TV AND MOVIE TOYS

Information Technology Personality Matrix

In my time working in I.T.; I have found a lot of things to capture my interest, and being as much a student of human behavior as i am a student of technology, people have played a fair role in my own personal entertainment and development. Over the years, I have realized that certain types of people flock to work in I.T., and with a little bit of work they can actually be pigeon holed into a few definitive types. So for your reading enjoyment; here comes the most accurate list of I.T. personalities on the internet today.

Personality One:   Little Person, Big Brain Syndrome

Typical Career Title:

Sr. Helpdesk Analyst, Helpdesk Technician

Typical Modus Operandi:

Little Person Big Brain Syndrome (LPBBS) happens, almost involuntarily to helpdesk staff as they approach the first 6 months employment to about the 3 year mark (if they do not get promoted out). LPBBS is annoying for those with more seniority or skills, mildly annoying to the users with whom he generally manages to help with about 65 percent of their problems. LPBBS may have also just finished a course or two on their certification track and will spend hours telling other junior Helpdesk staff why this certification does everything but guarantee his promotion onto the server team.

This is that person that argues with his coworkers about various wizards, and he condemns them for not remembering all 6 screens in the proper order off the top of their head. LPBBS is the guy that argues with each and every other helpdesk analyst as to what the root cause of this that or the next thing is. LPBBS is so thrilled personally to have found a gig that he has some skills that he places his self-worth value on how his last support ticket was handled. This is the person that generally is the loudest on the service desk, borders on rude when talking to other coworkers of equal or lesser skill, and goes uncharacteristically and completely, quiet, when the senior network and server guys speak, listening carefully so that he may offer incorrect translations of the conversation to his team mates later. LPBBS, in a nutshell, has a very small thimble full of knowledge, but believes this is 99 percent of everything involved in I.T. and that he is mere weeks away from being thrust into the role of infrastructure architect (even though he has no idea what D.O.R.A. is, what CIDR is, and he thinks the network guys are teasing him with fake information when they tell him OSPF really does mean open shortest path first).

Desired Roles:

Service Desk Analyst; anything with coordinator (they believe it sounds like manage). 

 

Average I.T. Lifespan:

2.5-3 years

Method of Attrition:

Matures out. Typically after a few years of being this role the LPBBS evolves into a junior Server Guy and occasionally into a business analyst. The personality generally fades as the person finally becomes responsible for one tangible item, and fails miserably due to an utter lack of communication, and failing to realize that his junior role got him spoon fed, and his senior role now forces him to be the one putting the food on the spoon for the next budding I.T. pro. At that point he becomes sullen and withdrawn for a week or two, and like a caterpillar leaving his cocoon, he will emerge from this funk in any one of the other IT Personalities (in very small organizations or where skill has never been recruited this fellow could become a Bitter Bob).

Personality Two:   Bitter Bob / Burnt Out Bob

Typical Career Title:

Sr. (Place higher order here – Network, Server, or Database) Administrator, Network Architect, (the failed result of them offering input to the small business as to what their title should be).  Bob really wanted Enterprise Architect but couldn’t muster the courage to try to float that one by.

Typical Modus Operandi:

Bitter Bob is a company legend. Bitter Bob is also what happens when great I.T. people get mishandled, or poorly mentored in their peak years.  Bitter Bob will usually have between 5 and 10 years’ experience in I.T. and be a technical guru of two or more technologies; he will have also usually been with the company long enough to have saved their bacon once or twice and his well-known and respected as “THE Techie”. Bitter Bob knows so much about what goes on with the companies systems, some of them; he has never even touched but is the go to subject matter expert for them. I.T. Managers will instruct their junior Admins and senior service desk personnel to try to find the answer before they go to BB, who will not hesitate to ask “What is it I’m Busy?”.  Bitter Bob will have a bent ear from the I.T. Manager, who generally for this to occur is a complete and utter I.T. Charlatan (See explanation later on), and he allows Bitter Bob to drone on Ad Nausea about how untrained all the other staff are, how poorly planned the upcoming projects are, a list of point form reasons why things at ACME Co. will fail. He complains about the team, upper management, the project team, in fact, he seems to show nothing but disdain for everything at the company, even though he is the one with the most time on the team.

Bitter Bob has expected his career to take an upswing he has been in a senior role for a while and expects to break the management threshold in his career but seems to be not taken seriously by anyone about this. His immediate boss says they couldn’t lose him from

His present tasks and Bob doesn’t know how to get to the level he is chasing with anything other than the technical skill he has shown over the years.  BB can be heard asking coworkers “Did you Google it?”  And can often be the voice in the meeting that booms “I shouldn’t have to document every single step – if you know even a shred of what you are doing.

