As long as they run this company like a high school where the cool kids get promoted and the popular kids get the choice units, while the nerdy kids that actually get work done are treated as disposable, this company will never get ahead. At some point during my tenure here the ideology of this company has switched from hire and promote the most talented and brightest to let's hire and promote our friends. If we can promote people to manager levels that have been arrested for public intoxication, while on business trips, and others that have to have their Facebook pages audited by the company to be acceptable - what kind of future can we possibly have? I worry that no matter how well I do my job and in spite of the fact that I have never had a bad review - I will be released for not being popular enough. I have seen several people released recently that were far more proficient than their counterparts but they weren't the cool kids.
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But where does the CIO get their prodding? From Sr Mgmt in other departments that have read articles in magazines and/or had a conversation with one of their peers at a conference. Most companies like to brag and IT is one of the ares they brad about most. When a CIO is asked to describe their "Mobility Platform" or "Business Intelligence Strategy" or their "Coordinated ERP solution" - if they aren't currently focused on that area, guess what becomes the new HOT PROJECT? Additionally if VPs are seen as only managing current software deployments, in the interest of saving money, they'll be painted as lazy or out of touch and they'll be minimized and ultimately replaced. VPs don't want that so this endless cycle of refresh and redeploy occurs. It's annoying as f*** - even for those of us in IT.
Amen....perfectly describes the Cdn operations as well. A senior exec with no previous HO experience (retained post divest) allowed to steer much of the ship, clueless senior managers allowed to run amuck and waste countless talented individuals, huge gaps in logic and basic strategy, even bringing in leaders/supervisors from outside of O&G (no joke...cement....power companies..) all while running off senior, more capable and proven personnel. Unbelievable. A culture of character assassination and 'don't tell' amongst the "Club". Only saving grace is the eventual divest of what remains to CNRL who will straighten out all the garbage.
Agree with 200890, CIO through management make decisions and lower level people have to implement it even if we disagree with why we should do it or if it doesn't make sense. Disagree too much? You get moved to another team and are silenced.
Not to many people use that platform. An from what I've heard, they love it.
It is IT management that makes those types of decisions - the lower level IT people try to be as helpful as they can and seem to hate those decisions as much as we do. In many cases IT management are in charge of a range of softwares and they may be familiar with one of them and they don't really care to know about the rest. In my group's case one of our day to day IT people was told by his manager that listening to us (his business customers) was going to get him in trouble because he didn't feel that we needed something we'd requested for a specific purpose. This manager never bothered to ask us why we needed it or what it was for he didn't know and didn't care to find out.
I just want my programs to work. I also don't understand the latest shift to Decision Space. It was not written for a windows platform. It is stuff like this that makes me question any and all related IT people. We are not mad at you...just the stupid stuff you do. You implement something and then change it 2yrs later. Waste of money
Most IT complaints from the business are because business people have unrealistic expectations about what can be accomplished. They don't fully appreciate what it takes to keep an IT department up and running and they think IT projects should not take as long as they do. It's been this way at every company I've worked for and even during private IT work. I don't know why people think IT and computers are easy - they're some of the most complex and complicated machines ever invented and the complexity increases when you start hooking them together and making them talk to each other.
Lots of IT hate on here recently, can anyone give some specific (but anonymous) examples?
Well stated. I believe the top level leadership is great at Devon, but somewhere in the middle the intregrity gets lost. Mediocrity and stupidity in the mid-management must be corrected for Devon to stay top tier. The place I see this being the worst is in IT and Data Management. They both think they rule and really neither does. IT is absolutely the worst. Instead of finding a way forward they want to prove you wrong. Their way or the highway. Many talented people but poor leadership. Devon teaches leadership, but they have very few examples of it in management.