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Dissecting Popular IT Nerds

234- From Social Outcast to Director: How Ted Assur Moved Beyond Toxic IT to Lead with Empathy

Dissecting Popular IT Nerds

Dissecting Popular IT Nerds

Technology

549 Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ted Assur With over 25 years of experience, Ted Assur has worn many hats across industries – from developer and DBA to manager and director. Early fascination with leveraging tech drew him to computers, but toxicity in IT culture led him to embrace customer service and empathy. He advocates moving from commodity specialist to indispensable generalist, shadowing business roles, and solving users’ problems, not just implementing solutions. Ted currently heads IT for a construction management firm. From Social Outcast to Director: How Ted Assur Moved Beyond Toxic IT to Lead with Empathy Join us as IT leader Ted Assur draws on his 25+ years of diverse experience to candidly examine unhealthy cultural norms that emerged as social misfits gained power in tech. Discover how a shift to focusing on customer service and empathy transformed his approach and opened doors to leadership roles. Gain insight into transitioning from developer to manager, the value of generalist experience, and key lessons on partnering with users to solve problems.

Transcript

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0:00.0

All right. Well, welcome to another dissecting popular IT nerds where we're allowed to geek out with our fellow nerds.

0:15.6

Today, I'm proud to introduce Ted Assur, whose commitment to leadership, process improvement, and team building

0:21.9

is the backbone of his career. Ted, welcome to the podcast. And please tell us a little about

0:27.3

yourself and when and where you started on the path of being a tech leader. Hey, Mike, thanks for

0:31.6

having me. It's really great to be here. I appreciate the invite and the opportunity to kind of

0:36.1

talk about my background.

0:46.2

So let's see, right now I'm a director of IT at a small construction management firm in Burlington, Vermont.

0:52.2

My IT background probably started when I was a kid.

0:56.4

I'll talk more about that and how that shaped my career and the success is within it. But I've worn a lot of hats. I was kind of reviewing before we had

1:03.1

the chance to talk here. And I've done a lot of different things. When people talk about being a

1:09.7

generalist, I've kind of walked in a lot of different things. When people talk about being a, you know, a generalist, I've kind of walked in a lot of

1:13.8

different shoes or worn a lot of different hats or whatever I want to call it.

1:17.0

So I was looking back in no particular order.

1:20.2

These are the things that I've done in my IT roles over the last 25 years.

1:25.3

A localization engineer, IT project manager, business analyst,

1:30.8

SharePoint developer, software developer, because those aren't the same thing.

1:35.3

DBA, a bartender, network engineer, business owner, help desk manager, product evangelist,

1:42.1

IT trainer, security analyst, team lead, IT manager,

1:45.3

IT director. Now, those aren't necessarily all things I would put on my resume's titles,

1:50.0

but those are certainly the roles that I have been in.

1:53.1

So let me jump in real quick and ask because I, too, have some bartending experience.

1:59.6

What did that bring to your career as far as IT? Because I know it

...

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