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IT Careers in 2010 - Learn a business
feminazi writes "Business knowledge and domain specific skills are becoming more important to IT workers, according to Computerworld's special report on IT careers in 2010. The most sought-after corporate IT workers in 2010 may not have deep-seated technical skills at all. Traci A. Logan, vice president of information technology and vice provost for academic affairs at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. says, 'That [business skill set] is going to be more important than the straight technical skills they know, because you're going to see a closer marriage between the business and IT.'"
That's always been the case. Business skills, especially salesmanship is what's most important.
This has always been true. This is why you can't just replace coders. Even though there's lots of coders out there, having someone who understands your business on a higher level will help you create a much better product. You can't just high someone who's been doing financial software for 10 years to go write a game. Maybe it would be nice if companies started realizing this, and didn't just bring in contractors to do everything, who have no idea about the business, or the business's real needs.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Who will be solving the technical problems?
Look at the job boards. Employers are looking for the right mixture of product specialized knowledge. Usually that want a combination of about six different products, and it's different for every position: one may want cisco, solaris, citrix, windows, oracle, veritas. The next may want: windows, redhat, ms-sql server, perl, php, html, css. And so on.
I always get the idea that the "authorities" who right these articles don't have a clue about the real world.
You mean that business will stop treating IT
like janitorial staff? Start acting on the ideas
that IT brings to the table?
emt 377 emt 4
Sorry, but I bingo'd before page 3 and had to stop reading.
Bottom line is diversify your portfolio of skills. Pick one or more of the math, engineering, financial, public speaking, etc. skills and you will have a better chance in the future.
This runs completely counter to the outsourcing and cost focus of todays businesses. Indeed even people hired "permanantly" are usually seen as expendable at the end of major projects. These are the ones with the most domain knowledge. Business types tend to be "visionaries" and whip crackers. Rarely do the excel at requirements or planning. I have worked for major corporations since 1990 and I see the gulf between management and software professionals growing widerthan ever with the increasing sophistication of tools and the increasing complexity of projects. Engineering culture has all but disappeared.
an ill wind that blows no good
The flip side of contractors not knowing anything about a business is companies with internal software developers who don't know how to develop. I've been on both sides of the fence, and there's no simple answer to the issue of corporate software development. I can tell you that I've worked in some places where the existing software was put together so poorly that it was little more than a deck of cards waiting to fall. "But it addresses the business needs!" is a valid point, to be sure, but when small enhancement requests which should take a day start taking >1 week solely because the original software was put together so poorly, you've got bigger problems than whether someone understands the unique business needs or not. The first core business need is that the software needs to be available and known to be functioning properly - you need to have confidence in it. Without skilled developers with a track record of proven success, that trust is harder to come by.
The best middle ground is to have hybrid people - people who have thought and can think from both sides of the aisle, so to speak. When contractors are brought in, if there's no one who can explain the business requirements at *any* level (and I've been in some places like that over the years), it's not the outside contractor's fault.
creation science book
Can't get the idea of Roy Scheider using an Apple //GS (the true technology of the future!) out of my head, along with the damn spinning sand-covered pacman spaceship. Arthur C. Clarke surely would have been rolling in his grave over THAT movie if the damn old coot had died long ago like the other scifi grand masters.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Geez - these IT career planning stories are getting tiresome.
You want to make money? Quit beating around the bush and
just go to law school!
... where all the actual work is done by immigrants or off-shored because no one local knows how to do it anymore.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Sure, what's "most important" is being able to sell. Particularly when the corporate network was just cracked and you have to explain to the CEO why all the clients have been looking at "j00 b33n pwN3d" on your website all morning.
Technical skills? Not so important.
That's "sarcasm" for those of you unable to see it.
Being a good salesman can get you in the door and on the project. But nothing will help if you don't have the tech skills to deliver.
Particularly as more and more of the business is being put on the 'web. The best people will have the tech skills and the business knowledge and the salesmanship skills. But the tech skills are the most important.
