By Julie Bort
Network World, 07/23/01

You control a big chunk of the IT budget, oversee a dozen vendors and manage a highly educated staff. You regularly discuss network requirements with your CEO and sometimes the board. Your projects are acclaimed as business enablers. You are leadership incarnate, with all indicators pointing to a CIO role, you believe.

But chances are you'll be passed over for that promotion like a pedestrian watching an F-16 jet fly overhead. The hard truth is network professionals are woefully discriminated against when it comes to landing top technology spots. Despite the increased visibility of the network, senior management and recruiters stubbornly perceive even the highest ranking network executives as not having the right stuff - compared to lead application developers - even though infrastructure is a main component of virtually any top IT role.

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"That role going to someone in infrastructure rather than development is the exception," says Gina Schiller, a CIO recruiting specialist for JB Homer Associates in New York.

In fact, a computer programmer with little to no infrastructure experience is four times more likely to become top technologist than an infrastructure expert with little to no application development experience, according to a Network World study the of 100 résumés of CIOs and similar senior technology executives.

Your chances double if you have application development experience, but that still leaves you at a disadvantage. Network experts who have managed big application projects still lag behind people who have done nothing but code, our research showed.

Specifically, developers with little to no infrastructure experience landed 33% of the top technology positions studied. Application developers with significant networking credits (such as the creation of a remote-access infrastructure) got 27% of the jobs. Network professionals with significant application project management experience (such as the creation of e-commerce systems or enterprise resource planning rollouts) scored 19% of them. Network professionals with no significant application development experience grabbed only 9%. (And, of those nine, two were replaced within a year by application development folks.) This is less, even, than those who don't come from the technology ranks at all, but sport a business or financial background. These people snatched 12%—albeit, all had notable technology project management experience.

A new trend called succession planning could make the matter worse. In succession planning, a company grooms someone as CIO. A lack of infrastructure experience is also the norm, says Schiller - and not considered a concern because training is part of the program. Infrastructure folks are squeezed out of the running from the get-go.

Still, the situation isn't hopeless. Network professionals who acknowledge this discrimination exists - and understand why -- can reshape their images, show off their business acumen and cross into the vice president ranks and beyond. Also, the CTO role common in government and growing in corporations can open doors. CTOs handle all the down-and-dirty technology aspects of a CIO's job, such as product standardization, and free the CIO to concentrate on business issues such as financing.

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Women infrastructure professionals are hurt most
Women are far less likely to land CIO or equivalent jobs then men, at 16% vs. 84%, and are slightly more likely to come from the developer ranks when they do.
Source: Network World, Inc. 2001

But your course won't be easy. No matter how well you fly, you'll be flapping against the wind.

Network professionals who have managed to climb to vice president or CIO positions say they've experienced this anti-infrastructure bias.

"It's harder for networking guys," says Paul Czarnik, vice president of technology and CIO for San Francisco recruitment firm Wetfeet. "If you are a technical professional who focuses on infrastructure, you don't have the exposure to the company's customers and business side that drives decisions. The best technical idea is not always the best business decision."

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The iron IP curtain

Czarnik's observations come from his experience as a programmer and a network professional. He began his career as an enterprise programmer, but moved quickly into development of network products. In 15 years of IT management positions in the '80s and early '90s, he moved from head of engineering for SunConnect to vice president of engineering and CTO at LANQuest. He held similar positions at a few other vendors before landing the top technology spot at Wetfeet.

Now, as a consumer of the network products he built, Czarnik has broad technology know-how. But, more importantly, he says, keeping himself in front of the iron IP curtain of the data center as a network professional gave him the experience to make business decisions - the cornerstone of his current job.

Czarnik determined how to allocate money and manpower for an application service provider (ASP) that Wetfeet launched earlier this year. "With our ASP product, do we aggressively acquire customers and do I have the resources to do that now? Or do we first bolster the technology? If we get the customers first, how do I deal with potential problems like scalability? As CIO, I'm making decisions, more than stating technical direction," he says.

Photography by Steven Vote

Network professional Jack Gelman also believes that infrastructure people have a harder time gaining top management promotions. His business experience and an MBA helped him earn a vice president title for his role as head of networking at Dow Jones in Princeton, N.J. He oversees 500 workers for the network, data centers, desktop and field services.

Gelman began his career in research and development for Bell Labs and then moved into sales for AT&T, where he learned to become "a profit and loss manager." These experiences taught him that, for an IT career, customer contact is the difference between respect and obscurity, he says. So at Dow Jones, he makes sure he is regularly included in customer sales calls. Such contact gives him the business insight he needs to educate his peers on the network's business impact. This, in turn, gives him an equal footing with the application developers.

"Application people are more visible and closer to the business. They get to appraise things from user and business perspectives," Gelman says. "[But] things are changing. Decisions made on projects were historically made around applications. But the infrastructure is outliving applications. The complexity of the infrastructure is driving costs and time to market."

Gelman points to this fact to ensure that his infrastructure organization is included in all project planning, alongside the application group. "The earlier we get involved, the more we can make sure the right choices are being made. That's the shift," he says.

