I am no longer a technician

[cdybedahl]

Since last Thursday, I no longer have any hands-on technical work. I'm now supposed to spend half my time being a manager at Init (the small consultancy company I've worked at since 2008), and the other half at my current client. Which is the Swedish Police Authority. Where I started with a technical task last November, only I insisted on trying to solve the actual problem instead of just doing what they asked. So now I'm in the position of un-official IT architect, trying to make people understand the organization's problems and, once they do, trying to make them understand how to solve them. It's more fun than it sounds like.

But I don't do anything technical any more. For the first time in over twenty years. It feels weird, but also mostly as a relief. Yes, sure, the technical details can be great fun and very exciting. But as I've grown older and more experienced I've come to understand more and more clearly how few technical problems actually are technical problems. Nearly all of them are actually people problems. And trying to fix people problems with technical solutions is a sure way to get really frustrated.

So now I'm trying to fix the people problems at the people level. Goddess knows if I'm going to be any good at it, but at least a few people seem to think I will be.

Time will tell, I suppose.

Comments

[watervole]

It'll be an interesting learning curve.

[katlinel]

Good luck! I hope this new challenge is rewarding.

[slamaina]

I know this is an older post but I read it to my wife because I knew she would appreciate it. She has a government job doing programing and most days she is banging her head because it is hard to create or fix programs if the client (or coworkers) don't understand the problem.

Slam