I am a Director of IT at a fairly large operation. I have to say that the analysis is pretty much spot on. There is little to no respect from the top tier of management above us and the users below us. The general consensus is that if they don't know what it is we do, it must not be hard. We have to work miracles on a budget that gets smaller every year. We have to keep things "easy" but still stop all spam (with no false positives) and all intrusions and viruses etc. But the minute one of those systems prevents someone's kid from downloading MP3 files we are the problem. (and I'm not kidding about the kid part) My favorite CEO request for the year so far is "just build a bunch of applications and then we'll pick the one we like". Second runner up was "what do you mean you can't tell the computers to only print on paper and nothing else? This is the problem with incompetent IT people." I kid you not. This was because we couldn't make the "print to file" box disappear on all of the computers in the world when they happen to be printing any of our materials. Stressful? You bet. Does management have a clue what they want to accomplish? No. Do we still have to figure it out and do it? Yes. If one of the departments is waiting on something from us, it's out fault for not delivering. If we need something from them in order to deliver it, it was our fault for not making them provide it. There is no time that the IT department is in the right and there is no time that any other department is in the wrong. Grumpy about it? You bet I am.