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Is Today's IT an Undervalued Asset?
mwillems asks: "I work in the technology industry, as a CTO. What I have increasingly seen in the last year, both in North America and Europe, is that IT has ceased to be a valid way to spend corporate money. IT spending used to be looked at as a way to gain competitive advantages. Since the .com bust, the arguments I hear everywhere is 'IT has now been proven to be a waste of money'. At many companies it is now easier to get a corporate account at a strip club than a new PC. Or a budget to develop a much-needed corporate app. If any spending is done it is on hardware - at least that is 'real'. Do Slashdot readers recognise that? Are there going to be many techies left ten years from now? What can we do to keep the spirit of innovation alive while this 'IT is bad' era lasts, and how can we make it end? And, how do you prove the value of IT? This is not as simple as it seems. Try it with a spreadsheet: as your typical CTO has to do so, every day."
How do you feel about the cost benefits of IT? Is it worth what your company spends on it, especially if the advantages can't be reduced to a simple dollars-and-cents figure?
yes.
Most people in the tech industry are going to fade out. Thus, leaving the majority of workers those who have been around before the .com boom. Bigger salaries and more work, instead of the bloated staff in a lot of IT departments that you saw during the .com boom. Personally, I'm glad to see it. I know plenty of people who shouldn't be in the IT field. Luckily, those are the ones finding other professions or reverting to their previous professions.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
We just got notice last week that to buy a new PC requires director approval. I guess I'm glad to hear we aren't the only one in this boat.
Hopefully the management will realize that having 10 minimum wage types working on their systems is not the way to go. They will then wrap up that money and hire one person who is worth a darn to do network security.
That is where they need to spend money, not on sub-vice-assistant-coffee-boys in charge of creamer for the network.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Most firms now realize that they can survive another year without upgrading their router or servers, which were either so expenseive originally that they simply must sit in the rack room longer, or are "good enough" even if they aren't the latest model.
Software is a whole other story. Most companies realize now that upgrades are a scam.
On top of all of this, many buyers realize that the latest tech will simply make them part of a large beta testing mob, where their old tech is now largely debugged and productive. Certainly MS users understand this.
I love working on IT, but let's face it, this is just like any other department in a company. Many of us have seen the total waste of $$$ that an IT manager will sell to the higher ups - sometimes just to work with new technology, etc.. The fact of the matter is that at a typical company, IT budget is not seen with an eye on monetary rewards. That has changed recently. Business rules state that if a secretary does something well for 30k a year, don't spend 200k to eliminate his/her position as it is not cost effective (even 100k is too much because it probably doesn't include maintence costs and the cost of changing business rules (which is much more expensive for software than a secretary)).
At many companies, IT is dead. What is the point of having an IT department when you do not allow them to do their job or listen to their advice. If IT is dead for your company, rest assured your company will be joining them in the grave any day now.
This is easy - innovate. Don't just buy new hardware and upgrade software, do something that IMPROVES life at the office. There's more to IT than scalable switches and making sure that you can ping the server. Come up with new applications of the technology and make yourselves valuable.
Create your own value, the rest of us have to do it.
Well, it IS a good question, but this is a tech site (mostly) and the response may be a bit biased. Go into any idustry and ask an employee "are you undervalued?" hell, even someone at mcdonalds would say yes.
Sorry to break it to you, but did you ever think you just aren't worth very much?
Two words: code obfuscation
I still see a pretty large market for developers, but what I've noticed is that everwhere I go now I'm expected to perform Sysadmin duties as well as my normal software development duties. I think that many companies are cutting back on the hardware staff and expecting the software staff to pick up the slack.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
This is the outcome of the insane IT boom of the 90's. I see many companies that purchased false promises and have nothing to show for it now. The company I work for has boxes full of software from various vendors. Most of which doesn't do what it claims, or does it so poorly its not worth running.
I don't think the attitude we're seeing the the death of IT, rather the maturing of it. There is now a need to justify purchases. The "we need it cause it's cool" attitude is long gone. People now look at a product and say, how will this help me.
Innovation hasn't slowed down, false promises are no longer considered innovation. I can envision the next few years to be some of the most innovative we've seen in quite a while. The smoke is cleared and the mirrors are gone, tis time to do real work.
Unfortunately, it takes time to use the following strategy, but it might help to lose that battle a few times and watch as things go badly. Document everything, including the (negative, or less-than-maximum-positive) monetary impact.
When it comes time to fight for financial resources for IT projects, point to the costs of NOT spending money on them and have the concrete history to back you up.
Ultimately it's like answering the question "what happens if we don't buy any more pens?" . The everyday person will obviously say: "You'll have a problem getting work done eventually because you'll be out of pens", but it may be harder to make a CFO understand that the same applies to IT spending.
If your company's IT department was filled with a bunch of MS certified wanabee system administrators who replaced all your systems with NT servers, approved by your VP because nobody ever lost their job by buying from Microsoft, then yeah... your IT department cost money.
This is just a low cycle. Because IT as it is today is such a new field this is the first low end of a new business structure that'll rebound in the next months/years. There's still contracts out there to be had and still companies willing to pay good money for them, you just have to look harder and be more innovative to outlive, outlast, and out play the other IT survivors until life gets easy again.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
I bet most of you IT types are just arrogant
a-holes. The wheels finally got tired of your crap, didn't they.
What is it about "computer people" that makes them look down on "non computer people".
You know what I'm talking about. You have a set of laughs you use to keep people away. I always hated the "you will never understand" laugh. Is that taught in school?
So yeah, it's about time somebody put you in your places.
You know who you are!
the truth is - nope, IT spending in the vast majority of comapnies out there should be drastically reduced.
I know of a NE Power Company that spends 10k/year/employee on IT expenses.
Which is insane. They arent a software company, they arent a development company, these expenses are a pure expense that generates no revenue.
none. nada, zilch.
how can you justify paying a HS graduate with a "certification" that tells people to reboot their machine as a fix for everything souble what you would pay a marketing person with a college degree?
you cant - there is no justification. Then you consider perpetual hardware upgrades and software licensing, you get an even worse picture.
Look at it this way - if you spend $1500 on a home appliance, like a fridge, washing machine, how long do you expect it to last? 15 years? 20? more?
and you want businesses, who arent in the computer industry, to buy new equipt every 2-3 years? not gonna happen.
then theres MS's latest yearly tax. if MS would have had it ready 3 years ago, it would have worked, but not now, no way - businesses dont care what they run, they just want to keep their expenses down.
... hi bingo
This may not be a popular opinion but I really don't think the majority of corporate users NEED a new pc very ofter. I'm a full time software developer and I'm perfectly happy with my "ancient" PII 400... Granted there are always exceptions to the rule, but for the most part I think new PC purchases should be scrutinized.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
The late 90's: All Tech Spending is Good
:)
The early 00's: All Tech Spending is Bad
It's oversimplistic reactions to the problems that came from tech spending in the 90's. Many people were creating products that were full of pizazz that didn't work for crap and people bought them because they thought technology was their salvation. Well guess what, technology isn't a magic pill, and anybody who claims ANYTHING is a magic pill should be taken out back and shot.
So now today, everybody is gun shy and overcautious. A company gets burned in the 90's converting their billing system to some flaky electronic system that has cost more money to keep together than your old system. Today they get the choice of buying yet another new system, taking the same risks again, or sticking with the known quantity. At this point, with money tight, few are willing to take that risk to get it right the second time because they can't afford to get burned this time.
Over the next few years as a recovery slowly works its way into the system, some people will feel that they can take some risks again. Those flaky systems will have long since been purged from the software gene pool and there will be good products that people will be able to trust. We'll actually begin to see those efficiency gains that were supposed to happen during the 90's hype and the world of IT will be back in business.
Until then, batton down the hatches and hang on tight
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Surely there is room for Linux in there somewhere. By promoting it to managers and the like, we can show that *innovation* is the key, and that through constant development and enhancement, your IT department CAN make a difference. If you want something tangible to show management, print out the source to the kernel, bind it, and present it at a meeting. SHOW them how great it can be!
I work in software development and in speaking to our customers (yes, I actually talk to my users directly so I know what they want/need) many of them are working on much better and more useful applications than they were two years ago.
Less online phone directories more online report generation from divergent systems. Moving data from paper booklets to online is cute, but what does it save? Create real time reports using data from different systems (internal and external) and suddenly you have something that makes life much better.
I'm the head of IT for a small Financial Management company in the midwest. There are 23 computers on my network connecting to two Win2000 servers for print and file sharing. I see 99% of my entire IT budget being poured into Microsoft.
;)
Look at every new machine purchased. How much of that cost goes directly to Microsoft for their Operating systems and even worse their Office suite? There was an article here dealing with it, but since it's almost time to go home I'm not going to take the time to look it up exactly. It was almost 80% of new computer costs go to license your Microsoft apps. And what's really sad is we are stuck on Windows. All our mutual funds send us their prospectuses in some crappy VB program or their brochures in Word format.
So don't fool yourself with where your IT costs are going. They're going to Microsoft and the trash for all the IT people who sit and read Slashdot all day when they should be working
I have yet to meet an MCSE who has even moderate product knowledge of Windows and related technologies. Companies are afraid to do much of anything other than hemorage into the MS license fund now - and that's simply in the desperate hope that maybe one day their systems will keep going for long enough to get something done. Corporate IT customers have been shovel fed garbage for so many years now, that few would even be prepared to believe that IT can a) pay for itself, b) be productive.
this, unfortunately, is the flip side to the internet-bubble coin.
remember how, in middle school, people followed the trends initiated by the cool kids? same thing works in business. in the late 90s, people thought 'hey -- the joneses are buying nobusinessmodel.com, so i will'. now people think 'wow -- i lost my shirt on dot-coms -- computers are a waste, as that fellow in usa today pointed out.'
wired magazine had an article two months ago that pointed out that all tech developments went through a curve -- early adopters got people excited about a tech, but then excitement waned because people couldn't see the use. as applications became apparent, adoption and excitement picked back up. technology in general is going through the same trend.
go get it
I see a HUGE productivity gain ahead for Mac OS enterprise users, the few that are left. It is certainly one that I am curious about in my current position - just how much the migration to OS X will help the productivity of my department.
Quintus malus puer est.
Ever heard of that? I know far too many IS projects that have costs, but there is no way to quantify the benefits. There is one very simple thing to understand here: costs come out of IT, benefits come out of the customer department. If you can't get the customer to step up to the plate and provide a believable justification, followed up by demonstrated results, you're sunk. The next layer here is time frame. A project that starts paying for itself (i.e. is deployed) three months or less from inception gives everyone a benchmark to know whether the customer's estimate of benefits, as well as IS's ability to deliver those benefits. A project that won't be deployed for three years is, frankly, silly. It's an exercise in blind faith, not an exercise in rational development strategy. If your development methodology delivers things infrequently in large lumps, you've got real problems. If it allows you to break large projects down into two or three month chunks that can be deployed to start getting a return on that investment, then you've got something. The last layer is risk. Those massive three year projects have unacceptable business risks. If you break them into two or three month deployables, you've limited the risk your customer (internal or external) faces. John Roth
IT is not the panacea of all things. Do you need a faster computer/network/sound card when you are a researcher... With the market pressures on companies, they need to invest the money in that which makes money. The money needs to be spent on the people doing the work rather on making sure the people who send email have the latest P4.
What's more important is, "How do I get a corporate account to a strip club?" I'm in the IT Dept. and I'd like to hangout there while waiting for PC problems. j/k
For the most part companies are looking at it as a bottom line aspect. If you show them where the increased spending will show a greater amount of cost savings in labor and or an increase in prophet they would be fools to not let you do it. The problem is that many IT people got used to it will make it a little better we should have it when in fact the little better never shows a return because you paid too much for it. For example where I work looked at replacing our outdated phone system in our offices estimated cost 1mil. Was rejected without a question as at a cost of a million dollars you just won't make it up in productivity by people having caller id's of who is calling from what office and additional speed dials. However spending 5 grand on a new terminal server that lowered time of routine tasks by 40% was approved in the blink of an eye because they saw the savings it provided. Just back up what you are trying to buy with numbers to satisfy the old equation and you will be fine.
I work for a VBC that's known as one of the best managed companies in America. We love companies with the attitude you describe. We call them "also-rans". Each year our businesses are given a target cost they must remove using IT projects. Spending on the projects comes from projected savings. The business owns the budget, but has to spend it through a centralized IT group. In our business, the number was $270 M (our revenues are about $10 B). Miss the number one year and the VP's don't get bonuses; miss it twice and the VP's don't have jobs. The trick is measuring the benefits, and auditing after project implementation to make sure they aren't playing games with the numbers. Does it work? This year, we expect to save $1.6 Billion (across all business) while increasing IT spending 12%.
However, alternatively, I've been thinking upper managers aren't worth their salary and the overall burden placed on IT (i.e. regular staff meetings, and various time wasting activities that could be devoted to streamlining the business... or handling a data conversion from a merger, etc).
And besides, what is the value to assign to cost savings for automating processes so individual peons don't have to press buttons and screw up data? One bean, or two? When I convert a customer, order, and trouble ticket history database from one company to ours... and it allows a single support person to intelligently answer a new customers question quickly - is that worth one, two, or three piles of beans?
I hate justifying my existence, and generally never have to when I deliver on projects that simplify processes and do things quicker than would have to be done by hand...
I'm not sure, but I really don't think the sky is falling either...
Lets face it, the networks are in place, the companies have a computer (no matter how old) on every desk, and they've already run their network lines throughout - and if they haven't yet, then they aren't going to.
They age of innovation and upgrading is over, the workers of IT have built a solid IT foundation, and now that it's constructed, budget is cut to simple maintenance. Of course the IT dept isn't disapearing, it's just no longer expanding.
Why is a mouse that spins?
The decisions of many companies during the boom was, at best, misguided. Companies are finding that the glut of IT spending left them with high-end equipment that was far too much, too soon. Now that the equipment is implemented and used, there's little reason to buy new equipment, less reason to train others on the use of said equipment, and less problems trying to shake down equipment. Therefore, a large IT staff is wasteful. The only way to justify IT spending in the near term is either massive growth from selling new product, or switching to a more cost-efficient platform. That's it.
A rolling stone is worth two in the bush!
but you'd never understand.
tehehehehe.
I've got 7 computers in my cubicle as I speak (Ok, 4 PCs, a laptop, a SparcStation, and an old PowerPC Mac). Yet, no matter how many times I request it, they won't give me a corporate account at any nightclub, let alone a strip club. What gives?
The worst part of all this is that IT employees expected corporate people to understand computers in the first place.
Have fun o ye of the meeting and cubicle! Don't come a-whining when you find you can't compete any more. Don't worry. There's a Windows upgrade that will fix it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've noticed that as my colleages machines have been upgraded, their code has gotten slower and slower. Maybe your admin assistent needs a GHz machine to run your finance spread sheet, but I know a good developer doesn't need the $4000 machine to hack code. I also know that our new enterprise Solaris box isn't as fast as the old duel processor Linux box that we used to use.
Okay, now that I'm going to lose my job for whining about corporate decision making... everyone have a nice day.
-brian
Today's IT undervalued, to a small degree yes, a little bit of an overreaction to yesterday's IT being overvalued. Spending probably should be reigned in compared to previous years, more justification for purchases and projects offered, etc.
People should realize that the IT of a couple of years ago was inflated just like the stock prices, that today is more normal than then. Apologies for the bad news.
I think our company (I work for a college in the UK) don't quite realise the importance of IT in their establishment. I think the problem is, at least from the point of view at my place, is that people just do not realise how much computers have taken over the 'behind the scenes' aspect of things. Computers are responsible for our critical finance data, running our telephone system (Cisco IP Telephony), running staff payroll - the list is endless. Yet people still see network backbones as a few pieces of old BNC strung across the back of a wall into a small repeater under the desk.. what they dont see if the miles and miles of UTP and fiber we have linking the various blocks and departments together, not including the various switches and routers connecting networks.
Is it because IT systems have become so reliable, and so transparent to the average user that they give it any thought any more? We keep pondering flicking the power switch on the core switch one day, just to see how much people suddenly realise their IT network means to them.. I'd give it about 1 minute before we got hassle from senior management asking when the network was due back up.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Use performance metrics (at least with new hardware)
If person "A" can run daily report in 10 minutes
on the old hardware and 3 on the new that will
translate in 30 hours worth of time the employee
could be using more productively. At 20.00 an
hour that is 600.00 worth of time. It does not
take too many of these instances to justify
upgrading a machine.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
The trouble with people's misconceptions about IT is that they arent so much misconceptions.. If your company is using P3 1gh+ processors, then unless you user higher end apps, there is no NEED to upgrade the equipment. 1gh is more than enough to run office suites in windows, most graphic programs work fine.. If companies can float for another year w/o upgrading, the price drop in equipment more than justifies the wait. Just feel sorry for those of us using 500 machines.. We all float down here.. (IT, get it? lol)
...especially if the advantages can't be reduced to a simple dollars-and-cents figure?
This hits the nail on the head. I make software for a living, and I can't imagine how I ever did my work without the Internet. E-mail, Web access, it all saves me quite a bit of time, and therefore the company money, but I would have a hard time trying to quantify these savings in dollars and cents.
I don't think IT departments will die. Virus checking, bug fixes, etc., it'll all still be necessary. People are getting more and more dependent on IT technology (wireless e-mail, web access). There is no way we are going to go back to snail mail and typewriters.
Now, delaying buying the latest and greatest hardware, and the latest and greatest version of MS Office, that I can see happening...
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
I'm not saying that what your saying isn't true. I just don't believe that is has anything to do with anything. If there is ANY lesson to learn from the last few years, it is that people do not operate (either personally or professionally) in anything approaching a rational way. People operate on the principles of greed and fear. Right now we are in the fear state. Sometime later we will be in greed state again. I always snort derisively when stock market "analysts" say that investors have returned to "value" investing (not that the analysts themselves has anything to do with people doing "non-value" investing...).
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Could it be that management has finally caught on to the trick of buying hardware and software that requires constant expert maintenance? As an IT dept. head, wouldn't you rather buy stuff that you know would keep those under you busy and employed? You sure wouldn't want to be the one that made the decision to buy hardware/software that made the IT dept. unneeded.
(I'm not saying this happens often, but it does happen. Ever had to try to convince some MSCE to let you buy the right tool for the job, instead of the electronic version of the spork?)
Unfortunately, thanks to M$ licensing schemes, hardware that's outdated 3 minutes after the box is opened, hardware that is underdesigned and runs hot, vulnerable software, etc., IT is a money pit. This especially true in those organizations where some PHB just has to have the latest/greatest as determined by some marketing wiz.
It's a pendulum that has swung way to far one way, and will swing far the other way. Hopefully it will settle in a comfortable position soon.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
In any era of disconfidence, there will be upheaval--this one is no different. If we're lucky ('we' meaning people in software and hardware development), the number of positions will shrink, but the workload and pay increase.
I'll go on the unpopular edge and say I think IT has been overhyped, personally, as if it were the fundamentals of all industry. I think it's important, but certainly not as much as true business. IT is infrastructure and support. All it can do is act as a lubricant for other processes, not create on its own. To have a massive IT department with huge budgets, particularly if the business is not directly in an information-dependent business, is like paying structural engineers 6-figure salaries to make sure the building is still level.
Someday, when software and hardware become truly stable and less bug-ridden, IT departments may just go the way of the contract skilled labor. Until then, we have dedicated personnel and associated costs.
One of the major issues with having in-house people for IT is that they look for work to keep themselves on payroll. It's natural. The next big thing is XYZ, and we need to have it! That typically spells investment in time and money, but not necessarily a justified need being filled. I've seen it done in past companies many times, and thought nothing of it because we had money to pay for it. Not anymore. For instance, I got 3 different machine upgrades in one year because our IT department kept raising the bar on machines and didn't want to keep older ones around, because it was more work for them to maintain different configurations. It caused more upheaval for the whole company than not doing any upgrades at all, and kept them mighty busy doing conversions. We had 6 people on staff to serve less than 80 employees. Tail wagging the dog syndrome.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Many businesses are hurting for hands-on technical folks like car mechanics, welders, etc. because for the last ten years our society did not 'value' those position. Now car mechanics are being recruited like Java wizards used to be courted. Let the IT world have ten years of not being high on the 'cool job list' and the same will happen to us!
With 'insight' like that you should be prepared to look for a new job. IT is not a profit center - it is an expense. Get your head out of your ass and join the rest of us in the real world.
IT is a value added resource in most companies but, sadly, in most companies it really doesn't directly contribute to the bottom line of profits vs. losses. IT's value is in making the employees lives easier without intruding on the day to day operations of the company. This tends to a be a cyclical trend based on two factors. The first is arrogance and the second is repentance.
