I found this so true! I removed my previous post due to the blog link I found it at was a $#$% of a owner.
There are so many reasons why working for the 'IT Man' sucks. Badly managed companies have high turnover, low morale, and employees who hate their jobs. Obviously, many of the causes overlap, so this will be a living document, changing over time and with your feedback.
1. Vendor Kickbacks/Bribes – the purchase of software, consultants, and IT services to those NOT most qualified, but to those that provide the manager with tickets to games, vacations trips, potential new job opportunities, and other 'loop holes' in corporate policy. This can cost companies millions of dollars down the road on failed integration projects, extra contractors, and unneeded services and software. I never thought much about this as a young developer, but as I advanced higher into the ranks as a senior developer, I would be invited to attend manager meetings for 'technical support'. Here I would see Directors spinning products that were total crap and way over-priced. Even though I would point out as much, these directors would still insist on pushing those products to the other managers in the room. I was personally involved in a situation like this where my company was going through some layoffs. They ended up laying off one of these directors who kept pushing products from company 'X'. Any guesses as to who that director went to work for after he got laid off?
2. The Hiring And Retaining Of Unqualified IT Employees- IT positions can pay very well. Managers will skip over better qualified candidates in favor of giving them to non-technical friends and family members to increase those people's incomes. While their job description & title will say that they are a 'programmer', they will never write one line of code. Inevitably, you end up with a situation where there are 10 unnecessary people 'supporting' 1 person who is actually a programmer. Being the only person who ever does anything besides meetings will eventually wear down the programmer and they will leave for a better job. The others will dig in – hoping to keep their high paying jobs as long as possible, hoping no one realizes they don't have a clue as to what they are doing. These people, of course, will eventually become IT Managers! What you end up with is a corporation that encourages its worst employees to stay, and its best employees to leave. Not only do the worst employees stay, they get promoted.
3. Non-Technical Executives Managing IT - Large corporations don't understand that managing an IT shop is way different than managing any other shop. There are executive
