Peter PrincipleI can never fault someone for not knowing something. There are innumerable topics about which I know absolutely nothing. In today's world, it is impossible to know everything about your own field, especially when that field is as broad and wide-ranging as technology. There is, however, a basic level of competence that I think anyone involved in technology should possess.
(PEET-uhr PRIN-suh-pal)
noun
The theory that an employee within an organization will advance to his or her level of incompetence and remain there.
Today, I witnessed a person who had blown the Peter Principle out of the water.
For reasons which will quickly become clear, I don't want to go into much detail at all about the particular clients I work with. Suffice it to say that these companies are some of the largest in the world in their respective industries, and these industries are regulated to such a degree that something as simple as changing your password requires a half an hour on the telephone with their operations managers. The testing requirements for simple applications fill binders that would make the American Tax Code look like a garage sale flier.
For the most part, the people that I deal with in these companies are some of the brightest people I've ever dealt with. Due to the nature of our work, I don't deal with everyday system operators. I deal with IT Managers and CTO-level personnel. That is why it is so jarring to encounter someone who seems to have absolutely no technical expertise at all.
I don't want to rant about the specific employee that I had to deal with today, but suffice it to say he obviously knows very little about technology. He wanted me to test a particular piece of software for him, but having much more important and pressing matters to attend to, I chose instead to simply provide him the five-word command that he could use to test the application himself. All he had to do was copy the command from my email, paste it into his emulator screen, and press Enter.
That proved to be too complicated for him to handle.
I spent the next two hours running this command while he fiddled with settings. I finally got fed up to the point that I just told him to let me take care of everything and I would call him. An hour later, I had un-done all of his settings shenanigans and had the software working.
What I would like to discuss is not whether I should have helped him. We are contracted to that company to provide support for these situations, so it was well within his right to expect that I would help him.
The problem lies in the wisdom of having such a person on your staff. Here is someone who was incapable of copying five words of text, pasting them into another screen and pressing Enter. Here is someone who told me that he had configured this particular piece of software exactly the same as similar package from the same company. The two packages use identical settings files and identical settings screens. When I looked at the settings, not only did he not have half the settings populated, several of the ones he had managed to populate were populated incorrectly!
What is this person costing you? Let's just say that he makes $60,000 per year. That's $30 per hour. Let's also consider the distinct possibility that he spent a good hour trying to get this software set up prior to calling me. Add that hour to the two hours he was on the phone with me, and you're looking at $90 worth of his time that was spent accomplishing a task that should have taken five minutes.
Now let's consider the cost of having me fix his problem. We charge $150 per hour. I spent three hours handholding and reconfiguring. That's another $450 on top of the $90 that they paid this employee. The total cost of what should have been a five-minute configuration? $540.
This is a clear case of an employee that is costing them money. And the baffling part is that he has risen to such a high level amongst others who so completely outshine him in ability that it is almost sad. It baffles me that they have kept this employee on for the last fifteen years, and he hasn't learned how to cut and paste. It is beyond my comprehension that this person has been able to keep a very technical position in spite of his complete lack of technical ability.
The point is that you have to look at your organization and make sure that you have people who aren't costing you money. If you have hired someone for a technical position, they should be able to demonstrate a certain level of technical skill. As the position becomes more and more critical, the greater the level of expertise this person needs to show. Why some companies keep people like this where they are is a mystery to me.
They must know of this employee's limitations. It is impossible for him to have been there for fifteen years without getting labeled as the moron. I just wonder what justification they have for paying what is very likely a considerable salary to someone who is contributing very little except hassle to their goals.
But who knows -- maybe the guy just makes really good cookies for the office every Friday.
