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Has the Glory Gone Out of Working In IT?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the good-old-days dept.

An anonymous reader writes to wonder if the glory has gone out of IT. One blogger remembered his first impression upon entering a profession in IT that made it seem like the place to be, with a new shiny around every corner. What experiences have others had? Has a more pervasive technical culture forced our IT gurus into obsolescence?

6 of 623 comments (clear)

  1. Wait, what? by Kell+Bengal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since when was IT prestigious? It once used to be the hot new industry where people made lots of money, but it was never 'sexy'. Lucrative, not glorious. And now it's not even that, so much.

    --
    Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
    altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
  2. Glory? by Sir_Dill · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Has there ever been glory in IT?

    R&D and MIT media lab aside ( I wouldn't call that sort of thing IT even though there is some overlap)

    When I hear IT I think of my corporate support staff.

    As far as I am concerned there has never been any glory in that thankless job.

    I mean how glorious can a job be where the only recognition you'll get is when you screw something up?

    When you are good at your job in IT nobody notices you since the goal of most IT shops is to be transparent to the user....

  3. Re:huh? by jimbolauski · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can never remember a time when shit hits the fan and I'm able to keep down time to a minimum and getting glory, just gripes about down time. IT never has glory because nobody cares about IT until something goes wrong then it's the IT guys fault, and every second of down time is because of their incompetence.

    --
    Knowledge = Power
    P= W/t
    t=Money
    Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
  4. Re:huh? by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Was coming here to say pretty much the same thing. If we wanted glory, we'd have become firefighters or something. We like fixing problems, for the most part.

    --
    Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
  5. It was fun until... by Mr.+Firewall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was fun until...

    • HR started getting involved in hiring decisions.
    • they stopped promoting from within for lower-level management, and started hiring clueless outsiders who didn't know a bit from a byte.
    • Micro$oft started becoming dominant in the networking space.
    • you didn't need a damn rinkydink-electrician's license just to string network cable.
    • my idiot boss outlawed all use of Firefox for "security" reasons.
    • IT decisions, affecting those of us who have to make that crap actually WORK, are made on the golf course without ever asking the worker bees what they think.
    • Your additional pithy comments here....
    --
    In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
  6. Cabinet Maker Working in Home Depot by dtougas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These days, I feel like a cabinet maker working in home depot. I have a bunch of skills that are not being utilized because the majority of the work happening (at least where I work anyways) has shifted from creating custom solutions to installing, maintaining, and supporting 3rd party applications. My job satisfaction is eroding. While I used to take pride in creating stable, elegant solutions to complicated problems, I now spend most of my time fighting with messy integrations.