Today I’m alone.
Back in March I suggested to some senior managers that if they were desperate to get developers for the new projects which were coming in, they could do no better than the three guys working for me. It would debilitate my team in the short term but we’d not lose any knowhow from the corporation and if they were quick, we’d get a good handover from them. The senior managers jumped at the chance and I find myself today, on my own, still attempting to deliver to an archaic SLA.
All three guys in my team were developers – used to writing code and getting results. What they were not is support people. They weren’t prepared for listening to complaints all day nor were they willing to sacrifice their sleep for a smoothly running system. The begrudged the duties that come with being on-call. Their skills were therefore being wasted as support is, for many, a dead-end role. When the opportunity for development jobs came up, they ran at them and due to the current market, they got them. One escapee, Steve the Biscuit is now working for an up and coming web design firm in Belfast.
It’s a shame though because the guys in this team were really smart and now they’ve all gone to pastures greener.
It behooves me to demand that you hire the right person for the job. Don’t hire a developer when you need a technical support engineer. Don’t hire a technical support engineer when you really need someone to man a phone. To do otherwise will breed resentment in the individual and dissatisfaction within your team.
I’ve no regrets about my time at $BIG_COMPANY mj though I suspect the interpretation of second-level support I had before I signed-up was a bit off!
You’ll not make that mistake again 🙂
Indeed! I shall especially be avoiding any mention of “on call support on a rotational basis” hehe