In almost any IT role, there is a need to communicate with non-technical people in a comprehensible way,
absolute bobbins and also a bit weird and stalkerish that you bring up OPs contribution in another thread.
Yes communication skills are increasingly important in the appropriate role, so you can communicate effectively, enable change adoption and engage in process/service improvement, articulate strategic direction etc. But they are usually senior management or PM role where you need to be able to understand a wider range of technical concepts and articulate them as appropriate.
Not so true for SME technical roles where you aren't required to have those skills. Some of the very best, most valued staff I work with have zero communication skills, and do not have the ability or willingness to develop them.
Only place it really lets them down is at interview.
Oh and regarding being a help desk "monkey", I started in IT doing that for a bank and look back on it with fond memories. Learnt a lot and was a great foot in the door for moving upwards when the time came. If you have any large bank scale head offices etc near you, I wouldn't discount it.
Not so true for SME technical roles where you aren’t required to have those skills. Some of the very best, most valued staff I work with have zero communication skills, and do not have the ability or willingness to develop them.
I think it's a "it depends" in this case on the company size. Small companies I have worked at you chat to the owners and getting on with them helps! Bigger company with layers, different maybe.
On help desks:
My first IT job was telephone-based tech support. "Monkey" isn't that unfair a description, at the place I was at at least.
On the one hand, the learning curve is near vertical, you will learn a lot and fast. The people you work with, the ones who aren't there because "any job = money" at least, are mostly good people who took a support role because they wanted to fix problems and help people. I have friends today that I made there like 25-30 years ago.
On the other, you will likely be treated like pond life, from the management to the customers. The trick is to get in, take as much from it as you can as quickly as you can, and get out before it sends you barmy. It's a bit like living in London. (-: Where I was at, the average length of service in Tech was six months. I managed four years but that was was largely because I wangled my way off the phones as fast as humanly possible.
sorry, I meant Subject Matter Expert rather than Small to Medium Enterprise. But your analogy is probably accurate nonetheless
Not so true for SME technical roles where you aren’t required to have those skills. Some of the very best, most valued staff I work with have zero communication skills, and do not have the ability or willingness to develop them.
Only place it really lets them down is at interview
Partly true - I have extraordinarily bad people skills and hate dealing with end users for that reason (not because I consider them beneath me :p ). In my current role something's gone badly wrong if I am talking to end users but I do have to communicate clearly in internal meetings (at all levels) and produce design documentation etc. The stereotype of the IT expert that treats everyone with disdain and does his own thing the way he wants to is either non-existent or very rare these days.
As for routes in to IT - depends a bit on which side you want to get involved with (infrastructure/admin vs dev, although the lines blur a bit with crap like Infrastructure as Code :p ). I'm very much on the infrastructure side and service desk is still the most obvious route in if you've got no formal experience (even with decent qualifications like an MCSE you'd struggle to get a role as an engineer etc. with no experience).
My route in was a VAX/VMS operator then focused more on the Windows Server then VMware side of things (and ended up as a tech architect), I don't think pure operator roles really exist any more (apart from in some niche areas). If I was starting out now I'd be looking at a service desk role in a big IT services company - not only will you get to work with a lot of technologies there's also likely to be training available and career progression paths laid out so you can progress from service desk to junior engineer well within a year. With smaller companies I imagine it's harder to progress that fast without jumping ship.
If your main interest is on the infrastructure side but you're adept at coding you should be able to progress very quickly as automation etc. is here to stay but the industry is still lacking in skills (thankfully I progressed beyond a fully hands-on technical role before my crappy coding ability became an issue...).
Cyber security is also a good area to aim at, even the junior roles where I work require coding skills though (and multi-OS experience), service desk or junior dev role would be a good starting point for that but you probably need to keep pushing back from being pigeon-holed as a dev or infrastructure admin and get into the cyber security side as quickly as you can. You're also more likely to need security clearances (everyone on-shore where I work has SC but some roles on government contracts need DV which is expensive and time-consuming to go through so no chance someone is going to put a new hire with no experience through it). Once you have it though you'll have much better job security (it's not really a "jump ship and write your own pay-check" thing though as they're usually government agency specific and don't transfer easily).
The stereotype of the IT expert that treats everyone with disdain and does his own thing the way he wants to is either non-existent or very rare these days.
This is an uncanny description of the last two lead devs for the product I was working on.
And yes, it was a management/hiring problem really. The company didn't know how to handle a dev team and wasn't able to recruit anyone more suitable for the role.
Underlying related issue: Experienced devs are in such high demand that companies will tolerate far weaker soft skills than they might for most other roles. In my experience anyway.
a bit weird and stalkerish that you bring up OPs contribution in another thread
I don't think so. The OP asked for advice. His behaviour in the other thread was so striking that it influenced the advice that I gave.
