Eric M Russell (4/30/2013)
TravisDBA (4/30/2013)
Eric M Russell (4/30/2013)
mosborne (4/30/2013)
However, without people skills, that high-priced consulting career will remain tantelizingly beyond their reach.I have only two words in response to this rather audacious statement above only because I have personally seen it and can personally attest to it, 'Not true".:-D
A talented IT person with less than average people skills certainly can earn a good living leaping from one six-month contract to another. However, that's not the same thing as a "high-priced consultant".
I hope you do not mind me throwing in my two cents worth. Have fun with it! 😛
A real gearhead with few if any personal skills can still be a very great asset and a huge success. However they are costly, unless you have a great project manager or staff who bid and assign staff to projects. A skilled manager will separate the gearhead from the customer by keeping them at a remote location and rarely if ever on site. Besides the anti-socialized staff would prefer to be left alone with the machine, his or her code, and let the rest of the world pass by. They are content in their world of bits and bytes.
Most true gearheads I have known are sick and tired of dealing with people and prefer to work only with the machine. They do not tolerate "the imperfections of mindless pinhead users who do not have a clue". But they will do excellent work if they are allowed to do it as an insolated asset. It is a management issue, and a good manager can make many successful if they will manage the skills into the appropriate positions and not assign people to positions where the probability of failure is so high that the project and careers are at risk.
Using skilled people to do what they do best is to use the "people skills" person to relate to people and to use the real gearheads to do the mind-melding magic that only they can do. It would be nice to have everyone balanced, but we do not come that way.
Use people where they are strong and do not use them to do what they are incapable of succeeding at. And for all that is holy do not think you can take a real gearhead and into a meeting with a group of people persons and think it will all work out well. The people skill folks will not relate to the "closed minded albatross who could not succeed no matter what", and the gearhead will not come close to getting along with technological lightweights who can not "PC" if it was written on their hand.
Have a great day! 🙂
M.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!