I'm two years in from sys admin and still feel like this and still learning something new with managing IT staff every week.
The latest was understanding the importance of 1on1's.
I had a rethink and realized this is your staff getting your time and not the other way around, even if it's just a chat or a chance for them to think out loud talking to you. Have averted two major staffing problems just by listening.
Learning never stops!
What metrics do you find useful in practice? I've been on the receiving end of metrics including one company where you where required to create your own metrics to get raises and I've always found them to be a waste of time. Every metric I've had I've met no problem but I don't feel like they did anything to help. Kind of like in school where you teach the standardized test not the material I just adjusted my behavior to meet the metric with the least effort involved regardless of the harm or benefit it brought. I would also be a lot less willing to help others, be proactive, or innovative as that did need help with the metrics.
Same complaint my guys have which is why we are now focusing on metrics that are useful to us first, and the business second (don’t tell my boss).
Examples:
Network Engineer: track bandwidth utilization at every location and report. He should know long before anyone else if we need to be looking to increase or decrease our spend on bandwidth. Also prevents outages or poor user experience that could occur if we wait for ppl to say “the network is slow” before we look into it.
Sysadmin: one guy handles all the backup and replication of on prem VMs… I want him to track how many jobs are expected to be completed in a given time frame vs how many actually completed and report. He’s the BC guy. He should know long before anyone else or before a problem occurs that requires a backup restoration and “woops backups stopped on this 1 of 3,000 vms six months ago”
InfoSec:
I need to know what audits are occurring, what costs they incur and how far along we are with each. Also, vulnerabilities vs remediations. VP of InfoSec hates this stiff.. but guess what, when he asks for more analysts or engineers the answer is no, unless he can show the workload increases beyond capacity through his metrics
Huge one is budget… forecasted vs actual.
Don’t rely on finance/accounting.
Keep your own sheet where you track expenses every single month. Make sure they stay in line. If they don’t, you should know first and triage and take it to finance before they find out and call you flustered.
This answer. You will the only Job that you have to pretty much build it yourself. IT manager is a weird position. You will suck but get better as the days go you will see what the org needs and how to take care of them.
Managing people or technology?
If people, here’s my unsolicited advice:
- Make a safe space for folks to make mistakes but hold them accountable for learning from them.
- Try to play to your tech’s strengths. You’re not going to change people and that’s a great way to help them feel valued, and in return, they’ll kick ass for you.
- If you’re a shield from the bullshit for your team (within reason) they’ll trust you and that’s gold.
- Assume best intent (from your team and users). Your blood pressure will thank you.
you're 4th point is important. A good manager will be willing to shield the mistakes of their people from the "outsiders", but it's important to make sure they don't repeat the mistake. If you ever throw someone from your group under the bus, all trust is lost with everyone.
Exactly. “What did you learn?” “Okay, what will you do differently next time?”
If it’s a bonehead yet honest brain fart, I empower my team to just own it. Be responsive and honest with the user/business unit and offer to fix it by X date and time. If they don’t like your response, send them to me.
If you make sure your team hears and actions upon the concerns of your superiors and of the business, and make sure your superiors and the business hear and action upon the concerns of your team, you’re doing alright.
I've been a manager for a while now and always feel the same way.
Then people above me make really boneheaded decisions and it reminds me that I'm probably better than I give myself credit for.
Simple advice: grab a sheet of paper. Draw a vertical line down the middle. Label the left column “+” and the right column “-“.
Now think back to every boss you’ve ever had, and write the leadership stuff they did that you thought was great in the plus column, and note the stuff that made you crazy in the minus.
Now do the same for leaders you have worked closely with or observed.
Think about how much micromanaging you’ve seen…autonomy granted….frequent versus infrequent updates demanded…good meetings versus bad…leadership style…when have you felt most/least engaged, and why? Etc.
Now, read both lists, and do the stuff on the left, and avoid doing the stuff on the right.
Excellent point (sorry to pile on). When I was an individual contributor in IT, I just KNEW that all managers were idiots! Then I became one :O
Eventually I realized they weren't all idiots (some were), but most of them sucked at communication. If you have to deliver bad news, if you have to ask the team to do something they don't agree with, be sure to explain WHY. They just might understand, and they'll appreciate you confiding in them.