What the hell does that mean?
I think we need to start with: "Learn how to communicate"
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Anyone who's worked with offshore resources knows this is exaclty true. A couple of years ago I was contracted at a large 401k company when they brought in massive amounts of Indian labor. They were bright, spoke English well, and did passable work...but they didn't know a thing about retirement accounts or any other American financial practices. I was far, far more valuable working with them as a business analyst then I was as a coder. Yeah, those of us Americans who are left in IT in 2010 are going to have to know the businesses very well.
This sig intentionally left blank.
I'm hopeless and should quit IT. When I read your last sentence ...
IT is just a vehicle to delivering faster, and more effective business drivers.
I visualized IT as a minivan delivering the likes of Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Little E, etc. to their retirement assignments: Driving business executives around.
It's bedtime kiddies.
There was a time when IT was a part of R&D and it's gone. A natural cycle of every technology kicks in. During emerging stages a technology is a research. After a technology comes out of the woodwork and mass-adoption starts, a technology becomes a production.
There is no magic in computer development any more. Adoption and demand are so high, people literally code for food. Take a look at your ten year old coding his website and think how many people could do that fifteen years ago.
The fact that there are so many companies nowadays in 3rd world counties (no offence meant) who act as major players in outsourcing means we are far beyond research and development stage in IT.
We did not need business people to manage IT when it was R&D simply because any R&D requires tremendous dedication and you can't do both research and business.
A production can and has to be managed. Business skills mean more than research capabilities in production. Why approach the problem with your mind if you can approach it with your pocket book and do not pay an arm and a lag?
I'm not worried a single bit about IT researchers. They are very bright, hard working and will be able to adapt. One year in an MBA programs is all they need.
The person writing the article is clearly seeing this from a managerial point of view, and not as someone who actually understands the technical side of IT. What I read between the lines was that the expectation is that FTE's will be more business and vendor/project management oriented while the pure IT skills will be contractors or PS engagements with vendors.
As someone who's seen this first hand, I don't think the author has hit the mark at all. Instead of shifting high level responsibility on day to day IT folk, they would be better to invest in key architects and engineers who can bring all of the existing reponsibilities together. These positions require leadership and long term planning/project management. These types of folks will replace the VP of IT types that write these articles, not the specialized IT skillsets that we have today.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
I think the article is anticipating administrating software and software systems will become easier over time. Probably.
But I would rather trade to something more technical, but close to CompSci, like Electrical Engineering, if I were in school. Or get more into Computer Science, but really get into the math aspect. Engineers and their types will always be needed.
I know several MBA graduates that are having problems getting jobs right now for over $12.00 an hour because of the glut (in their area) and I don't believe becoming a jack-of-all-trades (versatile as the argument puts it) will lead to anything but lower wayes.
Knowing the business, as the article says, should be good for anyone in any position - if not to help the business, then just to see how stable your position is in it.
to go with the pointy haired boss?
from TFA page 4
Cold
Legacy skills
really.. I should abandon my legacy skills eh? how about my obsolete skills? or my useless skills? will they still be hot in 2010?
The flaw in that approach is that it depends upon nothing going wrong that you cannot blame on someone else.
Which is not to say that you won't get lucky and succeed with that approach. Just that it is a flawed approach.
And that is the essence of "tech viewpoint" vs "business viewpoint".
Just ask the people working for Google. In fact, just look for any of the companies that the tech people are trying to get into.
Ideally, the company wouldn't just bring in "generic" contractors, but would select firms (or groups within large contract houses) that specialize in that company's specific industry & market. Sure there's some learning curve to the specifics of that company, but that experience not only helps narrow the gap, but it brings insights of what others in the industry do and different points of view that a company insider may not have.
TRANSLATION TO IT WORKERS:
I can't UNDERSTAND our H1B slaves.
