No, I Will Not Fix Your #@$!! Computer → My first management challenge

I have been in an IT Director role for a couple years now. In that time, I have really brought IT up another level in terms of service, response time, but also capability. In a company of 200 people, we brought on another IT person to assist with the day to day things as well. I have earned the respect of my peers and life is good.

Yesterday, they merged another team with my team. This other team does software installs at remote locations. Its a piece of software that is not incredibly complex, but it requires some support at times and its one that our customers need. This software really has not been a focus and it became one earlier this year, so my boss thought it would be prevalent to hand it over to me.

I have been working with the people who install this software and they are all good people. There is one though that is just a bit different from the others. He always works with people very well and his performance is very good. At the same time though, his only drawback is that he has no patience.

Today I had a chance to have lunch with him to talk about his goals, and he thinks he is owed a bigger opportunity. Even though he just graduated from college 10 months ago, has no certs, and really needs to prove himself a bit more in his job. I explained this to him, and worked with him on a plan to improve himself at the same time he improves his department. He seemed interested, but just said that he wasn't happy doing what he is doing now and wants to have a "clear plan" to achieve his goals. Most of his goal is about money.

I have been working with everyone in the IT department when it comes to achieving their goals. I want to see everyone grow to a higher level so they can achieve the goals in their careers. At the same time though, this guy has no patience to wait. I think he doesn't mind working toward these goals, but the fact that he feels like something is owed to him really turns me off a bit.

Maybe its a generational gap. I am 41 now and he is only 22. My generation really had to work their asses off to get what was owed to them. Nothing was just given, and I think he understands it but he doesn't like it. I am going to keep working with him as best as I can to help grow him, but.....

How would you act in this situation? Would you have more or less patience for this kind of thing?

The thing that I worry about is making a plan for him only to have the plan not go through because of one reason or another and then having him get upset at me.

In what area of IT does he want to develop? Administration? Database? Network?

Without knowing his interests, there's no way to direct him.

Maybe the "what job do you want to be doing in 5 years" question could work.

Whatever you do, make no promises or even intimations of advancement. The employee should advance on his own, then the company takes notice and offers something or risks losing the employee. The company may provide guidance and maybe invest in training but that's not a promise of anything.

He wants to develop more in the network area. That much is certain. He has said network architect, but getting to that point is going to be a lot of work. I think he understands that.

I didn't make any promises to him, but I did say that if he takes the lead in what he is doing now I would lobby for him to start working in the networking side. He wants assurances, but I told him that there are no assurances in business. He has to put forward the hard work and show himself to be putting himself above and beyond where he is now.

I guess the thing that I am concerned about is that he feels that he is owed this opportunity after 10 months on the job and no certs. Sure, he has pitched in as much as he can, but he really needs to not only own what he does now but to take initiative outside of his normal job to show that he is ready to move on. I already said I would be willing to pay for his books and certification tests if he chose to pursue that.

I just don't know what he will do. I like this guy to a certain extent. Just wish he had more patience.

Tell him he needs more patience. I was like that when I was in my early twenties.

Tell him to even think about networking, he has to go get his CCNA, when that's done he will be qualified to do the entry level network tasks he want to get into. If he want to do anything more complex, he has to get the CCNP, and that's just the start. Its not your job to make any promises or make any career paths, those days are LONG gone.

And yes, welcome to the cuddled entitled generation, but its not there fault, they were raised that way by what are now 40-50 year olds

How long has this person been working in the IT field?

I agree with guppy_fish, whatever your opinion is of certifications, a CCNA is necessary for network techs. Are the CompTIA certs still valuable? Maybe look at some of them as well.

Is his current work very Standard Operating Procedure driven? or has he designed/built anything for the company? If he's looking to transition into architecture, he must (imo) acquire a solid foundation first.

Nightfall, overall I agree with you, it's presumptuous on his part unless he has several years under his belt where he can rightly say he has "paid his dues" by doing the grunt work.

However I can perhaps understand this guy's attitude if he was shined on/strung along under his previous management. Having been there I can definitely relate to that. Again it comes back to how long he's been in his current role.