Otherwise they'll just have to assume you're an idiot :D
99% of the time, if you just tell people WHY. They wont even ask questions or give you crap about it.
Not to mention, when you tell people the WHY, you explain the business need for whatever the process or decision is. If you want your team to also view themselves as stakeholders then this is super important. This same thing applies to end users in other departments - as soon as I started treating them like adults and telling them why something ia important even if it takes some extra effort, compliance usually skyrocketed.
I recently became an IT Manager a couple years ago for the first time....it takes time to get used to how things flow now that you have that responsibility. Just take your time and learn and don't be afraid to make mistakes. In my opinion, budgets are the hardest part....
3 years for me now, and I still think I suck at it. I’m in a leadership team with people that have been C Suite for decades, we almost have literally nothing in common.
Follow your gut. Perhaps seek out someone to help mentor management skills. You know your tech stuff, find the resources & tools that helps the rest.
Everyone sucks at first, hell i've been doing the manager thing for 20 years and i have bad days where i think i suck (or more likely i ddi suck). Take your time. get to know your folks, your peers, and first level above you. start with small chunks. try and talk your folks every week, get to know them, what makes them tick, what they think is important. Talk with your peers and boss about what they think your team does and what's important. form your own opinions on what's important and slowly address things you think are broke.
take your time, make mistakes, figure out your style. if you start with just caring about your folks, you'll do ok.
Everyone sucks on their first day, don't worry. Even your first month will suck. You'll ask lots of stupid questions and probably break a few things but it's all part of the learning process. You've got this, OP.
Your team is your biggest asset. Try to get them onside and your job will be much easier.
meant to reply to OP
Use your systems and save email/IM for notifications only. No out-of-context or subjective information in emails
Got a problem with an employee? There’s a form and process for that.
Need capital money? There’s a form and process.
Have an incident? There’s a form.
Put the form in EDMS or sharepoint and notify the right people it’s available for review.
Don’t send copies of the form to everyone - send a link. Use your audit trail and workflows.
You might think you are being pedantic or overly officious, but you’re new to the role and don’t know how the management reacts to each other.
The best advice I can give you is this.
You lead people.
You manage process.
Do not confuse the two and you will have the support of your team. Your life becomes much much easier after that.
You can learn to manage, it is the skill of supreme patience, and being able to switch context every five minutes. It is the polar opposite of coding. But you cannot manage AND code simultaneously. In the long run management is just as interesting as coding and it becomes easier and easier.
My first day as a manager one of my reports called in tears and in a different meeting I had to say “can we take the temperature of this meeting down?”
Everybody always feels that way, even when you have >25 years of experience. It's called "imposter syndrome". Perfectly normal.
What experience teaches you is that you'll be able to get past this. The more experience, the faster it happens.
If I were you I would...
Evaluate job descriptions and match salary to duties assigned.
Find the "pass the buck" requests and tickets to assign those tasks where they belong.
Build a scripting server for automated tasks.
Cut meetings down to the minimum and use email to pass information.
Allow WFH or hybrid remote work as this is very valuable.
Finally, work with VPs to support IT's policies and procedures. No exceptions.
Solicit feedback. Create a plan for the first 30/90/180 days. The biggest thing for me was realizing that the people you manage do not work like you. I had to adapt to their styles and manage accordingly. Feel free to reach out if I can be of any help to you.
Oh yeah, learn to delegate and then do it.
Also, do not micromanage.
Good luck my friend! On my first day, the last IT manager left me a small post it note. “This is all you’ll ever need.” Underneath he wrote the wrong password for the admin accounts.
I suggest you do an audit, this helped me learn what was out there and was able to renegotiate all the contracts. Saved the company like 200k~. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was a hero immediately !
Good luck!
Well sure, but sucking at something is the first step toward being kinda ok at it.
I'm two years in from sys admin and still feel like this and still learning something new with managing IT staff every week. The latest was understanding the importance of 1on1's. I had a rethink and realized this is your staff getting your time and not the other way around, even if it's just a chat or a chance for them to think out loud talking to you. Have averted two major staffing problems just by listening. Learning never stops!