I need a middleman who'll be willing to work for entry-level IT wages, but do essentially all my management work for me, keeping my servants on task and getting the job done, meanwhile able to speak to me in plain MidWestern English and occasionally pick up my dry-cleaning.
That will be all.
...bullshit I keep hearing for over a decade now. Ths most sought after people will still be those that understand what they are doing. I am really fed up with management types tryinf to convince the world, that IT people are actually sort-of failed managers. The real reason is that the managers have an inferiority comples, since they do know that they can never, ever, under any circumstances replace an IT specialist. Too much air, greed and selfishness in their heads. On the other hand many managers are so bad at their job, that most IT people would do at least as well.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why search for a company? Start your own. You will be directly compensated on the value you produce; no layer(s) of management to blame for ciphoning off the fruits of your labor... Of course, some of those sales & biz skills will rapidly start to feel pretty important! :-)
explosion in job market for certain hardcore tech skills: storage/SAN; disaster recovery including replication, failover clustering, archival and backup; security including networking and system hardening and vpn/remote access; consolidation and virtualization with vmware and now I'm getting calls for xen and other Linux vm; network engineering.
Bentley is a business school. This is basically them saying, "Wahhhh... we wish IT people know our line of business... wahhhhh...."
Duh, or COURSE they wish IT people knew their line of business. So why don't we start looking at the courses they'd like CS majors to NOT take in order to make time for the business courses. Databases? Obvious nope. Programming languages or operating systems? Not a great idea if you want them to pick up new platforms / languages quickly. Algorithms? Don't hire that person to a project where you need advanced warning that something won't scale well. Computer graphics? OK, maybe that one is rarely necessary, but that's just one course.
My point is whether or not the author knows it, they're asking to eat their cake and (still) have it too. They want someone to study the line of business more, but ignore the dumbing-down effect that has on their IT skills. Taken to that extreme, you may as well just offer a few extra "IT" courses within the business department, and let those people be your company's IT staff. Which in most cases is moronic for well-known reasons.
Which bozo post-dated the article by 3 days then released it on the net?? Tomorrow's "Versatilest" or today's "regular" manager?
I've only worked in corporate America for 3 years now, but I see a couple trends: 1. There are 3 basic types of IT: - Production Support - the folks who run the systems from a day to day standpoint - Admins - the folks who keep the systems running on a slightly longer time frame than day to day - Developers - ie programmers who write the code to do the above two functions Prod support and admin functions can be outsourced relatively easily. Dev functions often require a good deal of business knowledge. What pisses me off are the developers who on the one hand complain about management's shortcomings, yet when backed into a corner play the whole 'well, that's not what the spec says' card. Lame if you ask me. You may be intelligent, but intelligence is rarely the limiting factor in corporate america (by, 'rarely' i mean never. if you think otherwise, typically that implies you are probably arrogant.)
Wait, so where do these IT people get all these conglamoration of skills? Seems like you can't do it without several years of working history. If anything, that tells me the industry will start to heavily focus on internal training to ensure new and old IT staff can fill this new gap.
You aren't born with business/writing/accounting know-how, nor with IT knowledge. People already spend a lifetime trying to be an expert in their respective fields. You can't be an expert in every field, especially those that require distinctly different skills.
I've never understood why business people, management, basically any non-technical position is considered the top part of the totem pole. Put 4 engineers together and they are going to make something really interesting that just may better this planet. Put 4 businessmen together and they'll probably come up with a new cover sheet for a 3 letter report.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I admit I only skimmed the article, but it seems like what they're saying is "make yourself cross-dicipline if you want a good job!" ...and probably in a second dicipline that is very different from a primary CS/IT/Eng.
I kinda wish I'd had the time/energy/money to do a double-major in school.
I do still plan to go back within the next couple years though...
I don't know about you, but that's a huge warning to me.
So, the "most sought-after" IT worker will be one who can
Why? Because
Translation:
2010 management will demand IT staff who can understand the business and technology sufficiently to manage the out-sourced projects.