The arrogance factor is what drove IT spending a couple of years ago. In essence, it is drawn from the idea that for the vast majority of corporate America IT organizations have tended to view themselves as being "The Reason for all Existance." CIOs, and the organizations they represent, develop an over exagerated opinion of their place in the world. The inevitable happens when the CEO realizes that spending a third of the total corporate budget on new computers still means he has to use Microsoft Office.
The repentance factor happens when after the arrogance factor has disappated and IT spending has flushed itself down the toilet. Computers start breaking and the two guys who program in COLBOL either retired or died. The peasants rise up in arms and the CEO takes notice, realizing that just maybe he needs to up the dollar count before he drives his company out of business.
These two cycles make up the Hebrew Cycle of Corporate Management, or HCCM for short. This is named after the relationship that God's chosen people have developed with God.
In a couple of years, when processes start breaking and computers get older causing more downtime than otherwise necessary the trend will turn around.
Beware the wood elf!!!
The way to keep the spirit of innovation alive is to innovate. Do not try to do anything that is a gimmick. Let innovation show its own true value.
...a good software engineer is STILL hard to find. now, many idiots have gotten BS comp sci. degrees, went to work doing DB or business app work, then got layed off after the .bomb, and now complain. real software engineers who not only know what they are doing but are able to do something competent and long standing exist in very small numbers.
why, you ask? because good surgeons are hard to find compared to nurses. for some reasons, the corporate bastards at the top of the stairs, tightening their already painful money belts, sit in their corporate chairs, smoking their coporate cigars, screwing their corporate secretaries confuse fresh i-want-lots-of-money IT graduates as real engineers. they put them behind large projects or developing some useless web app they themselves recommended, and then eventually the CTO complains.
a lot of software cost is due to this. another reason for large software costs is that it IS actually worth it sometimes. not for office apps, but for serious products esp development tools, if you examine the amount of money it costs to develop something with it as opposed to without it, you will see that it IS worth the money. many CEOs think that ms office is one of these products. that is where they are wrong. they make decisions (both in employment and software) that simply is unnecessary and largely due to propaganda.
after some time, the myths about IT will fade and we will have left are the hardcore techies doing their job, not asking for enormous paychecks and lots of stock options and bonuses. for now, however, let's lay off all the managers...we don't people to tell us how to spend our money, esp. since it is NOT theirs.
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
As an IT consultant installing enterprise management/ capacity planning software, I have seen both ends of the spectrum. Some companies seem to re-invent the wheel by writing custom applications to do off the shelf tasks. I've seen enterprise class servers that never had more than 10% loads. I've also seen well managed companies that balanced their IT spending with their business goals. There was a time when companies were spending money for buzword compliance. Company XYZ has this new fully integrated paridime enterprise baloney etc.... Do We? Now wiser heads (or at least more conservative, anyway) prevail, and companies are performing cost benifit anaylsis on all of their software and hardware expenditures. With all the shrinking bottom lines the stock holders aren't asking if the companies that they own have the latest and greatest technology, but are asking are we making money?
There will be new technology and some of it will be worth buying, but untill vendors can prove that their products will save money, without a huge capital investment people will not be interested in the near future.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
now we have a big economical crash here in europe, with unemployment rising and bankrupt companies every other day. and the pseudo-technicans are leaving for other fields.
now, this may sound very much like propaganda, but I think that being a computer geek is not something you can learn at a college or school. either you are a child of von neumann, or not.
in conclusion, I can already see that the "real geeks" are getting back into better jobs here, and the tie-wearing, solitaire-playing pseudo-people wandering off.
economy is like a sinus wave in capitalism. wait 5 years, and everything will have recovered.
Karma
I don't think anyone has made assertions as extreme as the straw men you are shooting down. What people are saying is that IT needs to be rationalized like any other factor of production. In the 90s that wasn't happening.
you can absolutely reduce IT to dollars and cents! trouble is, it's a saving in efficiency, rather than a direct or indirect profit. for instance - how much time, paper and stamp money is saved by email? my company has a centralized file server - how much time and how many floppies are saved? how many employees does it take to certify a document, and how much would it cost to maintain that certified copy "by hand" rather than on inexpensive, easily stored and maintained tape?
how many extra hours of work does a company get out of an employee who checks his email from home at night? or who can VPN in to add that last minute correction at 3AM ?
is your issue with the "repair techs"? the equation is simple - the more techs you have, the faster your response time will be for serious computer problems. assume "serious computer problem" puts your user out of commission. how long is acceptable for the company to be one worker short? talk to a hospital staffer about this sort of thing.
this actually isn't so bad.... it's not as hard as Human Resources justifying employee benefits. how much is it worth for the employees to have a weight room? improved morale? better food in the cafeteria? THOSE are airy-fairy, unquantifyiable savings (but just as undeniable!)
IT is an efficiency industry. the question to ask in justifying expenses is "how much human capital is saved by this project?" THAT will keep your budget for you... and the companies that realize it will outperform those who don't. even if we're in a slump, you can't deny reality. it'll rebound. maybe not to 1999 anything-beginning-with-the-letter-"I"-is-good levels, but it'll rebound.
We're not done bursting the bubble yet. On a fundamental level, I believe in the value of computing and information technology. Any money and effort spent there is bound to reward any large company. The problem is that the effort/money isn't spent well. We've been in a long era (going back much further than
Among any technical job title out there, be it "Java Developer", "Web Guru", "Network Designer", "Oracle DBA", or any of the other millions, I firmly believe that a large chunk of the people holding a given title (75%, higher in some areas) aren't worth their salaries. They should be making $30,000 for the amount of real benefit they are providing, not $90,000.
Companies need to get real. They need to spend IT HR money into two basic categories, and wisely: Production Support (mostly human macro tasks, shouldn't pay all that well), R&D (coders, testers, app designers, systems/network engineers - should pay well, but you should have about 10% of the staff you have now, and they should all be skilled and worth their money).
With a clear vision and none of the bullshit overspending fluff this industry continues to see, I bet the average IT dept could run on 20-30% of their normal budgets.
11*43+456^2
That's funny, I just heard in class today that customers are telling us that while they recognize that B2C is pretty much dead, B2B and infrastructure update plans are still going forward full force. Bandwidth updgrades, SAN strategies, moving legacy apps to the Intranet -- they're all continuing to move ahead, even in the current economic conditions.
.bomb was an interesting picture show, but more importantly, I think it helped companies realize that you really *can* dramatically alter -- and improve -- the way you do business, with the right technology. I'm not talking about betting your business on ad revenue, either.
Sure the
Intelligent Life on Earth
Now, it is just not considered as magic anymore (like in add sulphurous ash, ginseng and garlic and dot com) but is on same line as any investment, just where it should be.
but in the large bank I work in now its fairly easy. My FX trading application grosses $x, nets $y, costs $z. However with less obvious things like this intranet project, used to help branch offices understand and sell more investment products, you have get into special worldcom/enron math where numbers are relative... With things like HR, supply-chain, regulatory compliance, etc. some are simply costs of doing business while others are hard to measure as gain-in-competitiveness. Most corps use inbred numbers (i.e. last year with this volume of business, this many users, this much activity our costs and delivery time were x, this year they are y). Don't know how to do it the right way myself except to say that the majority of my time is spent teaching and explaining rather than quantifying.
This post, combined with the story yesterday about IT workers heading for restaurant jobs points out how important it is to be consistant.
.com slump are the one's which kept their bearings and didn't overspend. Likewise, heading too far in the non-IT direction will end up destroying a good number of companies which find out, only too late, that they can't keep up with their competition. Consistancy and keeping to a logical business plan is the key to a successfull business. Always.
The companies that are doing the best in the current
I've heard this story in the comparison of Wal-Mart vs. K-mart....one spends consistantly on IT projects that result in overall savings (i.e. not boondoggle projects), the other simply flaps with the breeze. K-Mart is now trying to catch up with inventory/tracking/pricing/shipping software and improvements that take years to implement correctly. They are also on the brink of insolvency.....not exactly the time/place to be making lots of rushed and critical decisions....
Perhaps there will be a downtime for IT, but it will come back as soon as things start to break around the office....
And, how do you prove the value of IT? This is not as simple as it seems. Try it with a spreadsheet: as your typical CTO has to do so, every day."
Screw that spreadsheet nonsense. If I EVER hear a calculator monkey where I work say something as half-assed as:
'IT has now been proven to be a waste of money'
I'll be headed straight for the wiring closets and pulling the plugs on all the switches and routers I can find. Shortly thereafter I'm sure he'd figure out that IT actually does have value, though he may still be hard-pressed to quantify it.
The real problem with IT is that we were promising people the wrong thing. We promised them that it would make workers more efficient, allowing us to get the same amount of work done in less time. What really ended up happening is that now we get several times as much work done in the same amount of time. We don't work shorter hours, but we do get more done. That's a good thing.
The company that I work for has done several projects for businesses and government agencies that seemed prohibitively expensive at first, but usually ended up paying for themselves in savings after 6 to 12 months. We've done computerized inventory and supply chain projects and tied it all together with wireless PDAs resulting in a faster and more accurate accounting of inventory, reduced labor costs, and the near total elimination of paper documention that required costly and inefficient storage solutions.
It's can somewhat difficult to understand, so I can see where someone might deceive themselves into thinking that IT is a waste of money. It's much easier to see when you have a specific task that is being moved to a computerized system. But honestly, I have to think that someone who sees IT as a waste of money is either a) not using it properly, b) paying far too much for it, or c) not really thinking about it.
Businesses have been making dumb decisions for centuries, under or overvaluing their IT departments isn't a greater or lesser sin.
Let them cut their budgets, that will only force more and more IT departments to use Linux and other free software to implement their mission critical projects.
Companies buy crap that they don't need, don't use, is unnecessarily complex, or that can't work in that environment.
They get suckered by sweet sales talk, then complain when it does not work.
If you shoot yourself in the foot because you don't know how to aim, don't complain about the quality of the gun.
We need a return to K.I.S.S. and a more level-headed evaluation and planning approach.
I don't know what the answer is. BS experts are just too damned good at what they do. I just read an article in the WSJ about how some sales experts are having a substance injected into their face which reduces certain facial expressioins by deadening nerves. IOW, they have cosmetic surgery to hide their lies.
Get the Goddamned suits out of my face, and I can build pretty good systems that are realatively simple and maintenance-friendly that solve real problems that I will happily stand behind. However, when the suits start stick their grimmey fingers into the mess, then all bets are off.
True geeks solve problems, true PHB's manipulate problems. Control over key decisions tend to gravitate toward the manipulator's region for some reason.
Table-ized A.I.
I work at a medium size company, in a very small country in Central America. They are in the field of real state administration and maintenance. Nothing tech related. If I tell them that we need a $2000 printer, they will consider seriously but will most likely accept. I just asked for a new tape drive, they just told me to get prices, I'll have it in 1-2 most likely, etc. They value the IT department as necesary, same as a lot of other departments here. In fact I get paid better that people in other departmets with a lot more qualifications than I do (up to 3 times more). In fact I'm better paid that friends that work in HUGE datacenters for online gambling. It's not the greatest tech job in the zaziest .com around, but I'm still hanging around.
So basically I would say that YMMV depending on the industry you are in. If you are in the tech related industry, they value you a lot more when things go well, but it can be hell while going downhill. On an "old business" things tend to be much more stable.
please excuse my apathy
Fortunately (unfortunaely for some) this will be the trend for a few more years while the untalented IT workers fade away. Before the boom, IT and IS had qualified workers. Then the web took off and my grandmother became a VB programmer b/c she's one of a few americans who can program her VCR. This led to calling HTML monkeys 'programmers'. Then the era of dot bombs and an increase in failed IT/IS projects came along.
/dev/null then it does being productive. Basically the same reason why the majority of americans are afraid to invest money in the market today.
Of course companies are tenative on dumping money into IT becuase the money still has a better chance winding up in
A few more years when the unqualified IT/IS staff go back to ringing up Big Macs(tm), faith in IT/IS will return to normal. In the mean time, if you are good, just hang on and and do your best.
Also, as we get a few years older, more and more people (employers, co-workers, and ourselves) will understand the role of IT and our field will be better defined...thus better 'trusted'.
There are many problems that have erupted in IT since the .com boom. These may or may not have been around before, but they are definitely known now.
One of the biggest problems I see is that there are many managers of IT departments who are just that - managers. Think of the pointy-haired boss in Dilbert. Just because someone is a manager doesn't mean they know the first thing about IT. I'm not advocating the promotion of your average IT nerd in place of them, but there are always a few people who have both management skills and IT knowledge. A good manager passes things off to the big bosses as good ideas. If he (or she) understands what he's working on, then they will probably be good ideas. If he doesn't, then they will be things that look good on paper and get him more funding. Nevermind that it makes the people below him aggrivated. It makes him look good, and gives him more money to spend on his desktop toys.
I have seen this problem in action. It's always fun to get a blank look when you try and explain the simplest of tasks to these people. It's like trying to explain matrix algebra to a 3rd grader, only with less chance of success.
Another problem I've seen is that, in the name of saving money, people buy inferior products. Some manufacturers are more reliable than others. Before ordering 100 systems from a company because its "cheap", it might be a good idea to order 5 of them and test them for a month or two, and see how well they perform. Maybe even order 5 from another company to compare them to. Also, ask the people who regularly maintain the ystems which kind of systems they have the most problems with. It might be a good idea to get their advice on who to order systems from. Then you will avoid problems like the one I have seen recently, which involves losing more than 1 computer a week to hardware failure. These computers are not even a year old, and still under warranty, but it still causes problems when you have 4 more break before the first warranty part gets there.
Hopefully, the cutting of funding to IT departments will drive off people who are "in it for the money", like these managers without IT skills, and also will cause people to take more care when selecting computers.
"Who am I" and "Why are we here" are not the problems.
The problem is when someone asks "Why are they here."
Sorry, don't want to pick nits, but it's your job that should be on the line if you can't just look at your IT department and justify spending money on it. There's something called productivity. Technology itself's ultimate goal is to minimize work and make processes more efficient.
So you should be looking at area's where a task is currently done manually. Look for some sort of data entry that could be database driven and automated via web forms. Keeping track of company inventory, or having an email and web based trouble-ticket/ call tracking system, are examples. Integrating two or more different databases that have grown up over the years so they can be administered and used together through the same application is another.
Desktop PC's should be the least of your worries as a CTO. It's really a trivial mantter. If someone _needs_ a new computer, then you buy one, just like you buy white out and printer paper. Its a tool, and without it most people can't function in a business. You should be wowing your bosses with integration and automation, not by questioning the need for new computers for staff. I'd say that it should be pretty apparent when a slow/outdated/broken computer needs replacement/upgrades/repairs, and if it isn't, perhaps that's why no one is willing to buy people new ones.
I.T. has certainly lost its glamour superstar status, but that is a different issue than what is posited by the author of the root article.
I know that my company has not stopped spending on I.T. at all. The difference is that now the spending must be accompanied by a very rigorous economics based justification. Our clients see us a provider of services and if we can show that an I.T. spend is required to meet those client requirements, then we do it.
Admittedly the practice of saying "We need cash to upgrade X because something new has come along. Just give it to us. Trust us, we know what we are doing" is finished. But our I.T. spend is still a significant portion of our expenditure because the company sees value in that investment.
It does mean that we don't always get the latest toys. But the skills of the I.T. department are certainly still seen as a key pathway to overall business success - and we like that.
I blame the geeks (Score:2, Flamebait)
See, he is right!
You mods can't even get it together.
mod away pudknockers
For some ROI calculations on that "much needed app" or other IT items is the best way to go.
IF
you can show it WILL save them money ( something that is REAL )
AND
you can show working examples of it e.g. company A has this and have more productivity to show for it then you might be able to show the worth
So what surprise is it that people notice?
And no, I don't think MS has a monopoly on crap. There are too many people on this planet, and not enough to do. Thus, the war on drugs and now the defense of the homeland: rice bowls for people who can show up reliably, pay attention, hold a conversation and follow orders. Same with a lot of jobs, IT not excepted.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
If users each spend 5 hours a week less time trying to find the otption to do whatever in the manual, or on the phone to the helpdesk, because your software is better, thats a savings of 5 * [avg. hourly wage] a week, in dollars.
If new software can handle the Chrismas rush and get the estimated 5000 orders you think you lost last year, thats 5000 * [avg. Xmas order] dollars.
In short find a way to put a dollar figure on it, even if it's only estimated. That's how to convince a guy in a suit.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
One mistake that people often make when looking at industry is presuming that there is some "stopping point" at which the company has been tech enabled: How utterly insane. Business is competition, and if you're in a billion dollar field and spending $20 million on a new database system will allow you to proactively respond to your customers quicker, gaining more marketshare, then it's likely worth it. If you got replaced a database server with a new, super hyper database server that gives you a CRM system that allows you to capitalize on every call, and keep customer satisfaction at its pinnacle, then not only is it a good investment, competitively it is likely crucial for you to survive as a company. There are countless examples like this where competition is the driving force behind technology: Sure, righteously deride technology in a luddite fashion, but remember your words fondly when you're in the unemployment line.
Economic slowdowns cause a cessation in spending, and the reality is that often the spending reduction turns out to be disasterous for those companies that fall behind.
I run the IT dept. at my company. I am the IT Director, the Systems Admin, and the Network Engineer. It is a small company of 30-35 people. We spend more money on IT than anything else except salary compensation for our employees. When I have to justify something like a computer or peripherals...I usually do it by simply explaining that we are spending 100k on an employee in salary and benefits and that he has to have an effective working environment in order to be productive. We can't just give a programmer some 3 year old used PC and expect the same level of productivity from them as one with a new PC and an ergonomic mouse/keyboard with a nice monitor. Now I'm not talking top of the line stuff like an Aeron chair and a computer with a Geforce4 Ti4600 card...thats just plain ridiculous. But actually investing in hardware and infrastructure that can VISUALLY be seen benefiting the users.
On another note, due to the fact that I am the only person in our IT dept. at the current time I have been able to keep costs down in other areas of my dept. I don't have to pay for training for any other IT employees or for more computers for them. The fact that I have kept my dept. streamlined and directly on task for what it's purposes are has garnered me alot of faith and responsibility from the higher ups, which means more freedom with the budget.
IT shops that just spend and show poor price/performance and hence have trouble getting things done is a symptom that there are some really ineffective people in the IT field. I'm sorry, but a degree from DeVry's is not going to get you a job working for me (I am looking to hire someone soon to allieviate some of the upcoming strain on my time). I have been in this field since I was 15 and working for Ericsson during high school as an asst. network admin. I did this because I loved the work not just because it paid well. If an IT person can't show me that they not only know computers but that they understand the underlying purpose of an IT dept. (which is generally to help the company get its work done) then they will be ushered right out of my office and back on the street.
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
Maybe these companies have realized the power of Open Source. The disproportionate amounts spent on hardware and software are a telltale sign of Free Software infiltrating the IT industry. This is a Good Thing for Free Software. If this is not a sign of increased use of Free Software, it will definately be incentive for IT workers to use Linux and other Free Software instead of commercially licensed software.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
'IT' may be a bit undervalued at the moment, that is to be expected after a long period of overvaluation, but not by much. In general, IT departments are dominated by badly trained monkeys who either couldn't make it in real technical fields, or wanted to make lots of money without doing any real work. (actually, there is a third category: the megalomaniacs looking for a way to lord thier power over the poor unfortunates who have to work with them) It is awfully hard to undervalue such folk.
The simple fact of the matter is that companies, even today, spend far too much money and effort on supporting their information systems. Some of this is due to the promulgation of inappropriate solutions (read: M$ bloatware). Some is due to the rank incompetance of the run-of-the-mill 'IT' worker (read: MC*E-bearing monkey). Obviously, a large part can be laid at the feet of CTOs and CIOs who don't put proper effort into either hiring or purchasing decisions.
So, the party's over and the bean counters are no longer willing to squander lots of money on faster machines to run more bloated software just to tickle some geek-wannabe's thirst for chrome. Boo-flippin-hoo! Good for the bean-counters! Putting 800MHz PIIIs on a secretary's desk just to type memos and emails was ridiculous in the first place. Now, anyone who recomended such silliness should be thankfull they haven't been tossed out on their ear.
As for how this will affect 'techies': don't make me laugh! 'IT' folk are not, in general, 'techies', they are administrative personnel. The real techies are off doing technical work and are in little or no danger from the 'IT' downturn. In fact, if the 'IT' downturn gets rid of the more obnoxious admins, all the better for the techs who don't have to deal with their crap.
</BILE>
Think about the "bad" IT spending (both in terms of dollars spent and dollars not spent costing productivity) you've seen in the last five years. Here are some of mine: A main file server that keeps filling up. An email server that can handle 8x the level of traffic it will ever see. An IP conference system brought in-house to serve 2-3 conference calls a day. Running fiber to the desktop at great expense to serve people whose primary application is email. Bringing in four different version control systems for one development effort. Replacing one outdated computer at a time, so that suddenly you're supporting a hundred slightly different machines.