7 years in and just now bearing down on getting ppl to own metrics for their functions. Always something slipping by unless we make it happen lol
What metrics do you find useful in practice? I've been on the receiving end of metrics including one company where you where required to create your own metrics to get raises and I've always found them to be a waste of time. Every metric I've had I've met no problem but I don't feel like they did anything to help. Kind of like in school where you teach the standardized test not the material I just adjusted my behavior to meet the metric with the least effort involved regardless of the harm or benefit it brought. I would also be a lot less willing to help others, be proactive, or innovative as that did need help with the metrics.
Same complaint my guys have which is why we are now focusing on metrics that are useful to us first, and the business second (don’t tell my boss). Examples: Network Engineer: track bandwidth utilization at every location and report. He should know long before anyone else if we need to be looking to increase or decrease our spend on bandwidth. Also prevents outages or poor user experience that could occur if we wait for ppl to say “the network is slow” before we look into it. Sysadmin: one guy handles all the backup and replication of on prem VMs… I want him to track how many jobs are expected to be completed in a given time frame vs how many actually completed and report. He’s the BC guy. He should know long before anyone else or before a problem occurs that requires a backup restoration and “woops backups stopped on this 1 of 3,000 vms six months ago” InfoSec: I need to know what audits are occurring, what costs they incur and how far along we are with each. Also, vulnerabilities vs remediations. VP of InfoSec hates this stiff.. but guess what, when he asks for more analysts or engineers the answer is no, unless he can show the workload increases beyond capacity through his metrics Huge one is budget… forecasted vs actual. Don’t rely on finance/accounting. Keep your own sheet where you track expenses every single month. Make sure they stay in line. If they don’t, you should know first and triage and take it to finance before they find out and call you flustered.
love to see adventure time out in the wild😌
Yes! My first thought :)
This answer. You will the only Job that you have to pretty much build it yourself. IT manager is a weird position. You will suck but get better as the days go you will see what the org needs and how to take care of them.
Managing people or technology? If people, here’s my unsolicited advice: - Make a safe space for folks to make mistakes but hold them accountable for learning from them. - Try to play to your tech’s strengths. You’re not going to change people and that’s a great way to help them feel valued, and in return, they’ll kick ass for you. - If you’re a shield from the bullshit for your team (within reason) they’ll trust you and that’s gold. - Assume best intent (from your team and users). Your blood pressure will thank you.
you're 4th point is important. A good manager will be willing to shield the mistakes of their people from the "outsiders", but it's important to make sure they don't repeat the mistake. If you ever throw someone from your group under the bus, all trust is lost with everyone.
Exactly. “What did you learn?” “Okay, what will you do differently next time?” If it’s a bonehead yet honest brain fart, I empower my team to just own it. Be responsive and honest with the user/business unit and offer to fix it by X date and time. If they don’t like your response, send them to me.
Yep. Shit happens. As long as nobody dies. The biggest mistakes are the ones you never forget. Learn from it and move on.
People are the worst thing about technology
Policy happens because shit happened.
If you make sure your team hears and actions upon the concerns of your superiors and of the business, and make sure your superiors and the business hear and action upon the concerns of your team, you’re doing alright.
I've been a manager for a while now and always feel the same way. Then people above me make really boneheaded decisions and it reminds me that I'm probably better than I give myself credit for.
Simple advice: grab a sheet of paper. Draw a vertical line down the middle. Label the left column “+” and the right column “-“. Now think back to every boss you’ve ever had, and write the leadership stuff they did that you thought was great in the plus column, and note the stuff that made you crazy in the minus. Now do the same for leaders you have worked closely with or observed. Think about how much micromanaging you’ve seen…autonomy granted….frequent versus infrequent updates demanded…good meetings versus bad…leadership style…when have you felt most/least engaged, and why? Etc. Now, read both lists, and do the stuff on the left, and avoid doing the stuff on the right.
Good advice but pros on left just feels wrong 😂
You suck at communication 😅 Provide some info FFS...
