Playing With IT, And Why It Matters

agallagh42 writes "Check out this article at ComputerWorld Canada by Peter de Jager, about how the best IT workers are really just "kids with big toys". How many of you have come across IT workers that obviously have no real interest in technology, and how much does it affect the quality of their work?" (Read more for another article on the more serious side.)

Code_Poet writes: "For anyone that has tried explaining to management the importance of well structured IT in a corporation, here is an excellent article over at The Economist on-line edition that explains the need quite well. Many companies when in a crisis situation just want the problems fixed and want to move on. Few understand it's an integral function of a corporation these days..."

Upshot? Toys are fun, fun is important.

Comments

Re:So, you're a *benign* parasite, is that it?

[Golias]

Look at it this way: How many people employ a full-time driver/mechanic for their cars?

You have to have a lot of cars before hiring your own mechanic is cheaper than taking them to the garage.

Correct.

Now, to apply your logic, how many people employ a full-time sysadmin for their home computers?

Not many... However, any company with a serious reliance on information technology owns the equivalent of one (1) Shitload of cars.

Just as somebody who runs a fleet of busses or taxis employs full-time mechanics, a company that relies on doing lots of math in a short period of time (i.e., a financial company) desperately needs a staff of IT professionals who know they're doing.

For a large segment of the corporate world, their data is their product. An insurance company that loses their data and can't restore from backup in a timely manner is a bankrupt insurance company before the month is over.

By the way, I do exactly no (0) system administration work in my job. I'm just a programmer, so I really have no vested interest in the debate to bias my viewpoint. (Our sysadmin spends most of his day swapping files on Napster, and we are all very happy that things are running smoothly enough for that to be the case, but there is no way in hell we would ever lay him off. Less that 50 large a year allows us to never worry about backups, crashes, or system upgrade decisions. We just sit around writing code and let the IT department take care of itself.)