Private Storm

This past weekend I attended a really lame local tech event. Actually, I only attended half of it since I left at lunch. Since I am looking for a new job, I had hoped that it would be a good networking opportunity. Unfortunately it was mostly a waste of time.

I’m the kind of person that tries to take something away from every experience. To that end, this event did provide me with one very important point.

Kathy Harris of Gartner talked a little bit about “three personality types and how they relate to IT innovation”:

• Type A organizations are aggressive in that they adopt emerging technologies early in their life cycle.
• Type B organizations are moderately aggressive in their adoption of emerging technologies so they invest in IT innovation to maintain their competitive position.
• Type C organizations are conservative and invest in new technologies out of competitive necessity.

One of my biggest complaints about my last job was that they did not keep up with modern technology. The administrators of that non-profit organization often cited lack of funding as the main reason for not being early adopters. New technology initiatives would help save the organization money in the long term, but those arguments often went unheeded. Even blogging and other web 2.0-related ideas were ignored, not because they cost too much (some of them were free), but because no one knew what they were.

As someone that likes to keep up on the latest technologies, both hardware gadgets and software services, I was more than a little bit frustrated being part of a work culture that just didn’t get it at all. Looking back, it is really obvious that my former employer falls into the Type C category, and a very low Type C at that.

I am probably somewhere in the mid to low range of the Type A category. If I had more disposable income, I’d buy more of the newest gadgets and would therefore be higher up in the Type A category.

This is a very important thing to keep in mind as I go to interviews. I now have a few extra questions to ask potential employers. In terms of adopting new technology, what type of organization are they? If they are a high Type B organization or above, then that will most likely be a good fit for me. Anything lower than a mid Type B organization would be a frustrating type of place for me to work and possibly would not even be worth getting out of bed every morning to go to.