January 14, 2003

This kid named Bill is hired by the IT shop to deliver printouts, and there's no rung lower on the IT ladder than that, says a pilot fish working in the same shop.

But while he spends his days doing every kind of scut work IT has to offer, Bill is spending his nights in class -- and after five years, he has his electrical engineering degree.

"Upon graduation, he's assigned to the network administration group and paid the entry-level degreed salary, though IT argues for a higher salary commensurate with his degree and experience," says fish.

And Bill is good, with a gift for sniffing out and fixing pretty much any network problem that crops up.

"Other companies and even the telephone people call him for advice," fish reports. "Everyone in IT understands how valuable he is and tries repeatedly to promote him to the next level."

But it's no dice. "Not enough time in grade or experience," says the human resources manager.

"But we'd have to pay three times his salary to get someone as good," IT boss pleads -- to no avail.

"The appeals go all the way to the vice president of human resources," says fish. "Still no dice."

So Bill quits -- and takes a job with another company for two and a half times his old salary.

The very next day, there's a network problem in HR. The network administrators jump on it, but no one can figure out what's wrong for nearly two days.

So the VP of HR calls the IT boss and reams him out for taking so long to fix the failure. "Why didn't you just send Bill?" he sputters. "He always knew what to do!"

January 13, 2003

Clue, Clue, Who's Got a Clue?

Nontechie IT director insists on doing the first interview with every technical job applicant -- "to determine their technical competence," says database manager pilot fish. "He interviewed one application development candidate for 25 minutes before realizing that he had grabbed the wrong person in the lobby." His first clue? When the interviewee -- who was actually applying for a data-entry job -- told him, "I've never written a program, but I would like to someday." Read More

January 15, 2003

Shark Tank: Next, we'll replace the furnace with Pentium 4s

Our fax machine has died, IT pilot fish tells his boss. We need a new one. Read More

January 16, 2003

Shark Tank: Now why does that idea sound familiar?

This pilot fish gets the assignment as database architect for a billion-dollar military IT project: pulling together all the support databases for military sites scattered across the country, so the data will be consistent and current no matter where a user logs on. Read More

January 17, 2003

Shark Tank: The long, hot summer

It's the long, hot summer of 1969, and this computer operations pilot fish is managing the night shift in the spanking-new computer room at a paper forms manufacturer. Read More

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