Why do companies hire non technical people to be their Directors of IT?

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/34693-why-do-companies-hire-non-technical-people-to-be-their-directors-of-it

by giis • 13 years ago

33 20 13 years ago

community.spiceworks.com

Adaptive• 13 years ago

Above a certain level in almost any large organization (and, unsurprisingly, many small ones) company structures are are optimized for highly political corporate sociopaths.

Thus, the op question could be rephrased as "why do companies hire executives unskilled in the role they are nominally obligated to perform?"

The answer is simply that the unwritten primary qualification for any given executive in such an organization is "Political Maneuvering". Everything else is secondary.

You will find that the exception to this is commonly, though certainly not in all cases, finance positions.

If you find a company where this isn't true and where you enjoy working, it's a keeper.

doktrin• 13 years ago

Not sure why this typo laden self professed rant rant is on the front page.

Even the single point anecdote doesn't really hang together logically. Is the hiring manager also the director of IT? At most mid-to-large organizations, those roles are distinct.

It's also not clear why he thinks the company hiring consultants to handle day to day tasks is such an obvious financial loss. Financially, full time employees aren't exactly free either. Work product wise, if it's really "script kiddie work" - why is he applying to begin with?

Either way, I think everyone probably agrees that - all else equal - technical proficiency is better than not. IMO, teams led by well-rounded managers/executives are in a better position than those without.

However, it's also true that non-technical skills play a bigger role higher up on the org chart. This includes obtaining the role as well as fulfilling its duties.

Put plainly : it's possible to delegate technical tasks, but impossible delegate the managerial ones (that is, after all, the job).

endymi0n• 13 years ago

Striking the right balance is tough. As I'm mostly around in and around startups, I can tell though that the ability to manage is just as important if not more important than technical skills. At meetups, I see hordes of ex-CTO's now being much happier in still highly paid specialist roles. Management isn't for everyone, and it's also not much for me. When we were growing, I had to do it, but with more talented folks coming on board I noticed that I'm 4 times as productive with a product manager by my side who's really good in empathy, motivation, keeping track and following up. Those skills are often distributed in counter-balance to high IQ and creativity and I've come to value them a lot.

supervillain• 13 years ago

If you give someone a job that is not their forte, the odds are they may be really good at it, or not.

Well, Jesus is a carpenter, Peter was a fisherman, Bill Gates is an economist, Steve Jobs is a marketing guy. See the pattern here?

j_col3• 13 years ago

Given that half of the professional IT people I've ever worked with don't even have IT-related qualifications, I'm really not surprised (but I am disappointed for our industry that the bar is set so low).

Can you work as a lawyer without a law degree? No. As a doctor without a medical degree? No. As an IT worker without a computing-related degree? Sure thing, how hard can it be!

I guess the differences are:

1. IT is still young as a profession. 2. IT lacks professional bodies to regulate the industry (see above).

So we end up with lots of unqualified people pulling the strings :-(

kokey2• 13 years ago

It would be nice for some kind of professional body or 10 to come into existence, so you can become say a Chartered IT <something> after either a relevant degree, few years experience and a bar exam, or a more years experience and the same exam. It's so hard for many companies to tell the difference between a guy that simply knows computers or someone who can make the right technology decisions.

ghshephard• 13 years ago

In security, this is becoming more and more the case. A lot of the CISOs (equivalent to CIO / Sr. Director of IT, but for Security) have CISSPs these days.

I also haven't run into a Director of Network Engineering that wasn't a CCNP or higher for about 5+ years now (this wasn't always the case)

I think the major challenge for "Director of IT" is that it can comprise a heckuva lot of disciplines. Even for a small company - you are looking a BizApps, Back Office Servers (Exchange, AD), Oracle DBAs, Network Engineering, Telecom, Desktop Support, ServerRoom Operations - and all the political pain associated with managing all the various interests that want things their way...

raverbashing2• 13 years ago

The best IT professionals are those with the capability to self-learn

So those who skip university are around 2 to 3 years ahead of the rest that was pumped outdated subjects, mostly given by people that don't have practical experience.