Not including school, only about 10 months.

This is a good point. The work he does now is SOP driven, but no SOPs have been developed. I pointed him in that direction because developing SOPs really is something he should be looking at.

I can tell you that some assurances were made by other managers. These were not delivered upon though. I just became his manager about a month ago and, as I do with everyone who works under me, I immediately start working with him on making him better professionally and personally. As others have said here, patience is key. I can't make anyone a architect overnight.

i can't really add to much that has been stated here. he's fighting against assurances that were made by previous management and possibly an inflated sense of self (he's always been the smarter guy in the room and he feels it will just carry over).

i've been with $employer for almost 7 years (my anniversary date is in september). i started right out of high school as a desktop deployment guy (despite a strong background in networking, ccna cert, and working towards ccnp). it was a long slog to even have engineers trust me to ride along with a project/cut -- and even then i did mostly "grunt" work. it took almost 4 years to have customers that i supported solely -- and would ask for me by name.

fast forward a few years, i've gained *a lot* of experience in the field; long nights, cuts going pear-shaped, learning about different topologies and how "industry" actually designs and deploys gear. as of last month, i was moved into a "solutions architect" role -- which encompasses a little bit of everything: training and coursework for new technologies, practices and methodologies for existing technologies, working with the sales arm to ensure that all pieces are being scoped/quoted correctly, and whiteboarding with customers in complex or critical accounts within the company. i couldn't do what i do if i didn't have a strong background of what "works" and what doesn't, as well as a strong understanding of the platforms, their behaviours, idiosyncrasies, and limitations.

i say all of this without having a cisco certification to my name (my ccna expired in 2007 and i never renewed it). i've passed my ccie r/s written and failed my first lab attempt. its very possible to be good at what you do without certifications -- but its harder. i've lived, ate, and breathed this stuff for 7 years. i'm still young, full of piss and vinegar, and kind of a prick at times, but i've managed to overcome some of that and be "presentable".

tl;dr -- tell him it takes time. having an "architect" title sounds cool, but there is a lot behind it. a lot of planning, coordinating, cost-analysis, working with oem's around design and strategy, and if things fail -- its not just that it doesn't work -- its money, both in gear and in labour -- that will be needed to correct it. its not easy. its a lot of pressure and it takes time to get there.

q.

I totally agree with you on certifications. At the same time though, my main objective is to get him ready for the next phase in his career. In this world, you have three critera when it comes to getting a good paying job.

1. Experience
2. Education
3. Certifications

If you have all three, then you are good to go.

Right now, this guy I am working with has the Education, but he doesn't have the experience or certs. Worse yet is he feels entitled to a big paycheck when he really hasn't proven himself. He has a lot to learn, and I want to help him out in getting to the next level.

The certifications at his junction would help him out. They would help out in giving him a boost where experience is lacking.

Ah, ok. I just turned 23, so maybe I can lend a "younger" perspective. I've been in a slowly progressing IT capacity for over 4 years, and all I remember thinking at the 10 month mark was how lucky I was to have an IT-related job at such a young/inexperienced age. That was wonderful for both myself and my employer; I was happy to work for basically nothing.

Without getting too far into my story and how my outlook has changed since then, here's what I would consider doing if I were in your shoes. If he's doing a good job in his current capacity, make sure to tell him that he's doing a good job and that you're interested in building his capacity within the organization. As mentioned above, the "five year" or even "one year" prospectus question would be a good one to ask. If he says "I want to be a network architect by July 2014" or something equally untenable, you'll have to tell him that it's just not possible to leap so far ahead in such a short period of time. I suppose if it comes to that, you can deflect by suggesting a smaller "stepping stone" role that you can fit him into if he gets his CCNA or whatever.

