What Does a Good IT Manager Look Like?

"I like a boss that doesn't waste my time with useless interruptions. A lot of managers think that busywork is productivity, like running around having meetings, filling out reports, and taking phone calls. Every interruption to a task that requires concentration and focus sets it back, sometimes a lot. Very few people can multi-task, though they think that juggling a dozen tasks while giving a couple of percents of attention to each one is being productive. It's not; it's doing a lot of tasks poorly. Most of us do better focusing on one task at a time, giving it all of our attention until it is completed or we come to a good stopping point.

"I like a manager that understands the business and where my little part of it fits in. It's rather amazing to me how many managers have no clue what real productivity is, what the business goals are, how to advance them, or how to set priorities. It's demoralizing to work on something and then see it scrapped, all that work thrown away, or to get stuck wheel-spinning and keep doing the same things over and over for new managers who don't bother to learn recent history, or old ones who don't understand why they're getting the same bad results from doing the same things. I expect my boss to have a clear direction and strategy, and to keep us workers bees on track."

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