My view on Tech People

I was having dinner a few days ago with a very good friend of mine who I’ve known for more than 20 years (eeeekkkk!!! revealing my age here) who was bemoaning the fact that he is finding it difficult to find quality staff to work with in his respective patch at one of the Evil Empires (insert one of the Telstra, Sensis, IBM or Accenture type of business and you get the idea)

I’m the first to confess that I’m not really, that technical in my view of the world, as defined by some of the super smart people I have worked with over my career. I’ve got technical understanding and I can support that with the evidence that I know how much I don’t know and know when to get out of the way. In that regard however I’m definitely a geek, who is into gadgets, but not the full blown cartoon level propeller head. I’d like to think I get along with developers in general terms, indeed, I find much of interest in their outlook and approach to doing things, but I don’t profess to understand the minutiae with which drives their day to day to be entertaining, rewarding and satisfying. I’m more interested in the outcomes they influence and how it can meet the commercial goals of the business that we’re working with.

The crux of his discussion was that he manages a number of managers, who in turn have platoons of dev’s reporting into his group and he had realised that over the years he had lost touch with what it was that devs ought to have as a core skill set, characteristics and aspirations in “stepping up” particularly in relation to their pay grade. It reminded me of an email I drilled up a little while back with some colleagues, trying to quantify this very viewpoint into something that was a little more tangible, so that of all small things, I could author a position description and send it to a recruiter for some staff we were looking for. Upon reading it again, I still stick by the below. I’ve found that over the years, it has given me a framework with how I manage people and more importantly interact with them in a meaningful way.

Staff Member Role Responsiblities, Obligations & Expectations

Company Values

1. Profitability & Sustainability – our ability to earn money, in a long term and effective manner

2. Quality – as defined by our work being judged and validated by our competitors and partners as being the best

3. Success – as defined by the feedback we elicit from our clients which is positive

Supporting the above

1. Adaptive – our ability as people to learn from our mistakes to improve and deliver on the above

1 Comment

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  Kaki Blogger August 21, 2011 at 05:00

  I Agree with this info will make all people know about it