When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers
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@Mario-Jakovina said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
To me "Managing Sales" and "doing Sales" are both part of Sales.
Managing isn't buying. Managing IT means you understand what you are doing and using those skills to make decisions, just at a manager level. Buying IT means you aren't managing. The title manager is often given to buyers to make them appear to be managers, when they really are not.
Managing is a real job that requires real work. Buying / hiring someone else to be the manager is very, very different from being the manager. What we see most often is someone with the IT Manager title, who manages nothing and often has no idea what he's supposed to manage, who them "buys" IT elsewhere and often ignores the need for management and ends up with unmanaged IT.
You'd never accept this in another division like finance. But in IT, people tend to be so confused and accept such a low standard from their employees that it's often easy to hide.
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@Mario-Jakovina said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
IT's primary value is in evaluating options, often an insanely broad range of them in loads of highly disparate arenas, and taking into account all the tech stuff, and applying all of the applicable business stuff, and making a decision as to all kinds of things that might involve.. buying software, hiring programmers for bespoke software, buying hardware, how a network is designed, who is hired, where they work, and on and on.
It seems to me that IT is just different (than examples in my prevoius post) because it is hard to find person who understand business needs and have deep knowledge of various IT solutions available in various IT fields as SAM described in this quote.
I don't believe that it's hard to find people, because nearly everyone you find that knows this stuff struggles to get hired while those with zero skills or clue are readily hired. I think it's more that finding a competent CEO is really hard and they don't want to admit that they dont know what they are doing and tend to favour people who pander to their egos rather than those that do the job. If a CEO actually wanted good work, it's not hard to find people. If every CEO cared, we'd run out of people fast, but in the real world, there's a lot of great people and companies with loads of excess capacity wishing companies would let them do a good job for them.
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@Mario-Jakovina said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
And to me, it can be fine that manager is "buyer", but that does not mean he cannot be excellent at his job.
Everyone in IT is a buyer sometimes. The question isn't "should we ever buy IT", it's really about "when do you stop being IT when all you do is buy?"
Example... a CEO hires a CIO / vCIO / MSP whatever. The CEO would never, ever claim to do IT even when the CEO makes the only buying decision (to hire a full firm to handle everything.) It's a quick, one time (more or less) decision and, if done well, provides for all the IT needs. Same goes for finance, the CEO hires the CFO and/or hires a financial firm. Same for legal. And on and on. The CEO picks all the people at the top. But the CEO doesn't claim to be a lawyer, do IT, etc.
But if the person that the CEO hires, and calls an IT Manager, then turns around and simply does the same thing again and hires yet another person to "do IT" and does none themselves, why would they claim to work in IT if the CEO didn't? They both did the same job.
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@Mario-Jakovina You have some good points for sure. In my opinion, IT should not just be buyers though. In my situation, they have very few skills and spend a lot more money "buying IT" than they would if people in those positions has some skills. We have a couple good people but the rest or meh. So to me, if your spending more money like this its a bad business decision not to have people with skills in those positions. There is also the fact that if they had better skills then they would make better buying decisions too.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
This is very different. If I have a sales manager (and I do), I want him to be able to do sales, to know when people in the department are good at sales or not, to know how to hire and fire, to train, to mentor.
I like this point. Managers need to be competent in the area they are managing. They also need to do a little of the work to stay competent. Also nothing is more encouraging than seeing your boss in the trenches with you helping getting stuff done once in a while. That really improves morale.
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@jmoore said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
In my situation, they have very few skills and spend a lot more money "buying IT" than they would if people in those positions has some skills.
Right, a key skill of doing IT is "good buying." If you bypass that and just buy the buying skill, you end up with having not bought what you needed in the first place.
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@scottalanmiller Maybe one way to phrase the "buying of IT" is to call it "buying of IT skills" so that it differentiates it from products. That is really what has to be done at time. You fill in gaps in your teams knowledge with this.
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@scottalanmiller In my limited opinion, I think the point where they are just an IT buyer is when they do it 90% or more of the time. When this happens I am confident they lose the ability to participate in discussions and make good decisions.
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@jmoore said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller Maybe one way to phrase the "buying of IT" is to call it "buying of IT skills" so that it differentiates it from products. That is really what has to be done at time. You fill in gaps in your teams knowledge with this.
How the heck can someone confuse hardware and software for IT? I mean, I guess someone who doesn't know what IT is. But working in IT, it's pretty weird to confuse the job we do, with tools that we buy. I think if we have to explain that, there's no hope to the conversation, lol.
I've never met someone who confused their own job, with say a desktop before. Not even a janitor looks at a laptop and says "that's IT". They know it's a computer and that IT is the people who work on it.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
How the heck can someone confuse hardware and software for IT?
lol well they must because of the decisions people make all the time. I know, it seems incredulous.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@jmoore said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller Maybe one way to phrase the "buying of IT" is to call it "buying of IT skills" so that it differentiates it from products. That is really what has to be done at time. You fill in gaps in your teams knowledge with this.
How the heck can someone confuse hardware and software for IT? I mean, I guess someone who doesn't know what IT is. But working in IT, it's pretty weird to confuse the job we do, with tools that we buy. I think if we have to explain that, there's no hope to the conversation, lol.
