Communications of the ACM
Beyond Stereotypes of IT Professionals: Implications For IT HR Practices
What is your image of an IT professional? A popular image is the "technology geek" [6]. Such caricatures of the IT professional can create problems for the profession by reducing its attractiveness to prospective entrants. Likewise, stereotypical images held by managers can create potentially serious problems for IT professionals and their employers since IT human resource (IT HR) practices are based on managers' views. If IT HR practices are based on invalid images of IT professionals, HR practices will be ineffective, resulting in such negative consequences as higher-than-expected turnover and decreased performance. Consequently, it is important to compare stereotypes with the actual characteristics of IT professionals to ensure an organization's HR practices are based on a valid description of those professionals.
Toward this end, we identify three stereotypes pervasive in the IT management literature and use survey data from 180 members of a national organization of IT professionals to explore whether the stereotypes are valid descriptions of them. Survey participants reported holding the following mainline IT positions: IT professional with no supervisory responsibilities (36%), IT supervisor (10%), middle-level IT manager (30%), or senior IT manager (24%). They were predominantly men (72%) and white (88%). On average, they had been with their current employer for nine years and were 48 years old. The questions we asked to examine the validity of the stereotypes are reported in the discussion of the stereotypes described here.
To preview our findings, we demonstrate that the stereotypes describe some, but not most, IT professionals. As a result, IT managers must go beyond the stereotypes to more fully understand the IT professionals they manage. This better understanding should help managers establish more appropriate HR practices than if they assumed the majority of IT professionals fit the stereotypes.
Stereotype #1: The "High Maintenance" IT Professional
According to this stereotype, IT professionals provide significant value to their organizations, but they expect their organizations to meet their many needs. Expectations of these high achievers include more pay, benefits, interesting work, recognition, and opportunities for growth and development. These IT professionals define more interesting work as the opportunity to work on hot projects with the latest and greatest information technology. They spend long hours, preferably at their time and place of choice, learning new technologies and determining how to make systems work. Nonetheless, they want the organization to provide them with training and new technologies to help them keep current. They want to be challenged to make great things happen with these technologies and to be appreciated for their contributions. Fundamentally, the character of this stereotype is consistent with research showing that high performers are motivated by specific challenging goals and feedback [3, 5] and that IT professionals have a high need for growth and development [2].
An organization wishing to motivate and retain IT professionals would need to provide the many incentives described in this stereotype, making "High Maintenance" an apt description of these high achieving employees. IT managers fear these employees will go elsewhere if the organization does not give them these incentives. These stereotypical IT professionals are less reliant on their organizations to provide secure employment since they rely on their technical skills to find alternative employment if they do not get what they want. This is particularly evident when market conditions are favorable for IT professionals.
To determine how closely the "High Maintenance" stereotype matches reality, we examined whether the incentives noted in the description of such IT professionals are important to our sample of IT professionals. Motive profiles were developed based on participants' ratings of the importance of items related to security, achievement, and flexibility needs. Response scales ranged from 1 (low importance) to 5 (high importance). The items for security needs were job/income security and level of benefits. The items for achievement needs were career development opportunities, recognition, and specific performance requirements. Finally, the items for flexibility needs involved freedom to choose when and where to work. Importance scores for security, achievement, and flexibility needs were derived by averaging responses on related items. The scores for these three needs were then used in a cluster analysis, which combined individuals with similar scores into groups. The cluster analysis resulted in three groups of IT professionals with the distinct motive profiles shown in Figure 1. Only one of these three motive profiles matched Stereotype #1.
The challenge for managers is to recognize that a large percentage of their IT professionals are probably not in the High Maintenance group and, thus, managers must make trade-offs about the types of incentives provided to their IT staff.
Sixty-five IT professionals (or 36% of our sample) were placed into a group we labeled "High Maintenance." Their lower security needs, compared to the other two groups, the "Lifestyle" and "Committed" groups, suggest they are confident of finding alternative employment if their current arrangement does not match their expectations. In contrast, their higher achievement needs (relative to the Lifestyle group) and higher flexibility needs (compared to the Committed group) indicate they want the many perks consistent with the stereotype. Thus, this group provides support for Stereotype #1.