Those parts are self-explanatory (generally referring to the next, next, next, finish click installer routine).

     Bitter Bob will languish where he is and inevitably be pushed out or terminated from the company. Change will come and Bob will fight it every step of the way as a failure. Bob may or may not be right, but Bob knows these new changes will take away his areas of expertise, which will leave him less armed in his day to day roles, which will mean, for Bob, he will not be able to as easily prove his worth as he could, and that he will need to start from scratch learning with everyone else again. Bob will , likely correctly, believe this will result in him doing everything, his unskilled team mates sailing by again, going to him for all forms of information etc. etc. Oddly, where Bob worke3d, will have another Bob emerge every 2 or 3 years taking with them most of the companies’ knowledge base each time.

Desired Roles:

I.T. Manager, Team Lead, Delivery Manager, Project Manager, occasionally Business Analyst

Average I.T. Lifespan:

16-20 months

Method of Attrition:

pending on  true skill and how much the employer has viewed Bitter Bobs Rants as potential threats it is usually a larger than average severance cheque. if Bitter Bob is absolutely feared, he will remain on payroll for the duration of his severance and receive all benefits while doing so, with a contractual clause that if during this time Bob even comes near his old network he will lose the severance. Employers may also call it a retirement benefit even though Bob is only 35 yr. old.

Bitter Bob, by the way, is what happens when a very skilled, top producer, or thoroughbred, or rock star (pick your nickname for them), is not mentored during his peak performance times. Even reading above you should be able to see that is was in fact, Bobs job to be the mentor to the junior staff, was Bobs job to better facilitate communication and requirements from upper management and or the project team. The I.T. manager has quite clearly demonstrated good management in hiring someone with more skill than himself, however, he has not corrected poor behaviors, nor has he mentored and shown Bob the business or management side of I.T. The manager has felt he couldn’t teach Bob anything about Technology but that seems to be all Bob cares about so he couldn’t offer much input or guidance. He doesn’t tell Bob of the complaints from management as to Bobs poor communication because he doesn’t want to deal with Bob complaining and whining, behavior he has never corrected so Bob believes this to be the way to conduct himself. Bitter Bob gave the company what they asked for – once- and got nothing in return, maybe it happened more than once. Maybe the company stopped allowing Bob to receive training for the products he was to train others on; Maybe the manager failed to see he was taking from Bob in the way of work, Taking from Bob in the way of Knowledge, Taking from Bob in the way of assuming the training and development didn’t need to extend to his “Guru”.  Bitter Bob, does not start somewhere else by the way, he dies, and another one is developed by poor management. An I.T. pro inevitably finds the environment that will teach him, and train him, to other areas that will balance him professionally and prepare him for his climb up the corporate ladder. Bitter Bob at one company remains that way until their departure – when they turn into a Happy Herb. Bitter Bob needed to be forced to sit a train the trainer seminar or some such, his development should have went towards management or leadership skills. Instead he was exploited and got nothing in return and then moved on. this is a lesson for I.T. Managers as a Bitter Bob, after leaving you, will always land on both feet and do better than he did with you, and that can cause morale to plummet to the direction of Exodus, as inevitably, all junior staff who did not have direct access to Bob when seeing Bob turfed, will follow his actions closely as they will see themselves following that path in their future. Just because someone has technical skills, do not assume your job of managing them is going to be somehow easier, or that they do not want to learn the skills you have, you are after all, on the next step up of their ladder, and you watched them race up to this point, why would you think they would choose to stop – just because they are now under you?

 

Personality Three: The I.T. Charlatan

Typical Career Title:

I.T. Manager, Director of I.T., Team Lead, in small companies CIO

Typical Modus Operandi:

