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ManagementSpeak: We want you to be the executive champion of this project.
Translation: I want to be able to blame you for my mistakes.
Thanks to reader Nick Osborn for this helpful addition to our phrase book.

“We ought to start a mentor program,” said one of the four Jim’s reporting to me several years ago.

“Great idea,” I replied. “One question: what’s a mentor program?”

A mentor program, Jim explained, recognizes the expert-in-the-next-cubicle, providing support, prestige (or at least respect), and a role in influencing how IS deals with LAN and desktop technology and support.

“I like it,” I told him. “You’re in charge.”

At this juncture all four Jim’s (and the rest of the room too, except for the other Bob who sat sketching the meeting notes) explained that this would prevent the proposal of any more good ideas. Suggesting doesn’t automatically mean volunteering.

Eventually we found two volunteers and started the program. We won a national award for it, too. And here’s the greatest part: I got some of the credit, when all I did was pop for lunch, books, and a few trinkets. Total budget variance: 0.0113%. Non-money.

Last week’s column started a series on the interaction between IS and the end-user community. As you may remember, the column discussed three insights that form the backdrop for these interactions: (1) Visibility = Dissatisfaction; (2) You need to provide stealth end-user support; and (3) IS isn’t the expert when it comes to personal computers.

Mentor programs build on all three of these insights at the operational level. By improving “next-cube” support, fewer problems reach any manager’s radar screen. If you’re really persuasive, get your mentors to buddy-up with new users, so neophytes have someone to say, “I don’t remember what they said about this,” to without feeling embarrassed.

Mentors require a small but real support effort on the part of IS, but reduce the total time expended by IS analysts supporting end-users greatly. Let’s look at how to organize a program like this.

1. Find a compatible and enthusiastic pair of individuals to head this up. Two is a great number of people for a program like this. Two people bounce ideas off each other where one just mutters. Two load-balance where one burns out or lets the program slide. Two keep each other’s enthusiasm going.

2. Qualifications: you need party planners and social directors, not techies. Business happens over lunch and participation is voluntary. Your mentors gotta wanna. That means planning lunches that are entertaining as well as useful. (Yeah I know: making work fun isn’t in fashion this year, but I’ve never had much fashion sense.)

3. Monthly Lunch Programs: have contests with prizes, (give the group a list of obscure features and see which one knows the most) drawings for door prizes, and guest speakers (every vendor in town will drool over the chance to talk to a group like this). Ask mentors to submit “Tip ‘o the Month” ideas for your company to include in its employee newsletter, and give a special prize each month to the mentor supplying the tip.

4. Giveaways: give every mentor aftermarket books on your applications – the ones for sophisticated users, not beginners. Also give them a plaque, clock, t-shirt, sweatshirt … something that both identifies them as a mentor and that they’ll like.

5. Influence: involve mentors in product decisions, configuration defaults, training-course content … everything that directly affects the end-user community. Give them access to a test server housing new software releases as soon as each new release appears on the market. Invite them to stress-test the new releases and give them prizes for major bugs.

This isn’t a strategic program – heck, it isn’t even tactical. It just helps everyone out with their day-to-day grind, at very low cost. You may not be a hero for putting together a mentor program. The mentors will be the heroes if anyone is, and that’s as it should be.

But you’ll have done your good deed for the day.

Of all the requests for advice I receive, the hardest come from college graduates or career changers wanting to know how to break into IT, and from older programmers who want to write code until they retire but can’t even get an interview. They’ve been sold on the idea that proficiency with computers practically guarantees employment. Now, nobody wants ’em.

I’d love to offer hope and great advice. Regrettably, the best advice I have is this: Find a different field of endeavor. Unless you’re in the top rank, there’s little future for you in IT.

The supply of programmers exceeds demand, and that drives down prices — your wages. That’s because the genie of globalization is out of the bottle, and it’s going to stay out of the bottle at least until the Internet closes up shop.

Twenty years ago, the same thing happened to factory jobs. U.S. factory workers were unionized, which simply meant that instead of keeping jobs and accepting lower wages, their jobs went away altogether as the factories relocated to the Philippines, Malaysia, and Taiwan. Now it’s our turn: Indian and Asian programmers work as hard as or harder than their American counterparts, and for lower wages.

It’s easy to blame greedy CEOs for this mess, but employers aren’t just being greedy when they shift these jobs to foreign workers. If they don’t and their competitors do, they have to charge more for the same products and services. Not exactly a formula for success, and when business shifts to the competitors, the jobs do too — overseas anyway.

Nor would changing the H1b program — or even eliminating it altogether — help. Whether foreign programmers come here or programming jobs go there, the result is the same except for which country collects the income tax. Foreign programmers produce code just as good as that coded by American programmers. For less. Are you willing to compete?

Is this a good thing? Not for the average U.S. citizen, I imagine, although it will help keep prices down when we’re shopping.

Not every IT job will move overseas, of course. Much of management will remain, as will jobs where proximity, linguistic ability, and cultural familiarity are important, like network administration, systems analysis, user interface design, help desk, and project management. Nor will all programming jobs will move overseas either. Plenty of U.S. factories remain open, too. But the trend is clear, and it means an increasing number of American programmers will be competing for a decreasing number of jobs.

So if you still want a programming career, here’s the best advice I have:

Expect to work harder, for less.