Moved & Shaken: Your Forum for Ranting and Raving about Your Boss

Recently, I attempted to schedule an interview with Mitchell Habib, the new CIO at Nielsen. Habib has been a lightning rod for controversy on Movers & Shakers. IT professionals who’ve worked for him have posted stinging comments attacking his management and warning IT workers about their fate once he steps into his new role.

Habib clearly has his detractors, but he also has fans.  His name always comes up when I talk to executive recruiters, some of whom seem to revere him like a deity.  In executive circles, Habib is admired and respected for his turnaround skills.  I wanted to interview Habib to find out more about this CIO who inspires both admiration and fear, loyalty and disdain.  But alas, Habib declined the opportunity to speak with me through his PR person, who told me he wanted to “hold off on the interview” because he “is focusing on ensuring his employees are clear on his vision and strategy.” 

Because certain CIOs like Habib generate so many comments, CIO.com has decided to create this new blog, Moved & Shaken, where people can exchange their experiences–good and bad–working for various IT executives.  We named the blog Moved & Shaken because the title describes the state of IT professionals upon getting a new boss: They get moved around and shaken up. Hopefully Moved & Shaken won’t be too hard to distinguish from Movers & Shakers.

We envision Moved & Shaken as a forum where IT professionals can rant and rave about their managers and their new CIOs; where they can give each other a heads up about what it’s like to work for a particular CIO or IT manager; and where they can debate their bosses’s decisions about such controversial topics as layoffs and outsourcing. For example, we’d like to see Moved & Shaken become the place where  Circuit City and Citigroup workers can discuss how they’re coping with the layoffs those companies have announced. 

When it comes to stories about layoffs and outsourcing, CIO magazine and CIO.com have always toed the corporate line, e.g. cut costs, increase shareholder value. We hope Moved & Shaken will round out the perspective on those tough IT management topics. 

–Meridith Levinson