Although I am just a random bloke on the internet, this is my area of expertise - I have 35 years in IT, mostly in technical roles but including managing a group of up to 220 analysts, testers and developers. I've been responsible for both development methods and for recruitment at various times. This isn't an appeal to authority, I can still be wrong, I'm just stating that I have some relevant experience from which to draw some conclusions.
The stereotype of the IT expert that treats everyone with disdain and does his own thing the way he wants to is either non-existent or very rare these days.
It's not as rare as it will be, but it's certainly not something that a forward looking organisation would be looking for. Quite a few people have mentioned agile methods, and the first value in the Agile Manifesto is 'Individuals and interactions over processes and tools'. This is a recognition that IT projects are fundamentally a communication problem at every level. People who struggle to communicate effectively will struggle in a modern project environment. They will be uncomfortable, their teammates will be unhappy, results will probably be poor. So I would not advise someone who says "I prefer technical jobs and problems rather than dealing with people if that helps?" and then displays some interesting communication behaviours to take up IT as a career. It is unlikely to work out for them.
and then displays some interesting communication behaviours
Nah u have just found a way to attack me like some wierdo. Take your gas-lighting elsewhere.
Nah u have just found a way to attack me like some wierdo. Take your gas-lighting elsewhere.
🤣
Best of luck with your job search.
Best of luck with your job search.
Good luck being a manager. You sound covertly toxic.
The stereotype of the IT expert that treats everyone with disdain and does his own thing the way he wants to is either non-existent or very rare these days.
I don't know, pretty much sums up all the IT experts I've met in the last 30+ years....
Good luck being a manager. You sound covertly toxic.
Unfortunately, there's a fairly high proportion of toxic managers in IT.
I fully agree with onewheelgood's points about IT being made difficult by people/communication issues!
Good luck being a manager. You sound covertly toxic.
I think your ability to both argue with and read the personalities of strangers on the internet would look great on your CV.
I did exactly this because it’s always what I wanted to do, mine definitely won’t have been the fastest way but I studied my A+ so I got the fundamentals nailed down then got a job on an IT service desk in a big city, started from the basics, learnt how the most important thing is asking questions, then couldn’t progress there any further and had developed enough for a 2nd line role, now I’m in a 2/3rd line role but the way to make the money is maybe start in support then briefly 2nd line then if you’ve got the skills, look at the AZ100 for Azure or 365 specialist etc...
People who struggle to communicate effectively will struggle in a modern project environment.
Aside from the OP just committing harakiri and proving your point,
I'd agree with everything you said except that a technical manager needs to understand that technical roles attract people who are a bit... odd. And really they need to recognise that this can be a superpower.
I'm in a fledgling security team, 2-3 years old, I'm lead to believe that the reason I'm here at all is because the conversation went:
"I want Alan on the team."
"Why?"
"Cos his brain is ****ed."
Communication can be critical but it's entirely role-dependant. One of the best engineers I ever knew was a lad named Tom. He was a genius and an honest-to-goodness polymath. There was nothing he didn't know at least something about, we had some amazing conversations. He was bored one afternoon so for no other reason than he thought it might be interesting, he learned Russian.
But by christ you could never send him to site, we'd have had legal claims, he was a borderline psychopath, he'd have stabbed the office cat on the way in or something.
What do you do with someone like that? We binned him off in the end (because it also turned out that he was a battling alcoholic and would pop out to his car of a lunchtime to drop a half-bottle of Smirnoff and then pass out) but for a few years we shoved him in a corner with a big pile of hardware and a couple of impressionable apprentices and he was brilliant.
A tech being able to talk to 'normal' people is great, it's a valuable (and probably undervalued) skill. But it's not a showstopper if they can't, we'll find them a desk and a command line.
On the contrary, that thread was closed which shows it isn't allowed to be a toxic and nasty place. I suggest you reread what you've just written, i_scoff_cake, you still have time to edit.
I think one of the issues is people want to get into what is actually an extremely technical role not because they have aptitude but because they think it pays well. I see people with formal training and they just don't think in the right way and never will. I also see the converse a couple of contractors I know have no formal quals but are amongst the best developers I know. So first I would make sure you fall into the second category.
At this point short of if I was looking to fill a role other than a modern apprenticeship or something similar I would look at you and have no way of assessing your aptitude for a role that was not based on training you.
So....
If you know someone who is happy to give you a shot in anything even remotely close then take it. Accept that initially you will be a drain on time and not a contributor and understand you will be paid accordingly.
or
Develop something in your own time, something you can point link too on your CV. If you get an interview you can use it as an example of your work too. It will also let you know if you have any aptitude for it or if you are wasting your time. Also if at an interview you bring samples it will tell the person who interviews you if you have aptitude or not 🙂
Another thing to consider is domain knowledge is pretty useful developing a product in an industry you know about is a real advantage. Especially if you are working for a small company where you might not have a large base of industry experts to guide the project.
