Hiring Disparity
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@technobabble said:
Did you know outside of the SMB sector, that businesses or employees don't know what IT is or what an IT person is?
I don't know what IT is! I asked that very question in a new thread on here a few weeks ago, and was still none the wiser. I often tell people I'm a Computer Programmer rather than an IT Manager, as I can understand what that is. When people ask me to describe what I do as an IT Manager I can't really explain.
I think IT is a horrible term. I prefer "Business Infrastructure."
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@technobabble said:
A friend saw a post about IT techs that I posted and asked me what is an it? I had to explain IT duties could be: computer repair, networking, malware/AV cleanup, backup management etc.
That's shocking. That's up there with not knowing what a teacher or engineer is. Although, in reality, most people only pretend to know what an engineer is and don't actually know much about the field at all and would have no idea what an industrial engineer, manufacturing systems engineer, civil engineer, ceramics engineer or other fields do.
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Well, this is not the article that I was looking for (insert Star Wars joke) but it's close enough: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497891/Renaissance-man
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I often tell people I'm a Computer Programmer rather than an IT Manager, as I can understand what that is.
Well a computer programmer is not an IT field but a software development field. Related but not in IT itself, which would add confusion. And IT Manager means that you manager IT people, that's a management discipline not a technical one. So both titles suggest that you are not in IT, just related to it (either beside it or over it.) IT Managers can be IT people who became managers (Peter Principle) or non-IT people that are used as managers (Dilbert Principle) or some combination. They can be hands or or not. But the "IT Manager" title makes no sense as an IT description because it isn't one, it's a manager role. Manager is pretty easy to understand. If those people are IT people (harder to describe) then probably you are an IT Manager.
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Managers don't just have to manage people.
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But Managers usually (in every other industry) just Manage. Generally a manager is the least qualified person to do what the people under them are doing. When I see that as someone's title I assume they are dumb and don't have a clue (says the person with Managing Director in their title).
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Managers don't just have to manage people.
That's what the term means. Especially in IT. There is no "manager" role in IT outside of people. Using that title without being a manager definitely would create job confusion everywhere.
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@Minion-Queen said:
But Managers usually (in every other industry) just Manage. Generally a manager is the least qualified person to do what the people under them are doing. When I see that as someone's title I assume they are dumb and don't have a clue (says the person with Managing Director in their title).
That's the Dilbert principle. The old Peter principle was that someone would work their way through the ranks and only manage when they went above and beyond what the field would provide. Engineering used to be this way. The best, most senior engineers would traditionally become managers after needing more money than being a senior engineer could provide. But they figured out that the best people were being wasted as managers where they were not skilled instead of in engineering where they were skilled.
So the Dilbert Principle came about to have the least skilled be wasted as managers rather than the most.
In theory, you want career manages managing career techs. That way, in theory, both are doing what they love and are skilled at.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Not even close. For example, to sit for the CPA exam, which has four parts, you have to have a certain number of logged hours in certain types of work, primarily tax and audit (two separate things). And to sit for the CPA exam, unless they've changed it, you are required to have at least at Bachelor's degree IN accounting. Less than 10% of people get their CPA license on the first try. Most need at least two rounds. The thing about accounting is that it's as much knowing tax law, if not more, as it is how to "do the numbers". My father is a CPA and says that so much of accounting is learning the law that makes up a given scenario, etc. Without hands-on experience, and a lot of it, you would never pass the CPA exam, regardless of how much you studied.
Requirements are silly, though. Logged hours means that you are working in the field prior to certification. So that's an advanced cert. I know that CPA is way beyond "accountant." Same for MBA. You are supposed to be a career manager before attempting an MBA. The CPA exam is hard, I understand, but I think we are talking more of a "normal" account level certification here. IT has plenty of exams that require "logged hours" but they still don't get harder, they just get weird because anyone can log hours.
Knowing tax law is just learning from books though, right? Not like CPAs can practice law as attorneys before taking the exam.
Having to have a degree in a field is just more paper. They do that to RNs too.
Not really. The law of tax and such is interesting because it's very much an applied study. You don't just sit down to study tax law for the sake of studying it. You work on a return and when you run across something (this is a very loose interpretation), you research the laws that would affect this situation and see how each do or don't apply. Also, the extent of a CPA "practicing law" is just holding POA on a client's behalf.
The thing is, though, that in the accounting field, unless you obtain a CPA license, you will not go very far. Most firms won't let you go beyond a junior level position without a CPA license. So you can't get to a senior-level position, a manager's position, and especially not a partner.
