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IT Departments Try To Avoid Getting "Ubered"
StewBeans writes: Fortune 500 companies and longstanding corporate giants are losing to startups that are born digital because they can't keep up or they refuse to acknowledge the ways that technology is changing both business and consumer preferences. Getting "Ubered" is now one of the biggest threats to traditional IT departments as the growing number of unicorns like Airbnb, Spotify, Square, and others take over the economy and win the hearts and minds of increasingly mobile, always-on consumers. In this article, nine tech leaders from large companies talk about how they have had to change their approach in order to keep pace and avoid getting disrupted by the next big thing around the corner.
Please, "Ubered", no. Not only no, and also no, but it sounds like a noise I once made in between too many bratwursts with too much mustard and too much sauerkraut, and way way way too much beer. I think the beer was lagered, which would make a sort of onomatopoetic sense, if it led to ubering.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
oh yeah, already been done.
And if you work for a company even considering it, it's time to prepare your resume anyway because your bosses are clueless.
Your company name gets verbed ONLY when it's both appropriate and a new word is necessary. You get verbed by popular consent. I'm not saying a massive advertising campaign won't do it, but it's damn hard to force a meme. Xerox. Jeep. Scotch tape. They were verbed because they offered something new. Google. Skype. They were verbed because so many people used their products. But even a massive advertising agency couldn't do it for, say, Bing. So what has Uber done to justify verbing? Sure it's shorter than, say, "out-innovated". But "Ubered"? It just sticks in my craw. No thanks. And take your viral marketing with you.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
The problem of traditional IT departments in large corporation is not getting "Ubered"; it's just a matter of having a large organization with all the bureaucracy that comes with it. Even Google struggles with that, as Sergei Brin lamented the other day. Also, I fail to see how Uber, Spotify and AirBnB are eating those IT departments' lunches. The businesses they serve, perhaps, but not those departments.
And those tips from that Enterpriseprojects.com article? Empty buzzwords. "Leverage relationships with decision-makers", "Move at the speed of trust" (Really? Really?! What does that even mean), "If it ain’t broken, consider fixing it", "Use process as business accelerator". These are copied verbatim from the article, and if this is what the best and brightest CIOs in the bunsiess have to offer us, it is small wonder that the IT profession is in such a shite state. I've seen similar statements on a great many powerpoints, and they all failed to make one iota of difference. Yes, you CIO's are going to have to "shift the culture" in your departments, as you like to say. And yes, most of you are woefully unequipped for the task.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Baring all the corporate jargon, the next big thing more often than not is quite simply a scam managed by venture capitalists and hedge fund managers to create the illusion of the 'next big internet company', pump it up to the biggest bubble possible and then sell it to gullible investors and pension funds (investment managers paid commissions to buy) and 'KABOOM', time for the 'next big thing' (they are not fucking around at all, those bubbles are at minimum hundreds of millions of dollars in size and quite a few end up in the billions range - all bullshit public relations and marketing). Seriously how many more of the dot bombs have to fail before people and investigatory agencies wake up and realise it is all mostly just a well orchestrated scam.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Then try not sucking at your job? Seriously, the reason that Uber has been successful vs traditional taxis is because taxi services suck. Their service tends to be sub optimal and they don't make use of modern technology to allow people to hail and pay for their ride. Uber does better in that regard, and so is popular. Cost really is secondary.
Well, same shit with IT work. If you are "Mordoc the Preventer" then ya, you could well be subject to getting replaced with a service (or person) that better meets their needs. However if you stay on top of what your customers need (customers in this case being the people that call you for service) and try to improve things as you can, then you are more likely to be fine.
I haven't been doing IT all that long, about 15 years now, but in that time I've seen what users need and expect change a lot as technology has changed. They still need and want IT, but what they want from them is different. The IT departments they bitch about are the ones who still think it is 1990 and refuse to update the way they do things.
What I think the article (really more of a short, buzzword-filled list) fails to address is that IT workers aren't leaving major, established corporations for "unicorns" for no reason. Most workers aren't going to give up seniority (and the perks that come with it like better pay and benefits) at a big company for a job at a startup for no reason other than because they can. In reality, it's probably that the startups are offering higher pay and better working conditions, thus giving workers a reason to leave.
