More Tales of Terrible IT Managers

“IT Management Fail: Always Blame the Worker Bees, in which I
rant at an article that was a paean to terrible managers, struck a
chord with readers, who shared some of their own stories:

“Management Meltdown

“Let me start with a short story about a situation I dealt with
this past summer. I flew out to a client site where I found a
broken architecture, management with no idea what was wrong while
pointing fingers, and a completely dispirited team. After two weeks
of taking a look at what was running (and what wasn’t) we’d
isolated a dozen specific problems with specific workable
solutions, and did so using that dispirited team getting excited
about fixing stuff and showing up for meetings. Other teams at the
client – testing and environment groups – were shocked with the
speed we moved as well as how informed and on top of things we
were. The two real bad employees were corralled and worked around –
the rest lined up and rocked through.

“Over the course of two weeks I heard numerous complaints from
the management and executive team about the IT team. The majority
of which was baseless, and the remainder aimed at the wrong people.
In fact the two real problem employees (out of thirteen) were
partially championed as hard working saviours – when in fact they
were openly sabotaging their own efforts, blaming it on others, and
then getting praised for suggesting unworkable solutions.”

Complete
Story