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Tech-Savvy Workers Increasingly Common in Non-IT Roles (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: IT professionals are becoming an increasingly common presence outside of the traditional IT departments, new research has found. According to CompTIA, it seems executives are calling for specialized skills, faster reflexes and more teamwork in their workers. According to the report, a fifth (21 percent) of CFOs say they have a dedicated tech role in their department. Those roles include business scientists, analysts, and software developers. There are also hybrid positions -- in part technical, but also focused on the business itself. "This isn't a case of rogue IT running rampant or CIOs and their teams becoming obsolete," says Carolyn April, senior director, industry analysis, CompTIA. "Rather, it signals that a tech-savvier workforce is populating business units and job roles."
Computers and technology aren't the scary dark areas that they once were. "Tech" is everywhere and now that a couple generations have grown up on it, they don't know a world without it. Of course more and more non-IT people are going to be tech savvy.
When will we reach the point where we don't even need executives?
Fixed that for you.
#DeleteFacebook
--Or is that "being the oblivious"? Maybe both?
Seriously-- ever since the CTOs and other higher ups put moronic HR people in that cant tell a wall power outlet from an RJ45 receptacle, and the endless pressure those drones have had toward ever increasing levels of "FUCKING ABSURD" they demand for entry positions, (you know, that whole "perfect fit" requirement bullshit?) IT people have been leaving IT in droves, and moving into other positions.
They dont just somehow forget how to be IT people though. So, naturally, those IT skills are going to start showing up all over the damned place.
But of course, those idiots cannot put two and two together. Rather than realize, "Hey! Look at all this tech savvy that is showing up all over the board!! Maybe our strict requirements for IT related positions REALLY ARE bullshit, like our IT people have been telling us for almost a decade now! Maybe there really *ISN'T* an IT labor shortage after all!!" like a sensible person who actually pays attention to what their employees tell them would-- they instead go full retard, and give bullshit answers like this one. "Oh, it's this YOUNG generation! They are just so naturally tech savvy!! We can just abuse this to fill the BLEEDING RAGGED HOLES in our IT chains, without paying extra for it!-- Naturally, that means our policies about excluding older workers are totally correct! GENIUS!"
Even though, the very people that are causing this shift in other professional roles, ARE THE VERY IT PEOPLE THEY HAVE BEEN LIQUIDATING, JUST TRYING TO FUCKING FIND JOBS.
It never dawns on them that this thing-- People with scary IT skills showing up doing other, totally non-tech related jobs-- is directly contra-indicative of their endless sob-story about why they "Desperately NEEEED" to keep bringing in H1B visa holders from professional diploma mills in India. You know, the whole "We can't find qualified applicants!" sob story? Yeah, that one.
Because nothing quite says "Lack of qualified tech applicants" quite like "Drowning in tech savvy non-tech workers."
a report says that more people than those IT roles need to buy what CompRTIA is selling ??? am I reading this right?
how many generations now has CompTIA created pay-to-play artificial barrier to entry in the technology industry? burn them with fire
Oh, that's cute. Executives don't have skills.
Many executives have proven that they in fact do not have skills, nor an understanding of the business they are in, nor the market into which they sell their products or services. That's why companies go under and get bought out by a superior competitor all the time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I got an engineering degree and certification, then was tossed out of work by a major recession. I went back for a CompSci degree and managed a low-level job in the then-new field of PC support, won a promotion to IT "coordinator" (manager w/o staff, because they were all rented on a project basis from the IT department) with the Waterworks for several years.
Then Waterworks remembered my engineering degree after 100 reminders and took me in as a construction-planning engineer, but I found my IT skills were key to the engineering job. I handled the drafting and GIS systems, was a lead on the project to bring in the new work-order system, was developing small solutions (tiny web apps, fancy VBA spreadsheets, etc) practically ever day. Heck, just knowing real SQL rather than trying to coax complex reports out of Business Objects was a vital skill for construction and maintenance management. It wound up being the last 20 years of my 30-year career.
I can't recommend this career strategy enough; it's more interesting than either IT or the base profession alone, and more secure than either, too. The hardest thing in IT is getting across the real user needs to the developers - and an IT-savvy member of the customers is always going to be the guy that's either handling the IT specifications, and usually the IT project management from the user side; or just throws their hands up at the IT bureaucracy and develops the solution themselves. (Some of my "small solutions" would up taking weeks of time and growing over years into >1000 lines-of-code; hated to do it, but IT bureaucracy would have taken even longer.)
