Mattel’s most recent Barbie® creation, the “Computer Engineer Doll” sports the sort of geek that might fit-in at our office. While I won’t pretend to be dissapointed that it has taken 124 careers for Barbie to become a Computer Engineer, it does bring some excitement to our industry.

I participate regularly with local education institutions who look to help educate students in technology and thought this would present an opportunity for us to give Barbie® a few words of advice as she begins her new career.

image by Mattel

Lose the Bluetooth during meetings. I’m impressed with your use of technology, but make sure you listen to the clients that are in front of you, without getting distracted.

You can’t survive on your looks. It’s true in every industry, you find people who want to survive on their looks may find themselves attracting attention, but soon it won’t be the kind of exposure they want. Study hard Barbie.

Demonstrate flexibility. While you can position yourself for success, don’t expect to have that pose everyday.  After a late night of implementation and troubleshooting, you will learn to become more flexible.

Maintain a well-rounded background. Keep up your grades in your business classes too, you might be surprised when you are asked to understand a balance sheet or write correspondence for a non-technical client.

Don’t talk down to your non-technical friends. Ken will ditch you faster than you can pull out a credit card if you become a tech know-it-all. If you want to keep your friends riding in the pink Jeep, you will learn that you must be able to communicate without displaying arrogance.

We wish you good luck in your new career path and if you haven’t found a place to land, send a resume over to Five Nines’ career page, we could always use a little more fashion in our engineering teams.

-Ben Pankonin

For many business consumers, the reaction to your last technology purchase is like getting to the bottom of a box of chocolates and realizing you are sitting alone on the couch with a box of Kleenex and reruns of “Pride and Prejudice”. We have all fallen victim of the blinking lights and cool features that romantically draw our attention and our wallets, but here are a few suggestions to keep from feeling guilty after your next purchase.

Start with the end in mind. You won’t find yourself growing old with hardware without thinking of why you need it. True, Stephen Covey wasn’t writing about technology when he wrote this statement, but his habits make a lot of sense for those of us who get obsessed with a little bit of gadgetry. The important thing to remember is the application. When looking for hardware or software, look to the final affected business process or benefit first, then your technology purchases have a realistic chance of meeting those expectation.

Justify it. While you may know she’s worth it, make sure you know why. Hardware purchases are often the least justified solutions.  But with capacity planners and more monitoring tools than ever before, now is the time to find a way to justify your business IT purchases.  If you are purchasing a highly mobile laptop for a salesperson or a new server environment, the value of each can be quantified.

Think about growth. You want to make sure this model fits you for the long-haul. Asking a CFO for more money because the current infrastructure doesn’t scale is one of the most painful conversations. I am amazed at how many times I work with a new customer whose technology infrastructure is restricted by hardware and software limits.  Even if your company is not in acquisition mode or hyper-growth, you may reach these limits in other ways.  Adding new equipment, people or processes should be a part of the original thought-process.

Ask for help. It is far easier to check your compatibility now than it is to seek counseling later. Often times we ask for help only after we have made our purchase, rather than searching to see if these gadgets, business tools and devices are what they are cracked up to be. For your next purchase, check with someone to see if your purchase is going to be a good match.

In order to keep yourself from feeling lonely by not having a good relationship between business and technology, fit technology into your objectives. While you don’t need an elaborate online personality test to see if your next technology purchase is a good fit, this should keep you from staring into the blinking lights, hoping for romance.