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Education misconception

While a lack of visibility is the crux of the problem, the bias against infrastructure professionals runs deeper. Top management, human resource professionals and recruitment firms - even those that specialize in technology executive placements - typically view network professionals as technicians, whose roles are operational and not strategic, says Allan Grossman, senior partner for recruiting firm A. Davis Grant & Company in Edison, N.J.

Although e-business has caused some companies to recognize the revenue potential of the network - rather than simply categorizing it as overhead - such thinking isn't yet the norm. But no one today refutes the business importance of applications because people understand a programmer's impact better than they do a network professional's, whose work is hidden in walls, wiring closets and data centers.

As Schiller puts it: "Application developers have more day-to-day interface with business managers. If you're on the infrastructure side, you wind up sitting in data centers. . . . it's location, location, location."

Therefore, application folks appear more business savvy and even better educated than those pegged as infrastructure technicians, Grossman says.

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This perception is a misconception, of course, as network professionals typically begin their careers with a bachelor's degree in a discipline such as electrical engineering, just as programmers begin with a bachelor's in computer science. And, like their programming counterparts, successful network professionals frequently earn graduate degrees in their fields or MBAs, or both (not to mention constant technical training). Gelman has a master's degree in electrical engineering in addition to his MBA. Still, while management better understands the network's worth today, it continues to undervalue the people overseeing that infrastructure.

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Fight back Discrimination against network professionals for top technology positions is widespread, but these tips can help you beat the odds. Get application development experience. A well-rounded résumé will help you land the job and excel at it once it's yours. Attend sales calls or otherwise make contact with customers. Learning about customers lets you base technology decisions on business merit. Interact with business managers often. Volunteer for committees, attend company meetings and luncheons. Schmoozing turns you from technician to person. Talk business. Discuss the infrastructure's impact on business goals and avoid yapping about its technological underpinnings. Promote your business skills. Whenever possible, play up your employee and vendor management, negotiation and fiscal experiences. Show off your smarts. If you have multiple degrees, don't let them be overshadowed by your technical certifications. If your company traps you at the data center, consider moving to the vendor ranks, where wider business management roles are available to technical people. This could build your resume for an enterprise CIO job. Consider a two-phase approach to the top, aiming for a CTO-type job first.

"I'm not suggesting that the network is less important," Grossman says. "On the contrary, without an established network, applications wouldn't do any good. But it still remains that application people interface with the business more and form relationships. So when the question arises on who should be considered for promotion, the people known are the application people."

Some network executives who have achieved CIO jobs say the bias against network professionals can be justifiable. "Without understanding the business and the ensuing applications that drive the business, it is hard to justify moving the infrastructure side into the No. 1 slot," says a former CIO who requested anonymity. 

He learned this the hard way. He landed the CIO job at a start-up technology company "despite my management experience being mostly infrastructure." But in a month, the start-up let him go, giving his responsibilities to someone with a development background. Of course, it would be unfair to say he lost his job so quickly because of his infrastructure background. But, he admits, his background failed to warn him that the company's business plan was poorly constructed.

The issue remains that the same measure of technical competency is not being applied equally to those from infrastructure as it is to those from development. The research numbers tell the story: More than one-third of the time programmers with no infrastructure experience land the role, while only one-fifth of the time a networking professional with significant application experience earns it, even though well-rounded experience would seem to be a better background.

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Mounting a fight

Combating discrimination requires a two-pronged approach. First, you must gain the business skills necessary not just to be considered for the job, but to do it well. Then you must convince others that you have those skills.

Make your image as a technology guru work for you The new CTO role could be your answer to professional discrimination. If your company has added a CTO position to its senior management designations, you may have an avenue for career growth. Technical savoir-faire, the element that works against network professionals reaching for CIO roles, works in your favor when applying for CTO, recruiters say. Click here for more.

Start by logging irrefutable business experience. You might consider earning an MBA. While our resume research wasn't conclusive on the topic, about one-half the bios listed an MBA. Still, a business degree alone won't be enough.

"Companies hire people for what they have done, not for what they want to do," Grossman says.

That means cross-training. Seek ways to become involved with application development so you can work directly with business managers. If this idea unsettles you because of the politics surrounding application development, perhaps a top technology spot at a corporation isn't for you, Czarnik says. Shouldering such politics is what an enterprise CIO does.

If you can take the politics but can't stomach application work, consider moving into the network vendor ranks where a strong engineering background can be a good fit for top management positions, Czarnik suggests.

Even development experience won't automatically land you a top management spot. You must also become your own public relations professional, Gelman advises. At every appropriate opportunity, flaunt your business skills. "Play to your strengths," he says. "Downplay the technology and play up budget management, negotiation, vendor management and project delivery."

Likewise, train yourself to discuss the infrastructure in business terms (the network upgrade saves X dollars annually by eliminating in-state long-distance charges), not technology terms (the network upgrade enables a converged IP network for inband telephony). You'll find an eager audience. Thanks to e-business, top executives are anxious to understand the business value of your work.

Another tactic is to reach for a CTO slot. This may be a career destination or a stepping stone to higher ranks, Schiller suggests.

Discrimination against networking professionals has been the dirty little secret few have been willing to discuss. But now that you know it's there, you can rise above.

Better in the tech sector, but still lagging Technology companies are most likely to hire network professionals for the top technology spot than companies in other industries, but even here, application folks win the job 60% of the time. Source: Network World, Inc. 2001

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