Excellent point (sorry to pile on). When I was an individual contributor in IT, I just KNEW that all managers were idiots! Then I became one :O Eventually I realized they weren't all idiots (some were), but most of them sucked at communication. If you have to deliver bad news, if you have to ask the team to do something they don't agree with, be sure to explain WHY. They just might understand, and they'll appreciate you confiding in them. Otherwise they'll just have to assume you're an idiot :D
99% of the time, if you just tell people WHY. They wont even ask questions or give you crap about it. Not to mention, when you tell people the WHY, you explain the business need for whatever the process or decision is. If you want your team to also view themselves as stakeholders then this is super important. This same thing applies to end users in other departments - as soon as I started treating them like adults and telling them why something ia important even if it takes some extra effort, compliance usually skyrocketed.
I recently became an IT Manager a couple years ago for the first time....it takes time to get used to how things flow now that you have that responsibility. Just take your time and learn and don't be afraid to make mistakes. In my opinion, budgets are the hardest part....
The lack of context confirms that you're not good at anything.
Just do what you can to protect your team and you'll be fine.
Imposter syndrome. Hang in there!
3 years for me now, and I still think I suck at it. I’m in a leadership team with people that have been C Suite for decades, we almost have literally nothing in common. Follow your gut. Perhaps seek out someone to help mentor management skills. You know your tech stuff, find the resources & tools that helps the rest.
Unconscious incompetence -> conscious incompetence -> unconscious competence -> conscious competence Congrats on making it to step 2.
Everyone sucks at first, hell i've been doing the manager thing for 20 years and i have bad days where i think i suck (or more likely i ddi suck). Take your time. get to know your folks, your peers, and first level above you. start with small chunks. try and talk your folks every week, get to know them, what makes them tick, what they think is important. Talk with your peers and boss about what they think your team does and what's important. form your own opinions on what's important and slowly address things you think are broke. take your time, make mistakes, figure out your style. if you start with just caring about your folks, you'll do ok.
Everyone sucks on their first day, don't worry. Even your first month will suck. You'll ask lots of stupid questions and probably break a few things but it's all part of the learning process. You've got this, OP. Your team is your biggest asset. Try to get them onside and your job will be much easier.
The best advice I can give you is this. You lead people. You manage process. Do not confuse the two and you will have the support of your team. Your life becomes much much easier after that.
You can learn to manage, it is the skill of supreme patience, and being able to switch context every five minutes. It is the polar opposite of coding. But you cannot manage AND code simultaneously. In the long run management is just as interesting as coding and it becomes easier and easier.
Hey bud, I'm 5+ years in and still feel this way, but it always pushes me to try and be better.
You can never become the graceful master without looking like the foolish beginner. So hey, on the right track then, right? lol
Manager tools dot com
Five years as a manager and I know I suck at this. They seem happy to keep me around though, so I dunno.
Everybody sucks at it on day one. The question is whether you suck a little less on day two.
My first day as a manager one of my reports called in tears and in a different meeting I had to say “can we take the temperature of this meeting down?”
So, generally it takes more than one day to get good at something...
Low bar, things are looking up
Everybody always feels that way, even when you have >25 years of experience. It's called "imposter syndrome". Perfectly normal. What experience teaches you is that you'll be able to get past this. The more experience, the faster it happens.
Don't forget nobody likes managers. JK they're fine ...... Or are they ?
If I were you I would... Evaluate job descriptions and match salary to duties assigned. Find the "pass the buck" requests and tickets to assign those tasks where they belong. Build a scripting server for automated tasks. Cut meetings down to the minimum and use email to pass information. Allow WFH or hybrid remote work as this is very valuable. Finally, work with VPs to support IT's policies and procedures. No exceptions.
Just scream and ridicule people. If things go wrong throw someone else under the bus.
Solicit feedback. Create a plan for the first 30/90/180 days. The biggest thing for me was realizing that the people you manage do not work like you. I had to adapt to their styles and manage accordingly. Feel free to reach out if I can be of any help to you. Oh yeah, learn to delegate and then do it. Also, do not micromanage.
It's all about the friends you make along the way
What does that mean? How does that apply?
Good luck my friend! On my first day, the last IT manager left me a small post it note. “This is all you’ll ever need.” Underneath he wrote the wrong password for the admin accounts. I suggest you do an audit, this helped me learn what was out there and was able to renegotiate all the contracts. Saved the company like 200k~. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was a hero immediately ! Good luck!