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Does IT Matter?
geoff313 asks: "I'm sure many of you are aware of the uproar over Nicholas Carr's article 'IT
Doesn't Matter' which was published in the Harvard Business Review, back in May. While many big names in the IT world have responded already to Carr's article (Ballmer has declared it 'Hogwash'
and Fiorina has pronounced it 'Dead Wrong'),
Carr debated vendor executives Monday at the Comdex trade show, proving that the issues he raised are still resonaating through the industry. Do you feel that corporate IT budgets
should be focusing on cutting edge technology to best serve its customer's needs, or should they focus on shoring up what they have now in order to maximize its usefulness to the customer? Some background can be found from the Washington Post,
InfoWorld,
and ZDNet, as well as at Nicholas Carr's site."
"For those of you unfamiliar his philosophy, it can be summed up pretty thoroughly by his statement 'Follow, don't lead,' arguing that the huge advances in the IT industry over the last two decades have erased the strategic advantage to be had by corporations for staying at the cutting edge of technology. In short, he advises 'executives need to shift their attention from IT opportunities to IT risks - from offense
to defense.' Of course the head honchos at IBM and Microsoft disagreed with him, citing Wal-Mart's use of RFID tags to keep track of inventory and other forward thinking IT decisions as a refutation of his thesis.
What I am interested in is the opinion of those in trenches of the IT war."
Developers.. Developers.. Developers.. Developers.. (Thanks Steve for the millions of smiles)
Is now into Department website activity useage and Intrusion detection...There wasn't a whole lotta that going on in 1997, and your business is pretty hosed without SOME attention being paid to security inside and outside your business walls.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Breakfast served all day!
IT matters because without IT I wouldn't know what to do. How many of you want to go back to the 18th century? Not I. A world without IT is a world not worth living in!
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Someday, the people who know how to use computers will rule over those who don't. And there will be a special name for them: secretaries.
--Dilbert (as if anybody here didn't know that)
Then again, some might say the same thing about Law practice.
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I bet most /. ers could knock up an iTunes store all right. But I'll bet .01% could actually build a scalable, well-managed, backed up version that you would bet your business on.
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Man, I feel so out if it right now.
I used to be totally with it, but now I'm so out of it, I don't even know what it currently is.
. . . goddamn kids today.
Steve Ballmer says it matters?
Carly "Jet Babe" Fiorina says it matters?
All we need is Darl McBride to join with these two twits, and we've got a quorum of incorrect opinions!
(Well come on, it's not like they've got anything ELSE right so far)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Grandpa Simpson: I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now what I'm with isn't it. And what's "it" seems weird and scary to me.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I say fuck IT.
I learned that IT means the ability to look up things on Google. I swear my whole job has become that. I don't even try to keep it a secret. When there's a problem I Google it. Because likely someone had the same problem, and was nice/smart enough to post it. This is why I'm looking for a new/more challenging job. Troubleshooting why someone can't print to a copier, which involves turning off the copier and turning it back on, is getting old :-).