Having spent about 20 years in the IT field, I agree that goot IT managers are sometimes hard to find. I have only run into a handful of excellent managers. Most of the rest were at the other side of the spectrum. THere was little in the middle. <p>Unfortunately, most who read this will be biased towards the good side of management. The bad ones will think you are writing about someone else, assuming they have the initiative to read this or any other article on management. <p>I would say the the most problamatic managers were those who needed to have skills outside of IT and problem solving skills. For example, by not having knowledge of functional areas, they would often design rigid solutions, making sure the users were involved (CYA style), and then blame the users if things were barely usable. <p>For the bad to worse manager who had no creative problem solving skills, usually politics and personality controlled the department. <p>It is my guess that the latter management style is a large reason why a lot of jobs are going to India. Y2K killed it for IT and smart executives decided to move the softer skills to a place that can be better controlled and less costly.

First off, my compliments to Paul on another fine article. For anyone who hasn't read Paul's book I highly recommend it. His book along with his occasional articles provide a great source of information for all of us in the I.T. field. I had the pleasure of working with Paul (unfortunately, for too short a time) so I can attest to his sound sage advice :-). <p>I believe for someone to become a good technical manager, upper management has to provide the tools and resource for everyone to succeed. Sadly, not many companies do. For those that are trying to implement the tools and resources needed, it can be a long, drawn out process. It takes a commitment from everyone for this initiative to succeed! <p>Good luck Paul and keep on writing!

This is a discussion about <B>How to Lead, Manage, and Motivate Corporate Programmers</b>.<p align='center'><a href=http://www.mcpressonline.com/mc? This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it @.6b27ca4a>Click here for the article</a>.</p>

Many years ago Paul was my IT manager and it was a pleasure working with him. He encouraged me to become a highly paid IT manager from the same advice given in his book “How to Become a Highly Paid Corporate Programmer” and this article. <p>Thanks Paul… <p>Great Article and Great Book!!!