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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 like assuming that business men with a mathematical background will prove that P = NP. It's not going to happen, because some problems are so hard that it requires a full time devotion to the subject in order to simply to understand them, and an exceptionally bright mind to make progress. Technical work is like this, it requires a full time devotion to stay on top of technology and to master it. Solutions created by people who think of themselves primarily as business men will be atrociously bad (even worse than normal), and businesses that rely on such people will quickly go under.
Philosophy.
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