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Is the IT Department Dead?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the that-explains-the-smell-in-there dept.

alphadogg writes "The IT department is dead, and it is a shift to utility computing that will kill this corporate career path. So predicts Nicholas Carr in his new book launched Monday, "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google." Carr is best known for a provocative Harvard Business Review article entitled "Does IT Matter?" Published in 2003, the article asserted that IT investments didn't provide companies with strategic advantages because when one company adopted a new technology, its competitors did the same."

12 of 417 comments (clear)

  1. Is the IS Department Dead? by RealErmine · · Score: 5, Funny

    Could be. Nobody's moved down there for weeks and the stink is awful.

    --
    Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
    1. Re:Is the IS Department Dead? by BunnyClaws · · Score: 5, Funny

      The smell doesn't mean they are dead. That is a normal smell for I.T. folks. Especially the guys supporting the servers.

      --
      "Anything tastes good if you deep fry it."
    2. Re:Is the IS Department Dead? by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nobody's moved down there for weeks

      Peeking in on them from time to time simply won't work - long-term monitoring is usually required, as their movement can be so subtle. Stop-motion cameras work well for this. One of the best techniques is to detect their movement indirectly, by periodically checking the amount of junk food packaging in their trash cans throughout a workday.

      Dan East

      --
      Better known as 318230.
    3. Re:Is the IS Department Dead? by Hoi+Polloi · · Score: 2, Funny

      You better give them back their stapler though.

      --
      It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
    4. Re:Is the IS Department Dead? by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Schrodinger's Tech Support?

    5. Re:Is the IS Department Dead? by vimh42 · · Score: 2, Funny

      "Nobody's moved..."

      Oh they were moving. Killed each other by throwing HD-DVDs around.

  2. Nope! by eck011219 · · Score: 3, Funny

    All of us down here in IT are alive and kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
  3. This guy is off his rocker by wizkid · · Score: 3, Funny


    But there are some CEO's and CTO's that will read this, and cut more funding from IT departments, making life even worse for people going into and working in IT. More skilled people will leave, and then with less manpower, more crackers will be breaking into the companies that are stupid enough to listen to this moron, causing more tort lawsuits, more credit card and personal financial profiles will be stolen by russians, thereby causing the total collapse of western civilization as we know it.

    Or maybe not.

    --
    I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong :)
  4. Re:Pasteurization is dead. by pangu · · Score: 2, Funny

    Clearly, pasteurization is dead.

    That's kind of the point, no?
  5. Re:Depends on the Market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm a QSA (PCI authorized auditor), and have done several PCI audits over the last year

    Great, can you swing by tommorrow around 9 AM? I'm having some trouble with my sound card.

  6. Re:lack of disadvantage is advantage by corbettw · · Score: 2, Funny

    Heck I know quite a few mid-sized companies that basically contract out their IT services already, but there's a downsize to that. You got that right!
    --
    God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
  7. Re:balderdash. IT will scale back, but never vanis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    A friend of mine works for a Well Known Thinktank. Nobel prize winners, genius types. Most of them wouldn't be able to distinguish a USB cable from Firewire if their lives depended on it. One of my friend's fathers is in the IT dept at Los Alamos National Labs. He says that from working there, he's figured out that PhD actually stands for "Please Help, i'm Disabled."