True story. I worked with a guy maybe a decade ago. We’ve kept in touch. He sees an article on Slashdot and thinks, “wow, that sounds like Wolfgang. I should send him the link.” He clicks the link, only to find that I am in the piece. The guy called me laughing this morning and said he can’t get away from my ideas on training.
Anyways, if you have worked with me, worked for me, or worked within ear shot of me, you’ve heard me say one or more of the following many, many times:
- In IT, you don’t hire people for what they know. You hire people for what they can learn and what they do.
- Everything includes a training component. Train during every initiative, every implementation, and every project.
- Technology is like sports: most of the work is training before the game. High performing teams and high performing techies spend 20% of the time training.
- Skimping on spending for training because of retention concerns is like saying: “I’m concerned that if people know what they’re doing, they’ll leave. And if they don’t know what they’re doing, they’ll stay.”
- IT management is a Chinese finger puzzle. You pull too hard, and you can’t get out. You put in too many hours, you get diminishing returns.
Lisa Vaas at Software Quality Connection puts it all into perspective in “I Like My IT Budget Tight and My Developers Stupid”.
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