I could go on, but you get the point. All of these are examples of "bad" IT spending that would have been prevented if you'd had good people and good managers, people who understand that the first rule of IT is to know why you need a given thing.
Now, it's hard to get people who are smart without being arrogant, careful without being overly conservative and etc. Moreover, even if you assemble a good team, it can be expensive to keep it together. The gains of a good group of people are realized in the long-term, and this is why so many otherwise intelligent businesses have incompetent people wasting money.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Just shows you that people who aren't activily involved in IT would rather beleive it's some magic that is always there ua know. like air travel, or the sun rising.
Best way to prove the need for IT? let the hackers and script kiddies run wild and then see what happens when this supernatual force of IT crumbles around them. Who is need then =]
(Don't mind me I'm going insane)
I have seen a lot of trash and litter being told "IT", but its just useless junk. There are many thinks that are being complicated more than they really are using IT. Example: The Class sign in system here at UTFSM. Every year its worst. To signin to a class is a real nightmare, and your treated like shit (you have no right to... you are entirely responsible of your (our) ... )
Before it was done using plain paper and hell, it was lots easier to get your classes signed in.
The guys who developed that system really didn't know a thing about Software Ingeniering.
I really miss those old paper days...
Maybe its just a process of natural selection (Darwin like aproach ?)
Greetz
You must live on a different planet. Your people must spend their time doing something productive rather than telling others to try rebooting.
How often do you have your machines replaced? Over here, we can replace our laptops after two years. In two years, the machines are still in top shape and not even close to being obsolete. My PIII/650MHz/192MB RAM is a perfectly fine machine -- really. I didn't need that kind of power when I got it and I still don't need it (I don't run crappy bloated operating systems).
Incidentally, I, with a single person under me (to help with handholding and help people find the manual I had written) and the CEO above, was able to support over one thousand end users.
This was going to happen since nothing can stay badly broken forever, not even Microsoft Windows.
The success of IT rested on three assumptions:
1) The Internet was a cash cow that needed only to be milked.
2) Microsoft Windows was the key to all things in the computer world.
3) IT staffing is always needed to service the legions of PCs in business.
But each of these failed to pan out for logical reasons. The Internet was a cash strategy, but was abused by stupid people placing money into businesses without a business plan and no real product--dot-coms. Bye-bye, they said to their money. Screwed up the stock market, that.
Microsoft Windows was indeed the way to all things computer-related, from apps to training. And quite a few businesses contracted with "kitchen-sink" computer service companies who could buy, service, or administrate all kinds of PCs (unless you're Mac OS or Linux--that's another sad story in most locations). And training would guarantee most everyone with certification the chance to submit their resumes.
But this business was based on the fact that Microsoft Windows was ALWAYS in need of maintenance and companies would ALWAYS upgrade their systems for the "latest and greatest."
Enter Windows 2000--the first Windows OS whose stability and performance claims were justified. Microsoft built this OS with greater strengths as word spread of a newcomer that was free and just as stable: Linux.
As budgets tightened, managers again asked the budget questions, but weren't accepting the usual answers. "Why do we need to upgrade?" IT managers were able to answer firmly in the past that these upgrades would improve performance, or administration. But managers knew, now, from personal experience that their computer running Windows 98 or 2000 was just fine, and didn't want their copies of Office 2000 messed with for now.
As the IT monies dried up, IT managers (and contractor companies) tightened their belts and downsized, kicking out some experienced techs but quite a few inexperienced (but certified!) techs to the curb. Windows didn't need armies to support any longer. Servers didn't either--a few new technologies consolidated some sysadmin functions.
And now we're back to the availability of techs and sysadmins with real experience, talent, and diversity. You could be a Windows NT admin, but you may also know Linux. No longer was there room for "computer religion." You might do Mac desktops, but also know PC desktops. It's a screwy kind of Darwinism (no pun intended for the OS X folks), but the competition between the stable UNIX operating systems vs. all things Microsoft have brought a new (or rediscovered?) dawn to the personal computing world: the generally stable computer.
Are techs still needed? Sure. However, if all you have are a bunch of certification certificates beyond you and little experience, those papers and 50 cents are probably worth a cup of coffee at McDonalds.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
To think the last thing I worked on ran on a 100Mhz 486 with 32MB of ram
BTW: does anyone else think that ad-hoc passing of strings or seralized objects between applet and servlet via HTTP is a giant step backwards?
-- ac at work
Being a design engineer in the vehicle industry, I can deny with absolute certainty that IT might be overrated. Solid modelling (aka 3D CAD) is standard since mid-90's and other things like PDM is rapidly catching on. Even the smallest of our suppliers seems finally to have understood the need. .com bubble.
On the other hand, you have dynamic simulation, like MBS, opening a completely new field for the engineer: real dynamics instead of just kinematics!
So, the role of IT for the R&D departments in the industry can hardly be overrated! Anybody who is implying this is {insert your favorite noun here}. And since our IT decision makers are all having an engineering degree (or are supervised by ones who have), our budget for IT is steadily increasing (or at least constant on a high level), largely unaffected by the collapse of the
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
Man, I love to spin a good yarn.
The year was 1998. I had just scored a job as an IT guy for a small silicon valley company that was going to revelutionize the world by building a netmeeting for radiologists.
Well somewhere along the line, my paranoid overly mormon CTO began to think I was satan and thusly ordered all my root priveledges be taken from all servers..
I'm not going to go into too much detail about why, we'll just leave it at he was a lunatic. I could no longer add users to the mail system, apply patches or do anything a person in my job would normally do, so I just sat there browsing the web all day. Surfing the web and getting paid is pretty fun to say the least.
This psychotic CTO thought it would be a good idea to put the burden of sysadmin'ing to the coders beneath him. That lasted about 2 weeks.
Secretary calls, "I forgot my mail password"
me, "Sorry but since I had my admin rights taken away I can no longer fix those problems"
CEO calls, "I just got an email saying 1 million porn spams for dildos just passed through our unprotected SMTP server is this true?"
Me, "Sorry sir, but without access to the logs I cannot verify this, here talk to the coder kendyl put in charge of that"
Where everyone was used to issues being resolved in 10 to 15 minutes with one phone call now turned into a trapeze act of phone calls trying to track down which coder was in charge of what system. It prevented me from doing my job, it made the coders jobs harder from fielding stupid questions, and the CEO was very pissed off about the whole thing. Coders were wasting up to 2 hours a day each to deal with stupid network shit.
Well eventually the CTO was fired for being a stark raving lunatic. The coders that held alligence with him blamed me for his downfall. One in paticular would do shit like run a samba server to fuck with my PDC, due to oslevel=1000000 my NT box would never become PDC.
The company brought in a new group to rewrite the product from scratch, and they brought with them a very wise admin named Ed Goldthorpe (If his resume ever crosses your desk, hire him, he's worth whatever he's asking) Ed slowly but surely got the coders to co-operate with him and got the network turned around in about 3 months. We had VPN, started running qmail, and basically everything was good.
I sort of faded into the background from then on. I still fielded support calls from our socal office and the one I worked out of.
The office moved 2 hours away from my house, where before it had been only 15 minutes. I put up with the 4 hour commutes by spending less time in the office. Eventually the company threatened to put me on hourly, I told them to fuck off and went to find another job. Maybe i'll write about the next job if we get an on topic story for it.
So going back to the point i'm trying to make. Most of these companies that are ditching the full time IT staff and doubling the load on their engineers will feel the burn in about 6 months. They will realize that an engineer pestered by idiots who can't change a font all day isn't a happy engineer.
IT acts as that buffer too keep the animals from eating the engineers/coders alive. When you throw away IT, you'll be losing a few good engineers too. It happened at my company, and it will happen at yours.
Very few of the .coms have viable R&D that can truly develop real innovation. Nor is this the proper place for that to be done.
Most of the .coms should never have existed as corporate entities in the first place. They were never viable and the same people running a different kind of business would have never survived in any other market either.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
"How do you feel about the cost benefits of IT?"
as compared to what...
A customer of mine had to capture a massive amount of data. Estimates showed it would have taken a 2-person team 700 days to finish the job. Instead, we thought about the problem a little, and devised an automated solution that took a single person 5 days to implement, and then 3 days to process. So instead of 1400 person-days, it took 8.
I guess if companies DONT want that kind of efficiency, they can ditch their IT departments. Just dont whine then the companies that exploit IT to be more efficient kick the shit out of the IT-less ones.
While I used my last post a joke I do have a real opinion on the matter.
I beleive this is an example of an "US vs Them" mantality. Non IT workers have unions and lobby groups crying for thier every little thing while IT workers don't really have such things. So of course thoughs without representation get shit on.
just my thoughts
Perhaps the CFO would like to go back to the days of hiring a room full of clerks with mechanical calculators and handwritten ledgers to balance the books?
The only people who think they don't need to invest in an IT infrastructure these days are idiots who take for granted all the positive influences computing has had on business in the past 50 years.
Either simulate or cause a disaster. Also simulate that there are no IT people in the organization.
Hmmmm, should this simulation be scheduled?
Now ask the people who would normally be in charge of IT (usually a CFO, CIO, or COO) at the director/exec level to fix the problem propperly.
The checkbook for contractor/vendor/consulting dollars will probably fly open.
IT is the nervous system of any company. You know you've got one somewhere, but unless you get hurt in a major way, you'll never know it's there.
"...the shortest distance between two points may be straight line, but it is by no means the most interesting."
Yes it probably could be done almost everywhere, assuming you can get one person to play "Mussolini of the Desktops" and stop users from adding stupid crap like screensavers etc. Hell man if we could get national hardware and software standards we could probably run on 5-10% of budgets.....
Think about bank ATMS they are almost NEVER down. Why? They are hardware and software specced and designed to do a straightforward task.The same can be done with PC's but it would mean taking the "Personal" out of Personal Computers.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
If a company is seeing IT as a waste, then they did not get the ROI they thought was promised. The companies which implemented less elaborate systems, didn't try to transform theselves from brick and morter companies into super e-businesses, and invested in systems that would actually make their lives better instead of systems that sounded really good at the time still see the value in IT. For example, instead of jumping on the E-business bandwaggon where customers were removed from the sales force, we decided to better arm the sales force with things like Lotus Domino and a quote system. The customers loved it, and sales boomed, the sales reps don't miss a beat and make the sale.
In most places, IT is still a cost center, not a profit center, that is not going to change any time soon. What IT has to do is show it can help make people more effective and as result show it can help lower the cost.
They work for dirt cheap, and that's cool!
1) Having them say it "isn't my job to do..." Bullshit. You're paid to support my machine. You can set boundaries (don't install chat software, for example) but when I need a tool to get a job done, or I need a machine running, damn it I need it.
2) Being told "I'll get on it soon," then waiting weeks for the solution. Hey, I'll do it myself. But if I have to do it myself, you're not doing your job (and I'm probably not doing my job).
3) Trying to help out by "fixing" working systems, especially during crunch times. Our IT guy decided to upgrade a linux kernel on a working laptops the day before a major demo. The kernel didn't work, and the collective blood pressure in the lab went up quite a bit.
4) Being a tactless prick. "Why are you using X? Only halfwits use X! Use Y instead." I use X because it works. Now fuck off.
I could go on, but for the most part it seems like IT people get in my way more than they help.
hrm
The middle mind speaks!
'Undervalued' or 'overvalued' is context-sensitive. My company spent literally millions implementing a major CRM package in a way that a) doesn't address the needs of 95% of the potential users b) will never be allowed to address those needs because of the grip the other 5% has on how the product is used and c) did not bother to examine the enterprise's overall needs and business processes prior to install (hence no reengineering and no value). If IT is perceived as being responsible for this state of affairs (as is often the case), then the business did not get good value. Not fair, but most of us have experienced this situation.
Organizations will still invest in IT given good CBA / ROI models. Good organizations will insist on business ownership and business process redesign as the starting point for these investments.
Steel girders are to a skyscraper as IT is to a large company. That is, IT is an absolutely must if a company is going to scale. There is absolutely no way around that. If your IT is insufficient or poorly constructed, your entire enterprise is on shaky ground.
You can't scale without it. It contains all of your business logic or "rules that your business runs on" and enforces them. It houses all your important data. It is a critical component.
Of course, outside of large companies, there is the angle you take on it, which is that IT is for a competitive advantage. In some industries, there are more advantages than others, and different degrees to which those advantages can be leveraged.
For example, financial institutions, who Id probably say have the best understanding of how much IT is worth, would be where I would look for an overall value of IT.
However, I do agree that companies are cutting back. I think there has been some overspending in IT where it really wasn't all that necessary. It goes back to internal controls and peer review. If you're putting in a new system, in-house, it is better to have two teams to compete for the best solution. Having your in-house guys do it by themselves ends up getting a lot of extra goodies thrown in. (And I'm not just talking about the Palm Pilots or UNIX workstations. But 4gb of RAM, when 2gb will do, for example. Or 600gb of disk when 200gb will serve the initial system size and a year's growth.)
If you want IT to be worth something to a company, then you'll have to do something that adds to the bottom line. That bottom line is how every decision is made during hard economic times, and without providing positive cashflow, IT is worth as much as the salesman that isn't meeting his quota.
is to make money. Any money spent in an organization that does not in turn make at least what it costs is a waste. Take payroll for instance, you spend $x / year on a person in return for work that will generate > $x / year in revenue. The same holds for IT. If it can't be demonstrated that an IT budget enables more revenue to be generated then it costs, then good luck justifying the budget. Money is the only metric in business everything from PR to policy to dresscode can be linked to a cash flow. I'm not trying to be come off cold or greedy but those are the facts.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Right now, in the wake of the dotbomb, it is no wonder that companies are wary about spending money on IT. The model has shown us that the more a company spent on tech, the liklier it was to crumble...of course in the runaway and irresponsible late 90's and early ought's that was true, but that does not mean that scaling back to a horrendous extent will help either. I think that what the world needs to see is tech companies again making money and non-tech companies using their web presences, etc to generate revenue. Of course there are many industries that are just not suited to e-commerce in any way shape or form, so if you are the CTO of a company that makes aluminium piping and you really want to sell it on the internet (a la the IBM commercial) I think that IT is a losing prospect.
For that matter, what's wrong with a corporate account at a strip club? Just try to make it one that isn't run by a biker gang, k? Thanks.
The other major thing that needs to happen is some turnover. Right now, the elite new graduates and the elite who were unfortunate enough to be working for companies that nolonger exist are finding it very hard to get jobs. Likewise a lot of companies that did their firing and are now holding on are still in posession of a lot of dead wood. Until the remaining dead wood is culled from the heard and sent packing back to community colleges and third world countries, the elite cannot re-people the IT sector. We were rushing around in such a terrible daze to hire anybody that we hired losers. No IT division can be successful if its employees are the worst hacks. Get the losers out and the elite innovators back in and then we might be able to start making money. If enough people can make money the rest will notice and we will once again have the IT budgets to buy all the nerf guns and free beer fridays that we want.
We need a return to K.I.S.S. We need a return to bad metal bands from the '70s? .
I see this first hand. I am a Desktop Suppport Technician for a healthcare company and I support a site with 3200 users by myself! It's gotten so bad that one of the techs was told to go buy her own pencil sharpener instead of the company ordering her one. I h8 my job!
I am BLaRG!
Sorry to have to break the following news to you:
;)
If you entered the IT sector in the last 4 years, it's been OVERVALUED the entire time you've been in it, or should I say IT.
While I will admit that I have really enjoyed the higher-than normal salaries and the perks of the dot-com boom (and even the post-boom) times, here's another piece of news for you:
IT is basically back where it was. More valued in some ways while less in others, but for all intents and purposes it is best defined as returning to _normal_.
If you weren't in the industry before, let's say, 1998 then you are in the unfortunate position of lacking the perspective to understand how today compares to pre dot-com times.
On a somewhat different but related note, if you joined the industry _because_of_ the increase in attention (and money!) paid to IT, it also has to be said that you are likely more a part of the problem than of the solution.
Corperations will spend less and less over time on systems. The Important thing however is were over what appears to be the major hurdle. When I started out it took forever to get a company to upgrade machines. I remember shorting out the presidents PC so he could get a new one because we couldnt upgrade his because of the CFO's policies. (Back when CFO's were the top of the IT chain).
:).
The salarys were high and so we got an influx of people, both bad and good. Some will fade. I gave up on the industry and hopeless and moved on but I was there before there was a web. I got sick of the underskilled people and lack of real knowledge. When i started it was find a forward thinking company who needs a visionary. Remember that buzzword? It might have been the first. People who could guide there network through the confusing world of it. Unfortunatly all the certifications out there have made most IT people think "There is the XXXX company name way to do it, it says it in the book, and thats the way it should be done." Theres a certification for everything too, Compaq ACE? Good god, if you need a certification for PC hardware might I suggest you seek employment at a 7-11?
Im used to the oppisite. Where vendors say "This is the way you have to do it" and we say "but that didnt work so we did this.", and they say wow and add it to the there release notes as a feature. I personaly miss the days of old where you kludged through everything. Mondays were about bandaids and by friday you had everything ready to break again.
The best thing that can be said is people did upgrade. In the olden days of using defibulators to keep pcs alive rather then getting a new one people stagnated with slow machines. Everyone (with the expection of bank employees who never get upgrades ever) has a resonable speed machine on there desk now. The Original rule said you should upgrade every 3 years. Companys shot for 5 or 6, the "Dot com" boom shot that up to 1 year to 18 months. Was a ridiculous expenditure. If we can settle back to every 3 years and keep it there we should be able to keep people going. Microsoft will have to go back to upgrades every few years but thats a sacrafice im willing to make
I do think that the industry will stabalize again but it will never be what it was. If your looking to justify the existance of an IT department do what we did when our CFO complained in the early 90's. We billed departments for time spent repairing machines in them. The CFO stopped asking cause all the other VP's stepped on him to get it to stop.
The bottom line is the IT department will really never make a company any money. Were good at spending it, lord knows Ive spent my share. Companies will try and cut back as much as they can till it starts to fall apart and then hold there. Unfortunatlly its usually a bit short of where it should be. But thats why we get paid the big (or what used to be big) bucks. That and the 16 hour work days. You remember those?
Apoligies if my mind is a bit incoherant at times, Im on a 5 minute break from packing to hit the road for a year.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
Where IT fails is when people start throwing around the pie-in-the-sky goals of "creating new marketplaces" and believing in the myth of "cyberspace" without having a mature plan before rolling out "the next new thing."
Let's face it--marketers love hype. They love those guru types who can jingle little bottles of snake-oil technobabble, producing a glassy hypnosis in the eyes of the corporate decision-makers. All the marketers hear is the sound of the till bell. Ch-ching. Unfortunately, some of us closet geeks really like the attention, and we can get caught up in the hype, too.
Maybe I'm cynical, and maybe my view is pretty short-sighted. But I think that information technology simply exists to cause an efficiency of the information infrastructure of an enterprise. Therefore, one can reasonably conclude that the "value" of IT is proportional to some factor of the company's value and the worth they place on their data. IT is more immediately important to a banker than it would be to a construction worker. Or better yet, IT serves a great purpose to the librarian, but could go totally unnoticed by the bakery chef.
That's one of the failures of the dot-coms--failure to realize the spurious and fickle expectations of the at-large consumer. Aside from not being able to create the consumer experience of a traditional storefront, the virtual world couldn't fully engage the consumer's confidence and euphoria. A quick personal testimony: I love to buy on impulse. It's a great feeling. However, I never bought on impulse when shopping online, which I do a great deal. Multiply my experience by whatever factor that you think is relevant, and that is the rate of growth that the dot-com world never matured enough to reach.
I hope that the lesson learned from recent years is that no product "just sells itself." The success of the IT factor of a company is going to be only as success of the enterprise that surrounds it. This means that it takes more than just knowledgeable engineers to make the thing fly; the executives have to be knowledgeable and make informed decisions. And they have to spend money. A lot of money.
A successful IT infrastructure is probably more valuable than its assets. A very efficient, mission-critical system like the one that runs the trading floor on NYSE is probably much more valuable than the assets/manpower that it took to create it. However, take that same scenario and make the IT solution very inefficient. In fact, make it somehow less efficient than the pencil-pushing system that it replaced. Suddenly, the value plummets from "invaluable" to "worthless."
There were many immature IT strategies in the last decade, and they failed to succeed. Hopefully, the successful IT stories will last long enough to convince another group of hypnotized executives to buy a bottle of snake-oil.
I've been in the IT business for going on 4 decades now (yep, I'm that old), and if experience tells me anything, it's that there will always be a need for highly skilled and motivated IT people, no matter what the economic atmosphere is at any given time.
I've been around the old guard--people who could do pretty much anything short of coding an operating system from scratch in pure machine code with both hands tied behind their backs. These guys knew their stuff, and were dedicated to keeping whatever system or application they were working on running cleanly and efficiently, because they lived and breathed technology.
