Why IT likes ninjas and not awards.

My organization had an awards show today. They gave out milestone awards for people working 5s of years, for people that went "above and beyond", people that had perfect attendance, people that took the most training programs last semester, snappiest dresser... you get the point.

My last job had this too. It was basically given to whoever wasn't terrible at a project that was important to management. Several of these projects were the financial and resource equivalent to black holes but that didn't matter. As you can guess, I never got one (one of those projects, nor an award). I knew it was one big circle-jerk and that it didn't make me any less of an IT professional but it still bugged me in a way. 

My last company was very small so we, as in Tech Support, knew everyone. All the devs, all the testers, all the sales people, all the shipping workers... we knew everyone. And most everyone knew us. That was just the nature. This new job, however, is a much larger organization. 

I've realized that IT people generally don't like awards. It might sound stupid but let me play this one out. On the good side of getting an award, it means that your hard work is recognized and, well, awarded. Good, right? It also means that people knew your name and have worked with you a lot. People work with IT a lot when they have problems... a lot. Many of those problems are brought about by vaguely tech-related questions or by plain old dumb shit. Like forgetting your password after working here for 3 years. Or asking if you should get a Macbook Air and what IT thinks of it. When people are on a first-name basis with the IT guys, that's likely because they've had problems. If they've had problems then either the tools they're using aren't foolproof enough or there's fundamental problems with how things are done with technology. 

Our goal is to be ninjas. We like ninjas. They're quick, silent, unnoticed but can be deadly. We're not talking literal ninjas but ninjas in the fact that what we do is magic and that you hardly ever have to call us. When we don't hear from users all the time, that means technology is as it should be; completely transparent. It should just work. The unfortunate thing about IT is that people don't call, email, text or IM us because they love the way we type, the sound of our voices, how we do that thing with our hair, etc. They contact us because they need help or something broke; In fact, most of the time, it's both of those.

We want to be quick, silent and unnoticed like Ninjas. But, we're also problem solvers, creative thinkers, and most of us aren't the grumpy assholes you think we may be. But we like to be behind the scenes making the magic happen; and standing behind you, showing you how to open programs with the Start menu isn't there. "No, your other left. There ya go."