Management Of Underchallenged Technical Staff

ManagementOfUnderchallengedTechnicalStaff is not easy for an ItManager charged with PeopleManagement.

Reference KrisJohnson blog at http://kristopherjohnson.blogspot.com/2005/05/please-let-me-work.html

I have used this analogy with my superiors in the past (note plural). Technical people are like musicians or athletes and need constant training to keep in shape.

View from the other side

However do you not see from the management point of view that if you are not working on technical matters that are dictated by business needs, then you may be incurring unnecessary risk for your management?

Even if you start on a "pet project" that will possibly make you more useful for your organization, that is not sufficient incentive for your manager. The argument could be: if you really have developed new skills you may have new expectations (e.g. pay, work assignments) that management may not be able to meet. So the risk of a happier employee for 2 months can be a "even unhappier" employee for next ten months. If you are really a great guru that increases the risk that you will want to leave.

So you want your technical staff only to learn the things management thinks are relevant to their current and upcoming tasks? And when the NextBigThing arrives in another technology, how long will it take for the company to train/hire expertise? --PeteHardie

Now another scenario is also bad. Suppose you are in the midst of learning / developing the NextBigThing called DollarNet. You are sure it will result in a marketable product earning heaps for your company. And then some real work arrives that your management wants you to tackle. You will have to drop your pet project and tackle the real project. Would your manager trust you to have the discipline to switch to the urgent work?

Do you trust your staff to work instead of web surfing? It's the same thing --PeteHardie

And then it is extra work for management to plan meaningful work for you that have minimal risks for them. If they succeed, they do not get extra credit for themselves. And if they fail....

whine, whine, whine. Management wants staff to instantly achieve expertise when it's needed, but doesn't want to let staff use downtime for learning new stuff --PeteHardie

Solve these problems for your manager, then he will be more open to your needs to have meaningful work. ThinkWinWin

Exploring new technologies during slack time does solve those problems, but is being positioned in this part of the page as part of the problem. If the issue is that employee training makes them worth more, and management doesn't want to compensate them more, it drives away talent. If the issue is that paying work is less interesting than shiny toy technology, well, professionals will do their assigned work on time, and reserve the play for slack time. Otherwise you have the same issue as any other distraction - personal calls, websurfing, water cooler conversation, etc

I hate to say it, but from the perspective of management they see "highly motivated" tech workers as those who take the initiative to improve on things already built, better process, better documentation, more test scripts, identify code refactoring opportunities, etc.

Changing process and refactoring are often (usually?) seen as risk, also. Few managers are comfortable with developers changing working code without a reported problem. -ph

Working on the NextBigThing is not appreciated because management do not know where to place the bet on technology. Leading edge is bleeding edge.

But a population of techies will spread out their interests - sure most might look into Java, but some will look at PHP, or Python, or Ruby. Diversification, ForFree !

It is probably more important for technical staff with spare time to persue relentlessly the acquisition of business skills, and domain knowledge of operational areas.

Domain knowledge might be seen as low-risk, but business knowledge would also tend to increase the employee's value, and require a pay raise to retain satisfaction, would it not?

I do not think the ItManager is disputing the argument that technical skills need to be kept up, but to extend that to learning new technical skills is often not appreciated.

CategoryManagement