Ask Slashdot: Are Companies Under-Investing in IT?

Long-time Slashdot reader johnpagenola writes: In the middle 1970's I had to choose between focusing on programming or accounting. I chose accounting because organizations were willing to pay for good accounting but not for good IT.

Forty years later the situation does not appear to have changed. Target, Equifax, ransomware, etc. show pathetically bad IT design and operation. Why does this pattern of underinvestment in and under-appreciation of IT continue?
Long-time Slashdot reader dheltzel argues that the problem is actually bad hiring practices, which over time leads to lower-quality employees. But it seems like Slashdot's readership should have their own perspective on the current state of the modern workplace.

So share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. Are companies under-investing in IT?

Comments

Re:IT is costly

[geekmux]

To the average person, the only reason IT people exist is to make sure they can check in on Facebook every 30 seconds while at work and replace their keyboard when they spill coffee or soda on it.

Aside from that, IT has no useful purpose and thus is seen as a debilitating cost. Why spend money on something which provides no value?

So, employees wouldn't dream of taking their own garbage out, taking turns cleaning the bathrooms at work, or working in an environment that wasn't equipped with a well-functioning heat and A/C system, so maintenance and cleaning staff is fully justified in their minds.

But the trained professionals who maintain the services that feed their social media and internet addiction, along with maintaining the systems that tend to help generate the revenue that feeds paychecks is somehow something that "provides no value"?

If this kind of ignorant mentality exists in an organization, then the fucking hiring problem isn't in IT. I say let the "average person" flounder like a fish out of water the next time the internet goes down, or ransomware hits their system.

Re:it's not the hiring practices

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody intentionally hires crap people... I'll agree there. We just came off a situation where a 6 person team was reduced to 2 because IT was "too expensive" in the CEOs eyes. We got approval to fill 1 of those lost positions but were only given funding to get an entry level person. We hired the best candidate we could find in a reasonable time in the price range, but that "savings" came with a lot of training , hand-holding,and slow delivery. Some would call that a crap hire because we couldn't replace with equivalent skill of the person they replaced. The hiring practice was fine but the constraints imposed led to ineffective hiring for the real needs of the company.

Funny ending... that person lasted under 90 days. We get to do it all again.

My experience in health care IT

[puck01]

It is underinvested, poorly organized with focus on maximizing income streams for health care systems rather than improving health care outcome.

I've seen enough at this point in my career in several organizations - some are hospital systems, some a health IT vendors - to be confident about this. Much of the developed systems were overseen by people with little to no real world healthcare experience. They made decisions directed to satisfy hospital system leadership which has had no serious vested interest in improving outcomes until the last few years. Most hospital systems leader have no background taking care of patients or whatever experience they have is seriously limited.

Because I've practiced medicine (and still do) it is been appalling to me to see who is making the decisions and why.

Now that I work for a large healthcare IT vendor and I have quite a bit of autonomy directing our resources to create content and tools that are more useful to the actual health care providers, the problem is we are understaffed to provide these products as thoroughly with as high a quality as they should be. One reason is because we have to undo much of the legacy crap - 20+ years of having non-clinical people doing this has led to frankly incorrect data and logic. If we could start with a fresh plate it would be much easier. Another is, no one wants to pay for clinically experienced people who know how to review scientific data to actually research the problems or the clinical literature to make fully informed decisions.

Re:Dilbert cartoons

[plopez]

In a foreword to one of his books Scott Adams said he would come up with the most outrageous cartoon he could think of. Only to have people email in recounting how they went through a similar but even more outrageous situation. Dilbert just scratches the surface.