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Newsletter – 14 April 2009 – Doughnuts, Herbal Tea and Stripping
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Hi,

Hope you all had a great Easter break.

My wife and I spent most of the break stripping. No – not that kind of stripping.
Our “new” house has barely been touched in 40 years or more, so we are removing layer upon layer of wallpaper prior to redecorating.
So with aching muscles I can gratefully return to newsletters, IT etc.

From time to time I am reminded how crazy corporate life can be.
If you didn’t keep a sense of humour about it you would despair.
I’ve often thought that the Dilbert cartoon strip is more a manual for survival in the corporate sector.

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Doughnuts
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A few years ago I was involved in one of those infamous Year 2000 projects.
It was a large project, and in the way of many large projects it started to go over budget.
So we were all “invited” by management to find ways to save money on the project.

In my particular stream I was able to readily make savings of $1.8 million.
My suggestion was rejected as not politically acceptable.

A while later management revealed one of their “secret weapons”.
Savings would be made by cancelling the $20 bag of doughnuts we gave the team every Friday morning!
The project team didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but they all agreed on one thing – the management were idiots.

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Herbal Tea
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I have often laughed about the doughnuts incident over the years, but I gave people the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was a one off aberration.

To my surprise I was talking to a colleague last week, who was relating a story about how her company were trying to save money in this current recession.
Guess what?
They decided to cut out the herbal tea in the various tea rooms in the building.

This is a large profitable company where the CEO has his private chauffeur sitting around all day in case he is needed.

I think they must have learned their staff motivation techniques from Dilbert.

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Technical and People Problems
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These two stories remind me of a comment made by Jerry Weinberg.
Jerry has been writing for years about the psychology of IT and consulting.
If you don’t know him, look him up for some very entertaining and useful reading.

In his “4 laws of consulting” he states (in law 2): No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem.

People outside of IT, and even many people in it, believe that the IT world is full of geeks solving highly technical problems.

I believe, along with Jerry, that the IT world is really about solving people problems.
Even though I came up through a technical stream myself, programming, I soon came to realise that the technical problems were mostly quite easily solvable – it’s the people problems that get you every time.

We’ve talked about Generalists and Specialists in previous newsletters.
The specialists almost by definition are those working mainly on technical stuff.
While this technical stuff has to happen, it’s normally straightforward and doesn’t cause a trained person too many problems.

Generalists on the other hand tend to be working more with people related stuff.
It’s no surprise that this category of jobs is growing faster than the specialist roles.

So, as we have said many times, you don’t have to be a technical geek or a mathematical wizard to make a worthwhile career in IT.

Common sense and people handling skills are what you really need.
This is actually good news, as it puts those desirable and well paid IT jobs well in the reach of non-technical people.

They are the ones we have concentrated on when authoring our Jack’s Guides.

These topics are discussed at length in our e-book “Jack’s Guide to Lots More Money” available at
http://www.jacksguides.com/more-money.html

If you are ready to make the leap into a much better paid job or contract, and be perfectly positioned as the recession eases, see our website at www.jacksguides.com

More about Generalists and specialists in future newsletters.

Previous newsletters.
In response to several requests, we have published many of our older newsletters.
You can find them at http://www.jacksguides.com/news.html
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This newsletter is published by Kevin Ramsey for Jack's Guides.
Copyright (c) 2001 - 2009, all rights reserved.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted without the express written consent of the publisher or contributing editors and or writers.
DISCLAIMER: We disclaim any liability for the use of Any contributed information contained herein.

I hope you've enjoyed this issue of our newsletter.
Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions or requests. ( kevin@jacksguides.com )

Enjoy and prosper in your chosen career. (even in a recession)
Till the next issue.
Kevin Ramsey
Founder of Jack's Guides