The Myths of IT – Part 2

See my previous post here for the first 3 “Myths of IT”.

4. More bandwidth will solve all your problems. – Bandwidth isn’t always the cure for traffic problems. You can add bandwidth all day long to a circuit, but if the problem is latency, you are wasting your money. One of those pesky laws of physics is that light can only travel so fast. Sometimes a better solution is to take care of the latency. That involves really understanding what the problem is before implementing solutions. An ever growing amount of traffic on the wires these days is of the real-time nature(ie voice and video) so it is going to be especially critical in the coming years to understand the latency needs of your customers. Many larger corporations and content providers deal with this problem by using multiple data centers across the country or world.

You can extend this myth to the wireless side as well. Simply adding more AP’s to a network will not necessarily make things better. In some cases, it will make things worse! As with anything, before you can provide a working solution, you have to fully understand the problem.

5. Everyone in IT must have business skills. – No. No. No. No. No. I can’t say no enough. I am paid to perform a highly technical function. In the course of providing that function to my employer, I have to deal with associated costs. I do have to understand what the capital expenses and operational expenses are, but other than that, I don’t care about the financial end. MY job is to provide solutions. I am not an accountant. I do not look at spreadsheets all day and try to figure out how to align my technology solutions with the vision of the various MBA’s and marketing people running the company. IT exists to provide solutions. Those solutions are based on requirements given from the business side. Tell me what you want to do and I will design a solution to implement that. It is hard enough to stay current with all of the various technology vendors out there. The last thing I need is to worry about how it affects the bottom line. I am reminded of an old joke when it comes to technology.

Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick 2. You can’t have all 3.

Are there people within the average IT department that NEED business skills? Yes. They’re called managers. Does someone providing front line support on a help desk need business skills? Nope. How about that engineer doing wireless installs? Nope. Maybe that systems architect designing your virtual infrastructure? Nope. Again, tell me what you want to do from the business perspective. I will provide you a solution. You may not like the solution because it costs a lot of money, but then again, I am not designing a dress(No offense fashion fans!). In the case of the network side of things, I am designing a conduit to move information around. That doesn’t come cheap. I think the problem behind the whole “IT people need business skills” mantra is that the business side of the house doesn’t always articulate what it is they are trying to accomplish. Additionally, the IT side of the house doesn’t ask all the appropriate questions to extract the information they need to design a proper solution. I keep reading about these IT executives who claim they only want to hire IT people with business skills. Good luck with that. People with business skills continually run companies into the ground. Are you sure you want your IT department to contribute to that? It’s better to let them take care of the nerdy things.

6. All IT people can fix your computer. – There was a time when I was somewhat in tune with computers. I knew a little about graphics cards, sound cards, memory, etc. That was back when I was running DOS and really just wanted to play computer games. Those days are long gone. I know next to nothing about PC’s and laptops. That goes for the operating systems as well. I work on all the gear that facilitates communication between the PC’s(ie routers, switches). I don’t have enough capacity in my brain to memorize how many cores the CPU should have and which graphics chipset will give you the best performance for World of Warcraft. I am not alone. Many of my fellow IT professionals are in the same boat. We take phone calls from family and friends on a regular basis. They need help with this or that thing on their home computer. Maybe it is infected with spyware or a virus. Maybe they need to upgrade their 10 year old computer and need our help figuring out which new one to buy. Guess what? I’m winging it. I’m taking a semi-educated guess on what computer you need to buy or how to fix your existing computer that runs like an old 286. Odds are I am using Google to figure out what to do.

7. IT people change jobs all the time because all they care about is making more money. – As with any career field, there is a certain percentage of people that will constantly change jobs to make more money. However, IT people tend to change jobs for different reasons. First, you have to understand that IT is a profession in which career development is generally up to the individual. The more they learn and the more they get exposed to, the better the options. Quite a few jobs in the IT world can be grown out of. After a year or two in certain positions, there is nothing more to learn. Nothing new to experience. Your job is simply to serve as a caretaker of the network and look at logs all day long. Most people can’t deal with that. They need something new and exciting. They need opportunities to grow their technical skillset. This happens a lot faster than other career fields. At some point in your career, you learn enough and have enough experience to get that coveted position at company XYZ that you have been looking for. Generally, it takes several years. We all have to pay our dues and work up the technical ladder. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot that companies can do to stop this transition from occurring. It’s just part of IT. You can’t hold on to your engineers forever.

The second reason, and perhaps the most common one, is that IT people tend to get burned out at companies after a year or two. Let me paint a picture of corporate IT for those of you who aren’t familiar with it. Your typical company is understaffed when it comes to the IT department. The people that they do employ tend to work a lot to make up for this fact. Chances are, you are fast asleep when they are doing their real work. You see, the business can’t afford to have any part of their network down during business hours, so any maintenance will be done real late at night. If you happen to have any sort of Internet presence, the maintenance windows will get even tighter. Of course, anyone who gets into IT expecting to work a 40 hour week from 8am to 5pm is not living in the real world. You work the odd maintenance hours but you still have to respond to issues that come up when everyone shows up for work the next day. Unlike many other departments within a company, you can’t sit on any hot issues. The network is what the business runs on. Failure to get it fixed means the business loses money. When people do call you, it is generally because they have a problem. Nobody ever calls you with good news. When you propose designs for projects, everybody second guesses you. Even if they have no idea what equipment it is that you have included in the design. If a project is over budget, IT usually gets trimmed down. Nevermind the fact that your new facility is buying some hideous sculpture that costs more than your house. Forget the fact that the company is buying everyone a $500 chair. The solution to the money problems are to cut out that pair of core switches you needed and go with the collapsed core model. Then, when the network sucks because you don’t have enough capacity, it’s your fault. Well, at least you have a pretty sculpture to look at as you make your way to your $500 chair at your desk. Issues like that happen time and time again and IT people get fed up with it. They move to another company that feels new and different. At least for a year or two. Then, the cycle repeats. Now I don’t want to be completely negative and say that all companies are like this. They aren’t.

To add on to the reasons behind burnout, most companies simply pay lip service to training. They want their engineers to do a million different things, but have no interest in providing training or even aiding them in their technical development. They want all the benefits of a highly skilled engineer, but don’t want to invest anything in making that happen. Loyalty is a two way street. Don’t expect any sort of loyalty from your IT staff if you don’t show any to them. Demand for skilled IT practitioners is high. Even in down economies, there is still a large demand. When people have options, their tolerance for corporate nonsense is a lot lower than someone who is just grateful to have a job and doesn’t want to rock the boat. They WILL leave.

That’s all I got folks. A total of 7 IT myths. Maybe you agree with some, none, or all of them. I’ve taken these from my experiences and from conversations from many of my peers. As always, if you disagree or have something else to add, leave me a comment below.