Said out-sourced projects will be the actual writing of the software that supports the company and the end-user support of the remaining company employees who use the software that was written by other people outside the company.
Welcome to the "Titanic" business model.
I'm sure you can all imagine the fun that that will be. With the out-sourced support staff blaming the out-sourced programmers and the out-sourced programmers blaming the support staff
Intel just canned 1000 MANAGERS and not 1000 IT people?
years ago. The managers were saying the same things then. They say it because they don't understand the complexities of what we do, and can't (otherwise they would be in IT). We can understand them, and most of us ignore these ignoramouses, who mouth off with this stuff. Business analysts work with the business, technical types do technical, cause it is a full time career just to understand all the technical stuff.
What else did you expect to hear out of a business school?
The IT people who are always going to be in demand are those who make sh*t work - whether those are managers pulling projects together under time/budget, or coders/networking/systems people who fix broken stuff and build the right new environments.
Yes, you'd damn well better have the needs of the business in mind in any position. But if Company A decides they're going to have manager types who don't have IT skills doing skilled IT work, they're going to find out real quick that sh*t don't work and there's no one around who can fix it.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
no matter how good programmer or technical person you are,but in the IT field if you can not make any client or impress your client with your skills then it is useless. :)
so business skills is a must.you must have understanding or market and future requrments
http://www.secgeeks.com/
>>You haven't an answer for my ideas, so strike back in ignorant and sullen silence, ever the domesticated animal.
An answer for your ideas? Your ideas are questions? Huh? Too much ambiguity....discard.
We want to hire one person not only to do the tech skills of four but we now want you to be our point of sale and make it all happen. We'll pay you for the talents of 1.5 employees while we keep costs down by 3.5 employees.
I've worked for over 15 years in IT. I've seen in more and more cases that programmers are being put futher and further from the business side of anything. Most jobs I've worked introduced the concept of a busness analyst.
The problem with the business analysts I've encountered is that they know neither the business nor technical aspects of IT. They're hired because of people skills which doesn't help get the request from the customer to the programmer. Too often they lack even simple logic skills.
This puts the programmer in a position of knowing their system and being removed from the busniess.
Why would I want to spend time learning a business only to be placed in an area where that knowledge will likely go stale? If I were in the finance dept., why move to IT especially when it's viewed as a cost center in most companies and thus worthy of budget cuts and outsourcing.
I guess business people are tired of the responsibility of knowing their business and having to actually think through the business rules they want IT to implement.
as an american, your point is interesting. to some degree, i think it is true. there is no doubt the upper class does all it can to take advantage of everyone else. they want lower and lower taxes. they want lower and lower wages. they want to sell for higher and higher prices.
enough is never enough.
i don't think this is an american thing, though, i think it is a greed thing - and that is the disease of the human soul that will eventually destroy us.
that is how it plays out in the usa.
while this overachievement does benefit the upper class to the greatest extent, it has other perks, too. like being able to muster the technological resources to save other countries from evil empires.
or start bs wars based on smoke and mirrors.
we live in interesting times. i'd say the over under for humanity's survival is less than 100 years - and that includes the greedy people at the top, too.
Knowledge engineering. knowing a knowledge domain well coupled with technical IT skills, has always been in demand. Architecting a good enterprise business database requires good knowledge of the business plus a good database skill set.
Pure coding is being shipped elsewhere, methinks.
it seems to make some sense... but probably spun into oblivion.
let's take my case. i'm a degreed manufacturing engineer. i learned programming b/c, well, the guy i replaced in a supervisor/management position spent 30+ hours a week playing with a spreadsheet - and i didn't want to do that. so i set up a vb6 / access db to get manage the data for me. don't laugh, i didn't know better.
i then created a work instruction db to handle 30-40 work instruction permutations when there were 5+ engineering orders per week that could apply to one or more work instruction set. since i detailed installed parts, the company was finally able to get their first correct bill of materials. that's right, they had ZERO correct BOMs prior to my getting the job done. they had two guys working ovetime trying to manage that disaster in word... and that was internal. my system was set up to outsource the work.
