Undefined Expectations

The process of building IT infrastructure is particularly difficult when the managers you’re working for do not express specifications or expectations. To exacerbate this the method of tasking one to perform work and then roundly chastising them for not fulfilling the manager’s every expectation is somewhat of a manic behavior.

This behavior is common in the middle management of organizations today.The managers are ill-trained and ill-prepared to deliver the demands of their superiors. The demands or expectations exceed reason in that they do not have adequate specification nor do they contain the fundamental information necessary to produce the outcomes desired and expected by those managers and their superiors. This is largely caused by their ignorance of the technology.

The worst offenders in this case are those that once had their hands and minds in the work but now, in order to make the better paycheck, have been promoted to oversight and do not maintain a daily “hands-on” knowledge. They will spew things like “it must be perfect” without expressing any specifications whatsoever.

This all begs the question of how does one work in an environment like that? You would have to be able to take a beating on a regular basis without complaining nor being bothered by the fact that you are not appreciated. You would have to accept the fact that your skills would be deemed inadequate in the eyes of those managers. Lastly, your future paycheck is at risk.

Does this seem to be a reasonable observation?