It's not all in the Pointy Hair

On IT and Management:

The right type of manager for IT is one who says, "I know enough to know that I don't know." These enlightened individuals realize that what the developer is doing is as close to magic as we'll get in the real world, and that as such, sometimes it needs special consideration.

Unfortunately, for the good of the world, this type of IT manager is typically whisked away to where they can do the most good: say, at NASA, a missile silo, or a nuclear reactor.

The worst type of IT manager is Conan: a brutal barbarian with an ingrained hatred of magic. He doesn't understand what programmers do, so every aspect of it to him is unpredictable and riddled with chaos. Since the developer is so (relatively) calm about working the magic, he hates them for it.

For the record, the second worst type of IT manager is a veteran programmer. There are veteran programmers who prove the exception to the rule, but mostly you'll get one of two types:

• an idiot who was never that great of a programmer, but he gets by with a little help from his friends; or
• someone who maybe knows a language that's mythologized in academic halls (but is otherwise dead), and loves to talk about the old days of COBOL pointers and punchcards.

When they're not promoted to management for their keen insight and people skills, the hazard of the programmer-as-manager comes if he or she feels that, "I've so been there--so anything coming from my people that I don't agree with is bullshit, because I know what's what."

A close friend of mine has been afflicted with Conan the General: enough time spent in the trenches to take both First and Second place in the Upper-Class Twit of the Year competition. With any luck, he'll accidentally run himself over in the parking lot.

Another friend of mine just has Conan.

In both cases, management goes by what it sees: if the page doesn't load in the browser, it must be the programmer's fault. Never mind bad databases, ill-fitting business logic, overzealous firewalls, or the Spyware that's clogging the machine: it all begins and ends with the developer.

Interesting how like the upper echelons of the business world, the low-level IT world can be: when the leader drives the good people away, bad (but agreeable) people fill the void. They all say "yes" to bad direction and gleefully sink the ship. Smart people get harassed, because who needs an old smarty spoiling our yacht party with news of a leak?

To further flog the metaphor, the short-sighted see the tiny ice-cap on the surface and ignore the glacier underneath: the problem must be those programmers--it couldn't be our infrastructure, practices, gaps in communication, nepotistic favoritism, politics, culture, or group myopia! It's those guys out on point covering our asses--our asses are getting bigger and they're not covering enough!