i then got smarter and moved on to lapp - linux, apach, php and postgresql. i've set up a work instruction and quality database.
i'm now learning ruby and rails to see how can i apply that technology. the oop and pre-organiztion stuff is kind of challenging, but i'm getting it.
iow, i know the business and i learned programming to help me do my job better.
am i the best programmer around? nope. i am decent, though. i found out that my db passwords are more secure than the fbi's passwords - and my table includes one username and one password. i'm also finding out that the ruby on rails guys apply a lot of what i tried to piece meal together... except they do it better and also do additional organizational things that i hadn't gotten to as of yet. so i'm not too bad, either. i do know i need to get better, though.
i design, i program, i qa, i refactor, i administer... i do the whole darn thing. precisely b/c i understand the business that i'm in - and i learn the minutae as required.
my advice to "get paid" is to learn to kiss *ss like your next breath depends on it. i don't do that due to general principle. since i'm not talking up the boss' kids, hobbies, etc... i have to more to be seen as valuable... so i do more. heck, i do it all. while my group was setting production and quality records at a prior job, the guy who sat on his behind and read "how to win friends and influence others" ended up lasting longer than i did... yeah, he's the exact same guy that said i was a "bad supervisor" b/c i helped my employees succeed by working beside them - including taking out their trash so they could work more effectively.
i'm not hating, though. we all have our failings and, unfortunately, lots of PHB types are unable to separate perceived personal life from professional business. this leaves them wide open to be manipulated by people who see them as easy marks and spend their energy working them over while others run the business. how naive to think these folks actually like them... they respect their position, nothing more. if they weren't in their job and didn't have control over the manipulator, they'd be on the outs. but they aren't socially sophisticated enough to learn this.
thank goodness for all the open source contributors and the generous people who have contributed to programming education on the net, newsgroups, mailing lists, etc. i'm still amazed at what is possible if the desire is there. i'm nowhere without all of you. thanks. i share the love any way i can, too. it is give and take... not just take.
my business knowledge does give me an advantage over another dev who can program twice as efficiently as i can. well, program, design, administer... everything... twice as good as i can. today. i created my niche, spiced with some good fortune. your average dev can't do what i've done b/c they haven't spent the time understanding the business process. it isn't rocket science, but there are subtleties. i got burned a couple times since some of the subtleties weren't communicated to me in a timely manner.
it
Message to mods: If you can't see the irony, please turn off your computer.
"Business skills being more important doesn't make tech skills non-essential."
however, the truth or fiction of the above, does NOT negate what I, personally consider the most poorly addressed and lowest item on the direction future business models are going. Customer Service is an impenetrable wall between the end user (Buyers)as well as sales and technology because they are both isolated from user-land reality, as frankly, is management.
It seems to me, since this site, to which I am an avid and long time reader, is so technically, automatically focused that you tend to forget you are the creators and NOT the end users.
I'm a fairly knowledgeable end user. But I am the average employee. I do "A" job, with a computer, in "A" industry or maybe several over the years. I play games, e-mail, do music or DVDs. I have a family and we have three computers with 3 different level of users. 'two' of us use different computers with different providers and operating systems at work. Comprehending the beneath the surface capabilities of multiple systems is 'unrealistic' expectation of users.
Most end users are Internet users NOT necessarily COMPUTER users. They are also End user buyers.
Technology is that box and stuff. Great Merchandising with COOL ads implant BRANDS!
Brands sell, Users buy, tons of great stuff.
NO ONE who is capable of dealing with the product in real life is ever available to resolve 'that/this' problem again. No Script? No Answer OR, MY VERY FAVORITE, repeat the exact same script at least three times until my head explodes!