This honestly reminds me of where I work right now, where the management is stumped at why they keep having people quit when they have managers going around every night telling people how much they want to fire them and how at risk they are of losing their jobs.
What is a cloud shill, Alex.
The issue is that monopolies like taxis get so focused on profits or whatever, that they forget they only get income from customers. With no competition, why should I treat my customers well?
Also most companies are middle-men, so finding a way to cut out the middle man for a middle man company doesn't seem to make sense. Gas stations sell you fuel someone else refined, that someone else dug up. They "add value" in the middle, but are all middle men. So "Ubering" in the sense of more directly connecting the customer to the service or product is the opposite of the goal of most companies. Personally, I'd love it if the manufacturers were to make their products available directly. Order monthly subscriptions to Coca Cola and get what you want delivered directly to your house monthly. For a price near the wholesale price for the store. That's the ideal. Any store marking up 50% or 500% will never compete with that. But it doesn't happen.
That's where Ubering comes in. When a company sees a need, and refuses to meet it.
Don't be dicks, and you won't get Ubered.
Learn to love Alaska
A lot of people have expressed some doubt as to what this word means. So let me explain it to you. Getting "Ubered" means that the old stupid company you work for has been made obsolete by a young forward looking company that is the epitome of the future of the global technology industry. Even though you will probably lose your job, you are secretly happy that this will finally give you the opportunity to realize your dreams of working for the company that "Ubered" you, even if it is just as a poorly paid driving contractor with no benefits, it;s totally the best decision you've ever made.
Getting "Ubered" basically means falling in love all over again. You don't care that your mistress is a criminal. You are willing to travel the ends of the earth to be with her, or at least vote for politicians who will change the law to make her innocent again.
But most of all getting "Ubered" means not resisting this beautifully elegant idiom permeating the English language completely.
You've been "Ubered" and you love it so much all you can think about is getting "Ubered" again and again.
I thought the threat was "cloudification", not "uberification". The buzzwordification is confusificating me.
Table-ized A.I.
What did I just read?
Come on.... I've worked in I.T. for almost 30 years now and the changes tend to happen incrementally, at a pace largely dependent on the release schedules of the vendors involved.
I don't know of a single person in corporate I.T. who feels threatened by the potential of some "upstart" business model appearing out of nowhere and wiping out their job.
If there's a single trend I would say "upset the apple cart" more than anything else for I.T. -- it would be cloud services. But even there, I.T. quickly got a handle on the concept and embraced it selectively in most cases, applying it where it added real value and ignoring it where it was just hype and buzzwords. It probably shifted the number of people doing server support towards the large data centers to an extent not seen since the microcomputer took off in the 80's -- but people with those skills still found places to work using those skills. And more recently, I've seen the cloud technologies begin to get "rolled back" into in-house solutions. For example, our company tried out CrashPlan for backups and put all of our mobile workers on cloud based backup with them. Worked well, but we eventually shifted to the "Enterprise" version of the product, where we run the CrashPlan servers internally and people back up to them over the Internet or any office LAN or wi-fi connection. Saves us money paying someone else for the storage space and gives us the ability to do a restore much more quickly, if needed.
I know several pro photography people doing a similar thing with DropBox. They liked the service but when they really started using it heavily, realized uploads of huge batches of RAW photos was SLOW (partially because upload speeds to DropBox in the cloud are throttled). Now they're looking at alternatives like Transporter, where again, your mass storage is local, on site -- but it works like the cloud in the sense you can upload to it from anywhere.
did anyone read the article? those guys have perfected their C*O speak.
You just don't understand the verbification of customer-facing, vertically-oriented, dynamic whiteboard portals. So in effect, these collaborative cross-platform methodologies employ seamless paradigms to repurpose transparent, misidentified strategic communities.
I'll take my "CEO Achievement" badge and golden parachute now, thankyouverymuch.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"I save about an hour a day using one I bought with my own money. If the company bought them for all of the devs, they'd pay for themselves in less than a month, but instead we're stuck in the 1990s."
Why they should do it!? No matter how fast their investment gets returned it's even better if they have the benefit with zero investment.
