Information Technology

I am getting more and more irate with the IT industry. Why?
In the 1980s, around the time IBM entered the PC market, IT was an industry of professionals, and I considered myself one of them. Now I am embarrassed to be associated with it. Here is a list of what is different, and in my opinion, wrong with it:-

Follow up:

• Certificated Skills.
  Experience and a MSc are no longer enough. You need certification in Lotus Notes or PHP or whatever the company uses or you have to take a test. Any idiot can read a book and repeat it parrot fashion. That does not give you knowledge of logic or give you the ability to think outside the box. All it does is prove you have the skills to follow a series of instructions. You're a human android.
• The dog can no longer see the rabbit.
  The rabbit, the person who has the problem, is no longer visible to the dog, which is you, the IT guy. Every IT hardware or software project starts as a problem. "Wouldn't it be good if we could do X", well you cannot, so that is the problem. What you need is to talk to someone who can actually understand, analyze, and offer a solution. I have a better idea, let's go talk to HR!
• (in)Human Resources.
  HR people have no clue as to the difference between C, Perl, PHP and a hole in the ground. All they can see is what is written on the request paperwork. As IT professionals, if we cannot find a PHP person, then we'll take a Perl person. HR has no concept of the dynamics of technology, but they do know how to tell if you "fit" the company image.
• Business incomprehension.
  All modern IT people know something about Technology, but what do they know about how the business operates. Probably very little. Perhaps that's why there is UI specialization. But I digress, it is no longer a requirement to understand why "It would be nice if we could do X".
• Daisy Chains.
  Dog and Rabbit again. Having worked for a company once through an agency, I was approached to do some further work. I agreed. Problem was "I" was not on the company's approved supplier list, so a company on the approved list was sub-contracted to hire me. They had some issues which I cannot recall, so they sub-sub-contracted another company that was already employed at the rabbit to hire me. I end up with less than half of the money paid by the rabbit, or the rabbit is paying over twice what they should have.
• Bugs.
  I know stuff has gotten a lot more complicated of late, but there is no excuse for shipping products that do not work properly. Look at windows. Whilst at the Press Association in London, I noticed that the Windows 95 OS came on a single CD. The bug reports and fixes arrived on 6 CDs.
• Error and Exception Handling.
  Any wombat can write a program that works when all in the garden is rosy, but what happens if a required file is missing for whatever reason. "Program failed" messages are stating the obvious, "the program does not work and I know why but I'm not telling you". Usually messages giving you a line number do not help much, apart from giving you a starting point. They identify were the program found the error and not where the error is.
• Sales and Marketing.
  M$, need I say more
• Everyone has a computer.
  and not everyone should!
• Any asshole can do it.
  Start a new career in Information Technology. If you can sign the check, then you qualify for our exclusive training and job search program. Call now.
  Just because you can get a spreadsheet to add 2 numbers together does not make you a programmer!
• Cheap is good. Right?
  I can get a chap in India with certificates up the wazoo for $18 per hour. His name is probably Abraham Lincoln and as soon as you get the code back, which will not work, you are going to have to hire someone else to fix it. I could, at the peak of my powers, outperform any 10 of them.
• Bums on seats.
  It actually shocks me to hear about how employees spend there time when the boss is not there. Surfing the internet, catching up with emails, and IMing with friends. I have seen people asleep at their desk, sitting upright. Yes but they are certificated and always arrive at work early. Not really surprising if you pay them to sleep!