Struggles with IT leadership and management - Anonymous employee Emerald Publishing Employee Review

In the past 5-6 years, Emerald has gone through as many IT Directors and CTOs. We're left with a head that's a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It doesn't help that the company has a habit of recruiting people into technical management roles who have either only ever worked at one other company all their life and don't have a range of experience or people who just happened to stumble into IT management after studying something completely irrelevant like History. We end up with career-manager with no relevant technical experience who never actually held a technical position and don't actually understand much but can string enough trendy buzzwords together to appear coherent. There have been far too many highly questionable decisions made on people, processes and technology that all respect has been lost by team members. But that's covered up by what's called "perception management" and "managing upwards". We've lost a lot of good people over the last 12 months as a direct result of bad management of the department and lack of empathy for employees. It's now effectively a kakistocracy. Fleeting gestures of support are empty and worthless. Strategic design elements have been outsourced because the senior incumbents are out of their depth and it's easier for them to get external parties to do it. This costs the company a hell of a lot more money and headaches further down the line. It does free them up though to write blog posts, present (badly) at conferences and focus on illusions dressed up as productivity and competence for board reports.