Recently I’ve been pondering a lot about the real true value of what I do for a living, that being IT of course. When I say real value, I mean, what can I point out to my children and say “look, dad did this and it helps people and is worthwhile because ______.”
I’m asking myself (and all of you) this not just because I think IT is being killed in the US as a potential career path, not just because business views treats us as a cost center and annoyance instead of an asset… But because I always wanted to help people and make a difference in this world, not contribute to it’s problems and I wonder now if a career in IT doesn’t do more harm than good in the big picture.
Seriously, I wonder… what have I done in this career other than increase efficiency and thus help line the pockets of already very wealthy people with even more wealth by allowing them to do the same things with fewer workers and thus put other people out of work who needed that money more?
As you can tell, I’m looking for more substantive answers other than “I saved my company x dollars” or “I helped a user figure this out.” or “I got our network to run more efficiently.” I’m looking for something of real value, something you could point out to anyone and explain in real tangible terms how your job made a real difference.
Is IT truely just a cost center, not just in the eyes of business, but also in terms of social worth? What real true value to the world do you think you have as an IT worker that makes it worthy of holding on to or sacrificing so much of your life for?