I've never met someone who confused their own job, with say a desktop before. Not even a janitor looks at a laptop and says "that's IT". They know it's a computer and that IT is the people who work on it.
Yeah you have the point right here. People think they are doing IT when they buy software/tools and have those they manage figure them out, deploy them, and support them. Your right though, you can't even have a conversation with people like this. I know, I've tried.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
How the heck can someone confuse hardware and software for IT?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I've never met someone who confused their own job, with say a desktop before. Not even a janitor looks at a laptop and says "that's IT".
I think you give them too much credit lol. That would imply they are intelligent enough to think things through just a little. I'm certainly not too intelligent in my opinion, but some of these people I work with are on the low end of the spectrum if you know what I mean.
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@jmoore said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
This is very different. If I have a sales manager (and I do), I want him to be able to do sales, to know when people in the department are good at sales or not, to know how to hire and fire, to train, to mentor.
I like this point. Managers need to be competent in the area they are managing. They also need to do a little of the work to stay competent. Also nothing is more encouraging than seeing your boss in the trenches with you helping getting stuff done once in a while. That really improves morale.
I completely agree with this.
I do not agree with other points where it seems you (or SAM) presume that "buyer" means "incompetent buyer". Why would we presume that? I will answer to other points...
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I like the plumber analogy. There is a huge difference between being a customer who pays for a plumber, and being a plumber. You need both. Plumbers need people to work for, and plumbing work needs to be done. But for some reason, in IT, we tend to confuse the two.
Well I don't like plumber analogy.
Plumbing is much simpler problem, nobody I know have "plumbing department" or "plumbing manager".
All of us need plumbing services, but we do not need to seriously understand plumbing.IT is much more involved in all business processes.
IT is something that can be one company's serious strength or weakness - I would not say that for plumbing.That's why I think comparison with Sales or Finance is more adequate.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Managing isn't buying. Managing IT means you understand what you are doing and using those skills to make decisions, just at a manager level. Buying IT means you aren't managing
I completely agree with first and second sentence here.
But how you come up with "Buying IT means you aren't managing"? Is this your definiotion of buying?
To me buying is part of managing (IT, Finance, Sales...), just like it seems you agreed with me on that in other post.Here it seems you presume that I said that managing is only buying (is not), and that "buyer" means "incompetent buyer"
I can agree that incompetent IT buyer is not IT.
And I can also agree that "incompetent doer" is real IT
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
So now the question becomes... how much IT work does someone do in position X before they are classified as a buyer or hirer of IT rather than IT themselves?
When I try to answer to this question, it seems that the problem of "classifying" is only with people titled "IT manager" or similar, or others that make IT decisions.
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Managing IT means you understand what you are doing and using those skills to make decisions, just at a manager level.
Let's think of an example where "IT manager" knows IT very well, makes good decisions, but he outsource everything (no other IT employees).
Can he be good IT manager? Probably yes.
Is he Buyer or Doer? If I understand Scott, he is Buyer?
Does it stop even being IT? I think not.Let's think of example where "IT manager" is incompetent, makes bad decisions and outsource everything.
What is the difference between these two? Just that the second one is incompetent
Does it stop even being IT? YES - but just becuse he is incompetent.So I think term "Buyers" should not mean that such person is "not IT themselves".
If we agree on that, we can differentiate Buying vs Doing quite easily.
And I think most GOOD poeple in SMB IT are partly buyers, partly doers.
I do not see need or possibility to "draw a line" between Buyers nad Doers, and classify people in one of two boxes. -
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@Mario-Jakovina said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
IT's primary value is in evaluating options, often an insanely broad range of them in loads of highly disparate arenas, and taking into account all the tech stuff, and applying all of the applicable business stuff, and making a decision as to all kinds of things that might involve.. buying software, hiring programmers for bespoke software, buying hardware, how a network is designed, who is hired, where they work, and on and on.
It seems to me that IT is just different (than examples in my prevoius post) because it is hard to find person who understand business needs and have deep knowledge of various IT solutions available in various IT fields as SAM described in this quote.
I don't believe that it's hard to find people, because nearly everyone you find that knows this stuff struggles to get hired while those with zero skills or clue are readily hired. I think it's more that finding a competent CEO is really hard and they don't want to admit that they dont know what they are doing and tend to favour people who pander to their egos rather than those that do the job. If a CEO actually wanted good work, it's not hard to find people. If every CEO cared, we'd run out of people fast, but in the real world, there's a lot of great people and companies with loads of excess capacity wishing companies would let them do a good job for them.
I am CEO, trying to find person to manage IT. I am on different market then you are. Skilled IT people usually work for companies from richer European countries, or US companies (taking over your jobs there).
I agree, it is hard to find competent CEO. But it is also hard to find competent IT people that understands business.
Most IT people find general business problems "boring" so they are not motivated to understand them. Most expect that somebody else "define needs or problems", and then they can find or give solution.
Good IT manager will see needs and problems that general management does not see, and add value to company in that way.Same is in Finance (my primary proffession). I came here, saw a lot of mistakes nobody knew about, and I have added a lot of value where nobody see the possibilities. Problems that I was hired for in the beginning where only part of what I've done.
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@Mario-Jakovina You make some good points and are certainly right that many IT do not try to understand the business aspect. Of course it can also be argued that if you don't understand business, are you really doing IT correctly.
