Tucked away in the basement level of Eastern Washington University is one of the largest science fiction archives in the world with science fiction books of the 1930s. It was an exciting time back then and the Great Vision, if we were to call it that, is that the World was going to hell in a handbasket and the Engineer / Scientist heroes of the story came up with rational solutions to society problems and saved the day.
Fast forward to today's science fiction: Even the "hard" science fiction is based on characters struggling -- usually amidst a developing romance of one kind or another -- struggling with socialogical problems, the implications of which they just didn't see coming.
And I think... just how like the development from Data Processing to IT parallels the science fiction world.
We've gone from the bread and butter, meat and potatoes business of Payroll / Personnel and Buget / Finance engineering processing problems requiring technologists with impressive skills, none of which are social, to the management "we want them to be like us, but do jobs which require entirely different skills" smarmy insistance that everyone in IT be 95% social and 2% technical with who knows what makes up the last few percentage points.
IT must now do the job of sales, PR and management to be accounted to be worth anything, rather than do the head's down non socialized work of really doing the work because management doesn't not only know what it's doing, but it can't begin to understand what technologists should do. They want the auto mechanic to also be chauffeur, chef, social planner and party facilitator on the salary of the janitor, because that's what they understand (if only dimly, if they understand anything at all). The real question is, how can this technical non person contribute to my bottom line, my career and my golden parachute when the bottom falls out. Also, it's important to have someone to blame for the errors that ended the company through incompetent management.
There are many good books on this sort of topic. I highly recommend "Snakes in Suits" by Dr. Paul Babiak and Dr. Robert Hare. IT Professionals are up against narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, incompetents and nut jobs in positions of authority.
And that is the main reason that IT is more like science fiction every day that goes by.
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Good article, generated a lot of comments.
Bottom Line: Software-As-A-Service + Consolidation = Death of IT!
Snap out if it, it's already happening.
Bottom Line: Software-As-A-Service + Consolidation = Death of IT!
Snap out if it, it's already happening.
IT should be at least as good at finding and using these more accessible efficient tools as end users, and by retaining a role for that team in selecting solutions and directing users to them, we achieve more order. I love non-technical people discovering new tools, but I also need to be able to figure out where we're all creating and storing intellectual property, what we name new servers and systems, and so forth. There's bound to be more self-service IT in coming years, but I think IT can only decentralize so much before tech life becomes dis-functional.
Here is why this is happening:
The amount of bright people, the true 'geeks' in this world is an very small and more or less constant number over time. The number of bright people does not grow with education or any human efforts..
The huge number of people who work in IT today, are of the "Me Too" type. Those people have little more qualification than the average user and their only advantage is that they are hired to perform IT tasks. Most of the time they do low-level technical tasks, no matter what their job description is.
On the cloud.. The Cloud is a new name for the Internet. The Internet was designed to handle the things that some today claim are for the Cloud. It is just that only now, many people and companies wake up to comprehend what Internet is all about.
So don't worry. If you are one of the few blessed geeks, you will become more and more valuable to all your peers with time, because computer technology and technology in general becomes more and more complex, often beyond comprehension by most human beings.
Companies, like Apple, Google, whoever - they just make money out of the work done by those very few bright people, who chose to pass their time on Earth playing with IT.
The amount of bright people, the true 'geeks' in this world is an very small and more or less constant number over time. The number of bright people does not grow with education or any human efforts..
The huge number of people who work in IT today, are of the "Me Too" type. Those people have little more qualification than the average user and their only advantage is that they are hired to perform IT tasks. Most of the time they do low-level technical tasks, no matter what their job description is.
On the cloud.. The Cloud is a new name for the Internet. The Internet was designed to handle the things that some today claim are for the Cloud. It is just that only now, many people and companies wake up to comprehend what Internet is all about.
So don't worry. If you are one of the few blessed geeks, you will become more and more valuable to all your peers with time, because computer technology and technology in general becomes more and more complex, often beyond comprehension by most human beings.
Companies, like Apple, Google, whoever - they just make money out of the work done by those very few bright people, who chose to pass their time on Earth playing with IT.
As I see the future: A decent graphics card, audio card and high speed internet connection will be all that is needed. Processor? Hard drive? No worries there. It all runs in a virtual desktop on the cloud. As a network admin, the recent migration to Exchange 2010 may be redundant if the organization I'm at goes cloud. Looks like I need to sign up for some development courses!
And this is the 'transition' most of our traditional support techies and server admins will need to make to survive. You're skills are still required people, just not in the usual arenas.This was part of what Jason was getting at in his article.
Here's a classic example of why the IT support era is not ending anytime soon.
This just happened today.
A guy at our company wanted to try out a cloud service before he talked to anyone in IT about it. I run the IT Department.
He made all the arrangements himself with a sales rep.. He picked the cheapest plan (Basic Edition) he could for a 14 day trial run.
After using it for a week, he had some questions about functionality. After he tried unsuccessfully to contact his sales rep three times (a cloud service problem), his boss called me to complain about the lack of service as if I had anything to do with it. I offered to help them. I found out what features he needed, showed him which edition would meet those needs, gave him a link to the video demonstrating how to do what he wanted to do, set him up with a new sales rep whose area of expertise is in our line of work, extended the trial, and saved the company a boatload of money by negotiating with the new sales rep..
If he had contacted me in the beginning instead of trying to impress his boss and do it himself, the company would not have lost days of his productivity monkeying around with the wrong edition.
My next task will be convincing him that he should not be the systems administrator because I am certain that my staff will be called in to make it work when he cannot.
That's why the end of the IT era is not near.
This just happened today.
A guy at our company wanted to try out a cloud service before he talked to anyone in IT about it. I run the IT Department.
He made all the arrangements himself with a sales rep.. He picked the cheapest plan (Basic Edition) he could for a 14 day trial run.
After using it for a week, he had some questions about functionality. After he tried unsuccessfully to contact his sales rep three times (a cloud service problem), his boss called me to complain about the lack of service as if I had anything to do with it. I offered to help them. I found out what features he needed, showed him which edition would meet those needs, gave him a link to the video demonstrating how to do what he wanted to do, set him up with a new sales rep whose area of expertise is in our line of work, extended the trial, and saved the company a boatload of money by negotiating with the new sales rep..
If he had contacted me in the beginning instead of trying to impress his boss and do it himself, the company would not have lost days of his productivity monkeying around with the wrong edition.
My next task will be convincing him that he should not be the systems administrator because I am certain that my staff will be called in to make it work when he cannot.
That's why the end of the IT era is not near.
This article is accurate for personal computing needs, and pre-packaged software like word processors and spreadhsheets has been around for ever. I don't think the same applies to the core developed software that runs the business and makes it unique. Thos purpose built core packages will be under development for the forseeable future at least in the banking arena where I work. tur most of it is now done of shore and that will have its own repurcussions as Western worlds dumb down.
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