I will continue to buy computers, laptops, Gotta have it software, but I find myself losing out more and more. I made a vow when Amazon patented double click to Boycott those companies who failed to provide their promise, acted immorally, and Failed to provide the customer service they promise. A damn computer that tells me what buttons to push to preform a process that has nothing to do with my issue and requires me to get a cauliflower ear while waiting to do so IS NOT CUSTOMER SERVICE.
A company, large or small, who will address my problem with 1. interest ( hear the complaint/issue)
2. actually make an attempt at ratifying/politely explaining potential operator error/or offering to research and inform me of an answer
3.EVEN if the answer is not what I wanted to hear, will get my repeat business every time.
Future Business needs to address the human component of IT. People are sick and tired of feeling ripped off by these giants and eventually if you look hard enough you find a way to cease doing business with them.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
Come to think of it, I hope they don't get the impression that I'm volunteering :\. I'm not.
Mods: If it itches, just go with funny.
why is it on slashdot and digg whenever the topic is on employment, jobs or research , it's always about I.T? For all engineers out there, being called I.T is nothing but disgrace. There are more challenging things to do than I.T. Come on guys!
They have enslaved our minds by creating a culture that is centered around work and achievement and competition and consumerism.
Soudns rather nice and productive, the trick is of course to find work which one enjoys.
While Europeans have the best of both worlds, lazing their summers away on the beach
No from whatI hear the Europeans are far from the middle, they're working for the sake of working and nothing else. I talked to someone from France a few weeks ago and he said it's basically impossible to have any ambition or drive there because no one else has any. People look forward to retirement alone isntead of trying to find interesting work.
If you talk about domesticated animals than europeans seem much more liek it than americans. They do their boring work for the required amount of time, work hard durign that time withotu slacking off much. They look forward to their time in the pasture, and show little passion for what they do except that they must do it.
Four businessmen in a room, with knowledge of their customers' needs and with insight from their technical staff and with a combined big rolodex of vendors, partners, and subcontractors, can broker the deals to employ 40, 400, or 4,000 engineers and can cause money to flow.
It is far less likely that four arbitrary engineers in a room will come up with a good idea *and* be able to create and grow an enterprise that requires four businessmen. Sure, it's possible---just like every kid can grow up to be the president, an astronaut, or a sports star---it's just not as likely.
Reality check: The purpose of business is not engineering. Engineering is one of many things that a business can sell.
-JM
Technical problems will be solved by engineers in low-wage countries like India, China, and Bangladesh. Wake up and smell the coffee: software, and most technical designs, can be shipped across the internet with 3 mouseclicks. So they will be developed where they can be developed at lowest cost.
I'm currently studying Bcom IT in South-Africa, it is Financial and Management Accounting, basic programming of excel and java, system analysis and design, both theory and practical, and oracle sql databases. Because it is a Bcom degree we have a few other business subjects. Hopefully I will find good employment with this degree when I leave this country.
This is my sig.
I once worked for a 'business' manager and spent two month collating accounts data into a spreadsheet. He couldn't understand the concept of backups and stored the one copy of the file in the C:\progra~1\excell directory and was in the habit of deleting the entire directory once a week.
"they will use outside vendors to gain those skills"
What he means is when they want to appear 'managerial' they hire in a systems analyst to tell them what their own staff already know. You get the work done in spite of them. And usually better when they are out of the office.
"business analysts in business units answer to business executives, with a dotted line to the CIO"
And the PHB gets to pretend to know what he is doing to earn ten time your salary. That article is just so much self congradulatory wishfull thinking. 'Oh, for the day when us PHB don't need the IT dept'.
When they start making up bogus cod technological tets you know it's just so much hot air.
See here for a software application masquerading as Business Intelligence
Now excuse me while I go upstairs and show some idiot how to email an attachment - for the tenth time.
davecb5620@gmail.com
in the future I.T. will be treated as highly diversified janitorial staff.
It's the old chicken-and-egg problem. No body will hire you for those "hot" technology unless you already have years of experience with them.
