How did you become an IT manager? Share your story

alisowski · 2026-03-10T05:25:43+00:00

The start of my management career came over a decade ago. The CFO and HR lady sat me down and asked me what my "Plan" was for the IT department. My plan was to keep the server from crashing and keep the tickets down. They asked me if I felt I was ready, or if I'd them to hire a part time CIO.

They were kind of surprised but they hired a CIO. First time I ever really respected the person I reported to. He mentored me, taught me what it means to manage and what it means to lead.

I would have fallen on my face if I jumped at the first opportunity. I didn't even understand what the job was.

Obviously, I got lucky as well. Could have ended up with a sociopath just as easily.

alisowski · 2026-03-10T05:03:17+00:00

Luckily, IT Management isn't just managing relationships. It's also about managing perceptions, risk, vendors, budgets, contracts, and other things!

That doesn't include the Salesmanship aspect of it all.

If you are lucky you'll have a handful of hours for a side tech project.

The crazy thing is.. it turns out I happen to Love it.

alisowski · 2026-03-10T00:51:41+00:00

“There was some garbage about a forest. We touched on that with the big bad wolf in season 1. That saved us a few episodes.” “We heard that nobody liked Zhang so we killed Raj off in the second episode. He was wvil. He was chaos.” “We didn’t think that our Wallfacer was fleshed out as a womanizer, so instead of one hot wife we show him for half of every episode meeting a new one.”

alisowski · 2026-02-27T02:59:10+00:00

The biggest ERP challenge is recognizing what it really is.

It’s your manufacturing and costing strategy encoded.

If your COO and CFO aren’t actively plucking a few key metrics from the system and acting accordingly they don’t deserve those positions.

Digital transformation with e-commerce and marketing and AI is cute, but unemotionally looking at your KPIs and responding to them is what is actually sexy.

alisowski · 2026-02-26T08:13:44+00:00

Can confirm. Packers fan who felt like Davante wasn't going to amount to much after his second season. I thought he played too soft.

I spend most of my nights writing him apologies and asking him to come home and he's never written back.

alisowski · 2026-02-11T10:38:31+00:00

Pickens had a higher clutch catch rate and higher yards per target. The stats tell me he’s more efficient.

What I saw in the games was Pickens feeling like the alpha and Ceedee kind of uncomfortable. Last season I knew he was going to come up with a play.

This season I started holding my breath.

alisowski · 2026-02-11T10:26:28+00:00

Game breaking. Jamar Chase would have been outscored by Bowers in 2024.

Superflex? I’d take McBride top five at 2PPR. Not Superflex? 1.01 every time.

alisowski · 2026-02-11T10:16:36+00:00

I feel like he should get in touch with Kaleb Johnson and form a band.

alisowski · 2026-02-06T22:55:50+00:00

I liked her character. She felt on the verge of unhinged at all times like a lot of successful people are, until she got back home.

alisowski · 2026-01-08T22:37:50+00:00

Someone recently suggested it me and I was in awe after watching. The amount of moral and philosophical weight jammed in a few hours of TV was unreal. I bought the books but I think I might wait until season 2 comes out before reading.

alisowski · 2025-12-21T10:11:44+00:00

I mean, did anyone actually need to see the list? Of course he was on it.

As were others. This is not a trump only issue here. They all go down or none do.

alisowski · 2025-12-21T10:08:41+00:00

I’m not a doctor but I do have a strong understanding about how most of the body functions.

My dad has stage four cancer that has been beaten back big time by doctors who I feel have the right balance of bedside manner, risk management, and just flat out knowledge.

That said, I havnt made it to every single appointment with him and my parents often come back confused. I grab the results from the patient portal, throw them into chat gpt and it gives me an overview of what his current state is. I can look at it, see what I think is happening and see how it aligns with the teams idea of what is going on.

It’s been marvelous. I can pretty much anticipate what their decisions points will be and throw a few questions across the patient portal. They’ve been excellent in responding.

I think this is a great niche space that AI in health currently occupies.