Forty-five IT professionals were placed into the Lifestyle group. Contrary to the stereotype, this group, consisting of 25% of the IT professionals, was actually less achievement oriented. Relative to the other groups, it is not as important for the Lifestyle group to receive recognition from their organization. It is also less important that the organization provide career development opportunities or specific performance requirements. IT professionals in this group may have a more independent lifestyle and, thus, may not be as interested in their organizations providing these achievement-oriented incentives. They may be intrinsically motivated, more self-confident, and thus more self-sufficient than others.
To illustrate, consider how members of this group may address career development. They may rely on self-directed learning obtained via the Web and discussions with their peers; thus, they are less reliant on their organizations to provide career development opportunities. Alternatively, the lower importance of career development opportunities may mean that family commitments or other priorities, perhaps resulting from their career stage, lead these IT professionals to seek a more balanced lifestyle between work and non-work (including family or community) activities. This is consistent with the Lifestyle group's need for the greatest amount of flexibility compared to the other two groups (see Figure 1). As one IT professional noted, "I have three children and I'm married. I still want to have a life" [4]. The bottom line is that the Lifestyle group is less reliant on the organization to meet achievement needs than the other groups.
Seventy IT professionals (or 39% of our sample) were placed into the Committed group. These IT professionals willingly work when and where the organization wants, since such flexibility is relatively unimportant to them compared to the High Maintenance and Lifestyle groups.
Taken together, this evidence suggests that the High Maintenance stereotype does not always hold. The higher security needs of both the Committed group and the Lifestyle group stand in contrast to the lower security needs of the IT professionals in Stereotype #1. With 64% (115/180) of IT professionals in these latter two motive profiles, only about one-third of those in our sample conform to the High Maintenance stereotype.
The challenge for managers is to recognize that a large percentage of their IT professionals are probably not in the High Maintenance group and, thus, managers must make trade-offs about the types of incentives provided to their IT staff. For example, having resources devoted to employment guarantees is more important for the Lifestyle and Committed groups than the High Maintenance group. The High Maintenance and Lifestyle groups might need extra dollars allocated for telecommuting equipment, in line with their higher flexibility needs, while the Committed need less of those resources. Similarly, for IT professionals in the Lifestyle group, managers could reduce the number of formal opportunities or development dollars allocated to learn new technologies while increasing them for the High Maintenance and Committed groups. To have HR practices based mainly on Stereotype #1 will clearly result in misaligned or wasted resources.
Stereotype #2: The "Older, Static" IT Professional
According to this stereotype, older IT professionals are radically different from younger IT professionals since they have a lower preference for achievement, specifically career development opportunities [1, 8]. There is a belief that IT professionals who have learned a skill and maintained that skill for years cannot adapt or learn a new one [9]. Consequently, organizations may devote less time and fewer resources toward updating the IT skills of this older group. Taking all of this into consideration, the marketability and job mobility of older IT professionals may be impaired.
To explore how well this stereotype matches reality, we first investigated whether IT professionals follow what is often considered a normal career progression, with younger employees having short job tenure (presumably the youngest, most energetic IT professional) and older employees having long tenure (presumably the oldest, most static IT professional). Cluster analysis, similar to that described in Stereotype #1, was used to identify career stages. With age and number of years in the current organization as the clustering variables, four distinct career stages were identified in our sample, as shown in Figure 2. These career stages, used in examining Stereotype #2, raise questions about this stereotype.
For instance, older IT professionals are not all alike with respect to mobility. As shown in Figure 2, both the "Middle-Aged" and "Older-Movers" in our sample do not fit the stereotype that job tenure increases with age. The Middle-Aged group does not seem to differ from the younger group, and the Older-Movers are radically more mobile than their slightly younger counterparts in the "Older-Stayers" group. This evidence is counter to the stereotype that older IT professionals have limited mobility.
When we analyzed the groups by motive profiles across career stages, we found further evidence that Stereotype #2 is not a valid description of older IT professionals. For example, consider those in the Lifestyle group. IT professionals in this group look less for career development opportunities from their organizations. If the stereotype were true, the Lifestyle group would dominate the older career stages and be relatively rare in the younger career stages. Not only did this group not dominate the older IT professionals (having only 25% in the older career stages), it also made up a similar percentage (24%) of the two younger career stages (see Figure 3).