I've also been around who I'd like to call the dot-wannabes--mainly young guys in their early 20's, fresh off of newly-pressed CS/IS degrees, who mainly didn't give a damn about the systems they were responsible for. Pretty much their primary concern was getting their 401k plan lined up; always coming in late and leaving early, while us old fogeys stuck around to clean up their poorly coded messes.
Now, not all of the young guys were like that, granted, but for the most part this is what I saw--and I've been around the block a few times at several companies that were pushing the edges of tech when these guys were still suckling.
Maybe I'm bitter about this, considering I was all but tossed out on the street during the dot-bust from my old position at a well-respected company because they wanted someone younger who could "think outside the traditional box." But things have turned around and I'm doing quite well for myself again. I wish I could say the same for most of the kids that came into the industry in the past few years--most of whom shouldn't have even been there to begin with..
Well, I'm done ranting on that. My main point is that, if you've got the skills and, most of all, the desire to be involved in technology, I would hardly call you unnecessary or overvalued. There will always be a need for these people. After all, you've gotta have someone there to clean up the mess when the next wave of bright-eyed wannabes gets weeded out.
Regards.
Of course IT is overrated... would you pay that much for a scooter?
I understand that it is hard to prove the value of IT departments, but that is because you have to show , somehow, all of the bad things that DIDN'T happen because IT was on the ball. So to that extent it seems me to be a lot like insurance. How do you justify the cost for fire insurance if there isn't a fire?
The model has been since the early days of Windows that if you sell software that is good enough, you can sell the fixes to it later. You see this is games, in operating systems, in everything. The razor is cheap, it the blades that make the money. Many companies that provide specific software solutions sell a mediocre generic product and then a long-term, expensive service contract for customizations and maintenance. Well, companies don't want that anymore. They want shrink-wrap that works.
The other problem is work force saturation. It's 2002. The guys that went into computers in 1998 saw their friends graduating that year and getting 6-figure jobs in San Francisco. There was a gold rush of both nerds who were going into comp sci anyway and people who have no business being in programming or computers. These people went to class, did their homework, but have no interest in the technology beyond how much it can prop up their checking accounts. The people who are getting jobs and keeping them are, by and large, those who care about the technologies they use and study and practice with them outside of classes and jobs.
So when I see a fresh comp sci graduate bemoaning his unemployment and griping that he can't get interviews even though he did 4 semesters of co-op, I both laugh and sigh. I laugh because I saw this coming in the late 90's - computers were the hot job and everybody went to it. You can get a 4-year degree and make an easy 60-80K! Well, no. Maybe in the valley where 60K is near poverty. A comp sci graduate with no practical experience in any worthy industry and only a marginal command of Java, C++ and their one painful semester of learning assembler on a Motorola 68K aren't going to get you shit.
Nothing will restore value to IT until the labor force things out to the point where IT departments contain mostly average but competant people who know their little niche and the wannabe's looking for easy money decide they should have gone to law school after all, which is what they do in between night shifts at the pizza stand in the mall. "I have a computer science degree!"
Yeah, mine's in English. Doesn't matter. When IT is small and does its job well and helps the company increase market share, earnings, and make the stockholders happy, then IT will have value. Until then we have to scrape by on our lamentably slow Pentium III's. Boo hoo.
IMHO, management is having a harder time selling the 'cool' new software because it costs money. Money is tight. We are in a recession. With the .bombs, the IT industry is having to return to earth. It is now just a department staffed by people with technical educations. Very similar to Engineering. (I can say that having been one). As an engineer, it is very difficult to get the things that you need because you have to justify the expense. Often, the money saved is intangible or you can't show it on a canned spreadsheet. The same can be said about software. For example (I'm just throwing this out), what money will be saved by migrating an existing application to Oracle 9 using Linux clusters. Finance has already written off the capital expense for the equipment and software in the first place. The data is being stored and people have their applications and can do their job. Why do I need to spend ~1 million dollars(US) to implement this solution? Because we won't have any down-time, says you. But we shouldn't have any down-time now, says management. Often, we being gear-heads can't explain the 'soft-money' benefits of new applications/hardware to accounting. We don't understand ROI and they don't understand what we need to 'do it right the first time'. Because we can't produce direct revenue we will be viewed as overhead and treated as second-class citizens in the corporate nation.
Blackmail the CEO and CFO. I'm sure there is something you can dig up on either one. Then either they will raise your budget or get fired when you turn in the evidence. Then bribe the board to make you CEO. Just tell them that any company loans they got, the company will not hold them liable. Maybe add some money under the table, maybe like you were saying a corporate account at the nuddie bar. By any means necessary. Then you can raise your budget. Even if the board gets angry at how a purse factory needs such a large IT Budget (read...less greed for the board), fire the board. If you have any ethical objections, fire your conscience and give your greed urge a raise.
Justify your existence. calculate the expected failure rate of all hardware in the company. ie: how many mouse failures, how many monitors failures, how many HD crashes, on average, per pc, per server. Calculate replacement time per failure. Price out consultant fees for those hours. Calculate consultant fees for a managed growth plan. Calculate the expected growth rate of the need for new IT resources over time. Add up all the costs, and compare it to your income. Don't be afraid to add in prices for 24hr support contracts from vendors. This is a basic task for an experienced admin. Determine exactly what is the cash value you provide to the company. It will likely be less than your income, unless you work for a very large company. Now you can add in all your "extra features" like convenience and rapid response, and sell it to upper management. I've had to do it many times.. IT is a tough biz these days because nobody knows waht you REALLY do. Hell for all they know you might just be reading slashdot all day ;)
But if organize all your tasks and duties, and cost it out over a year, the benefit to the company should be apparent. If it isn't.. well that's your warning to update your resume ASAP.
To say IT is unnessisary is like telling the Army they don't need seperate branches to keep track of troops, ammunition and supplies. If you are going to run a business with any sizable technology arm to it, specialist should be employed. Sure, you may be able to do it yourself, but then you're taking time away from the other tasks you should be doing. It's called delegation of authority. Or would you rather run shipping yourself? Sales? Accounts payable? All these duties are quote "nessisary" and somehow IT isn't? My ass.
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Doubt anyone will read this since it's so far down and I'm anonymous, but...
.com boom when companies would get BS software that promises to do one thing, then maybe halfway does it and you're stuck footing the bill. In other words software that's as good as in the garbage
This is perfect for Linux and open source apps. For the most part Linux doesn't have BS propaganda to support it. You get a tool chest, and you start building. Your costs only go up if you need more IT people to handle it. And for most companies that's okay, as opposed to writing a huge check to MS for "Software assurance" in which MS is garunteed to take your money weither they actually do anything or not.
How much did the company I work for spend on IT on the Linux side? $0. (Okay, I MADE them buy a copy of Red Hat so maybe $65). How much are they going to spend in the near future? $0. Percentage of time that I spend building things on Linux 100%, : but that's the key, I'm BUILDING. As I continue to work on things, stuff continues to happen. We get a return on an the investment on my time. When I go away, the next guy will continue where I left off. The tools are there. They're documented. They're open. Certainly a contrast to the
From my perspective it is not the value of IT that has waned but rather the budget. The question that I constantly here these days is what is the minimum number of people and the minimum amount of resources that I need to do 80% of the job. Persistance, sweat, luck, and "damn the torpedos" has to get me that last 20%.
I find myself wearing too many hats but at least I am employed again. In some ways things are quite interesting, all new technologies, working in all kinds of roles that in a boom I wouldn't have the chance. The downside is it takes siginifcantly more time on my own to retool my skillset just to keep in the game.
From my perspective, since the IT bust you have to do more than every before and delegate everything you possibly can or you are screwed. The herd is still being culled. It's the recession stupid, everyone is cutting costs.
The people I truly pity are those recent college grads that were sold all the boom hype and graduate with whopping debt to the bust.
~~ What's stopping you?
As an IT Manager in mid level of a multi national company i would like to see CIO's and CTO's held responsible for their actions. The company i work for made well over $200 million US profit for the region last year but because they promised $300 million to the market they embarked on a cost cutting orgy.
Im down to 4 staff from 8 and no budgets, none of mu guys or I have had a payrise in 2 years and our average bonus last year was $500 - that for an average (for me) of 74 hours a week. My guys have worked harder than ever before but they get nothing, training is promised and not delivered, and and all benefits stripped away and when they get better paid job offers my best staff have to leave as our CTO wont 'pay for his own staff like blackmail'
He of course gets shares... lots of them. In fact he got a payrise last year for his efforts.
Ho about this - when cutting costs the first thing to go is the management share vesting schemes, then the management bonuses, then the management take a pay cut - if i screwed up the way management here did i would be unemployed, they have all gotten bonuses.
Tell me, as a CTO, how am i expected to deliver support to a user base of 1300+ staff with 4 support guys (thats it - no helpdesk just 4) and still maintain some service level? Id really like to hear the wisdom of the wise ?
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
With IT going for $3000+, I think IT is far *overvalued*. I mean, c'mon! It's a SCOOTER!
yes, it would be nice if all us slashdot computer geeks could sit around here in a nice big circle jerk and justify why companies should be spending billions to keep us employed. The fact is - they did just fine without us before computers were invented, and then they fished around for 15 or so years before the "mythical productivity increase" happened, and then we got them over the Y2K hump. Now we're not needed anymore, at least not on the scale we were needed back in the 90's, so we'll be cast off.
"Tech people" like to think of technology as a steadily advancing tide the pushes humanity forward, and lifts us all up to some dreamed-of high-tech society.
While that may be true - you're forgetting who runs this world. The real world. It's the almighty buck, and the almighty buck doesn't give a crap about flying cars and moonbases.
It was nice that most of us were stripped of any wealth via the stock market crash prior to joining the ranks of the unemployed.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Too many places pour money into big servers and expensive equipment, thinking "If we build it, they will come".
The bottom line is, you have to have a great idea to get anywhere. IT is not where this happens. That happens in marketing (cringe) and in R&D, NOT IT.
However, you are undoubtedly right that there are some areas where IT spending is bananas. The classic case of keep up with Microsoft being a case in point, or the ridiculous situation where people who type word documents and do email all day are running on $2,000 PCs when a $500 box would be more than adequate.
I think the answer will come from your Point Of View. For example, if your a manger needing to cut costs, obviosly IT is going to be, without a doubt, slashed simply because once an infrustructure is built, as long as you have maintainance you'll be safe for a quite a while. But if you're say, the sys admin, you far notice the real need for extra spending.....not just from insight of the technology, but from the experience of people bitching 24/7 that their PC is too slow or of any latency that might occur, if especially if your overloaded and dont have enough help......
Only at some companies.
I'm guessing that some of the big decision makers got burned by some bad decisions during the heyday of the .com boom.
You have to admit they have a point. They were sold on something which
- they know absolutely nothing about (have an MBA, not an BS CS)
- which turned out to be a dud.
Why should they believe the next hyped up set of buzzwords coming from the IT community? (Certainly they should be skeptical of the same vendors that sold them that previous pig in a poke, whoever they happen to be - hopefully not you!)So first dispel any illusions that every new buzzword technology is a good thing.
Also, gain some credibility with those skeptics by validating their skepticism where it was well-founded. Yes, we sunk thousands of dollars into that supposed cure-all and it was nothing but headaches. It was mistake and you're right to call it a mistake. But also point out where things went right, or perhaps unexpectedly right (eg, Joe put in an open source proxy server that was the bees knees.)
If a vendor comes painting a picture, demand references to current users, and then dig down to the worker bee level in that organization to see if things really are working. Why dig? There's probably plenty of upper level folks in the showcase example company that want to look as if they made a good decision to go with vendor Y and technology Z. The CIO doesn't want to look bad to the other C level people, so definitely dig down. I can't tell you how much money has been poured down holes as a result of an uninformed decision coming down from on high, where there is too much insulation from everyday reality of things like hung servers.
You need to back things up with solid arguments showing non-IT folks how introducing some technology helps their business' bottom line.
A worthy competitor that has implemented technology X where you can show it has had a beneficial effect is one good argument. Another argument is a detailed analysis of a small low-budget prototype roll-out: eg, we created an XML based mechanism for tech-friendly Salesman Fred to access the manufacturing database so he could know how much leadtime to let a customer know he could expect. Etc.
In the big overall scheme of things I've heard an argument made, and I believe most of it, that the unexpected growth in productivity over the past 15 years or so has been largely due to the adoption of IT. (Some growth is due to improved business processes, but I would argue that many of those processes wouldn't be possible 20 years ago given the technology of that day.) If you believe that, then stopping all further investment in IT will likely lead to a stagnation in productivity growth and profitability.
Nothing's ever that simple, of course, and there's no iron-clad arguments for adopting new technologies. There's risk, no two ways about it. But taking the risk earlier than others leads to more substantial rewards, if you can afford the investment.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This one is pretty obvious - you have an IT network, you have to keep it running. You have existing software that is providing some sort of value, you must keep it running. Maintenance means replacing broken/failing equipment, it does not mean constantly upgrading to the latest gadgets. This type of IT spending is currently way to high. NT4.0 is good enough. Office 97 is good enough. There is no compelling need to upgrade to newer versions. When we upgraded from office 95 to office 2000 the only reason to upgrade was because of the compatibility issues. And this only affected about 1% of the office! This is not money well spent.
This is a bit more complicated. Actually it's a lot more complicated. Most businesses have been doing things one way since the beginning of time. When asked why they do something the answer is usually "that's how we've always done it."
Spend a few days looking around your corporation. Maybe you can apprentice with some of the Secretaries/Assistances for a few days. Learn their processes. Find out why they do things... question everything and look for redundancies. It probably won't take you long to find cases where people are re-keying information that has already been in the PC once. This type of work adds no value - if there is a significant amount of time spent doing this you can easily build a case to correct this. Start a project to extract the data from its original home, put it in a format that your clients will be able to use. These are the easy projects to get approval for - low political risk, high pay out.
Another way to find potential IT projects is to spend some time trying to trace processes from the original entry into the company, to the final delivery to the customer. Create a complete processes map. Find out what the original input is, and what the eventual output is supposed to be. As an outsider you should be able to look at the process and see major areas that could be improved. Anything that doesn't add value to the final product (in the eyes of the customer) probably does not need to be done.
Focus on areas where a customer request passes between many different people before it is filled. There are usually ways to improve or eliminate hand off time. Possibly there are many 'specialists' involved in a process when really they need one generalist and an expert system. These types of projects are difficult because many business units will need to cooperate to accomplish an improvement - but at the same time this is where the highest return can be.
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What I see both in the industry and from this question (and answers) is a complete lack of understanding of business theory (or practice). Not a single individual questioned how IT is valued, utilized, or perceived. No one mentioned competitive cost vs. advantage analysis or even the most mundane five force analysis focusing on IT.
No, the problem I see with proving the benefits of IT is the same problem I see in every department of every company I've ever consulted for. That is, a consistent lack of any real ability in those who hold any position of authority. Even when these directors, VP's, and presidents are given the right answers, they often fail to understand the questions.
No, the real problem with valuing IT is the mundane leadership now present in most of America's companies. And yes, I have the titles, experience and credits to my name to back this up.
Most of the companies I've worked for simply wouldn't be able to exist given today's volumes.
Stock brokers, for instance, have been around for a long time writing stuff down - y'know, using PAPER. But they wouldn't be able to execute many trades that way today. (Of course, that might be a good thing!)
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Bad IT drags down a company and good IT pumps it up. The hard part is getting good IT. It is not a matter of just plugging IT into the organization. You have to plug the right IT in the right way.
It is a lot like picking stocks. If you pick the wrong ones and you are screwed. You pick the wrong balance/mix and you are screwed. If your expections are unrealistic about when and how, you are screwed.
The smart and lucky ones make good money off of stocks. Yet, many get F'd by them because they don't know what they are doing (and some bad luck).
Thus, stocks are not bad, per se, just some people's methods of picking and managing them are bad.
I see a lot of human effort in most companies that could be simplified with good computerized solutions. However, it just seems that the implementation is often fauled up or ill-conceived.
I often see the same mistakes being repeated over and over again and the same train wrecks over and over, but am powerless to do much about it. "I told you so" just gets somebody pissed at you. People don't want to hear the truth. There is no reward for wisdom and experience it seems. Thus, wisdom and experience don't enter into the mix often enough.
That is why companies wan't younger, cheaper IT workers: They don't see (or don't know how to see) the value in wisdom and experience. If you filter out wisdom and experience, you are left with almost no difference between a grad and somebody with 15 years of experience, so why would they want to pay more for that?
Table-ized A.I.
a scooter
Okay, okay, using an 802.11 link to the office from my apartment. (Brag Brag.)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I'm a hardware developer, but we don't just mold this stuff out of silly putty. The tools I run to develop asics require a pretty beefy setup. I've got a nice computer-- 1 gig of ram, two 21inch monitors, pentium 4 xeon (which doesn't seem much different than a regular pentium 4).
I just went to my boss and said I'd like a new computer. He ordered this one without blinking... it cost them about $4k. My only regret was that I didn't ask for 2 gigs of ram. As it is, each of the tools I use in hardware development consumes 500-1000 megs, so I can usually just keep one open at a time.
On the PBS show Small Business School (http://smallbusinessschool.org/webapp/sbs/sbs/ind ex-ie.jsp?Size=800&Speed=250&page=/webapp/sbs/prof iles/228/home.jsp), there was an episode about this guy who bought a chain of failing art supply stores (The Art Store). He used IT (AS/400s) to monitor his inventory, sales, costs, etc... He ended up turning the store around with a well implemented solution using technology that works. Not some new product/technology that's still being BETA'd.
I'm sure the /. crowd could come up with many more instances of similar situations.
Unfortunately, most people want to use the newest stuff out there and they don't consider if the tech. has been proven or not. I see it time and time again, somebody in management says something ridiculous like, "We need an Internet, Java, XML messaging, scalable, IT solution!" Of course, it's not allowed to ask, "Why do we need that when we could use a(n) ."
P.S. Sorry about the link. You can find the transcript of the show at smallbusinessschool.org and look for "The Art Store"
There is no spoon or sig.
Parent is a response to a response to a posting. The slashdot moderators suck cock.
In my opinion, the targets of reinvestment dollars come and go like fads. It's not so much that it was "in" to be investing in IT, it's just that people feared being at competative disadvantage to their peers. Now since overall investment is waning and everybody knows it, people realize that they can redirect their moneys elsewhere without that same risk.
I read this as saying two things about businesses:
1. Most businesses are happy to stay in the peloton. If they're doing what everyone else is doing, they know that they won't get abnomally punished relative to the rest of the group.
2. There is not enough competition in most goods markets. Their profit margin is too high when it's not to their benefit to innovate but to "keep the train on the tracks".
I agree totally, in my business I run XP and Office XP and Illustrator 9 and Photoshop and Internet and CD burning (and sol) and my old p266/384mb was fine for this (after I turned the XP eye candy off). I was doing more than most people would on their business PC. I finally replaced it with a Duron the other day when Motherboard died.
What it did not do was run Fruity Loops well which is why I am happy to upgrade and it was a dog with Linux which is not as snappy as windows whe running X. But these things are hardly mission critical for me.
I have some friends who work for MS and the word is that they are very afraid of Linux on the desktop and staff are pissed off with the low share prices.
- Greedy.
- Lazy.
- Incompetent.
Greedy. I constantly see internal web development groups quote even a tiny, simple web site as dozens of hours and thousands of dollars, a price that would have been outrageous even in the pre dot-bomb days. Then they have the never to say "Why do you care how much we bill? It's all internal chargebacks, so it's really just 'play money'!"Lazy. All too often, in order to complete a project on time, I end up building and maintaining my own servers instead of handing off server installs and maintenance to the in-house "server management group". Why should the internal sysadmins be pro-active when there is no penalty for slow response time, no competition for customers, and when they know that by doing nothing, the most demanding customers will eventually just go away and solve their own problems?
Incompetent. As firms cut down on staff and cut out the perks, their most qualified web developers and sysadmins are recruited by headhunters or flee to better, more stable positions as each round of downsizing takes it's toll on morale. In the end, with very few exceptions, the only staff who remain are those not talented enough (or too apathetic) to move on to a better job.
In my experience, in many larger organizations, IT staff might once have been an undervalued asset, but in the past year, most of the valuable staff have fled for greener pastures.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
"IT" always represented this flashy thing where the company was paying a bazillion dollars to move everything to platform X with some flashy vendor and new "in" technology. This type of IT is dead. It's dead because people started to see it as an end in iteself, and somebody finally asked "where's the bang for the buck in our core business operations?"
I've always felt that simply polishing the hell out of your internal apps is the best way to spend money on IT. It's pretty easy in most business system to find ways to take business functions that take a minute or two but are done by several hundred / thousand people a day (or more) and reduce them by 50-90% time-wise. If those take a month or two each of programmer time, that is big-time ROI.
