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Is the IT Department Dead?
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."
They predicted the death of the IT department twenty years ago when the PC became widespread. It didn't happen, and it won't now.
Back then it actually looked like it might. Now it doesn't. Who's going to replace that hardware router when it fails? Upgrade the equipment?
Perhaps the "IT department" will become for most companies what the post office is to the mail department; i.e. hired out to a specialty firm. But that hardly matters to the geeks in the IT department, they'll still get their paychecks. Their checks will just have a different company's name on them, that's all.
Good luck offshoring hardware replacement, or doing more than a script-based "help" desk.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
So IT in corporate America is going to be run completely by external companies, which I would assume are the companies that provide the hardware to us, according to this author.
I consider this flawed in two ways:
1. IT services are not dead: Even if no IT department existed, some company, person or entity will have to be responsible for upkeeping the hardware and software implemented, as well as ensuring that the network components and business computers are all functioning properly. You could change the name, slice and dice it a thousand ways, but in the end, the premise is the same: managaing the spread of information in an environment, which from what I understand is information technology.
2. IT departments are not dead: If businesses knew that outsourcing services to other companies were cheaper, this would have happened a long time ago. Not like the IT department people wouldn't have jobs; they would just be working for the companies supported by the corporations. So far as I know, it is by far less expensive to maintain an in-house staff that takes care of all of that then pay three-digit-per-hour services to do the same job, and not have adequate knowledge of the business network.
I am pretty new to the corporate aspect of the field, so I might be missing something that this author saw that prompted him to write his diatribe; if I did, please fill me in.
"In the long run, the IT department is unlikely to survive, at least not in its familiar form," Carr writes. "It will have little left to do once the bulk of business computing shifts out of private data centers and into the cloud. Business units and even individual employees will be able to control the processing of information directly, without the need for legions of technical people."
Sheeeyeah- RIIIIGHT.
Wrong on SO many levels.
Little miss dolly dots who can barely operate MSWord and her email client is going to have the expertise to "Control the processing of information directly"? Fuck no. People like that couldn't spill pee out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel.
I'm in an academic environment. I work with a lot of really smart and VERY accomplished people, but that doesn't mean they know jackshit about computers. They need Mike (our I.T. god) on an almost daily basis.
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. you could give them tutorials all day long - and all you'd be doing is wasting their time, which is REALLY expensive.
And setting up these networks? And troubleshooting it all? When the print server's on windows, but the file server's on linux and I'm on a Mac and need something to print NOW? I am I going to "Control the processing of information directly"? I could, but in fact: Fuck No. I'm gonna call Mike, the IT deity for our department and he will fix it. IT will never go away, because (not to sound snobby, just acknowledging reality) some of us have better things to do with our time.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
You say IT jobs should be treated as a "Skilled Trade" like plumbers, welders, electricians, etc... However, you only want Universities/Colleges to be allowed to teach this trade? Are you pushing for a University provided vocational program? Kind of like the B.A. in Plumbing the University of California system offers?
Actually, you touch on a really interesting subject. The US used to have a strong system of vocational education, which provided skilled labor for a number of industries' needs. Today, however, the vocational education system is increasingly abandoned, denigrated, and "replaced" by low-quality (low value) and inappropriate college education. As a result, vocational education is less focused and far more expensive than it needs to be.
Of course, universities love this trend, as it brings them money (at the expense of the traditional vocational schools and programs).
And no, I'm not going to support these opinions and assertions with any real data or references; this is Slashdot! (Actually, I'm not sure the best place to find statistics about this subject.)