The I.T. Charlatan; Possibly the most revered position in all of I.T.  The I.T. Charlatan may or may not have technical abilities, if they do typically they are 3-5 years out of date (the last time the I.T. Charlatan really had to log onto a server).  This person drives I.T.  as delegated by the business.  The upside to this personality is the shear ability to dream. Got a Microsoft shop, The I.T. Charlatan will present a fantastic presentation to management why the latest open source *nix based app should be rolled out.  The I.T. charlatan is the storefront to the rest of the business execs as all C-levels will listen to the nonsense coming from The Charlatan’s mouth and believe every single syllable. In fact although the I.T. Charlatan will be extremely popular to the brass; the rest of the I.T. department feels hostility towards the I.T. Charlatan for a great many reasons, mostly, due to the stress they all will feel that the I.T. Charlatan, in his efforts to show how he could change the I.T. world forever,  is steaming towards making their skillsets completely unneeded by the company.  The I.T. Charlatan prides himself on casting aspersions about the rest of the I.T. Team’s skill, desire, or overall ability to service the company.   This person can in any circumstance, under any business model,  make outsourcing look like the best , cheapest alternative, simply by having I.T. staff run in circles trying to make his convoluted, non- tested,  “Hybrid” vision a reality. He of course, knows this will never occur and this helps towards his full goal. The I.T. Charlatans Main goal is to become the single voice between the I.T. department and the rest of the business, This allows for aspersions to be cast, for all IT related work to become a work order, “call the Contractors”  style of service. With only the I.T. Charlatan and a few project managers in the I.T. department, the I.T. Charlatan can further position themselves so that any failure becomes a failure for the third party supports and not for him.  The I.T. Charlatan will in most cases, decimate an I.T. Department, build relations with outsource help, and then leave before that absolute mess can be unraveled. This person destroys I.T. Careers, Destroys Businesses naïve enough to believe the snake oil carnival being sold to the, and leaves a trail of bleeding dollars behind them where ever they go. This does not bother the I.T. Charlatan, as he will be a person with a lot of consultant roots to begin with, so not only will all those sustenance contracts be awarded to his “alma Mater” but you can also bet there is a lot of really big kick backs coming from the vendor to the I.T. Charlatan for selling all those expensive licenses and software, and fees to implement. A wonderful deal, The I.T. Charlatan gets paid by the company to build, gets paid from the vendor  to build with a prescribed brand, and all the while really does no more than make some promises, gain the faith of the executive, enjoy amounts of dollars for budgets that no other I.T. Manager will have gotten from the company ever.  In end, the company gets fleeced, they lose a lot of long term staff, and bleed profusely from the I.T. budget.  The Charlatan leaves, with more not finished then when he arrived, but with absolutely no skilled people left to support the business, and ultimately, the business needs to go through a near full re-organization, just to repair the fiscal damage done.

Desired Role:

CIO, Director of I.T. , Salesman of the month

Method of Attrition:

The I.T. Charlatan leaves to seek bigger and better horizons always.  They also, always leave before they can be called to own up to the damage they have done. What is amazing is that the I.T. Charlatan usually manages to move on with the CEO’s full blessing as the best I.T. savior ever, while the I.T. department caves wondering what to do to get back to even mildly cost effective. The Charlatan will have amassed a fairly nice chunk of wealth selling licenses and seats to software that he receives kickbacks from his mother ship for (almost always the same company they will have “history” with, will also receive the sustenance and product implementation gigs) , and skips all the little things like fire suppression to protect the huge chunk of investment the company has put up to buy into his “Vision” .

Personality Number Four:  Happy Herb

Typical Career Title:

Systems analyst II, Server Admin, Network Admin, Sr. Service Desk Tech

Typical Modus Operandi:

Happy Herb is essential to any healthy I.T. Team. Happy Herb doesn’t mind working overtime (lots of it), doesn’t mind helping users or team mates with issues well below his skill set, doesn’t mind doing the documentation, doesn’t mind sitting in meetings, in fact, Happy Herb finds every single detail of I.T. to be exciting and entertaining.  Happy Herb generally, does not hold much desire to elevate beyond the Senior appendice on their current title. They do not worry about too many high level concerns, as they are confident their leaders are dealing with that. Happy Herb loves working in I.T. and loves working with people. HH will generally have the highest morale of the entire I.T. team and though routinely brow beaten by users, abused by management, and vastly underpaid, they will trudge on just happy to be part of a team.

Happy Herb is the bulk of any good I.T. Team and there will be more than just one on site. This is a happy, healthy foot soldier for the business, they will work tirelessly day in and day out, towing the company line, and doing it all with a smile. All I.T. Departments try like the dickens to build the bulk of their team from Happy Herb’s.

Desired Roles:

Their Current Role

Method of Attrition:

one of three usually: retirement,  a career change, or sometimes, the Happy Herb gets placed as an I.T. Manager (due to the length of time with the company ). This is usually Happy Herb’s demise as he will not enjoy directing people.

About the Author

Christopher C. Kelly is an IT consultant and specializes in bringing I.T. teams together to realize higher levels of success as a team.

http://www.chriskelly.ca

Mater The Greater- Cars Toon