Unis today, except the higher tier (hopefully) don't teach Python, NodeJS, etc

Even worse, some dropped C, Lisp(Scheme) or others for Java.

So don't be surprised the ones that just graduated can't do much

j_col3• 13 years ago

> The best IT professionals are those with the capability to self-learn

That's a universal truth. You also have to self-learn in college.

> So those who skip university are around 2 to 3 years ahead of the rest that was pumped outdated subjects, mostly given by people that don't have practical experience.

Imagine having those 2-3 years to dedicate to full-time learning, without having to try to learn on the job without the luxury of time. Non-grads are ahead in their specific work areas due to on-the-job experience, but lack the broader knowledge of (for example) a comp sci degree that will force you to look at many other areas of IT and business.

> Unis today, except the higher tier (hopefully) don't teach Python, NodeJS, etc

They are just tools. The latest cool tools will change from the commencement of a multi-year degree to the end. All colleges will look outdated when judged in this way, but that is really not the point of these courses.

> Even worse, some dropped C, Lisp(Scheme) or others for Java.

Again, tools.

> So don't be surprised the ones that just graduated can't do much

I would wager that a recent comp sci graduate will bring to your organization than you appear willing to give them credit for. Sure they might have to learn all of your tools and processes, but they bring with them years of training in analytical, logical, critical thought on broader subjects that you organization is currently tackling, enabling a fresh perspective and a capability for lateral thinking.

pc86• 13 years ago

The fact that someone has a degree in Philosophy or Classical Literature doesn't mean that they're not qualified to be a developer, provided that they've proven they can do the work and know the language(s) in question.

There's no inherent reason you can't practice law or medicine without the appropriate degree outside of the ABA and the AMA saying you can't (actually, you need a license; it just so happens that the professional degree is a requirement to obtain the license, but that's just semantics).

I say this as someone with a liberal arts degree from a podunk school nobody has ever heard of, and I know for a fact I'm more knowledgeable than at least one or two of the "senior" folks who are multiple steps up the promotion ladder from me. I'm in the fortunate position that my actual supervisor is smart and technical, was a developer at a Fortune 10 company in his past and does zero direct technical work today. We have developers in my office who have degrees in Computer Science, Philosophy, Political Science, Accounting and one guy who doesn't have any degree or relevant certifications. Nobody here is what I would consider a bad programmer. Everyone can hold their own building an application or writing a SQL routine. Some are better than others, but I haven't seen any correlation between field of study and skill (or even domain knowledge).

I don't see how judging an applicant or coworker based on a degree they got years ago (sometimes decades) fixes any of the issues with our[0] industry, and I don't see how raw technical skill makes someone more or less able to lead technical people. To use an example from elsewhere in this discussion, debugging a VPN connectivity issue quickly doesn't mean you'd make a great manager of developers. It's a different skill set and it doesn't mean that "unqualified people [are] pulling the string."

[0] Because whether you like it or not, it is our industry even though according to you I don't have the "credentials" to be in it.

j_col3• 13 years ago

> provided that they've proven they can do the work and know the language(s) in question.

And that's the rub of it for me: you have to let them lose on your project in order to prove themselves capable, and you have to hope they work out, i.e. learn on the job and you guide them through it. A Philosophy or Classical Literature major has to start their IT career somewhere, right?

So we have the old apprenticeship model rather than the professional model, nothing new here.

This is fine for junior members, but breaks down hard when you move into leadership roles when the leader is unqualified (both in experience and on paper).

Tyrannosaurs2• 13 years ago

So there are two parts to this question: why do you end up with non-technical directors of IT and why do you end up with idiots who raise obviously dumb helpdesk calls.

The later one is a fair question and I can't answer it in any useful way beyond the fact that organisations are often structured to allow and indeed reward things which might otherwise be seen as odd.

