era), but that's not my problem anymore. And you may have to bide your time and ride a downturn for a while. But there are always other gigs -- assuming you're already worth your current job.
So, ultimately, I agree with Guest. If you don't like the honey they're serving, find a new hive.
If you are not happy at a
If you are not happy at a job you should quit. I made the mistake of staying on a job I was unhappy at because it paid well for years and I can say without reservation that it wasn't worth it.
If the CIO doesn't care about your happiness then you should definately quit. This is a sure sign that you (the development staff) will get the blame for all the stupid decisions the CIO makes.
Any corporation is like a septic tank. The really big chunks rise to the top. Most CIOs are not only political animals they are quite clueless when it comes to technology.
This one also seems clueless about how to inspire and motivate employees.
Telling your people to go fuck themselves isn't going to help your projects go faster.