You buying your own SSD are part of the problem, not of the solution!
When I read the title, I thought that the article was going to be about the large number of people being hired away from large corporation to work at Uber...
First of all, fuck you. You have made way too much money by having access to the right decision makers to sell them on expensive ineffective bullshit. You have cushy jobs because you only need to actually work 2 hours a week since you have convinced management that the entire corporation cannot do anything with tablets or cellphones or bring your own device in the name of security. You have used the firewall to block everything productive or potentially disruptive to requiring your 'expertise' from the Internet access for common office workers. You have outsourced your networking experts to foreign countries. You have sold outsourcing as a way to eliminate all technical people from local offices. You have given lucrative IT contracts to friends in the business that have zero skills required. You hold the keys to the kingdom because you use loose technical mumbo jumbo to convince management that they need to wait on your slow solutions to problems easily solved by anyone in the know - anyone available outside your corporate IT kingdom. You force common office workers to spend more time working around your self-imposed technical hurdles to transfer a file than creating the actual files needed to transfer. You hold your entire company back. Second, we're coming for you and we're happy to help eliminate your worthless positions. Dear Management.. quit paying these losers already.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
The problem of traditional IT departments in large corporation is not getting "Ubered"; it's just a matter of having a large organization with all the bureaucracy that comes with it. Even Google struggles with that, as Sergei Brin lamented the other day.
I propose: "All Grue, and no Minions..."
Pretty sure Uber has "corporate IT."
Will all "corporate IT" functions shift to managed services? Hell no. Managed services suck.
If Uber achieves market domination, then Uber will suck, too.
That is really not what Ubered is. These next big thing companies are not only different in that they are fast and lean and dynamic; Primarily they are different because instead of a corporate behemoth employing hundreds of thousands of people, one programming wiz and his friend just program an automated app. A corporate behemoth with departments and HR and thousands to millions of employees cannot ever compete with two guys and an automated app; and they cannot adapt into one. There is no way to avoid being ubered, you just have to hope that your entire corporation is not the next to be automated away with a few thousand lines of smart code. You might as well talk about shaking up a search results factory, where millions full of workers find and return results to internet searches in the hope of never getting ubered by Google.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Businesses can stop being "Ubered" (seriously?) by:
Offering maximum value (price, convenience, quality, ...) to the customer. If you are the customer's best choice your business will thrive. If not, you (probably) won't.
This hasn't changed since the dawn of human commerce.
What a waste of time article.
and content-free
Seriously, who writes this garbage pretending to be shit pretending to be I have no idea what.
Unfortunately, that horse has left the barn quite a while ago...
1 way to make your IT department "move faster": Actually invest in it.
The people, the tech. Stop over scrutinizing every fucking line item, and LOOK TO THEM FOR GUIDANCE AND DIRECTION,
not just when you have a problem that needs to be "fixed".
Valuing your technical and operations teams (and paying them like you value them) goes a long way for productivity.
Just because your product isn't IT related does not mean you should treat them like any other overhead operation: A throw-away dept that you don't understand.
"solidarity" is just part of the game. What you "leftist bashing" types miss is that when you're playing a game you should use every advantage you have. Forming unions, and creating solidarity between a group of players increases bargaining power, and allows you to make sure that you get the outcome you desire from the market.
It reminds me of the online "Dilbert Mission Statement Generator" of the 90's. Here's a smaller sample:
http://www.strauss.za.com/sla/...
I used the DMSG for filler text for draft reports and websites. Often the managers didn't know it was filler and it stayed around into production.
Table-ized A.I.
Square is merely a shell of its former self, holding all their IPs hostage until they run out of money. They are nothing like Square or Enix were in the 80s/90s.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
Time for an union and / or a change to the OT laws with salary employees
"Enroned"? That's where we first heard of 'rank and yank'. We can say IT departments are trying to avoid getting Enroned: obliterated by a thing made of market capitalization that embodies toxic and perverse outcomes, destined to be spectacularly self-destroyed after doing incalculable damage to society.
Uber is Enron redux, complete with rewriting the rules to its own benefit, completely dependent on its own valuation to continue cancerously expanding or blow up. It'd probably be better for everybody if it blew up or got blown up quickly, rather than spawning a whole class of 'unicorn' act-alikes.