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Especially as IT is a department name and really not a name for anything else. IT as a title really only exists with the "IT Department" and to a lesser extent "IT Professionals" the latter being something that should probably be replaced with something better. To be a manager of IT refers to managing a department or IT pros. To what else could it refer?
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@thanksaj said:
Not really. The law of tax and such is interesting because it's very much an applied study. You don't just sit down to study tax law for the sake of studying it.
You can say that about any field. You don't just sit down to learn Windows administration for the sake of studying it. Yet people do that to pass certifications.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
Managers don't just have to manage people.
That's what the term means.
Well, it's not my understanding of the term.
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@thanksaj said:
The thing is, though, that in the accounting field, unless you obtain a CPA license, you will not go very far. Most firms won't let you go beyond a junior level position without a CPA license. So you can't get to a senior-level position, a manager's position, and especially not a partner.
Understood, but in IT most people never move up from being junior people. The pyramid of IT has a vast number of people on the lower levels and only an extremely few high up. It seems like there are many because the pyramid itself is so huge (millions and millions of people.) But the base to top ratio is big.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Well, it's not my understanding of the term.
How do you define the term? What is a manager to you?
I think if you ask normal people what a "manager" does, even people in high school, or retirees, or teachers, or engineers... they will almost all respond that a manager is a person that oversees the work of other people.
Manager, after teacher, might be one of the most universally understood job terms. I can't imagine many jobs having a more strict definition.
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@nadnerB said:
Well, this is not the article that I was looking for (insert Star Wars joke) but it's close enough: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497891/Renaissance-man
Also a really good movie with Danny Devito
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@scottalanmiller said:
How do you define the term? What is a manager to you?
I think if you ask normal people what a "manager" does, even people in high school, or retirees, or teachers, or engineers... they will almost all respond that a manager is a person that oversees the work of other people.
I define it as someone involved in management (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/management) ie "The process of dealing with or controlling things or people". In this case, the "thing" is IT.
I guess that either I'm not normal, or you're not normal, or the UK has a different definition to the US.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
How do you define the term? What is a manager to you?
I think if you ask normal people what a "manager" does, even people in high school, or retirees, or teachers, or engineers... they will almost all respond that a manager is a person that oversees the work of other people.
I define it as someone involved in management (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/management) ie "The process of dealing with or controlling things or people". In this case, the "thing" is IT.
I guess that either I'm not normal, or you're not normal, or the UK has a different definition to the US.
I get where you're coming from, but Scott is right in this one. Managers manage people. Correct me if I'm wrong @scottalanmiller but would IT Director be a more appropriate title in this case for @Carnival-Boy ?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@technobabble said:
A friend saw a post about IT techs that I posted and asked me what is an it? I had to explain IT duties could be: computer repair, networking, malware/AV cleanup, backup management etc.
That's shocking. That's up there with not knowing what a teacher or engineer is. Although, in reality, most people only pretend to know what an engineer is and don't actually know much about the field at all and would have no idea what an industrial engineer, manufacturing systems engineer, civil engineer, ceramics engineer or other fields do.
But a sad sad reality. In the 90s ASE was pushing hard to change the public's expectation of a mechanic (think Cooter on Dukes of Hazzard) to an Automotive Technician that using high tech tools and has the latest schooling on the latest vehicles.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I define it as someone involved in management (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/management) ie "The process of dealing with or controlling things or people". In this case, the "thing" is IT.
I guess that either I'm not normal, or you're not normal, or the UK has a different definition to the US.
I've never met a person that wasn't trying to promote their own title that disagreed with the concept that a manager is a manager of people. Only in SMB IT where people are trying to promote a title that they themselves possesses have I never heard it even suggested that a manager of "things" would be called a manager. Especially in IT where a "manager of things" is called an administrator. Given that there is a specific term for managing IT devices and a specific one for managing people it's most dramatic in the IT field where it's so clear what they mean.
So why not just tell people you are a manager then rather than mentioning IT at all? In the US, at least, "manager" is a title for managing people, always. I've been a manager, it was nothing like working in IT. But I called myself a manager and people knew exactly what I did without any additional explanation. If I called myself a manager now, people would think that I did exactly the opposite of what I do.
The Oxford dictionary defines the word, not the job.
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Also, @scottalanmiller and @Minion-Queen's point about mangers being the least qualified at what it is the people who they manage do, is also spot on. I think something that bears some confusion is that many people feel if they are in a position of oversight of one kind or another, they are a manager. However, manager really implies that their job is management, which means people. This is one of those connotative vs denotative things. If you look at the denotation of management, as you did, sure, slap any word in front of it and technically it's not incorrect. However, look at the connotation and it's a different story.
