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Is Web 2.0 A Bigger Threat Than Outsourcing?
An anonymous reader writes "According to InformationWeek, Web 2.0 is even worse than outsourcing for IT jobs. The article talks about corporations that have laid off IT staff and replaced them with technologies like mashups and wikis that can help people get things done without involving IT. Most IT people still think Web 2.0 is an overhyped buzzword, but that might not matter: So many Web 2.0 apps are sold (or given away for free) by software-as-a-service companies like Google that people can bypass IT altogether, and IT might not even know until it's too late."
It doesn't matter what the industry is. Automation is always a "threat" to jobs. But, people still work in the auto industry, and people still work in IT. You can look at automation two ways. You can view it as a threat to yourself, and you will be one of the poor-attitude IT workers that get laid off. Or, you can look at automation as a tool to let you get more done, and you will be one of the self-motivated go-getters that can be a VP of Technology since you don't have to bother yourself with peon work anymore.
Bottomline: this is about a CIO who recently got hired and wants to put his stamp on his new department.
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You mean other staff can start writing their own documents, wikis, etc and don't need me to re-install Microsoft Office three times a year? Thank God!
Much-discussed here already. If IT does not respond to user requests, they'll get sidelined. Been happening even since they bought out the first minis, (yes - minis, not micros).
Smart IT bosses anticipate user needs. We need to be saying "hey, have you seen how you could do your job better with this new thing?"... But many don't. So we're seen as a cost centre, rather than a profit centre. A hinderance, rather than an enabler.
Then we get outsourced...or control passes to the users and third parties. The risk is that corporate IT becomes an unstructured mess.
With no central authority, who then looks after the basics, such as corporate standards for storing and sharing information? What about security? Sure, some smart user can download the latest mashup, but will it play well with everything else? What's the upgrade path?
The purpose of IT - indeed any technology - is to improve the efficiency of business process so that more things can be achieved, more accurately, by less people.
Throwing your hands up and saying that improvements in IT are costing IT jobs is about as pointless as complaining that tractors and combine harvesters mean there's a relative lack of shovelling jobs available in agriculture these days.
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
A story I remember about technology:
Two men are standing beside the road watching the new backhoe dig a hole. "Look at that. Think of how many men with shovels could be working if we didn't have that thing," says the older man. "Think of how many men with spoons could be working if we didn't have the shovel," said the other.
If a problem is simple enough that it can be replaced by an automated system, then solve it and give me a more interesting problem to work on.
If your job could be replaced by a wiki, it wasnt *really* an IT job to begin with.
Sometimes I almost can't believe what is considered an "IT Job" these days. I've been in the IT industry for about 10 years. When I started if you were in the IT dept it meant that you knew the in's-and-out's of the most popular technologies, most importantly the workstation OS's that companies used.
These days so many of "IT Jobs" are just administrative positions which require more spreadsheet skills than they can find at the local temp agency.
No! You don't understand: Web 2.0 will synergise key technologies into a mashup Wiki that will enable customers to drive their own solutions and manage SOA n-tier applications without any requirement at all for infastructure, oversight, management or maintainance! Using AJAX will save you 110% each quarter on IT spending. It will make you coffee, fetch you donuts and give you a blowjob! Web 2.0 is here to save the universe! Everyone get connected!
If you think that's neat just you wait for the symantic web on handheld supercomputers. I hear that will be ready only 15 years from now!
Gigantic robotic arms with huge potato mashers. Once every year they set them loose around the office down here, and everyone screams and runs. The survivors get a raise, the widows of those who didn't make it get a ham. Best teambuilding event ever, especially when you're screaming "Every man for himself!" at the top of your lungs while avoiding the masher.
Until said provider goes tits up or even better, sells your data to someone else...
So it's just like outsourcing then.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Agreed.
There is no "natural economy" favoring the IT guys. I've worked as one, and I know full well the combination of poor social skills combined with high self-regard for their own intelligence/expertise that leads to an arrogant "priesthood" mentality. Additionally, because of their responsibilty for the critical data plumbing of a modern business, the fear of being responsible for failure of what are, frankly, often fragile systems causes a bunker mentality. Their customers, namely the rest of the organization, is viewed as a threat - because anything they do could trigger failure. I've often felt that in many IT groups, the preferred infrastructure for the non-IT personnel would be un unplugged PC in a locked room. In these types of groups, the organization will eventually seize any viable alternative to eliminate the IT group. After all, they are usually relatively expensive staff.
Successful IT organizations know that they are purely a service business. The most important attributes are responsiveness and reliability. If these are not present, they will not survive.
If producing a good or service requires less input--fewer man hours, less energy, less raw materials--that's a good thing; and our free market economy is supposed to achieve exactly that.
In a few years, many small and medium sized businesses will probably be able to get by without IT staff altogether; they'll be using mostly web-based services and outsourced remote management.
Of course, this means that a lot of IT people will need to find new jobs. So what? IT itself eliminated many jobs: typists, secretaries, customer service, filing clerks, mail handlers, etc. IT professionals really have even less business complaining about this than other professions.
When a member of your IT staff does it, you can fire or even prosecute them, and unless they're really malicious and destroy or poison the data and back ups, you still have the original data.
When an outsourced IT company does it:
a) it may not be illegal in their country of origin
b) it may not be covered in the contract you have with them
c) even if it is, it may not be covered in whatever deal is made if they're bought out
d) there may be no mechanism for (easily) recovering your data in the event of terminating service
e) if they go tits up there may be no way at all to recover your data
It's not a question of whether or not trusting mission-critical data or services to a third party is a risk, it's a question of whether it's a sensible or necessary risk to take.
It's official. Most of you are morons.