Why did I write this? I got challenged by Andy Warren

to write a bit about why I wrote something. I complained to him that he

has some "mechanical" posts on this blog that just mention he wrote

something with some questions, and don't really blog about why he wrote

something. He challenged me to write about why I wrote something, so

here I am.

I'm doing both of the next two editorials in one post, not because I'm lazy, but because they both came off the same article.

I saw an article about IT workers being pushed, and it brought to mind two topics at once. The first is that many of us have worked for a manager that didn't understand what we did. I had this occur in all kinds of IT jobs, but especially in databases. Even a couple fairly good developer managers didn't really understand databases. I think that's a common complaint, though I'm not sure it matters. I managed people without understanding (technically) what they did. It's incumbent on the employee to dumb things down and on the manager to respect the employee's expert opinion.

The other thing was that you have to get along with managers. I think management can take advantage of employees, and I don't think you need to stand for it, but you also shouldn't unnecessarily rock the boat or cause problems because you're smarter, the only person to do something or any other reason. I might be a pain about some things, but I let you know up front about those things and they're a big deal to me. And I bend on other things.

Two advice editorials really.