My first IT job was as an RPG Junior Programmer at a large pharmaceutical manufacturer’s Canadian office. I was given minor program maintenance tasks. One of them involved a small change in a daily sales report program. I had just completed a community college computer degree and was appalled at the report layout, which, among other problems, had a terrible case of what I call “column creep,” i.e. many columns of figures with totals that didn’t quite line up, so that by the time you moved across the page to the right-most columns, the total underneath the last column actually belonged to the previous column, and the last column total was alone in the right margin. It was ugly and hard to read, and related columns were not grouped together. I told the programmer I reported to that I could really improve this report and was curtly ordered to do what I was told and no more.

So I did, but I also asked around and was astounded to find out that this very poorly designed report was read first thing every day by all the office sales managers and every major company executive: It was the most visible of all the IT reports. So one day in the cafeteria, within the earshot of a sales executive, I told the IT manager that with a day or two of work i could make vast improvements to this report. After I left, the sales executive told the IT manager that he would welcome any improvement to this critical report.

This resulted in a series of initiatives assigned to me to find “low hanging fruit” i.e. fast and easy opportunities to improve IT reports, making them easier to read, better organized, and providing more relevant information. Our department began to be more responsive to user requests and my career got a huge boost because word got around that I understood and spoke the language of the business units, and that I could help them organize data into more usable information.

The average network admin is having an identity crisis. Sometimes these IT pros are on top of the world with lots of responsibilities, then a few weeks pass and they’re on everyone’s bad side. Management has unrealistic expectations, and users, well, they love you and hate you – often at the same time.

Despite the up and down nature of working in IT, you actually have more power than you think to make positive changes in your job.

Kevin offers four practical steps for breaking through and finding a career you enjoy:

1. Find out what it is that you’re really supposed to be doing.
2. Accept responsibility.
3. Set goals.
4. Raise the bar.

It was the first point I found most interesting: “Find out what it is that you’re really supposed to be doing.” It seems so obvious, but if you had to get up and give a presentation in front of a kindergarten class about what you do, would your boss describe your job the same way? In a former life, I had a job where I was supposed to be devising reports about audience reach, which I did. But I also volunteered around the small business to do tech support, build a website mock-up,  show someone how to do a mail merge … and none of that was in my job description. That’s the sort of natural job evolution that happens all the time, and for a small, 6 or 7 person company, it’s no big deal. But for larger companies, or if you’re looking to make sure you have the right experience for the future, it might be best to make sure what your job is on paper matches what you’re doing in the real world.

Have you encountered this slow, inevitable responsibility shift before? Did it end up getting in the way of your “real” job, or did it help you advance your career? I’d love to hear your thoughts, either in in the comments or at Michael@ITKnowledgeExchange.com.