My local state college knew it was ehading this way .Thats why I took my bachelors in Manament of information technology. Half computer courses and half business administration.
NOw I know ill be ready :).
it also helped that I had an Associates in Network Administration.
Engineering skills in the US are already undervalued.
We are just heading to a point where no-on at all in the US will actually DO anything. Everyone will just be middle-men managing everyone else. It's like one of those pyramid schemes.
If someone somewhere in the business pyramid doesn't actually produce some tangible product (i.e. made by engineers) then you've got no basis on which to exist.
Bentley College is known for its part-time MBA program, they sponsor NPR in MA to get a plug for the program on Morning Edition. Not suprising that a school in a high-tech area which awards MBAs is saying that all tech workers will need an MBA in 4 years...
You schmuck why do you post such ignorant and wrong info?
Oh and I forgot to ask dear /. readers to mod that schmuck down, a shame I can't mod his arse myself since I decided to post :-/
I've been on a few interviews in the last few months, and no matter how well the interview seemed to be going, the conversation pretty much ended when it became clear that I didn't have experience with Websphere or Weblogic, or I hadn't used Struts in my current position.
Sure, I could write off these interviewers as being short-sighted, but that doesn't change the reality that employers are looking for people who know a particular set of skills, and have used them oh-so-recently.
One interview, I had to keep saying "no, being a startup, my current employer can't afford solutions like that, BUT MY PREVIOUS EMPLOYER..." to almost every question, because they kept asking if I was using these technologies right now.
Business schools and even C-level management may give lip service to the idea of having employees with both business and technical skills. But, the people in the trenches are the ones doing the hiring, and they are more concerned with the day to day technical realities of the operation. They need people with particular technical skills fresh in their minds who can jump in and start reacting to said C-level managers' demands.
I just re-read what I wrote, and it sounds like I'm standing on both sides of the fence. I'm whining a bit because I don't have the exact skills they're looking for and they don't seem to be considering my business skills or even my ability to apply prior knowledge (Oracle Application Server, Tomcat...) to new problems. But I also understand that they need people who can start solving problems for them right now. My solution? I guess there's going to be Websphere & Weblogic certification in my future.
Don't listen to this article. Business skills wont get you in the door.
I have found that companies generally don't seem to value domain (biz) knowledge, and others seem to agree. Here is more on this phenom:
t Valued
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsDomainKnowledgeNo
Table-ized A.I.
People skills certainly help in a Business Analyst role (I am one, btw), but essentially what businesses (particularly sales and marketing areas) want is someone who understands both the needs of the business (drive sales, increase revenues etc) and has the technical ability to assess the feasibility of those requests. From an IT point of view, I've met programmers who come out with stuff like "I fucking hate salesmen" - totally missing the point of working in a commercial environment(er, perhaps you'd rather teach?). It's a "never the twain" kind of role - both business people and IT departments each think the others are dickheads/impossible to work with/have no idea about the real world - and while a BA is not exactly going to orgamise a group love-in, there is always a need for that kind of interface in order to achieve goals and finish projects.
Before university, I worked with a comp sci university grad, and was so disappointed in how little he could apply his skills to the business at hand. It's what led me to take a B. Comm. in University. I followed it up with an M. Sc., which was a good mix. The computer technology, I always found I could easily learn; the business skills were better learned in the University environment. I never regretted that approach. (Led to me being able to found one business that employed 100 people for a few years, and another that employed a half dozen for a copule of years, and another one on the go now.)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I've worked about 7 years as a developer, then due to wanting to move to a different area & having 2 small kids, etc. and other reasons, I went the Dark Side last year and accepted a job as a manager in a business unit. Everything the parent poster says is true: as a group, business managers are nowhere near as intelligent as coders. I'd have to say too, their vaunted social & people skills are only a trifle better than those of developers. Business managers do have an enormous chip on their shoulders vis a vis technologists, it is true. I am living proof that someone with a technology background can master "business skills" in about a month, maybe two. It just ain't that hard.
