Careers: Interviews

When Anne Mulcahy took over as CEO of Xerox in August 2001, the outlook for the company to which she had devoted 25 years of her life could hardly have been bleaker. Xerox was over $17 billion in debt, bankruptcy appeared inevitable, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating alleged accounting irregularities.

Ram Murthy, the director of application systems at the Peace Corps, answers questions about education, certifications, leadership and dealing with slackers.

MMORPGs -- massively multiplayer online role-playing games -- like World of Warcraft, Eve and EverQuest may be the best simulators of tomorrow's business environment. So say Byron Reeves, Thomas W. Malone and Tony O'Driscoll in this month's Harvard Business Review. The authors found that these games closely mirror the evolving world of business: distributed decision-making, rapid response, ad hoc teams, and leadership through collaboration rather than authority.

Michael Schrage has some advice, and it's not just for IT managers.

You might think the network you oversee is big, but consider Chris Robb's new job: network operations manager for Internet2, which in October announced completion of a new research and education network boasting initial capacity of 100Gbps nationwide. Robb takes on his new position as an assigned staff member from the Global Research Network Operations Center (GRNOC) at Indiana University. Network World Editor Bob Brown interviewed Robb by e-mail to get an idea of what lies ahead for him and Internet2.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Elder is head of the Air Force "Cyber Command," a newly created organization operated under the 8th Air Force headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Elder describes the purpose and evolution of the Cyber Command.

From the start, Henry Malmgren was determined to get to the South Pole. After graduating from Texas Tech University in 1998 with a degree in MIS he applied for a job in the Antarctic every year before NSF contractor Raytheon finally hired him as a network engineer in 2001. Since then he has alternated between the Denver headquarters and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, spending two summers and two winters there before finally working his way up to IT manager. Staying over is a commitment: Once the winter starts, there's no way to get in and out of the base until summer begins eight to nine months later. "I thought I would just do this for a single season, but somehow it always seemed too easy to keep coming back," he says.

Over the past decade, thousands of IT professionals lost their jobs to layoffs and outsourcing, so it's little wonder that many of those who chose to remain in the IT field have grown distrustful of their current employers. But for IT managers, there are steps they can take to build trusting relationships with workers who may be eyeing the door -- and other opportunities, according to Judith M. Bardwick, a management consultant in California. Bardwick, the author of One Foot Out the Door: How to Combat the Psychological Recession That's Alienating Employees and Hurting American Business, talked with Computerworld about how to reassure nervous workers.

Red Hat is one of the largest publicly held open source software companies in the world. Since it went public in 1999 and eventually came to offer the world its well-known Red Hat Linux operating system, the firm has performed well. It has come along way from the firm that Bob Young and Marc Ewing founded in 1995.

IT managers face increasing pressure to keep operations running while being strapped for cash and short on staff. As the baby boom generation begins to retire, many IT managers anticipate losing veteran workers. Add to that the fact that fewer computer science and information systems graduates are entering the workforce. James Kritcher, vice president of IT at White Electronic Designs in the US, shared his thoughts on dealing with staff in the face of an inevitable talent shortage.

If you're under pressure to get more done, the worst thing you can do is work longer hours. That's the message in this month's Harvard Business Review, where Tony Schwartz says the key to productivity is managing your energy, not your time.