So I tell people interested in IT careers to first become a nurse, accountant, engineer, technician, even lawyer - any profession that USES a lot of IT. Then add in IT, and you are practically guaranteed an interesting and lucrative career.
Never.
If you have ever seen how a company without strong leadership works you will realize the issues. I would take strong but incompetent leadership over a group of highly intelligent people who each have no authority (real or implied). The former MAY result in disaster but lower level employees can try to prevent disaster. The latter WILL result in disaster (or more likely a bunch of nothing happening) and the only way to advert disaster is basically for a de facto "executive" to materialize... resulting an what is the same thing as executive leadership.
Executives today are much more effective when they have "technical" skills but most people don't realize that executives really don't need to understand everything about what they are managing. They are hiring people that hire people that hire people who do the work. What is far more important at the executive level is understanding big picture issues that actually affect the business. This is often different than knowing the SAME skill as a worker. As an example: A clothing company executive doesn't need to know how to sew but it might be helpful to understand where cotton comes from and the general supply chain (which you don't need to know in order to sew).
Is this what we're calling people who are security nightmares for organizations now? The script kiddie who thought it would be fun to store data in Excel/Access files outside of company control and outside of the ERP? They thought it would be cool to store vital company data in multiple spots, so none of it matched and meant that all of the reports conflicted with each other. Is that what we mean by tech savvy?
Cool. Let me know how that works out for you cause I'm done cleaning up those messes.
COO: Hey did you know that Andy has a really cool report that shows our operational KPIs?
Me: Really? How's he doing it?
COO: I don't know but it's really nice.
Me: [goes to employee] Andy, how are you getting those reports for management?
Andy: Oh, I just setup a little Excel/Access/DB over here on this site and then I copy/paste some stuff into from application ___ and then manually fill in some of the other info as I get it.
Me: Oh, so you're violating company policy by storing that data separately and even outside of company control?
Andy: Yeah, I guess so.
Me: Well, I'd like to run a consistency check on the data against our DB. Can you get me a data dump?
Andy: Sure.
Me: [runs checks against production data]
Me: Hey COO, most of the data in Andy's reports are crap. There are serious data integrity issues. You shouldn't base any decisions on those reports.
COO: what? You need to fix this.
Me: No, I already provide the reports as you have requested. Those reports are based on the actual data in the system. Not something copied half-assed by a kid with no DB experience.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
This really begs the question, why does the executive cost $800 an hour, besides the obvious cronyism that occurs in boardrooms?
Have you seen the prices on yachts these days? It's difficult to keep up with the all the other CEOs at the yacht club.
That's a common problem. "Semi" IT people "in the field" get something practical up and going, but it's a potentially huge maintenance headache down the road.
The snag is that the "central" IT office usually doesn't have the resources to "do it right" from the start. They get more requests than they can handle, in part because many requests are bogus, but it takes analysis to know that.
And when the rogue app breaks, SOMEBODY has to try to fix it, and that somebody is often the central IT people when the lone-wolf builder is on vacation or leaves the org.
But one advantage of this is that the lone-wolf builder has the domain knowledge and direct contacts to make the customers/user happy, at least while it all works. They are doing much of the analysis, prototyping work, and proof of concept. If and when a formal project is started, much of the domain-study foot-work is already done.
One guy at our org cranked out bunches of apps in MS-Access that users loved. But he retired, and database file corruption issues and lack of documentation created problems for those trying to fill his shoes. However, his apps road-tested his concepts and many were ported to formal apps when the time came.
The "panic fixes", like your 2am call is still a friggen bummer, though. I don't know of a good solution. Perhaps a compromise can be made whereby the lone-wolf dev is required BY POLICY to answer a series of questions about support and do basic documentation. The questions and requirements may also encourage them to consider maintenance issues. Example questions:
Is this project critical to the organization?
What are likely problems if it stops functioning correctly?
Are you the only one who knows how to fix it?
Is there a "manual" alternative procedure in case the automated one fails?
Is there app documentation? If so, where?
Are there regular backups of the software and data? If so, where?
Table-ized A.I.