For instance if I was recruiting for a job in water and you knew what a PRV and DMA were you would have an advantage.
I have been an embedded C, C++ developer for 25 years, but I work very closely with teams that develop web apps and have dabbled, but its not really where my skill set adds the most value these days.
It does appear to be a young mans game in web app dev, as apposed to the embedded stuff that seems to be full of old duffers like me 🙂
It does appear to be a young mans game in web app dev, as apposed to the embedded stuff that seems to be full of old duffers like me
Hi five! not embedded at the moment but big C++ project with some very low level stuff. I'd second the web stuff being a young mans game. Seems like a constant battle with new frameworks etc and takes a real passion for (to me) learning the same thing but slightly different again and again to stay relevant.
Frankly, this episode makes this forum look like a nasty and toxic place.
I've no idea what incident you're referring to, but if that's your conclusion from your description then that speaks more about you than your arch-nemesisisis. a) you're judging the site on the back of what sounds like a fairly minor spat with one single other user and b) you're choosing to still be here and expecting free advice. For a "nasty and toxic place" you appear to be doing alright from it yourself so far.
As for you mocking my ability to read strangers, what did you think Onewheel has done? He declared that I’m a poor communicator, in general, based upon his own misunderstanding on one thread?
He's not the only one who reads your posts - you do rather give the impression of being able to regurgitate strings of text without giving much of an impression that you understand what they mean. I'm not saying I do, BTW, but you do write in a dense and impenetrable style.
You also seem quite happy to put other peoples' noses out of joint and also fairly consistently determined to present a contrary point of view. Now, that's fine - debate's a good thing, right ? - but you can come across as incredibly condescending at times. I'm not saying it's right, but you ARE going to annoy people - I wouldn't be posting on this thread if I wasn't one of them.
I probably should just let this one lie but I spent today pulling ragwort on a nature reserve and it's been bugging me all day. So, @i_scoff_cake, this is for you.
My first point is a general one. If you ask for advice on an internet forum and people respond in good faith, it's not a great look to launch ad hominem attacks just because you don't like the advice. It's just rude. As was your 'help desk monkey' jibe.
Now I'll address some specifics.
Nah u have just found a way to attack me like some wierdo. Take your gas-lighting elsewhere.
I have never attacked you. I stated that I had observed some behaviour from you that was counter to what I had previously stated to be desirable in an IT context. If you think that is an attack then again, that would be an undesirable attitude in a team. Yet this is where you start the ad hominems.
Good luck being a manager. You sound covertly toxic.
If you'd bothered reading what I wrote before you'd know that I'm retired these days. I have no idea what covertly toxic means - surely if the toxicity was covert then no one else would know about it, so it wouldn't really be a problem?
Onewheelgood’s nose was put out of joint on another thread because he discovered that he didn’t know anything about the intellectual milieu of CRT and Critical Social Justice despite probably considering himself quite ‘right on’ on the topic of anti-racism.
You've just made this up. My nose was not put out of joint at all on that thread. I was struck by your style, and I thought 'Isn't that the guy asking about an IT career?'. Other people asked you to try and write in a way that might be understood by more people. If you had been interested in actual communication, you would have done that. But you didn't. It seemed to me that there were two possibilities at that point - either you are interested in communication, but you struggle to do it effectively, or you don't care about communication but have some other objective. Since I had already stressed the importance of communication on this thread I came back to make that point again. I'm sorry you didn't like hearing that, but it's actually something I feel quite passionate about. So many IT disasters have been caused by a lack of respect for the human factors.
Now in a covertly toxic and stalkerish way, Onewheel crossed-threads and found a way to get back at me under cover of ‘positive’ career advice. In other words, a form of gaslighting.
I still don't know what 'covertly toxic' means, but I don't see what is stalkerish - this is a public forum, on which you publicly asked for advice. There isn't anything stalkerish about using someone's behaviour to make advice more relevant. And why would I want to 'get back at you'? You hadn't done anything to me (well, not until you came back to this thread and started with the insults). As for gaslighting, I'm not sure you know what that means.
Frankly, this episode makes this forum look like a nasty and toxic place.
Projection much?
And I still haven't attacked you. I haven't insulted you or called you any names despite being sorely provoked. I think you've been very impolite, and I do struggle to understand why you see things the way you seem to. But that brings me back to my fundamental point - unless people can communicate and collaborate effectively, any complex endeavour is going to be difficult. If we can't even manage a forum discussion properly, what hope is there for a global software roll-out, or the next version of Windows/IOS/Android?