Lets say the programmer makes double what the typical business process user costs. If it takes the programmer two months to do a project and the net result is that a business function/transaction occurring 480 times a day is cut from 90 seconds to 30 seconds, then the project pays for itself in four months. That kind of work isn't sexy, but it sure does pay for itself, especially when departments can delay hiring more people because their existing folks are more productive.
There are a lot of crappy apps out there that waste user/customer time, especially because IT managers were hell-bent to shove new apps out so they could claim victory in the time-to-delivery game. The whole IT industry needs to step back and focus back on the end user experience and business fundamentals: eliminate waste in core business processes.
He knows ALGOL.
I'm not one to advocate the destruction of data. When my pimp (recruiter, as I am a contractor) has questioned the lull in the IT market I've said: Hope for a virus. When viruses hit, it's the veterans that make the difference. How long your company can recover will depend on how many seasoned IT people you have. You want someone who's been through it first hand and not to rely solely on your AV vendor. Though they can be a tremendouse help, if they are busy writing a pattern file what should you be doing in the meantime? I'd tell the brass, you want to know the value of IT? Think back at the outages or problems you've had and ask yourself: "Was the downtime limited or lengthy? Did we have experienced IT personel or "Johnny Come Lately's?" How did that effect our resolution time? My 2cents worth. >
Well, lessee- do I think IT is undervalued? Depends. They make me call tech support for stupid reasons that I ought to be able to change, I can't install fonts, etc.
When I called for a fun question, just once, I asked if PCs were Big Endian or Little Endian. I've never had a ticket escalated so fast- none knew the answer. In fact, I ended up calling a chemist that programmed and he knew the answer.
Don't mention the word 'server'. If you do they descend upon you like the rightous going to protest an Eminem concert. Dont' expect more than 50 megs of disk space on the server- drives are too expensive (note one particular one contains all the research material has faild 4x... they haven't fixed the problems yet).
No I don't have a good attitude towards my IT dept. It's called Feudalism, they are building a kingdom and all the little serfs have to run around and do their bidding. They upgrade your computer to untested software and then blame users for crashing it and bringing down servers
So is IT undervalued? Nope. Overvalued. Reign them in and see the company take off... give them free Reign and watch them grind research to a halt.
This is not as simple as it seems. Try it with a spreadsheet: as your typical CTO has to do so, every day.
And I don't get paid big bucks to be one, you do. It's your job to do this not mine. This is the part where you earn your six figure income and 5 figure bonus that you get every year. If you can't justify the existence of your IT Dept at your company, how the hell am I supposed to do it for you?
IT has a reputation in corporate America as the most unresponsive and least human-centered department in any organization. Here are the stereotypes I've encountered:
1) IT people are more interested in their machines than in helping me do my job.
2) IT people have no understanding of what I do on a daily basis.
3) IT people are penny-wise and pound foolish. They won't pay $200 so I can have a Zip drive that will allow me to take my work home, but they'll spend $1.5M on a VPN that will take a year and a half to implement and won't work properly when finished.
I've been on both sides of the fence, serving as IT support and being one of those people griping at poor IT support. It seems to me that if more IT departments thought of themselves as enablers rather than as an end to themselves, they'd receive much more respect.
Want to see a good example of how it works in a good support organization (and IT is always support)? Go to your nearest Air Force base and talk to the pilots and crew chiefs. Sure, the pilots get all the glory, because missions are oriented around flying the aircraft and hitting the target. But the crew chiefs are given tremendous respect, because they are responsible for making sure the aircraft fly properly. They understand and take pride in their role.
Many IT folks seem to have the opinion that they're smarter than the people they serve. They may be smarter, but that doesn't change the fact that people above them in the organization have to make the truly difficult decisions about hiring and firing, where to spend money, how to stay competitive, and so on. It's not that IT decisions aren't difficult, but in any organization, the more important the decisions you make, the bigger your salary.
If more IT departments realized that they actually are part of a larger team supporting the same goal, and took off their wizard's hats, they might find a lot more acceptance on a human level.
That's where IT folks commonly fall flat on their faces. They don't realize that business people make decisions based almost exclusively on human factors, only secondarily on money, and a distant third on technical factors.
IT departments that grasp the human factors, take care of the other people in the company, and bend over backwards to help people go about their daily tasks are far more likely to get the money they need to conduct glamorous "innovative" projects.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Consider this possible scenario:
Optimally at company X, IT is made up of many "Operators", few "Administrators", and even fewer in "Management". Operators handle the Help Desk, the new user setup and other day-to-day repetitive low-key issues. Administrators handle the larger issues as well extend and improve the various services IT provides. Management (for simplicity, this includes "administrative assistants") manages all the paperwork, inter-group company communication, etc.
Instead, at company X, there aren't enough and/or properly trained operators working as operators, too many operators acting as administrators, the few administrators overworked and management merely creating more things to manage and causing the administrators to also perform management duties. Generally, pretty much making it impossible for Company X's IT group to be cost-efficient (or even helpful to users).
When company X was swimming in money, they got along by throwing more money at any IT problems. Hiring more operators, paying expensive consultants (who recommend what the administrators proposes, or worse, recommend a white elephant solution) and buying software and hardware based largely on which vendors played golf with the upper management of IT.
Now that they are no longer awash in money to throw at problems, they have to cut back. Cut back on management? Of course not. Consultants? University buddies and management doesn't trust the opinions of the experienced administrators. Use better vendors? And face him on the golf course this weekend? A lot of the "fat" is valued more than the "muscle" by the management and so when it's time to make the company leaner, they end up with little muscle supporting lots of fat. The remaining muscle ends up overworked and generally not skilled enough to handle a lot of the work assigned to it. To push the body analogy further, this generally only leads to three outcomes. Optimally, the management "Gets it" and the system is strengthened and made more efficient, or the company continues to work with IT on life-support or enough functions fail that the company goes under.
Luckily where I work is far from having a "heart attack" as it were, but I suspect that at too many other companies the situation is closer to "Company X" and that most problems are largely the fault of mismanagement (including problems of incompetance on the part of operators, as management hired them in the first place). Find and give more authority to management that "Gets it", and you'll likely find the "IT problem" will solve itself.
First, a disclaimer - I work as a software developer for a living, so I'm biased
I've seen projects that have no value - I've seen projects that had great value - it all depends. For instance, one project the department I'm in is working on will allow our end users to turn around their job in hours instead of days, and cut the handling of their product by about 50% - this will allow the company to do one of two things
1)Produce more product, or more sophisticated product
or
2)Lay off a bunch of folks
Another product allowed us to digitize a document production system, so we could reproduce the documents on demand - being we had a 7 year LEGAL requirement to store the documents, this was a BIG deal - you see, we got to eliminate 8 file cabinets in NYC, plus the off premisis stuff in NJ. Who cares about file cabinets, right? But when you realize that floor space costs $150/month/sq ft, and that horizontal file cabinet takes up 9 sq feet, thats over $16K in rent per year/cabinet - or 129k/year in savings just in RENT, never mind needing less staff to get those documents, and better turn around time.
The CURRENT project I'm on used to take 300 temp employees over 1 month to do, every 2 years. Now it's me and one other person, and I send a few months every two years updating the software and testing
It's harder to justify upgrading to the latest copy of Office - XP doesn't do much more than Office2k - but when it comes to custom software, sometimes it's a no brainer - particularly when you don't have to rely on customers, just on increased efficency
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Where I work, the trend has been towards the standarization of company wide processes, across all of the disciplines: engineering, HR, IT, etc. The hope was, if they can distill the proper process, they can make incompetent or semi-imcompetent people productive, and make competent people slightly more productive.
IT spending is viewed in the same way. Lots of companies thought that if they just implemented the right file server, or purchasing system, or XML based web services something or other, incompetent people would be productive, customer relations would be quick and helpful, engineers would be free to create, and everything would be puppy dogs and teddy bears and big red balloons.
Only problem: both of these assumptions are wrong.
Every company needs standard processes so that people can be efficient. But no amount of process makes incompetent people competent. Every company needs decent IT, but no amount of IT makes incompetent people competent.
What more companies are realizing, in both process and IT, and probably other areas as well, is that just spending more money (1) is not a good way to get work done, (2) takes resources away from business segments that produce products, and (3) doesn't necessarily make anything better.
IT is now just approaching it true value from the topside because we've all been under the impression that it could magically make our lives better, and it doesn't.
(And just to nitpick, while IT is tech, tech is not IT. There are plenty of tech jobs that aren't IT.)
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
Interesting point missing from the story is the response to the statement "'IT has now been proven to be a waste of money'".
Wouldnt this be a good time to whip out your spreadsheet telling how much you saved the company because you implemented a custom built app that filled a need the users had. Dont have one? Gee, what is your justification for building those apps then? Where is the business case? Where is the follow up to the business case that tracks the amount you have spent on the app in comparison to what you were spending doing it manually? Dont have either of those figures? Maybe you should start getting them.
IT was magical in the late 90s but now it's a bad word. There will be organizations that need lots of IT help and organizations that don't. Some companies will dump most of its IT budget and do fine and others will increase IT spending and find it gives them an edge. What's always been true is that the companies that match their IT spending to their true needs will come out on top. Nothing else matters, not the trade rags, not the media hype, nothing. In a few years we'll see articles about companies that surprisingly spend lots of money on IT and have an advantage in their market. Big deal. It's the same old story. The best thing you can do as an IT profesional is be useful. Just like anyone else.
Also, the first generation of computer nerds could command vast salaries and respect because they knew about all these arcane protocols and device, and computers were mysterious "black boxes" that worked magically.
Nowadays, however, with universities cranking out IT people, a flood of people who want an IT job because it's hip or pays well, and the general decrease in learning curve for technology, an IT employee is now more akin to an auto mechanic than a doctor.
So, in short, I think the average IT person's salary will decrease. Mind you, there are still going to be high-paid computer wizards, but the average IT person is not as rare as they were a few years ago.
Part of the problem is that in the rabid enthusiasm for all things technological and internet in the last several years, "IT" was sold to management as the solution to all of their woes. To a large extent management bought the idea, because they *wanted* to believe it. Not unsimilar to the way investors bought the idea that a lot of those same companies would become hugely valuable.
Having said that, this idea that anyone is or should be "down" on IT is a silly one.
Information technology, *properly developed and deployed* can add substantial value, reduce costs, streamline processes, all of the things people generally look to it to do. Smart technology people at successful companies know how to do this: identify your technological needs, then use hardware, software and networks to fulfill them. It does NOT mean that you rush out and buy a bunch of expensive state-of-the-art servers, hire armies of just-out-of-college Java programmers, web lackeys and DB admins at $75K/year/person and then kick your feet up and wait for the productivity to roll in. Oooh, I think I hear it coming now.
The reason "IT" has gotten a bad rap is that businesses have come to view technology as some sort of magic bullet, when in reality it is just a tool. An extremely, unbelievably powerful tool. But tools are useless unless you (1) first think deeply about the task you need to solve, (2) choose the appropriate tool for the job (taking your budget into account), and (3) have someone around who knows how to use the tool well when you get it. As a rough and hasty analogy, if you'd like to hear Beethoven piano sonatas in your living room, you could buy a bunch of CDs and (if you don't already have one) a decent CD player. Or you could shell out for a brand new Steinway and hire 3 community college music majors to hang around your house in 8-hour shifts in case you want to hear something. But the CDs is a cheaper and better solution.
I write software for a living, and the trend I've noticed over the past 10 years is that as we get better at this (and here "we" means my group as well as the industry considered as a whole) we are able to spend less of our intellectual effort on the parts that "feel" like technology (complex algorithms to do X or Y, dedicated servers to cache Foo so that it will be available for Bar) and more of them directly addressing the company's needs to process information: designing data relationships, decoding and simplifying business processes, creating tools to understand what we have and establishing standards for where information goes and how it is supposed to flow. This kind of thing is what capital-I capital-T information technology is *supposed* to be about: using technology to manage information [better]. And this is where all the productivity comes from if you do it right.
All the rest of that crap: servers, routers, Java programmers, relational databases -- the things that everybody got excited about and bought/hired/licensed by the boatload -- that's just what you need to have around to implement the good stuff. Make sure you don't pay too much for it. :-)
I can't recall anyone referring to "IT" prior to about 1990. This term seems to be a fad that sprouted up sometime in the '90s - but now people are acting as if it's an established term that's been around forever.
My experience in the past few years has been an increasing work load with the same pay. Most companies don't fully understand how much work and responsibility IT has, even in non tech related businesses. Recently more of my time is spent doing tech support, when I need to focus on programming and network administration.
Perhaps an analogy of oil in an engine might apply to the function of IT. It's not gasoline, tires, an aerodynamical shape, or any other feature that might make the car go faster, but over use the oil, use poor quality oil or try to use gasoline as oil and you'll find the car won't go fast at all (or for long).
Think about this, most non-coding office workers can do their job on a 486DX4 with win 3.11. Maybe give the folks with large spreadsheets a pentium 166 and extra RAM. Supporting all the crap is expensive. Email, Lotus123, Lynx, and Write are all non-tech workers need to get the benfits of computing.
But the VP of marketing has to have the latest laptop with the latest crapware on it so the prospects think he is a big wheel.
It is just like all the companies advertising on each others websites -- there was no real business going on.
Tech staff will always be needed. Certain functions will become less removed from everyday life as it becomes easier to, say, install hardware. But there will always be a need for someone who can at the very least READ code and make sense of it in solving tech problems. There will also be a need for someone who can understand how an operating system works, and why this means certain apps are being fussy.
You could always work in a library, as I do, but I only recommend this if you wish to be treated as the downstairs help, and get paid as such.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
The biggest reason that IT spending gets out of control and produces no real results is becuase managers just don't understand the technology or their technical people enough to know what they are doing and are unwilling to admit their mistakes letting the problem get worse and worse.
An example here at my current job is working with the monitoring department. The decided to use Netview and Robomon to monitor Windows servers. They hired two contractors who had no experience with either product. The manager who hired them had no experience with those products, project management or even basic programming skills. She simply trusted the judgement of the people who were under her.
The could not get Netview working, they could not get Robomon working and their usual complaint was to blame it on the system owners. When the system did work, they had done such a poor job of writing monitoring scripts it was not uncommon for our deparment to see on the screen, about 50 to 100 error messages a second scrolling through events window.
After a while upper-management broke down and hired a outside contractor to tell them what was wrong. I talked with her and she said, it was the contractors that they hired. I asked, are you going to tell management that? She said no, they did not want to hear that they had made a bad decision so she was going to give them what they wanted. Saying they may need some training.
Finally they decided that it was the Robomon software that they had purchased was the problem. So the contractors, who by this time, being so effective, were hired as employees. They had decided they wanted HP Openview, nevermind that they had not worked with that either. They wrote a report detailing their methodology for determining the best monitoring software and listed HP Openview at the top of the list. I took at look at their report. It seems that made up a number and then assigned it to the packages that they were suppposed to review. Of course Openview was at the top.
So now, after two years, they still have not been able to configure an effective monitoring tool but lets look at the total costs.
$1.055 million dollars in support and software, don't even know about the hardware. The manager had been told that their were problems with their employees but she brushes them off, and always backs them up. So is it any wonder, with this attitude about technology that people don't want to put more into that bucket!
Not only that, a lot of people are due to be fired. You can't have a period of very high employee demand w/o hiring a lot of incompetents/poor workers. IT was a "golden job" for a short period of time, great for workers. Now it's turning into a regular ol' job. You have to know your stuff, you can't blow obscene amounts of money, you need to do a decent job of interacting with other people.
And the people on Slashdot wanting to eliminate H1Bs to "protect" foreign workers (if they could get a better job overseas, they'd be there now instead of hassling with immigration), wanting to raise salaries more to "improve IT" (what we need are competent IT personnel at existing salaries...no more "I used a computer for three years and dropped out as a college freshman to go web designer/IT" types) and so on and so forth...well, they're just not being realistic.
Most of the people getting fired are just plain incompetent or overpaid (and in denial about same), and the company has been wanting to get rid of them forever...and as IT demand has finally dropped a bit, they can afford to do so. That isn't true of every last person, but if there's two people out of twenty fired, and allowing for a decent margin of inaccurate evaulation, the fired people are going to be the worst workers.
If you were fired, it's possible that, astounding as it sounds, the problem is not H1Bs, your company, terrorists, open source, or corporate corruption. It may just be you -- you might want to take a look at yourself, figure out how to make yourself a more attractive employee, maybe make your salary demands more reasonable, and then try again.
My two cents, unpopular as it may be.
May we never see th
as I'm typing this message, I'm sitting at BU lab. A guy in the window presumably is hired to do some lab works. What he's been doing for the last several hours was (i) playing video games with speakers turned up sufficiently loud for everyone in a lab to hear, and (ii) screaming 'OH SHIT' every couple of minutes, also sufficiently loud for everyone to hear. I wish I would strangle the bastard.
I work for a very small company that does a/c refrigeration service. The IT budget is essentially what toys I want for at home.
Why? No return. Any software or hardware that is tailored to the business costs too much money. Off the shelf won't work, because it isn't geared to the business we run. So we do invoices by hand. The boss has a recievable system in a book that works and has worked for 35 years. Anybody who has seen it work has adopted it. Why? It works. He knows what he needs to know by looking down a list. His system scales to about double of what we are doing in volume. So why spend the money on something that maybe won't work as well, and even if it does, you have to run both for a year?
I say this, and I'm a computer geek. I've realised that there is a divide between those who gravitate to a digitally based tool, and those who don't. I would do things differently, but I would also probably code an application that fits, for a hobby.
If you have something that works, use it. If you don't, find something that does. Computers may or may not have anything to do with it.
Derek
One of the reasons for this bust is that people were spending money on IT stupidly. I'm sure we all know a few people who have insisted that they need a new computer because their old pentium is "impairing their productivity" when all they really do is word process. And let us not forget this sub-moronic idea that just because M$ comes out with a new version of office, you need to have it in order to keep up. The result is that companies have way more features in house than they can typically use, which translates into wated money.
Now tell me who out there is naive enough to think that the people running the show are sdmart enough to learn that IT is a worthwhile investment as long as it is well thought out and carefully implimented? Reactionary attitudes tends to be the norm in just about everything everywhere. Right now the pendulum is in the process of swinging back towards a cut corners mentality, which is good to a certain degree.
"We can't install the latest release of Windows/Office on our old k6-2? Why can't we just use the old version?" That's intelligent thought, and as techs, it should be up to us to answer that question. I truly believe there will come a time when we are no longer in a recssion, and invester confidence has returned, and when that time comes, the people who approve budgets might be willing to listen to and consider your answers.
Until that time comes, you're just going to have to accentuate the negative. If you need to develop some app, but there is no budget, then make sure you accurately predict how, in the long run, not devbeloping it will actually cost your company money. When enough techs are proved right often enough, then the pendulum will start to swing back the other way, of course this gives us all an even mightier responsibility; to learn from the lessons of the past 6 years and NOT try to solve every problem with something newer and "better."
I currently work for one of the top 5 airlines, and even though we are losing money, we continue to spend on IT innovation (smartly). You just need to prove ROI w/ in 1 year and a good NPV. If you can't get your application approved, possibly find something small that would really affect the bottom-line and pitch that idea. Sometimes a $10000 project that yields $50,000 in savings is easier to swallow than $1Mil that saves $3Mil.
.commers wanna-bes need to go do something else, or whatever it was they did before 1994. And leave IT to the pros. b) we need attrition (like retirement), and since the industry is young, those that are good are needing upward mobility, yet the IT structure is always a little more flexible than say Finance. c) IT people need a lesson in macroeconomics; i.e. a company website is nice, but does it really make you money?
Finally, my thoughts on the IT industry. I had a talk with a recruiter friend of mine and he really opened my eyes. First, he said that the following things need to happen with IT: a) all those
Since I work for an airline I may have to learn (very shortly) to say: does anyone have any coffe-ey or cook-eys? No, okay I'll just take a nap (www.oddtodd.com)
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
I am a recent computer science graduate; instead of trying to find a job in the tech industry, I'm taking some time off from working -- and when I decide to return to work I don't think I'll be looking in the computer industry.
IT still has value, but only as infrastructure for now. The B2B and ERP bread and butter (or was it pie in the sky) days will subside for a while.
But pull a wire on a laser printer and watch them jump for the IT support guy. Do they get out the old Selectric and carbon copy? Heck no. They're lost without Word and that HP5 pumpiing out copy.
What if the phone and voicemail system breaks? Do people get out the backup carrier pigeons? Bullhorns? Interoffice mail? Probably not.
These are just the technologies that the end users have figured out how to use. The flashy powerpoint demonstrations on all that whiz bang, expensive stuff looked good, and promissed a lot but the end users could not actually use the product.
They will catch up, someday, eventually. I hope...
.
What IT needs is honest, effective, and knowledgable management.
