

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

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doktrin
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).

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Tyrannosaurs
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
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.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
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.

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Adaptive
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.

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beezlebob
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 :)

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j_col
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 :-(

~~~
kokey
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
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...

~~~
kokey
Security certainly has it nailed, since the CISSP works like I described, and
isn't vendor specific.

I believe a senior IT 'management' type qualification needs to cover, amongst
a wide variety of things, things like development management (e.g. mythical
man month) cost management (e.g. COCOMO) and general business sense (e.g. not
getting locked in by a vendor).

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endymi0n
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.

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rekisu
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.

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y1426i
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 :-)

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supervillain
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?

