A lot of IT guys, particularly the ones that just hit the job scene, seem to have a sort of snobbish complex about their jobs, looking down on people with fewer technical skills and more business administration skills. They laugh at terms like Prioritization, Time Management, Change Management, Lean Fundamentals & Project Management, thinking these 'made up terms' that don't really have any value and don't really do anything.
Perhaps, when your work involves technical expertise, you tend to work within a bubble, respecting only those people around you with similar skills & objectives, and mentally demeaning or devaluing those within administration, management, etc.
However, techies would do well to remember that the companies they work for wouldn't be around for long without these kinds of folk. We’re not talking about start-ups. We're talking about a large IT company, with 5,000 to 50,000 employees. Companies like these run on processes.
Your brilliant scientific mind and those of your colleagues might develop a software product that changes the way we live, but it takes a whole team of costing specialists to number crunch, deciding how much value they should attach to the end product and its various stages of development, including the value of your time spent developing it. Without the cost managers, how would your company know what to charge for anything, or the ideal time a project should take till completion, or how much to bill a client, or how much to pay you? It probably wouldn't even have financially mapped deadlines.
Then there’s the business development guys, the ones who reach out to create clients to begin with. You wouldn't have any work without them, since they’re the ones who’re out there in the field pimping you. And they need the latest analytical tools (that you deem useless) to help sell your services.
Once a contract’s been signed, you need to have client relationship people to keep the client informed and happy. You can’t expect the clients to talk to you techies and get a straight answer to a query about a project update, in English, in less that 20 seconds. And the client relationship guys need a whole host of soft business skills to be good at what they do.
And of course you need real business experts, operations and process experts to ensure the human conveyor belt keep functioning smoothly and efficiently. And they can't be using outdated project management tools now, can they?
There's simply no room for snobbishness in a large organisation, and with such specific job roles as yours, it's understandable to come across competencies you don't understand. But remember, every competency is valuable.