If Jane has no reason to be communicating with the outside world, do not give Jane access to anything outside the Intranet. Jane will still be able to collaborate on projects and use the corporate network, but she will spend less time posting on Slashdot and sending personal email. Jane may "waste" just as much time by talking to co-workers, but co-workers who are friendly and know each other well are better team players.
If Bob's job is to write reports, his PIII-500 will do the job. Jim needs to do graphic design, so he gets a new PC, while Bob sticks with his old one, or gets Jim's hand-me-down.
Harry the office temp probably doesn't need a computer at all. Don't give him one.
Unfortunately, managers are not always as knowledgable about their IT as they should be. There is a lot of money to be made in the IT consulting field just by being honest and not telling managers they need more than they really do.
What Future?
I'm reading this and do all my work on a PII/266. It's fine for compiling software and doing work.
Computer have become a bit of a status symbol -- most people don't get a company jet or car, but they do get a computer, and their value to the company is represented by how much the company blows on them. Ever since desktops become a commodity item, no manager would be caught dead getting a new desktop -- it has to be ridiculously expensive laptops.
In terms of CPU power required, I'd rank stuff on this kind of order:
video/modeling
heavy-duty 2d graphics (not web graphics, laddies)
software development
DTP
secretarial work (word processing, filling in forms)
executives
Now, the funny thing is that executives, who in my experience use their expensive laptops primarily for checking email, perhaps do a little bit of word processing, and maybe browse news sites, are the ones to get the most powerful computers. Well, no, the 3d modeling/video people go first, but after that, execs. And it's not that they need or use that many cycles...but they can exhibit their value to the company by flaunting their expensive business-class computers.
I can't imagine a system that a PII/266 isn't reasonable to compile, unless you have literally *hundreds* of developers constantly modifying files, and so have to recompile most of your project on each compile, instead of just a file or two. I mean, if you're coding on Mozilla or X, you still are only modifying a few files yourself, and you can happily deal with compile times there.
Of course, if you're recompiling whole projects every compile, then I could see the need, but in that case you're also doing something wrong in your design...
May we never see th
I think the above is what CEOs, boards and shareholders want to see. IT gives them this. Whether they are smart enough to admit or not.
I just recently read this article at InformationWeek.com. It refers to Cisco CEO John Chambers, Cisco's positive third quarter report, and most importantly, the referred to study by the U.S. Labor Department. I quote, "The U.S. Labor Department on Tuesday said workforce productivity increased 8.6% in the first quarter of 2002, up from a 5.5% increase in the last quarter of 2001. According to Chambers, increased productivity is the impetus for U.S. companies to spend on high-tech computing and networking products.". Now, certainly Chambers is going to be biased, but I don't think the U.S. Labor Dept. is (at least I don't think so.)
Chambers also brought up and interesting point in another article I read. He said something to the affect of (I'm paraphrasing here) from the statistics he had seen concerning productivity over the past 3-5 years (or so) productivity is on an upswing, which meant to him that we are just now learning to utilize all of this IT stuff we've bought in the past few years and what's more important, we're still learning how to be productive with it.
I think those that criticize IT should stop and ask themselves if they are more productive with it. Do they like having shared drives to collaborate off of? Do they like having word processors, spreadsheets and of course databases? How about faster mainframes and servers that decrease the amount of time spent finalizing a transaction?
Without a doubt, time is money. I see IT as saving loads of time and thereby loads of money.
Just my 2 cents. YMMV.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
In the late eigthies, you still had to write almost every application if you required something like a workflow and wanted the system to be used by mere mortals.
Today, one person alone can set up an integrated office system with document management, customer database, accounting, reporting, E-mail access, firewalls, printing, backup, telephone integration, banking, video and audio editing, ftp and webserver, dns, dhcp, wavelan, gigabit backbone, raids, computing clusters and mobile vpn access within weeks, and several hundredthousand apps are available for free or very little money. You can easyly afford a database software or an office-suite worth a few hundred million dollars of develepment effort, and get even millions of man -months delivered on a $50 Linux Distribution, including the source code. Or if you buy a Mac or a PC today, you can actually do useful things without even installing additional software - remember, what you could do with an AppleII out of the Box ?
So today, if you want to roll your own stuff, or even spend a few days on improving your customer database access, you need many thousand customers to justify even using a real database instead of MS Outlook contacts or a simple spreadsheet.
Trying to build a new 3D-Engine, a Web-Browser, a database engine or a new GUI library is almost insane from a business point of view, so the deeper you descend into the swamps of IT-Development, the better your justification has to be for shelving out that money and taking the risk of failure.
I try to ride Moore's law and aim for something unique that does not exist so far because it was impossible or too hard to do in the past. I try to stay current by spending a lot of time hands on new technology, and I steadyly improve my and my team's knowledge and skills, but I admit: it is increasingly harder to find and exploit those niches where you have both: Fun and Profit.
OTOH, there will always be the Linus way: Build something for the sheer fun and knowledge, and the worst case is that you are happier and smarter afterwards.
And if you don't mind to listen to someone who has been around for a while and covered some distance: Never do things for the only purpose of profit. It will minimize your chances, but even if you succeed, you will not be any happier than today. And probably have fewer friends.
parabyte
Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
Sometimes you have no choice. If you are running Linux, then you can keep an old PC around for a long time. On the other hand, if you are forced to upgrade to the latest version of MS Windows, then there are forced hardware upgrades. Eventually, you need to buy new. Unfortunetly, since MS does have a monopoly, it is sooner than a lot of companies would like.
People who would rather visit slashdot.org than work on their latest assignment.
I agree fully, though Slashdot is as reasonable a news site as any (in their headlines) for getting tech news, which can be quite imporant ("New Windows Worm Attacks IIS 5.3.1 installations"). It can be used reasonably.
People who would rather try getting Linux running on their companies server than maintaing whatever's already on it
I don't buy this. If the company really has no need to expand that server's services in the future, isn't throwing any more money at the server software, and is comfortable with whatever degree of technology lock-in they're suffering, *then* there is no reason to try Linux.
There's a lot of money being blown on IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft servers because at purchase time, no one wants to try a sudden, jolting transition, and no one bothered to do a gradual, gentle one earlier. These gradual changes can save the company a lot of money over the long term. If an IT person has spare time, he *should* be experimenting with cheaper software alternatives for the company.
People who think they can show up to work dressed like a slob and that people will respect them because they are 'elite hax0rs.
I *hate* the entire "dress up to go to work" ethic. Now, don't get me wrong. You have to interact with people over the course of the day, and they don't want you wearing a thong or a "Big Johnson" T-shirt. That's legitimate. And some positions (sales, for instance) really do put a *lot* of emphasis on making a corporate impression for the company. So I can understand dressing up there. But I really don't see the point in blowing a bunch of time and money getting dress shoes. They don't improve my productivity -- if anything they hurt it. I spend most of my day looking at a computer screen and maybe occasionally a telephone. I'm not talking face to face with customers. Why should anyone care whether I have a tie or whether I have an expensive dress shirt?
Fortunately, the ridiculous emphasis on clothing has been recognized and mostly eliminated in the last few years -- compared to the 70s or the 80s, clothing requirements are far, far more lenient. A shirt with a collar and slacks pretty much are enough most places I've seen (and slacks=>blue jeans at others).
May we never see th
If I had points today you'd get them: I think there is a lot in what you say.I;'ve been around a while as well and think your analysis is correct.
The point that needs expanding is the "do not do it only for profit" one. Of course companies do do everything for profit, cash flow, shareholder value. But in IT, a lot of benefit is derived from playing. Not "Quake 17" type of playing: I mean driver/OS/kernel/Office XP/Apple II type playing. A lot of the benefit of IT is in measurable productivity enhancement, and that is enhanced by deep knoweldge - deep knowledge that is enhanced by playing. So, two birds with one stone, job satisfaction and corporate benefit.
Michael
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Can't....Resist.......Flamebait.......
:)
People who think they can show up to work dressed in a suit and tie, and people will respect them whether they know their ass from their elbow?
You must be in marketing...
Spoken truly. If I wasn't inexplicably perma-banned from moderation, I'd mod you up.
May we never see th
And in doing so, you'll probably make his point beautifully. If you did that at any office I've worked in, everyone would just carry on typing their letters and filling in their forms. They would do so unburdened by a flood of pointless e-mails about "funny" circulars and porn sites, and the incidental viruses that come with them. People in the office would actually walk down the corridor and talk to each other for a couple of minutes when they needed to know something, instead of wasting hours typing e-mail memos back and forth, and then worrying what they could write because it's on file and if it goes wrong they might get the blame. All in all, people would just go back to what used to happen before corporate multi-million-dollar networks became the absurd centrepieces they often are today, and the myths about increased productivity due to silly IT budgets would be exposed once and for all. But go on, you pull your connectors. Just make sure you've got enough in the bank to pay the mortgage while you retrain as an accountant.
It's also usually not true. IT can certainly make things much more efficient if competent people organise it, and those who use it are well-trained. But with equal certainty, I claim that this is not the case the vast majority of the time, and that consequently the vast majority of IT spending really is just making you liable to failures that never existed before for little to no actual benefit.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
1. Hardly anyone buys off the net
2. Windows is finally so stable I dont spend every second day mucking around with it.
3. IT always was over hyped buillshit.
4. If we werent expected/forced to upgrade every three years it might start paying itself off one day.
5. Name one IT person who makes sales for their non IT firm?
6. IT relied on cheap buggy *nix and windows. If they werent no one would be employed to maintain them would they. (*nix aint buggy? grow up)
I know there's a lot of blame for all the bums in the industry (Look at me ma! I read that ASP for Dummies book, and now I deserve one of dem Beamers and some stock options!).
However, I think equally to blame are the geeks (and I consider myself one of them). You know, we care more about the technical side of stuff than the actual business end. When we talk about IT spending, we want to see corporations cut the big checks for IT projects. However, if they don't impact the company's bottom line - either save or make money - the company has no business bankrolling it. No business whatsoever.
There still is IT spending - automation of systems, taking paper forms online, etc. Alot of intranet and back-office projects, developed in the most cost effective manner. This means high-level languages that offer the quickest and largest ROI.
This means that the "sexy" stuff isn't where the opportunities are. If you can crank of a fancy 3D spinning globe in Flash, or feel at home banging out kernel C or 8086 assembly, then I have some advice for your career: 1) the Big Mac has 2 buns AND the special sauce 2) ALWAYS ask them if they want fries.
If you can put together web based solutions, using ASP, CF, PHP, JSP, SQL, and maybe even some COM/.NET/servlets, etc, then you'll have an easier time finding a place with a cube and some budget money.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Is ONE 'killer-app' to make everyone see the light again. Remember the days before SABRE? That single tech investment by AA forever changed how business in the airline industry was conducted. Companies that didn't also invest in technology went bankrupt.
This is how the world works. A single innovation can spark a revolution....
Hopefully any future sparks aren't extinguished by lawyers before the real flames can begin.
I ask the users, my clients, what business problems they need help with. I don't ask them, do you want the new Yoyodyne 1.27gigawatt laptop?
I ask them what process or capabilites they need or want to do their job better. It's my job to translate their needs into a actual plan for implementing technology. Sometimes they do ask for specific technologies, like Blackberry PDAs. Unless there is a good reason not to fufill their requests, give them what they want.
Let me say that again, 'Give them what they want'. I'm not saying make your facility insecure or wasteful, but playing the BOFH gatekeeper of technology is a bad place to be.
You may not think that all the requests for laptops or special applications are absolutely necessary, but for the most part you need to trust your clients that they know their business needs.
Compromise is the key. Having an ivory tower attitude toward which technology you use will not help you show value to the organization.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
When the IT staff is asking for corporate accounts at a local strip club, can you really blame the company for undervaluing them?
:)
Tastes like burning! - Ralph Wiggum
I think a large part of reduced spending on IT departments is that 'tech weenie' mentality. Business dress; employee 'perks'; and work environments have all changed in the past decade or so - in all departments. Unfortunately for us; a lot of the publicity regarding these changes has focused on the IT community - we were the ones getting paid higher salaries; getting the opportunity to work from home or allowed various 'leniences' because of our outrageous working hours.
Granted, not all of us got this - I for one spent 7a-12 midnight in 1997-98 spending part of the time on data entry; part on tele and computer installations, and the rest of the time running a Xerox Docutech machine on a GS-5 salary - but enough have or did that the impression is still there.
In a company whose IT staff - programmers, network admins, and support - are afforded the respect and understanding they deserve, and not held as 'those weird ones that fix the computers', then you have the proper spending habits and business behavior.
These sorts of things so very much remind me of the group of managers that wanted 'technical support/helpdesk' staff made or named 'customer service' and put under control of the Marketing department because they were not 'real' IT people.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
We may be preaching to the choir, but I agree with you 100%.
The only thing worse than "increasing work load with the same pay" is the recent trend for employers to cut out benefits and perks, and freeze salaries (no annual raise). In effect, this becomes "increase work load for LESS pay".
In IT, "job hopping" is much more acceptable than in other careers, and often changing employers is the only way to increase your salary as you increase your skill level.
Of course "job hopping" worked much better when there were plenty of real job openings to choose from. Today's market is like playing Arcade Frogger at level 29, with most of the logs removed and the rest replaced by alligators and turtles...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
This is a perseption that redmond is currently promoting. The idea is that companies have to go to them for their IT needs ( after all Macrohard can "prove" that this is cheaper). Once a buisness fires its knowledgable IT staff, then their managment can be more easily misled with FUD and smoke and mirrors. Have you noticed that a large part of usofts time with target businesses upper managment is geared at formenting mistrust of the IT department, escpecialy if it is a Unix house. And you bet I'm posting AC with brocke style and mispelins
sinus wave? you know, you aren't helping my opinion of snobby eurotrash, and take a second to think about what those who invented all of this before you were even born thought of YOU when you came into the industry.
think about it
The obvious conclusion is that it, Microsoft, is the root cause of the problem, because the things that corporations are complaining about are in fact characteristics of Microsoft Products.
Microsoft products are used through out the industry, and are the standard. Are they not? Whose software is left to blame?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
And in doing so, you'll probably make his point beautifully. If you did that at any office I've worked in, everyone would just carry on typing their letters and filling in their forms. They would do so unburdened by a flood of pointless e-mails about "funny" circulars and porn sites, and the incidental viruses that come with them.
Wow. You must work for some seriously behind the curve companies. The last 8 companies that I've done contract work for would all have screeched to a halt if they started losing connectivity. Heck, one of those 8 would have brought down large chunks of Internet backbone if someone started pulling cables.
Methinks that if you had a little more of:
IT can certainly make things much more efficient if competent people organise it, and those who use it are well-trained.
At your company then you'd probably be feeling more of a pinch in such situations.
IT leadership and business unit leadership have been passing the buck back and forth for 20+ years. IT gets paid to give the business systems that solve business problems and business managers either demand systems that will ensure their budgets and staffs will grow, or blame the IT managers for not delivering what was "needed" (even if they did deliver what was requested). This cycle will continue because the managers on both sides know if they actually solve the problems they both won't get more money - it will go to marketing, sales, executive bonuses, and lastly shareholders.
The large IT departments have all sorts of "Work Avoidance Processes". These include things like preferred vendor lists, architectural standards, language requirements, CMM level requirements, work entry processes, Project (mis-)Managers, Prime Integrators, etc, etc... Business Units have other mechanisms but all are really just there to game the system. The only way to get ahead is with a bigger budget and more people - real IT systems to address the operational aspects won't give them either so they have to make sure IT never delivers solutions, only technology.
In a dollars and cents basis I've seen my company spend in excess of $100 Million Dollars a year and have single releases that costs them an additional $15 Million a month in increased work on projects that were declared a success. They have also shutdown the rapid delivery groups who were solving $300 Million a year problems for less than $3 Million because they weren't using "approved technology or processes".
No, I don't see a way out of this yet. Sorry.
Companies that do not focus their IT on the bottom line, and spend what it takes to achieve that bottom line, lose. Period. Just ask K-Mart. They spent all their cash on nonsense such as bookstores and home improvement centers rather than on matching Wal-Mart's IT spending, and the result... well, we know the result (Chapter 11 bankruptcy).
I'm confident that savvy companies will continue to spend as much on IT as is necessary to hit the bottom line. As for other companies... (shrug). They'll be road kill soon enough, so I'm not worrying about it.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
You are completely wrong about that. Actually, the *software* is the driving force...
Face it: It's always wanting to have the newest software that forces you to upgrade the hardware as well. You can't just upgrade your software every six months, and than let your higly paid employees sit around in idle loops while the overaged computer is having his hard time trying to cope with that. (Actually, such an attitude can be found in some small companies... Which is probably the reason they are small.) And Hardware costs are usally less then 10% of the IT budget, anyways.
The problem is that software vendors are *expecting* you to upgrade hardware regularily. It's somewhat better in the free software world, but not generally: Think of KDE and Mozilla...
I used to have a quite old software system (dated 1999) on my much older PC (1997 or so), with only the most important programs updated, and it was ok -- there were a few things painfully slow of course, but generally I never felt a strong desire to change the hardware. Recently I have upgraded to a new system, with 2.4 kernel and xfree 4.1 and all, and now I will have to buy a new PC...
Of course, you can't keep using old software forever. At the end, I really had quite a bit of trouble with the old system. (Not because it was lacking functionality in itself, but because of compatibility issues...)
The only thing you can do as the customer is not rushing out and getting the newest software just because it is available, but to consider each upgrade thoroughly.
All my comments get moderated +-0, spotless.
Here is a link to a Wired article from a few months back. It basically debunks a lot of the over-reaction to the dot-com bust. The New Economy Was a Myth, Right? perhaps a little too optimistic, but it makes a lot of very good points.
If you really wanted to show your company how important the IT guy is, you could just stage a mini strike and refuse to do anything. Most businesses wouldn't last five minutes without an operating network. Think about it: email, lotus notes, spread sheets, file sharing - everything that a business relies on to keep moving and keep productive would be shot. I know how much my father relies on his computer and especially the connectivity to the company's network in order to do his work as a financial reporter. If it wasn't for the IT guy, I don't think much business would get done in today's world...it's a shame that businesses don't realize this.
SIGFAULT
My company, a major regional healthcare provider, is about to spend 8 figures on standardizing and upgrading our infrastructure- clinical apps, XP everywhere, mainframes, gobs of disk, and jobs jobs jobs for years.
We can do this because our organization watched the bottom line like hawks, IT helped them do that, and IT gained management's trust by doing more with less and cutting when the organization needed it. We even won accolades like Information Week Top 500 under fiscal duress (hint, we are in the top rankings).
We are also looking at the whole patient/doctor interaction with the hospital and will optimize our processes, not just the software (in other words what happens offline is more important then what happens with the boxes).
The competitive business world IS a bit different, and thanks to the greying of America healthcare will continue to be a growth industry, but doing the basics would work in any business.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
I work for a sub $100 million dollar a year manufacturer, and our IT department is just warming up.
Any IT project I or anyone else has proposed has had to have a rock solid cost analysis with it, and it's that analysis that makes or breaks the project. Good projects can always be justified on a spreadsheet.
For example, we're implementing a wireless network in Operations for use with hand held terminals, for doing location management (mainly a lot of barcode scanning). Our current system works in batch mode, with hourly downloads. The cost analysis pointed out that the labor alone from downloading was costing the company $150,000 per year that could be directly saved, and more than recovered the investment in a wireless network and new PDTs.
A new computer for someone is also easily justified. We had people running Windows 98 on Pentium 133s. Assume they waste ten minutes (in increments of 15 to 120 seconds) a day waiting unnecessarily (compared to a new computer) for files to open or close, operations to complete, and to reboot from the occasional crash. I think you'll agree that's conservative. That's 45 hours a year. A clerk costs at least $15 an hour ($12/hour + benefits), usually more. That's $675/year wasted. A new Optiplex GX50 from Dell is around $900, and has a lifespan of at least three years. The computer pays for itself within 15 months, providing a net savings of over $1,000 over the life of the computer.
The president is definitely not a gearhead. But taking the time to justify the costs has always paid off for me, and now he trusts me with more speculative projects, like an in-house TV network, and control units for injection molding machines that are just Win2000 workstations running a VB app with a touchscreen.
So, no, IT is not undervalued in companies that are generally well-run, and have a very rational approach to the profit and loss statement. I suspect that the same companies that now denigrate IT are the one's that jumped hardest on the bandwagon when it was hot.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
If your argument is true, then why is it that the largest companies with the largest budgets have the worst customer service? You're just wrong - you can't spend your away to good service.
Here is how to show the cost of IT:
ExpenseYear = TotalCost / LifetimeOfSystem;
EmployeeBenifitYear = EmployeeSavedTimeHours * EmployeeHourlyRate * 52 + CostOfEmployeesNoLongerNeeded;
ProfitBenifit = ProfitSystemWillGenerateYearly;
TotalBenifit = EmployeeBenifitYearly + ProfitBenifit;
If (ExpenseYear TotalBenifit) {
Buy();
} else {
wait(1year);
reevaluate();
}
and not be some shiny department, full with shiny hardware and shiny software that add to the company's spending ONLY.
is one of the most intelligent discussions I've ever read on this subject, period.
