13 surprises by a non-company

After working for many years in custom software development companies, you involuntarily start to think - and how does all this fuss look from the other side, from the customer? It starts to seem like a sinful affair that everything is simple and clear there, all people are knowledgeable and professional, decisions are made intelligently and reasonably, and in general, life is in full swing, and not like in this our IT morass ...

A couple of years ago, such considerations pushed me to try to work in a company where everything is a source of income, but not software development. Successfully turned up a proposal from former colleagues to take the position of IT-director in one of the leading organizations in the financial sector, and I began to vigorous activity, bravo rolled up our sleeves. Now, after a while, from a height, so to speak, of the experience gained, I want to share surprises that awaited me on this path - of course, those who have already worked in different areas and different organizations will most likely not find anything for themselves here New, not surprising, but for naive IT people like me, who have seen only the same type of “bodyshop” -autsourcer, something may seem really unexpected.

1. Suddenly live women
   On the first working day I was in complete stupor simply from the contemplation of the office population. It is no secret that, as a rule, mostly relatively young men, plus a secretary, a personnel manager, an accountant, usually work in IT offices, maybe a lawyer and a couple of girls in technical positions like analytics or testing. One hundred workers, which translates into about 90% of the male population, which over the years begins to be perceived as the norm. No, of course, in the morning on the way to the office you notice that people are about equally divided, and all these women also have to work somewhere, but when I personally saw a company where almost two thirds of women were, honestly say shock. Without any sexist background - just an incredible separation from the usual state of things, to which you have to get used, for the first time in vain trying not to fuck up in an elevator with a dozen colleagues of the opposite sex.
2. Suddenly adults
   The overwhelming majority of developers are relatively young people. I don’t have statistics, I can only say that at about 40, I almost everywhere where I have worked in recent years, turned out to be in the top 5% by age - to put it simply, most of my colleagues turned out to be younger than me. Here, at first, I simply suspected something "wrong", and only then came across the official statistics, which claimed that the average age in the company ... was about 43 years old. Damn, for the first time in the last twenty years I turned out to be younger than the average in the company where I work - I felt young again. There are some consequences from this moment, let's say, of an indefinite nature - for example, for the first time I was able to accompany my colleague to retire, because in IT companies this simply does not happen! It causes strange sensations inside the body, somehow related to the sudden awareness of the passage of time, the frailty of all things, etc.
3. Continuous celebrations
   I really don’t know why, but those IT offices do not sin too much - yes, of course, they will eat cakes for their birthday, and that’s the end of it. Here ... of course, birthdays, then birthdays, all religious holidays, plus March 8, etc., etc. And on every occasion money is collected (there are colleagues who are willing to spend time and nerves on this dregs, just not to work), tables are laid, in special cases even salads are cut and songs and dances are arranged - I'm not lying! For some cases, he even hired a professional choreographer to stage all of these round dances, with multi-day rehearsals in meeting rooms and corridors. Only there were no drunken fights, since it is strictly with alcohol here, and thank God.
4. Life for the company
   What is the usual term of work for an IT company? That's right, two years. Worked three? Old-timers. Five? Well, probably, you are the founder and do not want to throw your child. And when such a scheme is firmly rooted in the brain, you will experience incredible feelings at the first annual corporate event, when the authorities start calling your colleagues to the stage to issue certificates and valuable prizes (optional) for loyalty to the company. Here are those who have worked for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years ... and they are stuffed, if not the full scene, then pretty well! That is, there are real people who ottarabanili a quarter of a century on one office, which during this time resold twice and changed its name four times! It categorically does not fit in my head, at least I never managed to scrape my jaw off the floor.