The most important thing is to temper his short term expectations so that you can grow him within your organization over the longer term. He may just be so comfortable with his current situation that he thinks he knows everything and is entitled to more than he really is. Simply going through the CCNA program may be enough to calm him down because he will quickly learn that he doesn't know everything.

yes and no.
they will provide experience on how to configure things and major pitfalls to avoid. cisco tests aren't always what is done in the industry in terms of best practice. they build up the skills so that you can learn best practice for implementation. certs are important -- but its important to temper what they are learning with how it should be applied.
at times -- he'll need to be thrown in the fire to see what he can accomplish. life isn't always about being handed a gift-wrapped deployment -- sometimes you just get dropped into something with little direction and are told to figure things out. those that can, move on. you get beat up. you take your punches. you learn. wash, rinse, repeat.

my two bits. i've been dropped in some crap and have failed miserably quite a few times. its how you learn, sadly.

q.

Absolutely, which is why I say "give a boost", not "provide all the answers". Certifications as a whole really do help, both professionally and personally. They have to be kept in perspective though to the bigger picture. Human Resource people who hire based on these certifications are doing their company a great disservice. Those that use certifications as a way to evaluate the whole package are using them the way they are intended.

I think most 20 somethings are like this, they are the right now generation. They want to get as high as they can & make the most money possible in the shortest time, the one other thing is that if they don't get they want they move on fast to some other employer. Your 20 something could do the same if he doesn't feel like he is progressing forward fast enough.

Unfortunately that's how many educational institutions do their IT hires... the HR departments are so used to looking for teacher certificates and masters degrees, that's how they hire an IT person... I've worked with techs that can memorize tests and pass a ton of certs, only to ask me how to do a DoD wipe of a drive, which even if you don't know, you could easily google it and find out.

The job I'm in now, I was recruited because as my bosses put it "the department is so inbreed, (as in they came up through the school as student assistants) that they don't know what industry standard even means." I've been here less than a year, and I've identified close to 100k yearly that we can save on licensing costs, cause they already own a better product that no one took time to learn... but HR only cared about what certs I had when I was being filtered through, not my other experience in the field.

I quoted the two items that are pertinent to this situation.

1) There was a time when I fell into the latter category, when the agitating speed of 'older people' delayed me from completing my tasks. If you've ever waited in line at an ATM machine for an elderly woman to complete her ATM transaction, that was the feeling I suffered on a daily basis all throughout the day. I'm not exaggerating the feeling, it really is stressful when you're working around people that can't think as fast as you can and not until you're older do you realize the significance of aging and its effect on your mental acuity and alacrity.

2) I'd also experienced generational issues but not the same as those suggested in this thread. Basically my superiors were not fully utilizing me to my full capabilities while they were delegating tasks most appropriate for me to slower, older folks who often stumbled through their tasks. This may have seemed to my superiors as a situation where I felt I was owed the world but the reality was I was seeking more work and responsibility because I needed it. To saturate my attention I'd fill in the gaps by aiding the older guys, completing a lot of their work and allowing them to take the credit for it.

These experiences may not apply directly to your situation but its food for thought.

My suggestion to you is to load up this young fellow with plenty of additional tasks and have him prove to you that he can handle it. If he feels he's 'better' than he's regarded, see if it's true; if it's not true, you'll both see this and perhaps it will take the wind out of his sails a bit and if it is true, perhaps you've found someone that you could utilize more effectively than you are now.

Good points! I have just loaded him up on tasks in order to show me he is ready to take on a bigger role. The area he is currently in is in dire need of updating the documentation and someone to lead that area. I am setting him up to do these things. I told him that I am going to set him up for success, and if he can get that department up into tip-top shape, then he would have proven himself.

After he gets that down, then we can talk about the next phase which is more on the infrastructure side of things.

Coming to this REALLY late and with not much else to add...

I think the certs idea is a good thing. 10months on the job, no experience or certs can really hurt, and
I don't know if this guy can see that or not.

Putting some network-related side tasks to him is also a good idea. Hand him the task, set him loose and
see what he does with it.

Keep an open door with him. Don't know how his previous managers handled him, but nothing like a boss
that says "my door's always open," and sticking to that policy, to let a person know they're valued.