These things are cyclical. I'm a QA guy, I was the first to go (well, the first techie, sales, help desk and tech support were considered less worthy). Bean counters don't see the value in what I do. Fourtunetly, I also write code so I'm laying low hacking mediocre code until things pick up. In a year or so QA will be recognized as the most nessesary thing since breathing. You need not worry, they can't live without us, someone has to make all shit work, and they are too stupid to do it. The genie is out of the bottle and the geeks have inherited the earth. Remember the prolouge to "Brave New World"........our biggest danger is "amusing ourselves to death". They can't amuse themselvs to death without us, so we will always have work
Computers from the late 90s work just fine. When (if?) my box dies, I'll take a new one. Until then, save the expense and gimme a bonus instead. New machine at work, or cash that results in new machines at home? What a no-brainer.
IT is not undervalued but certified morns are..
..they cannot think their way out of a box..
Look at how many certifed morns are on places like FuckedCompany.com boards moaning about job hunts..and then when you put them spot and ask them to solve areal tech problem
That is not to say that there are not still certified morons employed who have not been found out yet..your time will come!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
There's no such thing as a "cost benefit". The phrase you're looking for is "cost-benefit analysis" which compares costs against benefits.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
If this were true, please explain:
why we are using word processors instead of typewriters or movable type presses.
Why spread sheets are needed? We could use register paper instead of an expensive computer.
Index cards are cheaper than databases. Lets go pull the plug on that expensive DB server.
Customers and vendors don't really need to do stuff with our web site, they can call in to our customer service lines. Oh, we'll need more bodies in customer service...
Who needs e-mail. Snail mail is fine for what we do...
Why should we search the web for the best prices, just order catalogs once a year and go to the public library more often to do research.
Now that we've deflated the hype around computers, lets talk about telephones, fax machines, pagers, and cell phones, and why we don't need them anymore.
After that, if they back off, then ask a simple easy question: Do you think any of that stuff runs itself?
Seriously, if anyone said that IT has been proven to be a waste of money, I'd look for an ulterior motive. Fast.
Now, if they mean that a lot of people went overboard, well, I don't think I could argue against them there. One only needs to look at Darwin Awards to see that a lot of people do go overboard... and kill themselves doing it. The trick of it is not to be a lemming.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
One of the biggest money wasters is object oriented programming. It triples the complexity of almost any project, including maintanence.
JavaBeans is posterboy of this evil fad. Objects are the GOTO's of software engineering and I would rather use GOTO's than Javabeans.
It was designed by suckers for suckers.
On the contrary; I think I work for some very good companies, which is exactly why pulling the router wouldn't stop us from working.
I'm a professional software developer. The IT support staff at all of the companies I've worked at recently were pretty competent, and obviously the "office workers" were computer literate. That is exactly why we don't need absurd amounts of connectivity. If you pulled out all the networking, you would...
That is it. There is no more. The important two of these things -- source control and backup -- would have worked quite happily over a bog standard office network from ten years ago, without any of the expensive new hardware everyone seems to be installing.
As for everything else, I think the benefits of Internet access in general, and e-mail in particular, have a long way to go before they are proven to be cost-effective. Right about now, I reckon in most offices, you're losing an average of 1-2 hours per employee per day to surfing, just because they can. Add to that the amount of spam they have to clear out (and I'm including all the internal rubbish as well as UCE in that) before they can start work in the morning, and you've probably lost another half hour.
And of course, there's the small issue of losing half your customer base if the wrong virus sends the wrong confidential documents to your whole address book before the patch turns up to stop it for you to worry about, too. That's a hell of a liability to accept just so Joe Blow can e-mail his Aunt Mable from his PC (on company time, probably) and yet many places do so without even taking the most basic of security precautions.
Many of the other gadgets are more of a liability than people realise as well. "Great, a phone that uses the network, we can all plug into the same sockets now!" they cry. And then the power goes out, and they can't call the power supply company to fix it because all the phones are dead. No, really, I have seen this happen. Now tell me, wasn't it smart to spend 300 on each of those nice new phones rather than 15 each on a set that, well, just work?
And of course, we mustn't forget the productivity benefits of letting Word turn "12 August 2002" into "12 August 2002-08-12" for me every time I write a letter, and doing away with the ability to create a new document from a template anywhere in favour of "smart" tags, task panes and such that know exactly what I want to do and make it really easy -- unless they're wrong, as they frequently are. It's a great comfort to me, though, that I can now have a 2.2GHz P4 on my desk, because it needs all that extra horsepower to run Office XP compared to what Office 97 took five years ago to produce much the same results.
So, I stand by my original position. IT can, if used well, make a big difference; that is beyond doubt. However, most places do not use it well, and would indeed have been better off with their PIIs running Win2K and a simple network connecting them for backup, etc.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Offer to take away all the computers and bring back typewriters and lots (and I do mean lots) of file cabinets. If IT provides no value, then you should be able to sell this as the ultimate money saver. Maybe even get yourself an award for thinking "outside" the box.
Which one of you acutally have worked in a big firm? Larger firms traditionally will pay less money to their IT staffs then smaller companies. Even during the "dot.com" boom not alot of larger companies were flooding their IT people with tons of money. Goldman Sachs for instance kept their salaries pretty stable with the only benefit being that they got a nice bonus at the end of the year based on performance. To say that IT is undervalued, I don't believe so. An IT guy will not bring in money for the firm. Unless it's a computer consulting firm (those guys were overpaid because during the dot.com boom there were plenty of clients to fatten up their wallets). But besides that IT is a Cost to the firm and not a Money maker. It's a simple rule of business if somethign costs more then you're making you cut it. You don't pay someone more if they're not helping you bring in the money. Plus workers from foreign countries are much cheaper. It's simple supply and demand.
Now, video editing, or hi-res graphics, or gamez, those can actually use up horsepower. And I really am happier recompling large applications on my PIII400 than on the P60s, but half of that is just memory size...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Thats how business works bud. And no one spends their days generating reports. The value and worth of any support IT is to make people work easier/better. Maturation in productivity IT has gone (for the most part) beyond the ability of people to use it.
In my case (consultant / systems engineer) my primary environment is a laptop, and we need new ones every ~2 years because they get beaten to splinters hauling them around, plus our Corporate IT Bureaucrats keep giving us new Microsoft Bloated Office and Operating Systems, so we at least need to upgrade RAM and disk space every 1-2 years, while if we were using Unix it wouldn't be such a problem.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This whole market bust is a boon for some. Right now I have 3 techs that just paid their own way through getting their MCSE's. I've trained them each extensively and each has been assigned specialties that is extremely effecient for our company. As long as I keep rolling out new systems and allow them to get hands on real world experience installing and maintaining the latest and greatest, they are likely to actually STAY here!!! The thought of having employees that actually know what they are doing stay here at their current salaries would have been unheard of 2 years ago. And this isn't such a bad gig being 10 minutes from the beach...
In my previous tenure as Director of Engineering for, yes, a dot-com, I valiantly tried to utilize sensible ideas from my newly received MBA in software/hardware investment decisions. That was basically useless because I was routinely given directives routed from various department heads to "above me" and back down. These directives ranged from stupid to insane. Most were gigantic wastes of money because everyone making the decisions ignored what we (in engineering) had to say and the decision-makers were completely non-technical.
Salespeople would come in and sell other managers on "this software just plugs right in" -- we would be handed an invoice and a consultant and be expected to "plug it in" with obvious results.
Now my impression is that people might actually care about the value one receives for IT investments. Maybe people will actually listen to IT business experts and review their analyses. Seriously, I think 75% of the waste would have been avoided by just thinking for 5 seconds.
And if you're interested in analyzing and researching IT investments before jumping in, I'm available on a contract basis!
They can think like that, all they want to. When you get a competitor who DOESN'T think like that, they'll eat your lunch.
Look at Wall-Mart, innovating their IT like madmen, and K-Mart, who started just a few year's too late. Examples abound.
Display some adaptability.
I work for a small company, where I am the only IT person. The owners KNOW they don't really know what needs to be done, and leaves it all in my (IMHO, capable :P) hands.
On the flip side, I also consult (because of my grueling 40hr work week) for an ex boss with an accounting background. He's one of those guys who will say, "I need Email, what does MS do for email." :( -a MONTH after the face...
Everytime he calls, I can tell by the tone of his voice if it's Microsoft Software, or Non-Microsoft software failing. The MS tone is bewilderment. While the non-MS tone is exasperation, as if the problem is normal. For example, I changed the IP address on the mail server (BSD), and 'partner' companies have some sort of 'non-updating' DNS- so it was my fault
That's one of those guys who WILL pay for endless software, because he BELIEVES it's less trouble. Even as he's re-installing Windows, telling me Microsoft produces the best of everything (I will give him Office, and Developer environments), he still doesn't 'get' it. He didn't 'get' it the next day when he was rebooting his Terminal Server, and his NT production server because SNA was being screwy (of course, he used SNA for 3270 emulation, because pure IP isn't 'Microsoft-enough').. It's like talking to my 8 year old..
Rant Off
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
During the same period, we were seeing the transition of business systems from mainframes and superminis to rackmount PCs. That was a tough transition, but it, too, is mostly over.
There's nothing wrong with this. It's a good time to fix the trouble spots in your systems, clean things up, and concentrate on reliable service.
That's happening. And it's good.
Remember when online shopping was flakey? (The most popular early implementation of online credit card processing, ICVERIFY, worked by emulating a dialup merchant terminal. Hence the early "wait up to two minutes for your order to go through, do not hit reload".) That's gone.
Remember when AOL was losing about 5-10% of their E-mail messages? It was so bad that Time-Warner people, who had been ordered to use AOL at work, demanded a real E-mail system. That's fixed.
Remember when you used a web site with a database, and about 10% of the time the thing broke? Even the big search engines used to be down now and then. You don't see that any more.
And if you were an early DSL user, you remember the hell of installing the thing, the random disconnects, the downtime, and the lame customer service. (In California, the Public Utilities Commission had to lean on PacBell hard.) That's mostly fixed.
Maintenance programming isn't as much fun as new development, but there's a time for it.
Every company I have worked for had an IT department that managed to have a swelled head to match its budget. They typically were egomaniacs, and treated the nerd/geek engineering staff with disdain. This was really due to the fact that most of the engineers could do the IT job as well as their own.
We finally chased IT out of the engineering building and maintained our network ourselves (and had better uptime)
Your mom's box is an undervalued asset.
At least in my experience.
;)
The corporate mind has shifted away from IT.
Not my problem though, I'm gettng out while still have my sanity, and going back to law enforcement.
For me, the pay is better, the hours are better, and I actually get to do my damn job instead of sucking up to whichever Sales/HR/PR/ geek happens to be the flavor of the week.
True, I run the risk of getting shot, but if things don't change where I am now, that may happen anyway.
Just once, I'd like it if someone called me "Sir".
Without adding, "You're creating a scene."
Most of the companies I deal with want to use technology as an advantage over their competition. The problem is being able to complete successful projects and actually have those sucessful projects have positive effectices on the bottom line. Technology isn't a silver bullet for business, you can't purchase IT in a vacuum or develop applications in a vacuum and expect things to work.
Sure there was IT waste, such many people go in to IT because it was a money maker, sure many people are disillusioned with IT, but this isn't unique to IT. Every profession has these problems, especially professions that make a lot of money (Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers).
But let me tell you this, in six months or a year when the "IT is a waste meme" is gone, the CTOs, CIOs and others that decided not to spend on IT now, just as things are turning around will be out of a job because their companies will be behind the technology curve. Businesses in America have very short memories and saving me some money more than six months ago, with nothing new to show for it today is failure.
It was not because of tech people saying oh I can make $$$. It was because non-tech people saw they could make money. And why is that? Because investors though they could just make money by selling stock at a higher price disregarding the actual cash flow (in the .com bubble I'd call those "drawings").
If an invesment in a dt com should go like this:
1) 1M start-up -> 2M for next 3 years -> 6M for 5 years -> breakeven -> lots of profits
They just did it like:
2) 10M investment, sell stock for 1000M in 6 months -> 50M investment, stock value jumps to 5000M -> 1 year later, profits vs. market value are ridiculous -> buble explodes
The shame is that some good companies wanted to go the 2) way but couldn't. The couldn't choose the "spendings roadmap" because they needed to actually BURN the funds so that they could issue the IPO. Once the IPO was up and the initial investors laughing whatever happened to the company could only hurt:
- millions of individual investors
- the IT industry
So the people that set up the bubble are really happy and the only ones I see have survived are the companies that wanted to be in business for the long run, had plenty of their OWN cash in sufficient quantities so that will not need anybody elses money before break-even (6 or 7 years). Some other managed to survive because they where able to cut costs inmediately and as they where overfunded after IPO, the remaining cash at the new spending rate was enough to reach the shore (but VAN of these projects was a disaster).
unfinished: (adj.)
It is you, my friend.
WIRED has been 100% wrong 100% of the time in its predictions.
Or are you living large on the Wired 30 stock index?
Gee - where did it go? To zero.
Small correction: The shame is that some good companies wanted to go the 1) way but couldn't...
unfinished: (adj.)
Slashdotters can complain about Microsoft and other proprietary systems undermining investments in IT. Microsofties can complain about Open source stifling innovation. We can all blame IT's lows on bad software, support etc.
Personally I feel that the industry is still maturing and that businesses (most) have not adapted to utilize IT effeciently. Most of the money is poorly spent. Most of the projects are poorly designed, developed and implemented (usually because of decisions made by people who do not understand the technology and how to make it work for the business)
Just my 2 cents
I have been an IS Director for the last six years. When the BOOM hit I didn't jump ship, I fought home turf battles. I made decisions based on what the buisness community wanted to acheive, not based on the latest greatest buzz word. We replace hardware based on need and reuse the old systems....yes sometimes just for the gee wizz factor (put together a cluster of 100 "junk" with my staff on weekends). We didn't take the easy roads. We built software that needed to be built and forced it to be done right. When I worked with marketing for that wonderful sale site we budgeted it so tightly that we could see profits from just a few sales. then we let the sales above that pay for new neat features. If you bought into every ad that crossed your desk as an IT manager you made mis-steps that may be impossible to erase. Our budget is lower this year and next, but thats ok... I planned for this to occur. we do not need windows XP on every desk win98 is working fine. upgrade WIN servers nope... changing to linux.... need to add 300 new employees ok but only on my terms...the new users get the old pc's with only software required for thier duties oh and running linux since we spent the last 3 years rebuilding our interfaces to software to be web based and star office at $70 each. the old users get new computers around 1.5 ghz still running win98 or whatever is preinstalled.. with an old office install. On top of all that all our printing, mailing, faxing costs are gone. The internet is and always will be a great way to save money, but it is not the sales ground many expected no DUH!! I built on the idea that processes that were taking money and control out of our company were costing us money, so we changed them and saved 3-4 times IT's yearly budget.. Oh and so you know my staff is full of people with no degree in IT just a love for what they do. So I have not seen this IT sucks fall out. MORAL If you spent the last 3 years jumping on every IT will change the way the world works band wagon you will most likely have to learn about reality the hard way.
GOOD LUCK!!
i think that techies should start their own companies, as much as people on here hate Bill Gates, he was a techie who decided to start his own venture. Why not start your own business ?
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
Server-side apps are too expensive for small companies. You have to mix several different technologies/languages.
Why the hell have several/any web-designers/graphics artists + several programmers when a couple of programmers could do the app in a fraction of the time/budget using "old time" technologies ?
Web can be over-engineering, you know ?
Accounting concerns focus on GE. The arrogant
practices symbolized in your righteous 'tude are
what will bring down GE. GE will struggle under
it's debt and its myopic MBAs groping to herd
a sprawling, delcining empire. Stock options
and underfunded pension plans will stunt it.
I heard from a VP level executive the other day that a large portal company had just laid off 70% of their engineering department to be replaced by an outside contractor in India. Perhaps a fast network, a courteous phone voice and remote desktop have shifted IT to India as well. To further cut costs, the CFO can then reincorporate the company in Bermuda to avoid U.S. taxes on companies' foreign revenue. Oh, and expensing options is bad....
The bottom line is that those executives slavishly devoted to today's stock price, fervently outsourcing production and meeting quarterly numbers at the expense of all else have lost vision and are going through the motions. They will fail, but not before sacrificing the jobs of many deserving and not so deserving souls. We are bringing about the IT and software development talent in other countries. Perhaps this can be a selling point to be used by our esteemed corporate marketing departments. (Mind those courteous phone voices in the background.)
Call our IT and Engineering folks overpaid, but having adjusted for numbers and quality, they still deserve jobs. (Average CEO duration at a company is approximately 2.5 years, last I read.) Tying executive compensation so tightly to the stock price is further eroding cares about the long term viability of the company.
The current corporate focus on the short term is as stupid as Microsoft's subscription licensing is greedy. The ironic part is that Microsoft claims the subscription model is needed to even out the mountains and troughs prior upgrades made to their revenue stream.
Designing, making and selling things is rapidly losing ground to financial forecasting, putting the right spin on the corporate "story" and making further "plays" via acquisitions or mergers. There is an intangible called leadership that seems to have been misplaced somewhere as we all scan for what to jump to next.
This question is like:
Ask Slashdot: Do You Read Slashdot?
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
were the ones responsible for the dotcom bombs. They made promises they could not keeps, and put out products that would not make money, mostly because those products were, for the most part, completely useless.
We need to prove to everyone that IT isn't what was responsible for the dotcom bomb. We need to prove that IT can create useful and money making products, or at the very least, help increase the returns on those products.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I just love watching the corps dig their own graves! Don't you?
Hmm, $5 bucks off... Ahh who needs 10 fingers anyway!
Free speech is getting expensive...
I'm just curious how many people remember what business was like 10 years ago? Information was not as widely available, and what takes a few hours today took days sometimes weeks to do then. Business has gotten very fast, very informative, and when setup correctly can be made to do more work with 50 people than you could do with 500 people without a solid setup.
Take for instance a database setup from 15 years ago. Information was put into a flat file, very fast reading and writing, but try to do something useful with it. By that I mean, without running 5 reports, and having to move data manually to make your purchase orders match your sales orders...theres a ton of things I could go into but you get the picture. Now lets take a customer who has a simple logon via web, from the comfort of his/her desk inputs a sales order, which then goes through the database and manages to get an order setup, an update on their account, and does everything but ships the product (but it does make the packing slip).
My question is...Who are you going to have running this type of operation? Most smart companies have something like this going. Customer service and customer intimacy are going to be the new kings of doing business. The easier you make it to get stuff done, the more likely you are going to not only retain customers but get more. Again who does this? Your friendly neighborhood IT Sysadmins, DBAs, and developers. Not to mention the Desktop support staff who have to help users that should know how to open e-mail and how to make an excel spreadsheet, and get paid $20 an hour for that "administrative assistant" BS while the Desktop support guy gets maybe $15 and wound up typing the paper for them. OK maybe an exageration but I know most of you have seen THAT type of BS.
IT is going nowhere. It isn't dying. It's just gotten tougher, and deservedly so. We are about to justify our paychecks for the next few years. The strong will survive.
the world is full of sheep (the human kind). Previously they all said "invest every dollar we can spare in IT. I don't know why but everyone else is doing it." Now they all say "I dont care what you say. Nobody else is investing in IT so neither are we."
Ultimately there have always been those who have kept there heads. These non-sheep individuals look at the evidence and make logical decisions based on the facts to hand. These were all to often the people who predicted the IT bust and they are now all too often the people reminding others that IT can still be used to gain a real dollars and cents business advantage.
Our woollen breathren would do well to heed there advice.
IT as it was during the .com was a bust and a failure. I was part of a department that paid 80,000 dollars for tape changers to eliminate the need for IT people to take five minutes out of the day to change a few tapes. There was a line of Sun Enterprise servers, the cheapest of which shipping with a price tag of 45,000..... There were 23 of those damn servers... Ultra 60 workstations were being phased out for Ultra 80s for software developers just for the hell of it. The ratio of IT support people to users was about 1 to 4.5..... Damn cushy job with all kinds of brand new high end hardware all the time. Supporting fewer than five people is easy...
.com mess that is just flat out worthless. There is a point of diminishing returns, particularly with concern to equipment. Even with people, quality IT can go a long way with few people. That place folded fast when the bubble burst.
