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I want to visit upon a different view on one of my tips from a post back in January with ideas of what to do after being hired in IT.  In a effort to try to continually evaluate and present multiple facets to my thoughts, I wanted to describe an alternate view on tip #1. A colleague of mine, who can be at times a controversial figure within the organization, came back at me when I began discussing issues around a new member of the pack.

My coworker felt that a person with good intentions who made aggressive mistakes was a positive trait.  That the resulting “conflicts” would shape and mold both the environment and the new individual.  I didn’t agree at first, but after reflection on his words, I did find that he may have a valid perspective.  My only counterpoint to his was that, true genuine desire to make things better and aggressive mistakes have some value.  However, if you alienate everyone around you and they don’t want to even be around you, say nothing of cooperating with you, then what value does the aggressiveness ultimately provide?

A second incident of a new person violating tip #1 occurred just the other day.  It again, brought back my thoughts around the aggressive mistake point made above.  This new person, his first day I believe, started to hijack a meeting.  He did provide what sounded to me as valuable knowledge of a product that we are not familiar with.  So, on that level I was generally okay with his talking so much.  However, the wheels came off when he started to suggest things that aren’t standard for us and that’s when I knew he talked too much.  Your first day, don’t say how things should be without understanding the company and the environment first.  I’m sure he will provide value as he seems intelligent, but he must show some respect and maturity in seeking to understand before he seeks to be understood.

I did get the feeling with the newest, new guy that he is or was a consultant. This constant desire to demonstrate immediate value is the life blood of that role and may explain his behavior to me.

When my “geek” husband would work late and he would call asking, or I would call to ask him if he wanted, me to bring him dinner, I would always ask, “Does anyone else there want anything? I’ll bring them something too.” Naturally, this was not a problem but what I thought funny was some of the comments that the guys and sometimes gals, would say. The one comment that stuck with me though was when I heard one of the guys saying that they wish their wife would do things like this for them. I thought, “Well did you ask them?” I never said it out loud, but I did think it.

I often would wonder about what the spouses or significant others of the people that worked with my husband thought about when their loved ones were working late. I would sometimes think that they were sitting at home with the kids making sure they were doing their homework and getting the kids ready for bed in preparation for school the next day. Additionally, there were some people that did not have kids that I would think about them. What were they doing? The funny thing that came in my mind one time was the spouse sitting on the couch, watching a romantic movie and eating bonbons while their loved one was working their hind side off. I would chuckle at that, come back to reality,and thought well maybe they are too busy to help out. I would keep asking myself the question though I never came up with an answer.

I think some of the “geeks” think that we spouses don’t care about what happens with their work, hence the comment like ‘I wish my wife would do things like this for me’. Surprise! Some of us do care what happens to them while at work and the work they do while there. I used the bringing dinner to my husband when he was working late as an example of things we do care about. I ask husband how his day was, if anything interesting happened that day, and he usually answers me with the things that happened. I’ll ask him about a project he is working on and he will explain what he’s doing and explain what it does. I don’t claim to understand every single thing he talks about but I do listen to him and I do care what he does. He enjoys his job, well most days, and that’s important to me. I talk my about my day and he listens to me, so I’m sure there are spouses or significant others out there that talk about their days and you listen to what they have to say. Why not ask them if they would like to hear about your day? I know you may not think they would like to hear about it, but it may surprise you when they start listening to you and start asking you questions about what does that thinga magiggy that you were talking about that you worked on that day do or how does that whatchamacallit go from one place to another that carries that stuff to everyone. We may not get the terms right or even know all the names, but it is kind of amazing at times to think that we do care about what goes on. If you’re not amazed, you can at least get a good laugh out of the names we call the things we try to understand.

Just wanted to let everyone know that itminddesign.com now has a twitter account for those who like to follow sites and posts through twitter.

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You ever need find out if your product (hardware/software) is supportable or wonder why the maintenance costs are skyrocketing? The odds are your hardware or software is on the end of life list.

Here is a link round up of the public “end of life” (EOL) website listings for some IT vendors. If you are a consumer or vendor and would like to contribute a EOL or EOSL link to this, please email eol (at) itminddesign.com or leave a comment below.

Software:

• Aruba Networks
• BEA
• Big IP / F5
• Brocade
• Citrix
• Fortinet
• IBM
• Java SE
• Juniper
• McAfee
• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Windows
• MySQL
• Novell
• Redhat
• Sybase
• Symantec

Hardware:

• Aruba Networks
• Brocade (requires Brocade Connect account)
• Cisco
• Fujitsu
• F5
• HP
• Juniper
• Nortel
• Riverbed
• StorageTek
• Sun*

*For some reason, Sun has two lists, one public and one more comprehensive if you have a support contract. Why make someone pay to see a vendors list of equipment on “death watch” is beyond me.

There is a lot of turmoil with the transfer pricing (chargebacks) in my company.  Being that we are in a responsibility accounting model and the commercial and internal IT department is a cost center, we seem to be somewhat limited in the flexibility of our chargeback method.  I did read an excellent article from Management Accounting Quarterly describing an activity based costing model which would be a more effective method for us.  I will preface this by saying that a change to a profit center may be the easiest way to make this idea work. Currently, we over-recover, but that recovery is not been seen as “real money” that can be spent and it does not transfer from one year’s budget to another.

Additionally, there are some practices that I see from hardware(OEMs) and software vendors that the company should put into practice. We have applications that continue to reside on equipment that is end of life or end of service life.  All during the periods of end of life, the cost of maintenance is going up significantly.  The vendors don’t want to support the hardware and software, so you pay dearly until they no longer want to support it all.  Why can’t our IT department take the same stance?  Once hardware or software reaches the point of unsupportable (end of service life) we still have applications deployed on it.  From a recharge perspective, the IT department has not put enough pressure (in this case financial) on the business unit to evacuate the equipment. Priorities would change if the BUs would start seeing absorbent cost increases to their P&L besides the increases in maintenance costs.  I’m not even going into the risk management issues of being on equipment that isn’t being updated and could be exposed to security issues due to the lack of upgrades to the software.

I once did some side work for an independent contractor.  He once told me of a customer that was such a pain to manage that every time they called, he would continue to raise his hourly rate.  He hoped that they would think the amount was too crazy to pay and would leave him alone.  I’m not sure they ever went away.  However, I don’t think he thought they were over a barrel and wanted to fleece them.  I think he just wanted them to go away.  So, I don’t propose we raise chargebacks to the point the BUs want to go outside our own company, but I think adopting the OEM approach to support would be appropriate.  It’s the general carrot and the stick approach.  The IT department must define what the preferred paths and behaviors are for the BUs and then making it “unattractive” to want to do it any other way.  I think this model will work for more than just chargebacks.  It can work for their selections of development software and technologies and equipment that these solutions can run on. 

The key to making this successful is to define the path well.  If it isn’t, I am afraid the IT department will discover the business end of the law of unintended consequences.