Funny challenge which make you decide if a certain person is worthy of being an IT Boss or not…
According to someone named “theodp” from Slashdot, the best way to cut off someone in the IT Department is to head for the big boss…
As he takes “Cringley” arguements about this issue, IT Bosses usually get hired without proper knowledge about the IT Industry… Don’t know how things are done, why are done, how much does it cost to be done and other questions…
The challenge that was stated is reasonable (Well in the way that I see it)… It goes like this:
If a person applied to be an IT Boss, he\she\it must know how to render “Hello, World!” in C, HTML and PHP… And the ability to pull “Hello, World!” from a MySQL with a perl script… Other than that the person is in no place for such position!
I kinda agree in some points… Even googling a little could reveal the answers for the questions above!
But here’s where I disagree;
Boss should know more social skills than computer skills noting that computer skills are a must while social skills are needed more… Y’see, computer skills might differs by computer environments (as in if the IT department deals with networking, developing or troubleshooting)… While social skills doesn’t differ (well, might differ but in little amount of differences) because you’ll be dealing with IT employees who are human…
We can argue in this subject for days… And everyone can prove their own points in a way or another…
So I’ll just leave you the Slashdot link and you go enjoy it there…
It is said that your social skills at work account for 80% of your success. 20% for the technical skills, which is why hard-core geeks don’t fit in managerial positions perhaps.
But even best social skill without technical skill is a nightmare I’ve lived. One could say anything to the manager and he would believe. Else, even the best proofs won’t convince him if he was of the other type.
A good combination of both is what a manager of your dreams is 🙂
I really laughed when I read the challenge… I wouldn’t be able to be an IT boss because I’m no good in MySQL (though learning isn’t a hard task)…
But true, social skills are really important, but being a boss of something you know nothing about is a big no-no…