That is the kind of IT spending associated with the
Now I'm making more at a smaller company that has pretty much stayed at about 25 people or so total for the last 15 years and has pulled in about 14 million this year. Equipment is purchased usually refurb, upgrade cycles usually wait for about a 3x upgrade, and leans heavily on intel architecture machines for cost reasons, only as many non-intel machines are used as are necessary for testing. When a second internet connection was needed, I took a retired PC and put linux on it, not requisitioned some high end cicsco hardware. Same with a backup for our SonicWall gateway (purchased before my arrival), made out of a P60. VPN is FreeS/WAN powered, not hosted on a PIX. I am the only IT guy supporting those people, and really one good IT person is all you need for most situations with 25 people involved. Good IT people can support a lot of users with fewer resources. Upgrading Ultra60s to Ultra80s for code monkeys won't help them code faster. Having a humongous team of IT support people that spend more time thinking someone else will fix it than doing anything themselves will not help things.... And this realization is hitting the business world, and in this light it is a correct assessment. To say it is completely worthless would be foolish, but to say pouring money into IT works would be equally foolish.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's interesting that the poster mentions that spending on hardware is easier to justify.
I have a P3-500 that I use for all of my development. Same machine I use at home. It does all of my builds and daily work just fine.
Now, our IT department has went and bought several hundred new multi-jiggahertz machines. I'm wondering, who exactly needs all of this power?
We aren't a company of gamers(at least nobody is paid to be). If my development environments don't need that speed, I surely doubt that Solitaire and minesweeper will run any faster for our Marketing drones.
I could however use a new copy of Airopeek, but forget ever getting the money for that...
Walmart can tell if a COLOR of spray paint is being sold in unusual quantities in one store and start to adjust the amounts of that product being sent to the store. Kmart, only knows when their end of month inventory is done. Guess who has better it?
I am a business consultant for small to medium sized companies. The most IMPORTANT thing that most of them don't know is who are their most PROFITABLE customers, and how much profit they made today, last week, and last month. If you know these things RIGHT away instead of 6 weeks latter, as the accounting weanies want it you much stronger.
IT=Information, and information when turned into knowlege equals profit. The trick is to have computers manage the information so people can turn it into knowlege and devolp plans and actions around that knowlege.
Someone addresses the H1B Problem More data on the H1B problem Proof that the NSF caused the H1B Mess
Plus the flooding of H1b Visa Workers and the layoff of the Dotcom workers caused a 25% unemployment of IT Workers. Making IT workers "A dime a dozen" in the eyes of managers. People who used to earn $60,000USD to $90,000USD a year now have to compete for $20,000USD to $40,000USD a year jobs in the IT market that require more skills and education than their former jobs did. If their college degree is ten years old, they are rejected because the knowledge they learned is now obsolite (unless they are COBOL programmers or something that doesn't expire that quickly). My degree is now ten years old, and I either have to go back to college and get a new one, or hope that my AAS will get me a job somewhere.
Plus managers have always discriminated against IT workers, calling us all sorts of names, working us 60 hours or more a week at no extra pay, trying to get us to write code faster but not understanding than when code is slammed out at those speeds that it isn't as reliable.
That an Microsoft changing everything every three years doesn't help. Why it is enough to turn a developer to Linux and C++ with a bit of Java and Perl. ;)
IT is a DEAD INDUSTRY. Admit it now and it will make your life easier. Pack up your talents and try something else. Be an entrepreneur or go back to school and learn a trade.
For those of you who have jobs and disagree with me, wait until your company catches up and fires your ass (which you can then whipe with your stock options).
This is fairly simple stuff... You take a piece of Technology for Automating Bank Transactions (ie. Automatic Teller Machine). Let's say it took one person 2 Minutes to do a transaction (ignoring the cost of a paper-trail). If an ATM machine can do it in a micro-second it is almost irrelivant. The comparison in this case is Cost of Service against Quality of Service. Let's now assume that, to the Customer, the Percieved Quality is exactly the same through an ATM Machine. Now If the cost per transaction is less for an ATM machine than an "Over the counter" transaction it is simple - you use the ATM Machine. However you also need to remove the person(s) that got replaced, otherwise you destroy value. People have mentioned the Dot Com Boom. This is a bit of a side track around the whole value of it. If a project technology or otherwise doesn't have a good solid business case, it has a high chance of destroying value rather than creating it. The question around will IT continue to be around is an obvious Yes. However I hope that companies link more about their business cases before charging into value distroying initiatives.
hmm... What I am seeing is a severe cutback on expenses, but not necessarily on investment. Discretionary budgets are getting tossed and support services are being cut back, but investment in new equipment is not falling that much.
"New technoligy is always overrated at first, and then underrated in the long run"
,in the late 90's, some wacky research teams, came with numbers that 50% of the population would buy 60% online by the year 2000(dont remember the exact numbers, but you get the picture). My reaction whas: Yeah right , keep dreaming.
I strongly agree with this.
When
"It is not because no one sees the truth that it becomes a mistake" (Mahatma Gandhi)
"Less online phone directories more online report generation from divergent systems. Moving data from paper booklets to online is cute, but what does it save?"
I manage the directory team for a large multinational. By moving from multiple island directories and scrapping paper based phone books for 120,000 staff, we have saved well in excess of $1 Million per year. What is more, it is an essential pre-requitise for developing the applications you describe. Once this is done, you can add additional feeds from accounting, building managmenet systems etc. in batch mode and real time. Over 100 applications now take feeds of that data in batch mode or using LDAP queries, and their life is much better.
If we had started with this end goal as our initial objective, we would never have run this project. By building the phone book first, we got something which everyone likes and uses and has provided the basis for a very successful meta directory project. Real time reports are perhaps two years away, and I don't see the major advantage, but we will get there.
This is what makes IT fun and useful, upgrading routers and desktop productivity apps isn't. Lots of us are still adding value and having fun, some introspection is useful but don't get too dishartened yet.
I've been in the IT industry for over twenty years, first in IBM mainframes, now in *nix administration. My father is a retired systems programmer. In other words, I've seen IT not only for myself for a long-time, but cross-generationally. And I can tell you that the new management attitude toward IT isn't new - it's back to the *old* attitude that they always had.
I started out in bank IT (we called it DP back then - Data Processing) and also worked in hospital and defense and equipment leasing IT operations. One thing they all had in common - but of which banks were by far the worst - is they viewed the computer room as a black hole that sucked up their money and gave them nothing in return.
One can easily suppose they viewed the IT staff in the same way.
One thing few of them seemed to realize is that the actual fact of the matter was that far from sucking up their money and giving nothing back, the IT operations made their entire business possible. Even then. In the 1970s and 1980s.
The bank I worked for, as an example, had three data centers. A main one, an auxiliary one, and a smaller auxiliary one. Plus a cold site contract with a disaster recovery service. These data centers were geographically remote enough from each other that any natural disaster short of an asteroid impact could not destroy more than one of them. Why? Because if their IT operation was destroyed, the bank would have ceased to exist. The bank's money wasn't really in the vault. It was in our 3350s and 3380s and our 3081s. Someone, obviously knew that, and set up the data processing divisions accordingly. But the day-to-day attitude was that IT - the division without which the branches could not operate and the ATMs would all just sit there - was a drain on the company that produced no profits. Never mind that we enabled the frontline people in the branches to do their jobs and they would fail utterly without us.
So in the lament of IT being undervalued today, I see nothing but a return to the way it always was.
No, that comment wasn't funny. The moderator probably just screwed up.
Pay no attention to the bean counters. There is a lot of jealousy at the incredibly high salaries some IT workers are bringing home.
Firstly remember this is more certainly about company politics than facts.
1) Ask to see the 'proof that IT is waste of money'. The critic won't be able to produce it because the dot-com crash was about the failure of the venture capital system not IT. Dot-com's failed when they lost their VC stream, which is why e-commerce is still growing volume, at a reduced rate. Indeed done well you could use this insight to decry the critics lack of perception/insight even 'deception'.
2) Recognise the critics are almost certainly using this as a tactic to increase their own [Dept] prestige, position and budget during difficult times at your expense.
3) Try to build bridges with the IT critics, try to enlist them to your cause, leverage your department's abilities to aid your allies. When the IT critics come to you for some, reply sorry no budget. Consider giving them some outage, make sure it's planned and during work hours because you don't have the budget to pay overtime.
4) When they come to you for a project, leverage your co-operation.
5) Learn some accounting how to prepare and manipulate cost benefit analysis, learn how to capitalise your expenditure.
6) Cannibalise your existing budgets, particularly closed licences, thin out some of the dead wood.
7) Reduce what deliverables your are prepared to make in keeping with budget restrictions imposed.
I'm a programmer with a 3 year old computer. I'm not planning to upgrade soon. I am thinking of buying a new chair (probably not an Aeron). I think a better chair is likely to improve my programming more than a new computer would (I'm typing this with horrible posture due to my crappy chair).
I'm not saying you're full of it about the productivity gains since you didn't give enough specifics to find anything right or wrong with. I'd like it a lot if you posted more details. The exact nature of the upgrades and productivity gains are squarely on topic for this thread.
I can remember when I first decided to get into IT (in a support role, not a programmer) the only thing that I was thinking about was working on PC's all day, keeping the up, upgrading, etc...
Only one problem with this, I had no idea what PC's are used for in business. Like it or not, how users us their systems is of great importance. Basic business says if it saves money, it is good, if it costs money it is bad. For the last 5 years, IT has cost money. The typical user is not the multi-billion dollar international company with 1000 servers and 10000 workstations. It is the small mom and pop shop on the corner. They buy PC's because everyone says they will save them money, without ever finding out how PC's are supposed to do this. In the end, most of them find that they are spending more money, because they either hired a "shadetree" IT person who sold them an NT server to handle their accouting, or because their users are not educated in using the equipment. A lot of companies have cut spending on IT because of this and feel they can do without IT.
We have to remember what PC's were designed to do, which is replace people. In order for a small business to justify using a PC, they have to be able to cut payroll costs, or production costs. Most of them still have the same number of employees, or more employees with the IT staff. As much as we like being the center of attention, we have to get to the point where we are invisible to the user. They never see us, and the system always works. The key to creating a market for IT is changing some very old habits in business, and improving what we offer.
Not From us, but BY us ;)
;)
Just think, next time the BigWigs want something that involves IT-related skills, you hold out until they give you something you need. You refer to it as "Fair Trade" for services rendered. That, or "Sorry, but unless we have that Googleplexer9000 you've been denying me, I just can't do what you're asking of me. Our poor, outdated hardware just can't handle that kind of load."
They just might see the value of IT then. Just has to be, uhm, "Highlighted" a bit?
Companies are spending money - but they are being very conservative about it. There are many "everday" tasks and projects that are, of course, going to continue to be there. I saw one comment posted here about the market being saturated with less-than-qualified people a year ago because there were big salaries in it. This is true to an extent, and if you are one of those people, then sure, maybe IT/tech/whatever just isn't for you.
Guess what : the money is still there, there is still work to be done, there is just a lot less of it to go around. It's still the same routine though. Companies still need IT stuff to get done - they just want guaranteed results (or damn close to).
Those certifications people love to mock (whether it be Cicso, Sun, MS, or whatever) combined with years of ACTUAL experience are big decision factors. It reduces risk. Personally, I am completing my Master's of Software Engineering - a few more months of work and hopefully a lot less worrying about the collective budgets of the IT industry.
There will be work. I will find it. I can deliver results.I'm a 2000 man.
Then God help the company he works for... as a CTO/CIO your *job* is to make the business cases, to help the organization understand where the real value is. Sometimes it isn't easy, but dammit man, that's your freakin' job!
You work with the business users, you work with your peers, you coach the folks that work for you, so everyone is in agreement on where the value for your IT spending is, and then you go do it. You don't just built sh*t for fun and to keep you buried in your IDE for 10 hours day... You have to have good reasons for upgrading your bandwidth. If you can't fully and clearly articulate a good business reason for it (more transactions, better data integrity, better security, more informed business decisions, decreased cost per X) then you probably shouldn't do it. Just writing it off to corporate luddites and ignorance is weak, and it's a cop out.
maybe you should look for another job.
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
We've replaced a few of them with some newer Dells, but that's just the guys who use AutoCAD, and some people who use Quark, Photoshop.....
Everyone is fine with their machine. We'll replace them as the crap out. Some of them are dying already.
It's not that IT is being *undervalued* today, it's that it was so *overvalued* yesterday that it seems bad now in comparison.
But old habits die hard, and IT is still a money sink for a lot of companies. I work at a state college, and we just spent over $600,000 (of student IT fee money!) on three huge Sun servers and accoutrements, to fill a need we don't have, never mind that we could have matched their power with some Linux clustering.
The thing is, putting P4's on the desktops of workers with decent P3's isn't going to make anyone more productive. What might is getting them software that doesn't suck, better input devices and bigger monitors. But good luck getting your CIO/VP of IT/whomever to understand that.
As for spending being restrained on useful projects like in-house apps, that's a real shame. But it's something of our own fault for preaching for so long that technology was a business miracale. Think "boy who cried wolf", we've bulshitted the suits for far too long and now they don't believe us when the company has a true IT need.
Hello, "this guy" here:
Valid points of course: an IT organisation should prove its value, as should any activity in a company. Goes without saying, and I am not arguing that. Resources are always scarce, and need to be distributed on a basis better than "I say so".
But there is more to it than that.
First, mine was a general observation - not my company, but throughout the industry. My company is OK, thanks, as indeed we have representation (me) at the most senior level. But many companies are not so lucky.
I get the impression that IT is being singled out especially to prove its value - when is the last time you saw accountants, or marketers, or janitors whip out the spreadsheets to prove each quarter why they should be there? As an activity that has fallen into disfavour, IT now gets this all the time.
Thing is that this type of value is often hard to prove. An app to do something very specific: OK. But what is the value of a spreadsheet? Of a web site? What is the "value" to us all of slashdot? IN dollars? That's open to interpretation, which is why even the US government is not yet convinced IT contributes to productivity. And even if you can demostrate that it does: then over what time period? I venture thath the initial PCs took more time that they gave benefit, but still, were a worthwhile investment.
Another thing that bothers me is the lack of vision I see. In the dot com era, vision was everything, to ridiculous extremes. But now the pensulum has swung back too far and there's not place for it at all. Competitive advantage comes out of "vision", "R&D", "trying and failing and trying again", etc. I suspect if we took the spreadsheet approach every time there would BE no spreadsheets, PCs, airplanes - or slashdot.
Michael
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BDOS ERR ON A:>
Though I'm not familiar with the details of their reports, some research economists are beginning to discover that there WAS no productivity growth during the tech boom, or at least no more than the trend line (3-4%).
/investment/ instead of an /expense/. This made billions of dollars of software spending look like "productivity".
I can tell you ONE of the reasons for this. In the USA's GDP figures, software was counted as an
I've been seeing many threads blaming the fall of IT on HTML monkeys and certificate trained incompetents. However, no one seems to be discussing the reverse side of the coin, which is the fact that the system that IT has been putting in place for the past 20-some odd years HAVE made us more efficient and allowed many existing offices to require fewer employees and those were laid off in the early 90's. We saw in a way that it was the triumph of tech and how we made things better.
IT departments were given carte blanche to increase their headcount unchecked because their senior management did not have the expertise to review what IT departments were pushing, causing the 'net boom. As the net boomed in the late 90's those laid off folks (aka folks we put out of jobs) moved to the tech sector because that was where the jobs were. Remember the glory tales that we were hearing about on a weekly basis in 99' 00' about how program xx converted laid off employees into HTML programmers or network admins and that it was a "good thing"?
Now that the bubble has burst, I doubt the blame it on the unqualified monkeys we imported / retrained idea, there are no jobs to go into. IT and the information age was what everybody was counting on to save us and prevent a recession / depression. There are no places for those people to go. They are going to cling to there certificates and go to interviews of jobs they don't qualify for so they can feed themselves and their families.
In non-software related companies, terrible requirements from the business units were, and in many cases still are. How is IT supposed to save money when the business units demand poorly conceived features (which they want yesterday) and then after 60% of the coding is done they start changing their minds? How many of you coders from non-tech companies out there remember being in meetings with these people trying to help them figure out what they want? How many of you remember them getting frustrated because our asking questions like "what specifically do you mean by 'The system should always work but if it doesn't it should do something'?" Remember all the times that you bit your tongue because you really wanted to say, "I can't read your minds"? Remember the scope creep? People from business units saying "But isn't that easy?" or "Just stop development now and send it to QA," or "Your problems is that you guys are perfectionists." For those of you who coded in software houses, how many times did Product Marketing come to Engineering with specs for a product that they boasted would outsell MS Office? And how many times did PM do an about face and the product got cancelled ... after it got as far as the QA cycle? If you experience is anything like mine, all of these events happened all too often.
Here in Washington state, the Washington Software Alliance lobbies to make it legal to not pay tech workers overtime. They - the folks with the cash that we need to pay for rent, food and bandwidth are very certainly taking an 'US vs. Them' outlook. Like the overtime bill, they also lobby against ergonomics standards and just about everything that would improve our quality of life and work life to their own advantage.
But there actually is a union for tech workers - Washtech. The union arose out of the microsoft-permatemp lawsuit. While we (I'm a member) do traditional organizing campaigns to unionize workplaces, there is a lot of member activism in lobbying for the interest of tech workers. It's a small organization, primarily the work of the members. We also do low-cost training by members, for members and sponsor workshops on such timely issues as unemployment, gov'ment retraining monies, worker's rights, etc.
Check it out.
. This sig unintentionally left blank. I meant to put something here, but I'm busy.
During the .COM boom, IT spending went up and up because investment bankers saw return on investment of $2 to $5 for every $1 invested. This was due to both real productivity growth and the stock bubble. As the year 2000 wound down bankers saw return on investment drop to less than $1 for every dollar invested. So they stopped. Cut the funding from over $80Billion per month to almost nothing. Crash!
.COM spending. Part of that was stupids with no business plans and part of that was idiots who called themselves Venture Capitalists and had no clue. I blame the investment bankers because they were playing with the bubble at everyone's expense, and knew it.
The problem was that there really was a lot of real productivity gain. And there was a lot of stupid
The last company I worked for spent $9000 per user per year on IS/IT costs. Unbelievable! And it didn't give them what they wanted. The CEO was so pissed he oursourced almost everything, if for no other reason than to flush the lot and start over. Unfortunately, the costs looked like they were going to rise to $13k per user per year with poorer service.
Fundamentally, I have never seen any company get very far away from the 50 users for every desktop support person. Very expensive. The expense is in the OS on that desktop, be it M$ or Linux or Solaris, etc. An OS is an OS and it takes management. Thin clients are the only solution to that, and even a Palm can be a thin client.
Most IS folks I know (and I are one) love complexity; it's fun, it's challenging, it's the source of their high salaries, it's part of their identities. But complexity is the enemy! We forgot the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Complexity is expensive, unreliable, and we dive into it for all the wrong reasons (i.e. we forget the point of the app and get lost in the coolness of the technology).
But there was a lot of *real* productivity gains. And our entire economy needs that to continue. The economy is a multi-generational society-wide construction project; one hickup and a lot of hard work is destroyed and needs to be rebuilt. It's something that needs to be protected. And I'm not just talking about greed here, I'm talking about people's lives, retirement, children, etc.
Value of IT = Income with Computers - Income without Computers
The simple question is this: How much money would this company make if every one of the computers and all data stored therein were suddenly eliminated?
In many cases the answer is the company would make very little simply because all the customer data would be gone.
if you're in IT in N. America or W. Europe you have 2 things that are going to overwhelm all other trends and generally result in fewer jobs and lower pay.
.com / telecom
1. Moore's law.
(I'm really talking about advancements in hardware in general - storage, memory, networking).
2. India (and later SE Asia).
I'm not just talking about those in IT who only jumped on the bandwagon during the
boom. These 2 things are going to impact everyone.
You're illustrating the point I'm trying to make. Personality and "human factors" are, for better or worse, more important than any other factor in business. Far from being trivial, they're at the core of everything that happens in a business.
Your minimum effort approach may work, but you may also just be reinforcing existing beliefs about IT people as mercenaries who get along better with machines than with people (not to say that you get along better with machines than with people - I'm talking about perceptions here). Having been in a similar position before, I understand where you're coming from, but there is a difference between being a slave and being helpful.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Maybe not. Maybe the best time to jump in is when it looks worst. Econ. 101 case history/market model: Start 1.Hog prices boom. Farmers hold back sows to breed like crazy. 2. Stoats grow a bit and hit the market, crashing prices. Panic selling of hogs and breeding sows pushes prices down to the point some farmers fail. 3. A shortage of pork results, prices soar. Goto 1 Never End
IBM announced to the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday that their services revenue was down and they will be laying off some 14,000+ employees from their money-losing services division. Services like those intended to support IBM's new $1 billion investment in Linux. Oddly enough, IBM told the SEC in August 2002 that they would be taking a $1.4 billion charge for the financial quarter because of the restructuring needed to offset the loss of profits in the services division. If a company that generates a lot of its revenue off of services loses $1.4 billion in one quarter partly on services tied to a technology they hyped, it tends to cheapen the $1 billion the company spent a year ago to hype said technology and the value of services for that technology.