For the High Maintenance and Committed IT professionals, we found that Stereotype #2 also did not hold. Within these two higher achievement oriented groups, the Older-Stayers had higher preferences for job/income security, level of benefits, career development opportunities, and recognition than the Older-Movers. Perhaps the reason these preferences are higher among Older-Stayers is that they have not had the opportunities the Older-Movers have had to satisfy their needs through job moves. These results suggest that all older IT workers are not alike.
Clearly, age alone is not a good basis for designing IT HR practices. The results suggest that HR practices should be based on a more complex combination of age, tenure, and motive patterns. Counter to the stereotype, companies should continue to provide opportunities for those older IT professionals who are willing to change, repackage themselves, and acquire new skills to be successful. These employees may have valuable knowledge of a firm and its applications into which they can integrate new skills. Conceivably, this would make them even more valuable than a younger IT professional who does not have such firm-specific knowledge and skills.
Stereotype #3: The "Technology Anchored" IT Professional
Consistent with the "technology geek" image, IT professionals define themselves and their value in terms of the number and difficulty of the technical skills they have mastered [8]. Their careers are anchored in technology. Since the half-life of technologies is short, anyone who does not keep up is a dinosaur. Like the dinosaur, these out-of-date individuals are in danger of becoming extinct, forever severed from the evolving IT career world. According to this third stereotype, moving into a managerial position limits career options since technical competencies erode quickly in such a non-technical position. Therefore, this stereotype views IT professionals as not valuing non-technical/managerial competencies and assumes management positions are career dead-ends, thus limiting the pool of potential IT managers. In the words of one IT professional who made the transition to manager, "Most of the young-gun technology talent out there say they tolerate the `suits' but have no aspirations to become one" [7].
To explore Stereotype #3, we used data based on participants' agreement with three statements about the value of their competencies. For example, participants rated the following statement on a 5-point scale (where 1 meant "strongly disagree" and 5 meant "strongly agree"):
In general, compared with others whom employers would consider for jobs that would interest me, my knowledge, skills, and abilities are relatively attractive.
We obtained an average score across these competency items for each IT professional. We used that score to compare those in managerial (non-technical) positions with those in non-managerial (technical) positions. In contrast with the stereotype, managers indicated their competencies were more valuable to them (with a rating of 4.3) than did those whose jobs were more technically focused (with a rating of 3.9). IT professionals with management responsibilities appear to define themselves in terms of their management experiences [8] and not their technical competencies.
Rather than rely on simple generalizations, managers must evaluate an intricate combination of motives in conjunction with career stages to predict the needs of individual IT professionals.
The major implication from this analysis is that HR practices should focus on developing not just technical skills but also an awareness of the possibilities of a wide range of career paths. IT professionals who have not moved into managerial ranks might benefit from understanding the value of the competencies they could develop as managers. Those being groomed for managerial positions should not only be given managerial skills training but should also be provided with a broader perspective on the motivations and value of being a manager, through career planning exercises or access to managerial-level mentors. The organization will then benefit from a greater pool of internal candidates to fill open managerial positions.
Conclusion
The research highlighted in this article provides evidence that IT professionals are more complicated than the stereotypes we examined indicate. Contrary to these stereotypes, IT professionals possess a diversity of motivations that cut across age and organizational tenure profiles. Rather than rely on simple generalizations, managers must evaluate an intricate combination of motives (such as achievement, security, and flexibility) in conjunction with career stages to predict the needs of individual IT professionals. Paying attention to such complexity, however, should have its rewards if organizations wish to institute IT HR practices that align with their IT professionals' needs. Specifically, the allocation of scarce organizational resources should be more efficient and effective by targeting different resources toward supporting IT professionals with dissimilar needs rather than directing all types of resources indiscriminately at all IT professionals. Consequently, for the benefit of IT professionals and their employers, managers should look beyond the stereotypes and strive for a richer understanding of their IT professionals.
References
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Figures
Figure 1. Motive profiles by need categories.
Figure 2. Career stages: Average age and years in organization.
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