5. Rigid hierarchy
   For contrast: the usual structure of the IT-office of an average hand is something rather amorphous, and at the same time rather flat. That is, there are, of course, all sorts of directors, managers, tmlids - however, to call this a hierarchical structure the language does not turn, mainly because the salt of the IT-office is projects, the essence of education is temporary, around which some shaky structures. Are you used to it? Fine. And in a non-IT office everything is not so! The structure is multi-level, unshakable and sacred. Its place in it is observed violently and in all possible ways and means. And there is no greater insult than to confuse a person’s position, and call him a specialist when he has long been a senior specialist! The most interesting thing is that in 80% of cases all these ranks, titles and places in the hierarchy are absolutely empty sounds, but by the workers themselves they are assigned such an immense importance that they often just want to cry, watching how quite adults are (see clause 3) define themselves and build their behavior based on the meaningless "tag".
6. Hard borders
   It turns out that “not my job” is a sacred mantra, which is allowed to be constantly used by everyone, including representatives of the lowest hierarchical castes. While IT specialists timidly promote concepts like “collective ownership”, in a non-IT office this is a heresy, worse than which, perhaps, is only a violation of hierarchy. Here everyone knows exactly what he is obliged to do in his position, and does not make absolutely the slightest movement with his little finger, if this movement is not described in his job description. It would seem great! Clarity, clarity, certainty of the processes - this is fine, but it is worth considering that nothing is perfect. It happens that some important part of the work by oversight is a draw - then you sailed. Nobody, for any price, would agree to do it, even if it is obvious to everyone around them that it is absolutely necessary to do this part of the work. Worse, it is worthwhile for someone to go on vacation or get sick if, due to the impossibility of doing this, or simply because of forgetfulness, a deputy is not officially appointed - that's all, the work has stopped. No one will ever try to “hide one” for a colleague, even if it costs 15 minutes of time a week and exactly no brain effort (literally, this is a true story).
7. Career horror
   While IT recruiters chase after IT people, humiliatingly begging to talk about open vacancies, in a non IT environment, it's not at all like this: the labor market belongs to the employer. He is here and the king, and God, with rare exceptions all the same local IT specialists, as well as a few narrow specialties, where the situation is similar to IT. From this there are exactly two important consequences: first, the overwhelming majority of colleagues have in their eyes animal fear in the face of commanders, due to the fact that it is in its power to take and interrupt your long-term epic in its present position. Fear is compounded by the fact that the longer a person works in the same position and in the same organization (see also clause 4), the more he becomes fit only and solely for work in this very position. As a result, the farther - the worse, and the authorities are actively using it for self-elevation and local rule. The second consequence is that the authorities have no idea how to behave with the same IT people, where everything happens exactly the opposite, and as a result, the most adequate IT people simply run to where they will appreciate more, and pay, too.
8. Authorized stupor
   In a surprising way, it is combined with the fact that in most cases workers are fully self-made people with decent work experience, families, etc. But, nevertheless, it is a fact: you can communicate freely only with employees who are at your hierarchical level, or at two adjacent ones - from above and below. Attempting to reach someone outside this range directly causes an overbearing stupor: regardless of whether you are addressing someone too high or too low, the subject falls into a catatonic state caused by what he does not know, but what is going on here? If you send an e-mail, it will most likely remain unanswered, the call will also, and if you turn the unthinkable during a personal meeting, you can observe natural deafening of the body, glazed eyes, rambling, hasty escape, simulating an incoming phone call, and other funny effects. The reaction, apparently, is physiological, and therefore the situation cannot be resolved - all that remains is to spend thousands of time addressing the right people through hierarchical intermediaries. It is also interesting that for the natives such a system does not cause not only indignation or surprise, but even some inconvenience.
9. Fail to fail
   This, in general, is a boring point - so many jokes have been invented on this subject; However, in the personal practice of a person who has been surrounded by IT specialists for many years, this happens sometime for the first time. So for the first time, they gave me a laptop without admin rights. So for the first time I came across hordes of colleagues who are not able to copy a file, remove an application from a letter, connect a projector, connect to a wireless network without a password, print a document, disconnect a microphone in a web conference. Almost no one can take a screenshot and send it by e-mail or insert it into a document. The shock passed in about six months, the background misunderstanding does not disappear until now, since the same trivial actions have to train the same people time and time again and again who firmly believe that they can’t remember this “IT nonsense” this is work. At the same time, local IT professionals often understand their colleagues' business quite well, and this asymmetry is taken for granted.
