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A Super Post

December 17, 2007

Since leaving Freeze I never really took the time to write out why it sucked so much to work there. Luckily for you, my former co-worker Chris did. You can read all about it if you Click Here.

UPDATE: For some reason Chris shut down his blog so here is the text as it appeared on his site

IT Professional the Right Way

So I have started a new job for a new company in the past week. I will not name companies because I don’t believe they have to be mentioned. People who I have worked with in the past know my past companies I have worked for.

I have worked under four IT managers
in the past 8 years and 2 of them were good. Thankfully, one of those four managers I am currently working for. The first IT manager I worked for was a terrible manager, knew very little about IT topics and refused to listen to his staff. The company I worked for at the time had a CTO that saw something had to be done with this manager for the good of the company and the good of the IT dept. This IT manager was moved to another department and I got a new IT manager. He was a great manager in my opinion, he listened to his IT staff, he empowered his IT staff, and he backed his IT staff. I learned a lot from him, how to manage people, how to handle day to day politics, how to get things done.

I loved working at this company for this manager, I unfortunately had to leave this company because the they were bought out. I moved to another company in the area that sounded great. With their talks of bonuses, trips, and free pop. In the interviews the IT manager talked about how cutting edge they were and all of the huge projects they were working on. I joined their team, moved into the lead Network Administrator position. From the first week that I was working for this new company I knew there were issues in the department.

My first week another Network Administrator quit without notice basically saying he could not work another day under this particular IT manager. In the following weeks I saw blow-up after blow-up of different IT employees when they had run-ins with their manager. Things rolled along somewhat ok for the first 6 months I was there because we were really busy. The company was building a new corporate building and we need to set it all up. Once we moved into the new building and really settled in the issues that had been brewing really started to explode. More and more highly stressed blowouts were occurring among staff. It got to the point where a number of staff went to the COO about it.

The environment at this company in the IT Dept continued to degrade, projects of all kinds broke down. Nothing new got approved without overly drawn out battles with the IT manager. Projects pushed by the manager just wasted everyone’s time. Larger project would get restarted halfway through by the manager and shifted from person to person throughout the staff. The entire department basically lost the will to work, a 2nd person in upper management was involved with the issues and still nothing change. IT personnel started to jump ship, 9 of the 11 staff within 9 months. A 3rd person in upper management was involved and still nothing changed.

It is my opinion that a bad manager is a bad manager, it doesn’t matter what training you send them to or how many discussions you have with them. You can micro-manage them and still they will be a poor manager. Their staff will know this and once the staff loses all respect for their manager the game is over the department has broken down. You can do one of two things as upper management, you can ignore the reality and try to fix the manager, you can hope it gets better, even throw money at it. The other thing you can do it make the hard move, replace the manager, hopefully before too much damage is done.

Thankfully the first company I worked for that had a terrible boss realized what needed to be done and was able to turn around the dept almost overnight. Instead the second company decided to look the other way as their department was decimated by the in battles between staff and management. Is the feelings of one person that much greater than the lives of 9 others and the stability of the company as a whole?

To my fellow past co-workers: Brad, Brye, John, Mike, Mike, Allen, Chee, Calvin, and Josh good luck in the future. I am sure your future jobs will be brighter than you past. Garry I hope things can turn around there before things are too late for you.

As for myself I look to the future and it shows great potential at my new company. I have seen in only my first 5 days that things are back to the way they should be. I am getting things done, getting projects moved forward and making a difference. My boss listens to my opinions and has faith in his staff.

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