The point and role of management is to set the agencies Mission, Vision, and Values. They are to set the end goal for the staff to achieve, then get the [redacted] out of the way and let the people work. The management team at Marion County IT is so destitute of principle that they cannot manage their way out of a wet paper bag even if there was a flashing neon sign that said “EXIT THIS WAY”. In fact, they bought and paid for such a neon sign (external consultant) and rejected their recommendations or implemented them so poorly that it made the situation worse than it was before.
The management team at Marion County have their heads shoved so far up their posteriors that somehow, someway, they believe that they know better than the professionals with years more technical experience and expertise. Feedback, suggestions, and all other information from the technical experts are routinely rejected for no other reason than, “we’re management and we know your jobs better than you do.” Technical staff who spent years building positive and fruitful relationships with vendors were at one point told that they no longer were allowed to speak to said vendors; management took over those communications and thoroughly ruined them. The relationships degraded to the point that paid professionals from the vendors quit mid-project due to the astounding incompetence of the management team.
County culture is one of, “you live to work.” Lip service is paid to the concept of work-life balance. If you’re not sitting in a cube where management can metaphorically beat you, then you’re obviously not being productive and working. The employees take their jobs seriously and do everything they can to do right by the county taxpayers. However, management is so incredibly insecure that they throw around the word “insubordination” like they stocked up on it during a flash sale and write up employees for standing their ground regardless if the employee has law, regulation, or industry best practices supporting them. At Marion County, accountability only goes one way – down. When employees try to hold management accountable, they are labeled insubordinate and subsequently written up. Management fostered inappropriate relationships with HR personnel to string together unrelated perceived incidents to stick employees with final write-ups. MCEA/SEIU 503 as a union is so inept that all they did was sit in disciplinary meetings and take notes. Adding insult to injury, write-ups at the county do not require employee acceptance/acknowledgement; all a manager must do is submit it to the employee’s personnel file and it’s there permanently.
I am appalled at how the management team has not been thrown in jail for fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer dollars. Because they are technically incompetent and did not listen to the experienced professionals in their employ, management made decisions that threw out millions of dollars of recent investment and wasted years of work. Modern technologies (not even cutting edge!) were ripped out and defecated upon, and with them tools and capabilities that improved the staffs ability to perform their duties, increased the county’s security footprint, and would have placed the county in a position to better transition to future technologies. Instead, old and bloated systems were put in place because management used those tools to great effect twenty years ago. And most of those tools were never fully implemented, further wasting taxpayer dollars and investment. Investments valuing hundreds of thousands of dollars were made without proper accountability or oversight.
I am flabbergasted that a member of the management team with a criminal record was given full administrative access to all county systems, and when the technical team refused to make the change, they were threatened with termination if they did not comply. Management additionally has a track record of standing over employee’s shoulders and forcing them to make system changes that were either unethical or compromised the security and stability of Marion County systems, potentially exposing taxpayers information to malicious actors. If the employee didn’t make the change, they were threatened with a write up or straight up termination. When management was confronted about these incidents, their go-to response is to gaslight the employee by saying that the employee should have known better.
Unfortunately, the rot doesn’t stop with just the IT management. Multiple complaints were carried to higher levels and were routinely ignored. When confronted about the dearth of people leaving the IT department, the top-level management responded with, “I guess we hired the wrong people.”
When I say that Marion County is destitute of principles, I am targeting nearly everyone in management. Despite their challenges, many/most employees were rockstars and beyond awesome to work with. They are what made the job not just tolerable, but worthwhile. But it wasn’t enough overcome the fact that we never knew if we would show up to work with a job or not. Substance abuse became normal just to cope with the stress of being treated as if your years of experience and education meant nothing, of being treated like a child and told to sit in your cube and wait for explicit instructions from mind-bogglingly incompetent management. Of sitting there, powerless to stop the captains from setting the boat ablaze before ramming it straight into a cliff.
There was only one option – leave. Do yourself a favor and go look for employment somewhere else because no matter how bad of a dumpster fire anywhere else may be, that’s preferable to drowning in the septic tank that Marion County has devolved to.