10. Expenditure part
    The conceptual difference between IT and non-IT is, of course, that in IT, you - being a programmer, tester, analyst, IT-manager, finally - are part of the budget revenue (well, for the most part), and in non-ITA - only only an expense of his article, and often one of the most prominent. Accordingly, the corresponding attitude is built up to the internal IT specialists - as to some freeloaders who we, the business, are forced to pay from our own pockets, and they also dare to want something there for themselves. Accordingly, there are and will be ongoing attempts to reduce this annoying expenditure part - touchingly combining with shouting propaganda slogans about how everything is happening now on the web, mobile applications, social networks (underline), and how vital we need the digital revolution, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Often, a sermon about a bright digital future and a call for reducing the cost of information technology comes from the mouth of the same fiery manager in the same half-hour event - for me it always looks especially piquant, but at the same time almost none of my colleagues seriously, it seems not annoying.
11. Sudden decree
    From the first two points of this list, it would seem as if the fact that employees (that is, female workers) will quite often go on maternity leave is quite natural, but no, for me the first couple of times turned out to be a surprise! Well, I was not used to synchronizing project plans with unspoken plans to increase employee families. It looks like this: at the critical moment of an important project, you are trying to contact a key employee, who turns out to be an employee, who went on maternity leave a week ago, and “forgotten” about this a month ago. And yes, no one obliges her to appoint a deputy (see clause 6), tea is not about that right now, my head hurts, so it is likely that your important project will stupidly rise and require inhuman efforts to move forward. And yes, nobody cares, because children are the flowers of life. And yes, for a couple of years it happened five times, so probably this is the normal state of affairs, which, again, in a non-IT office does not annoy anyone, and in an IT office - absolutely unthinkable, in my opinion. And yes, it is quite normal to appoint a lady who has just returned from the decree to some strategic post, so that six months later she safely departed to the next decree.
12. Indecisive frames
    Cadres, of course, decide everything, but only if there is little money to allocate to them (see paragraph 10), and generally to plunge into the abyss of a strange non-life (see other points), it becomes clear why it is so difficult to form and retain decent team of internal IT specialists. Only you will gather strong developers - the authorities decide that the project should be given to outsourcers, because it’s not such a big deal to deal with such nonsense, we have other core competence. Only you will persuade an intelligent specialist to work in your team by hook or by crook - the authorities will cut the salary budget and will wonder for a long time why the newcomer left so quickly. As a result, such constant filtering in the team naturally leaves two categories of people: fighters for the idea with burning eyes, the fathers of the systems they have been building for years bit by bit (this is good, but there are few of them), and also the indecisive guys who are here calmly. " The latter are more, they are not much puzzled by professional development, but they are ready to endure lower wages and thinner tasks. In general, now I understand very well that, due to the current situation, all sorts of outsourcers will always have bread and butter for dinner, because you will not turn any mountain with such a specific layout of the team.
13. Language where only will not turn
    And for dessert - about languages. No, not about programming languages, but about languages ​​of ordinary human communication, as well as writing documentation. Surprisingly, even in quite a multinational corporation, it is not immediately obvious to everyone that technical documentation of common use must be in some language that is understood by more than a million people on earth. In English, for example. In IT companies such a question has never even arisen - everything was always and everywhere written in English, so that as a result many issues were automatically resolved: audits, attracting third-party specialists, transferring projects to someone else, but who knows? However, an ordinary neaytishnik is not so simple. So what if it works in a multilingual environment? So what if he even knows in advance that his colleagues who do not speak his language will use the document? Fi, is this a good reason for not writing a hundred-page specification in an incomprehensible language. It is also more convenient for him. And who needs to read - well, then let them translate somehow, but not by online translators, because we don’t want to put confidential information at risk. Yes, yes, let's bring in professional translators! And by the way, why are your expenses so increased?

Here, perhaps, and all - from the core. You look at a few dumbfounded IT people in the world will be smaller!