How to be a CIO

Dear Bob ...

I am the IT Administrator for a small company that recently went public.

I have been here 4 years and when I started the infrastructure consisted of 2 servers and 35 workstations. Since then, we have gone public and spent a few hundred thousand on computers, servers, network equipment. Up until last year, I was the only IT person on staff. Seeing that I was a little overworked, they agreed to let me hire someone to help out.

We now have 10 servers, and 80 workstations most of which, I personally, have installed and configured. In addition to my personal and management duties, I am a member of the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance team. My dilemma is I am sorely under-paid and under-recognized. No one in senior management cares what I do. They have no idea what servers we have or what OS they run. THEY DON'T CARE!!! All they care about is, "Does my email work?"

I have built a solid reputation over the years that, if I say, we really need this server or that software, the CFO doesn't question me.

But rarely does anyone ask me what I'm doing. "Hey, I just migrated to a new mail server!" (Nothing but the sound of crickets churping in the back ground) "Hey, we upgraded to Red Enterprise with no downtime."

(Silence). Hey, I'm going to migrate everyone to OS2 warp... (Yawn).

Now I wouldn't think of doing that but my point is, no one would question it. All in all a great job, but subsequently, I have no successes to trumpet, no one to stand up and say, "You're doing a great job", "Over the past 4 years, our file server has had 100% availability." "We have not lost one computer do to virus outbreaks".

Is what I am doing really that easy, that someone else could willy-nilly just come in and pick up where I have left off? What's a guy to do to get credit around here.