Training. Any possibility of the company footing part / all of the bill for training / learning? Or if
the company offers any techinical training at all, and not just in networking, but other IT topics as well?
You never know, it might spark this guy's interest into something else... and it'd give this guy some options.

I got stuck on the patience thing myself, and having been on that side of the desk before, it sucks to hear
"the boss" repeat the same refrain over and over. If he doesn't get it that, tell this guy he'll have to
face the hard truth and may have to go someplace else for what he wants, and offer to help him out for a
work reference.

My 00000010bits.

Regards

Bah. Cert, shmert. The best-of-the-best engineers I work with daily don't have any certs.

I don't either, and I'm in a pretty awesome role. Came out of college and landed a junior sysadmin role, moved up to lead a 10-person SA team in a few years, and now I've spent the last few years as a senior architect/client consultant for one of the big tech firms.

Hard work, innovative initiative and production under pressure are far, far more valuable than pieces of paper.

Thankfully, I'm at that point in my career where if a potential employer demands certs, it's a sign that I don't want to work there.

First things first. "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." - Mark Twain

Do you have the job requirements for the position that he is interested in? If so, pull that out and work with getting a plan to help him meet those requirements.

There is every possibility that he will start on that path and see how much work it is and then quit. Better he quit early. I worked with a guy like this years ago, always chasing the dollar and looking for ways to get rich quick.

What might be a good method is discussing the amount of time and effort you have had to put in, in order to get to where you are now. Maybe hearing your story might give him an idea that he needs to work to get where he wants to be.

Agreed. I had a long list of what I referred to as "BS certs", all those useless CompTIA certs, maintained my MCSE since the NT 4 days and I once had MCT, but I think those all lapsed. The only marginally useful certs were the Cisco certs since they forced me to hunker down and learn IOS programming pre-test.

While I wrote every test by strolling into the testing center whenever I felt like it, acing a test based on hands on experiencing, our local community college churns out Microsoft + Cisco certified 'network engineers' that are ill-equipped to handle a 10 user network, never mind a corporate infrastructure.

I enthusiastically agree that "Hard work, innovative initiative and production under pressure are far, far more valuable than pieces of paper" and this is the primary focus of my hiring when I'm in a role to do so, however I do feel that the certifications are a contributory factor in selecting an employee if he already shines in the more important areas. I have hired successful IT employees with zero certifications and they're stellar at their job.

From a candidate's point of view the only thing that matters is what the employer wants. I was a Linux Engineer for the Feds and had to be certified in Red Hat, and have a security cert....as well as a clearance. It didn't matter if I thought certs were worthless. I either had them, or I didn't have the job, so they most certainly weren't worthless. I'll tell you this too, I know a lot of people who think they're good sysadmins who wouldn't stand a chance on Red Hat's live exam. As far as CompTIA, try sitting at a DoD keyboard without at least Sec+. And they now except CASP for higher level roles in 8570. The fact that they meet both IA and CE certification requirements means they most definitely are NOT worthless, regardless of what we think.

With that being said, I once did not value certs, and still only do as a way of augmenting a knowledge base if you don't want to work for the Feds. Even though I was a 15 year veteran when I took Sec+ to let me do federal contract work, I learned some things during my study period. They are not worthless at all. They're just not a replacement for real experience.

I evaluated various IT/IS openings for the Department of Defense and I didn't see any mention of your suggested pre-requisites. You wouldn't happen to have a citation would you? I'd be interested to see their list and compare it with the Canadian equivalent.

I wouldn't say that certifications are worthless, but they are worth less than the value a lot of people put on them, especially those that are looking to fill positions. Having a certification is just like having a degree. You have proof of the knowledge, but not of your ability to apply it. The best certification test I've ever taken was an HP printer test. Because it was open book, just like real life. The questions were things along the lines of "The display shows ERROR 72, what do you need to replace?" No one can know everything, but they should know how to find the answer, even if the solution is posting to a place like DSL Reports. I don't know everything, but I do know that there are a lot of knowledgeable people here who can steer me in the right direction. People with real world experience.

Google DoD Directive 8570. Best regards.