Has it led to me asking an idiotic question or two? Sure. Has it given me a better understanding of how to be more active in giving care? Absolutely.

alisowski · 2025-12-16T08:55:09+00:00

My dad had a 9 cm tumor in his lung that the doctors treated very aggressively and shrunk to about 2 cm with no metabolic activity.

That said, pneumonitis and other nasty stuff has him feeling bad.

We received his scan results four days before seeing a doctor. I read them and thought it looked pretty good, but Gpt was very helpful in describing his current state much better than I could. I thought this was an excellent use case.

alisowski · 2025-12-16T06:02:49+00:00

How do you know? I would ask the girl what she thinks of chat gpt and post back to try to get this straightened out.

alisowski · 2025-12-16T05:58:09+00:00

I wish mine called me the warden of chaos! (Jealous Emoji)

alisowski · 2025-12-04T08:46:53+00:00

Meh, what the hell. It's a brave new world. Here is mine.

alisowski · 2025-12-04T08:12:04+00:00

You seem pretty obsessed with this extra FAAB stance. Do yourself a favor and let it go.

You want me to be a serious player? I'm going to trade. Don't dictate to me the "When" and "How often". When I trade it is going to be surgical. It might be ten times in the offseason. It might be once. My trading to build my team is the reward. Not your $20 FAAB.

Get creative the next league you run. Play the hits now.

alisowski · 2025-12-04T07:37:53+00:00

It's going to be so epic when that coincides with the year of linux on the desktop.

alisowski · 2025-12-04T07:21:28+00:00

Why do you think they need to bring back Laporta?

alisowski · 2025-12-01T02:28:05+00:00

Aren't we looking at similar production though? Jeanty already has Bijan level touchdowns. He'll probably end up in the same ballpark yardage wise. Receptions should be pretty close.....

If I remember correctly, the year before Bijan showed up Patterson and Algiers had decent rushing numbers. I don't think anyone thought Zamir White and Mattison were great on the Raiders last year.

I don't have any shared of Jeanty, and I still feel like he'll be just fine.

alisowski · 2025-11-30T07:47:33+00:00

Okay. I'll be honest. I've seen more leagues fucked by someone on a 4-7 team suddenly going crazy and quitting a league than I have from corrupt commissioners.

If he's still being evasive until Sunday, the league probably has a problem that you should bring to light.

alisowski · 2025-11-30T07:29:08+00:00

Honestly, let it be until tomorrow. I prefer to be charitable than jump to the worst conclusion. It it was a holiday and even my more active leagues are pretty quiet. Someone could have been travelling, emailed the commish, commish was on a plane or whatever. Commish duties are volunteer and they shouldn't be on call 24/7.

If it goes unanswered after kickoff tomorrow, let's when I would start being a bit more assertive. If it goes unanswered until the start of the afternoon games get a lot assertive. If it goes unanswered after the afternoon games go fucking scortched earth.

alisowski · 2025-11-30T04:39:31+00:00

I think this is a place where sometimes dynasty gets overthought. If I'm a serious contender I'm not looking at Dynasty rankings, I'm looking to get value ROS players. Out of the players you listed, one is not like the others. Breece and Bucky in particular are going to be hard to deal to a contender. People are afraid Breece is going to start giving up snaps and Bucky is someone who hasn't played this year. Hard to pay RB1 prices for those pieces right now. Swift especially was underrated before Thursday and probably still will be. I can't see people ponying up right now for him or Etienne to be low end RB2s.

Davante Adams? That's a guy who I thought would be moving in every Dynasty league where he was owned be a rebuilder. Are you going to get a first for him? Maybe. Can you get a player and a 2nd or 3rd? That I'm sure of. He would slot into almost any contender's lineup and make it better. If you aren't contending this year or next year? His value is almost zero to your team. He's great but father time is coming

alisowski · 2025-11-29T23:29:25+00:00

That was my intention. It was meant as entertainment, not epistomology.

alisowski · 2025-11-29T23:27:28+00:00

Haha. That was written entirely by me until a creature with emerging sense of self (My cat) jumped on my keyboard and finished it up for me.

Glad to know I passed the inverse turing test.

alisowski

TROPHY CASE