Terrorists 'disrupt'. This whole twist on advanced-stage capitalism is perverse as hell.
As opposed to the American people, who have been Grubered.
I will chime in with the 'this is crap' crowd. Exactly which "Fortune 500 companies and longstanding corporate giants are losing to startups"?
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Spoken like true upper management.
Having been in IT for over 30 years, I can say that you don't understand IT.
1) Our job is not to cater to the whims of every user. Our job is to protect and manage corporate assets and to keep the corporate systems running.
2) Our job it to provide the users with services that support the business need. These are not your home computers and you can not use them like your home computer. So
a) No you can't have admin on your computer
b) No you can't have root on the server.
c) No you can't install that app on your computer that you downloaded from some unknown website.
d) Just because you open a ticket that says "Reboot Server XYZ" does not mean that we will reboot the server. WE DIAGNOSE THE ISSUE AND PROVIDE A SOLUTION! Providing us a solution to implement only shows us that you do not know what the hell you are talking about.
3) You are using a 4 year old blackberry because there was no money in the budget to upgrade to a modern system. Accounting has a 5 year amortization cycle and as such you can not get funds to update a system less than 5 years old. Take it up with your bean counters.
4) We are heroes: If we did not come in at 2am to fix
a) That broken SAP computer you would not get a pay check! Company invoices would not get paid, the companies 10K filings would be late, the companies tax filings would be late, etc.
b) That time entry system that crashed, you could not enter your time.
d) That crashed card key system, you could not get into the building.
e) The crashed drive shares, then no one in the company could work.
f) The crashed E-mail server, then no e-mail and companies stop working with out e-mail.
g) The crashed web server, then there are no sales via the web and $$$,$$$ are lost every hour it is down.
This list goes on and on, without IT you are screwed when it goes down. So you may want to be a little thankful that we are here.
As to the Pink web site, if you want the website pink, ill make it pink. However, I need that in writing so that when sales plummet and the CEO comes down looking for the idiot who made the website pink, I can show him that I was ordered by the manager/director/CIO to do it. It is amazing how many times I have asked for stuff like that in writing and been chewed out by the requester. "Im telling you to do it, you do it. I dont need to open a ticket, or send you an e-mail."
We're not "Ubering" because we're more mobile. We're becoming more mobile because companies are being Ubered. This is not an effect, this is a cause. Companies are Ubering because that way they can eliminate pensions, benefits, salaries, wages, and even the employees - Uber, for the uber example, plans on replacing all those "contractors" with robot cars. That means: all taxi drivers, gone. All Uber drivers, gone. Net result: the "inevitable" funneling of all profits to the owners and to Wall Street. The cost of public assistance to the newly destitute will, of course, be borne by taxpayers and the rest of society. Loss of retail revenue, loss of homes to bankers as mortgage holders default in poverty, decline of some neighborhoods that once housed the poor and lower middle class, with an increased crime rate which, of course, will be blamed on the lack of morals and gumption of the poor. So, more prisons, more pauper's graves, more of the usual invisible disaster that hyper-capitalism is greedily enabling.
Let's not even talk about what is going to happen to the tens of millions of truck drivers.
In the case of Uber, have the conventional taxi companies offer a similar service. That means where there isn't a conventional taxi available, then the trip is offered to the on-line drivers.
As an IT support contractor, I get paid 80% more money than an IT worker who collects 2% raises by staying put and showing loyalty.
.
Uber took the 'establishment hack owners' that had all been vetted, insured, regulated, taxed, all in the name of public safety, and threw it out the window, because the customer wanted a lower cost option, and was willing to take risk for the sake of flexibility.
Market disruptors ALL take on new/change everyday. The latest round is just same song, next verse.
Data centers are now 'cloud service centers' because of a perceived difference due to a name change.
Easy to install software (typically at consumers request) is called an 'app' rather than software or an application. The biggest change is many are developed in basements and garages and starbucks, and uploaded to stores rather than heavy development teams.
Many more examples can be thought of quickly. Again, just more examples of same song, next verse.
My question is 'what next'?
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."