I work within a large IT organization and the people in my department have been given the opportunity to work from home. If I do, does it reduce my opportunities for promotion or increase my chances of getting laid off?

In short, the answer to your question regarding the effect of working virtually on promotions and layoffs is that it depends on the following:

• Your company’s culture and norms regarding working virtually
• The percentage of people at your company that work remotely
• How visible you can be on a day-to-day basis to your boss and others
• How effectively you can perform your job remotely

Now let’s discuss these items one at a time . . .

As an IT Manager, motivating team members working in a hybrid or virtual workplace brings special issues, challenges, and complexities.

This webinar discusses how traditional and customized influence, delegation, and project management techniques can be used to motivate, even energize your staff, reduce attrition, and enhance work quality

There is an old expression that says “To have a good friend you have to be a good friend.” I believe that loyalty follows the same paradigm. As a manager, if you want your team to be loyal to you, then you have to be loyal to them. Furthermore, because you are the manager, your actions and attitudes will be the primary determining factor as to the cohesiveness and loyalty of your team members toward each other and toward you.

That said, the following items will help you build a loyal organization . . .

At their best, you get whisked off to cool locations like Las Vegas and New Orleans. At their worst, they are down the street from where you work, and you have to come back to the office in time for a 4:00 staff meeting.

Cool locations aside, with proper planning, a technical conference can be of real value to you, your staff, and your company. This planning is divided into two parts; picking the right conference, and budgeting your time once there.

Regarding picking the right conference, consider the following . . .

There is an old expression that says, “People should work to live, not live to work.” That said, upon occasion, and within certain bounds, you should allow an employee’s personal life to take precedent over their job. The concept here is that if you have a good employee who is working through a difficult family, personal or health issue, you should help them out.

Assisting an employee at their time of need has the following benefits . . .

Question: As a technical IT manager, do I really need to take classes on soft skills like active listening and interviewing? I hate that stuff, aren’t I better off learning something new technically?

Ok, I admit it. I was the biggest offender of the advice I am suggesting to you here.

As an individual contributor, I never took soft skills classes. I loved training, but if I couldn’t pick up an additional technical tip or two I wasn’t interested.

For many years, if I had the choice between Oracle Database Internals, Advanced Techniques in Function Overloading, or Active Listening, guess which two courses I took? Well, I’ll give you a hint. It wasn’t Active Listening or other soft skills related classes. I’m really glad I took the hard skills classes, the technical information I learned helped me grow as a technical professional.

In retrospect, however . . .

You are not only the manager of your group, you’re also its leader, primary advocate, mood setter, chief bottle washer and of course its chief decision maker. That said, feel free to get input from your staff and/or other knowledgeable parties, but at the end of the day, the decision is yours and yours alone. In fact, if you try to be too nice and leave every decision to a department vote, you will be viewed as indecisive, weak, ineffective and an obstacle to getting things done. On a lighter note, the good news is that you get to call your department’s shots. Cool!

Now that you know you’re the one on the hook to be decisive, consider the following when making decisions.

Question: Professionally I customize software modules on a well-known software package. The version we are working on is one version back and about a year old. Is continuing to work on this old software version hurting my professional marketability?

The short answer to your question is no, not yet, unless it was a major release that is being quickly and widely adopted.

The longer answer is that, in my opinion, a techie’s skill set from a marketability perspective has a two year half-life. That is to say, that the exact set of skills you have today will only be half as marketable two years from now.