As to the former, a few reasons spring to mind:

1) Because it's hard remaining technical once you reach a certain level. Sure, you can be the best sysadmin or developer in the company, but when you move up the ladder you will spend more and more time doing non-technical things. As that happens you'll pretty rapidly find that others will surpass you technically - entirely reasonable as they're doing stuff five days a week, you're not. If you're managing a big department then the amount of time you're hands on will rapidly drop to zero and given the pace of technology within three years or so you're probably better assuming you know nothing as what you do know is as likely to be wrong as it is right.

2) Because they should have decent people they can trust to know and do that stuff. People complain that technical people aren't trusted but having a technical manager as often as not results in meddling and second guessing. A decent IT manager should understand high level principals, be able to ask the right questions and help structure thinking and other than that should let their staff do what he pays them to do. As to why they employ consultants to do things their existing staff can do - a lot of the time this seems to be the case but in 20 years I actually can't think of a single place I've worked where this has been true. Sometimes there's a lack of resource (that is people are busy elsewhere), sometimes specialist knowledge is needed or whatever. In my experience people are usually either neutral or positive about consultants coming in.

3) Consider that troubleshooting a VPN isn't the best use of their time. Possibly they could sort out their own VPN connection but if they're earning a six figure salary is it best that they spend half a day sorting it out themselves or that they call in someone who can sort it out in 30 minutes?

The short version: a director of IT isn't some sort of senior, senior sysadmin. It's a different job that needs different skills. Yep having technical understanding would be nice but given the choice between a director of IT who could configure a firewall and one who could manage budgets and keep political crap off my desk I know which one I'd take everytime.

integraton• 13 years ago

4) The CEO and any other execs involved in the hiring process don't know enough to hire for the position properly. Anecdotally, every single case I've seen of a non-technical Engineering / IT director (multiple, first and second hand), this has been the case.

Tyrannosaurs2• 13 years ago

Indeed. There are a bunch of bad reasons but I thought I'd try and point out some reasons why it's not necessarily a sign of incompetence.

Some of this comes down to organisation and department size too. You get directors of IT where a department of five or six people. In that instance they should absolutely have some recent technical exposure. Once you get up to a department of 20 or so though technical competence isn't top of the list of things a candidate has to have.

bobdvb• 13 years ago

Agreed, I have worked for technical and non-technical bosses. On one disastrous occasion we the department director was a promoted IT teacher whose main qualification was a certificate of competence from the British Computer Society. She stayed for a couple of years, I lasted a year under her confused leadership before I quit over the directors incompetence. The first time I have quit for more than just job progression.

rekisu• 13 years ago

I think the real question here is "why do support teams not have technical leads?"

No one bats an eyelid at a software project having a non-technical PM because it's a Team/Technical Lead's role to fill in for the PM's lack of technical knowledge; I've never heard of a Support Team/Technical Lead before though.

beezlebob• 13 years ago

Firstly look at the highest level of management, CEOs are not always experts in their fields but have a broad knowledge of operations, finance, HR, payroll, legal etc.

IT Directors do not need to be highly technical (although some technical knowledge is normally required), to manage outcomes.

Prior to my previous role at a startup, I was in the IT industry for over 15 years. What I learned taking on the CTO role is that it isn't just technical. I went from programming/infrastructure/architecting to doing budgets, recruiting, planning, and management on many levels and importantly relied on the staff underneath me to take on the low-level IT issues and provide knowledge.

Management is taking on a more important role in business in all sectors including IT. The people who fullfil these roles will start being from different backgrounds, and as organisations start to look to turn their IT departments into profit centres, they will take on people from roles like product and project management.

However I fear the day when a sales exec runs IT :)

y1426i• 13 years ago

So that tech folks can enjoy the free time available by running their work scripts and learn new skills to form startups or get better jobs :-)

Why do companies hire non technical people to be their Directors of IT?

Related Stories