In a nutshell, here's what constitutes "business skills": learn the basics of finance and accounting, that takes about 2-4 weeks to get comfortable with. Then, find nice-looking clothes that don't wrinkle easily, unfortunately business clothes do tend to cost more than coder clothes. Whiten your teeth, if necessary. Get a good haircut. The main thing, after the appearances: smile and act by default in a friendly manner toward all, exuding a sort of relaxed optimism as your default persona. That is about it, it takes maybe two months to do this stuff and have it feel natural (enough). I still do coding when I can, to automate my work and for my own sense of self-worth.
Screw resumes. They are for the weak. What you need is notoriety. Be very
Give first. Get in touch with your local cable-access channel, and produce your own "IT for small business" show. It takes minimal expertise to produce a "local quality" show. Perhaps $2000 in equipment is all you need - you can get by with as little as $750. Heck, in your community, there might be FREE equipment you could use!
Produce an episode weekly, and try to get it aired at a consistent time. Don't make it an ad, make it informative, and USEFUL for viewers. As soon as people see that you are not trying to sell them something, they'll listen to whatever you say. And, if you briefly mention some contact information, you'll have people lining up to throw money at you, because they'll TRUST you. In each episode, you are giving them something they can use. They will reward you for it.
As another case of give first: years ago, I owned a computer store. We had an area we called the "triage" to take computers and give them a once-over. When a customer asked about a problem, we quote a "free diagnostic". We gave the diagnostic right there, as they stood there. It usually took about 10-15 minutes. We gave the system a very detailed once-over, and usually performed a free service or two. (such as running a virus scanner). Combined with a bit of Q&A, we determined the work that needed to be performed. We got comments about the thorough checkout, even though it was pretty quick.
Because we gave them something first, we almost NEVER GOT TURNED DOWN on a work order quote. It just didn't happen. We'd given them something, they watched us do it, and because of that, they felt compelled to give something back.
Establish yourself as "the guy who always can get the right answer". NEVER GIVE A BULLSHIT ANSWER. If you don't know, be honest about it, and then offer to research an answer.
You don't have to be omnipotent - and they'll learn quickly if you are BSing them. But, if you work and strive to be the person that never "lets them down" because you always offer something truthful and workable, you'll never, ever go hungry.
People talk to each other. What you want to be is the name that's uttered just after business owner X says to business owner Y: "I'm looking for somebody who ____, who would you recommend?". If you've avoided the BS answers, and you've given somebody something they can use, they'll probably use your name. This is the highest form of notoriety - the referral.
Now, perhaps my formula is a bit scary - I haven't had a "job" in almost 15 years - I've been a consultant/freelance/business-owner all along, in fields as diverse as aviation, real estate, job-placement, IT, and education. But there are plenty with lots of money who pay me well because I never pretend to be anything but what I'm not.
I can't tell you how many times I've left a sales presentation, having spent 5 minutes explaining that I can do A, B, and C, and 3 hours 55 minutes explaining that I can't do D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, YT, U, V, W, X, Y, or Z, and ended up with the contract, even with competitors that could do A-N! It's a big selling point to tell people what you aren't -it establishes trust and a definition of expectations that's comforting to people. They know your limits, and they know what to expect from you. And having the confidence to calmly say what your limits are lets peop
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I am looking forward to the day when the business requires us IT folks to be straight up pimps! I personally love wearing a large purple hat with a 3 foot long feather, and the platform shoes....oooooohhhh!!! How about they leave IT people alone, quit trying to remake us into some fucking image they think should be, and let us do our fucking jobs!!! I wonder what Jesus REALLY looked like...and I wonder how many years it took for the powers to be to make him into the tall, bearded, gentle hanson man you see in pictures...
----- I have bad karma for a reason! -----
Has IT ever been the place where hard-core development goes on? In high-tech companies, IT generally doesn't directly participate in product development.