Professionalism & self representation

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi all,

Just wondering what your thoughts are on this topic? I work with many non IT managers and the main boss is non IT. They have zero clue what pressure I am sometimes under but I stay quiet and focussed and crack on as you do.

I'm currently working on my responses to these managers as I've noticed and been told that I'm not doing myself any favours. It's also become more of a problem since they got rid of my staff to use money elsewhere.

I could be working on risk to business cases or half way through a mass mail migration to O365 and because they got rid of my staff they will want some cables tidying for example. In theory I must stop what I am doing and tidy the cables but then when the important work hasn't been done I'm pulled apart.

This is happening daily I'm pulled of extremely important jobs to do shite that an apprentice or low level technician should be doing. (No disrespect to low level techs, we all start somewhere) then I'm spoken to like shite for not managing to get the important jobs done.

My problem is I'm too honest so I go down the defensive road and explain why we're in this poor situation. It falls on deaf ears as these managers are ignorant to the inner operations of IT or my job role.

Should I train myself to communicate better with these people or Just leave and join somewhere that appreciates our roles?

I have done detailed reports but they haven't been read at all. I know as they ask questions day in day out which were all detailed and answered in the reports.

Is this common in IT?

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

It depends how you look at it, some may say managers are not there to understand IT or it's issues that is your job or that it is your job to help them understand, do you understand everything about there job? What are there goals and objectives how can IT help them achieve that?

Also depends what industry you are in and the impact IT has on the business to how much the managers care.

What you are describing I think is quite common it is rare to find managers that understand the business and IT and it is also rare to find IT staff that understand the business and IT.

 

Hi Rob,

I think you have hit the nail on the head... When i started the business had a focus on IT and effective use of technology to boost productivity and outcomes. This has completely gone now. The new managers (we've had 3) aren't interested in IT whatsoever they would prefer to use pen and paper where possible.

Its frustrating when i'm told that i'm failing as a project which has been cleverly analysed and predicted to take 3 days if all goes to plan should only take 1 day as the non IT boss has googled it and its straight forward. I'm too sensitive to these instances, it drives me insane so i often get a little heated and say something which i should really hold in. It doesn't do me any favours.

Most of the frustration comes from the team being made redundant and instant support/project delivery still being expected.

 

Sounds like a very frustrating position to be in. A couple of things you could try:

1) make your workload visual - use a technique like kanban to show what you've got in progress and queued. Even if someone doesn't understand IT, it could help you talk about the impact of task switching
2) Get the business to sign off on the risk of any task switching - "I understand that you want me to tidy cables rather than install this security patch, but can you please confirm in writing that you're accepting the risk to the company?"

Good luck.

 

Thanks for recent comments guys all good information.

I'm trying so much to stick to jobs and not breaking off unless the boss has requested a break off. I then update a spreadsheet with the change of plan so I have a record of what I broke off of and why.

It's sad really but it seems normal after speaking with the masses.

I guess I've had it good for so long that it's come as a shock.

 

Hey sparky, The report writing was mainly done out of hours in my time as I thought it would help my situation and indicate to the boss that I'm aware and I'm doing a good job. It back fired though as it wasn't read at all. Just shelved.

Recently I've had a few conversations with higher management and they have all come to the conclusion that I should have more staff. Looks like my opinions are shared amongst higher management and maybe this boss won't be around for so long.