I’m an IT Manager. I usually work with start-up companies, usually from their first year onwards. It’s not uncommon for people in my circumstances to find themselves starting out as head of a team of one or two, and then concentrating their efforts on successful expansion through investment in systems and people.
The IT Manager in a firm usually reports to and advises the board on all things technical, but how are the board to know whether or not what they hear from their own technical team is in any way right for them?
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People often comment that the leap from coding to carpentry seems giant. Not so: the two professions are more closely related than is initially obvious. In the IT industry, it’s tempting to think that we’re riding on the leading edge of existence: that every day we’re breaking new ground, advancing ever forward, and taking or species to new and uncharted heights. Again, not so. While the materials and language may be new and sparkly, we’re merely recycling our aptitude for much older skills.
I work closely with a decorator, and it interests me that we have almost perfectly complementary skills. While he is highly skilled at painting, preparation, plastering and puttying, he freely admits to being disasterously bad at anything to do with wood. Similarly, I can’t paint for toffee and my plastering skills are a joke. The moment I crack open a can of paint, you know disaster is only minutes away. Fortunately we know our own and each other’s limitations, meaning we can usually avoid major tool-throwing, expletive-inducing catastrophies. It also means that if we’re tacking something new, and either he or I are finding it frustratingly difficult or boring, the chances are that the other will probably take to it much more easily.
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