> just braindead blocking software purchased by incompetent managers.
Having been that IT person early in my career, responsible for
networks, firewalls and policies, what you say sounds cruel. But I
could not agree more. Today there is a tragic de-skilling in ICT. When
I speak to modern corporate or academic IT people I make the best
faith assumptions. I assume they are like we were in the early 90s and
speak to them accordingly with technical respect. Then I discover they
cannot configure a mail or web server, cannot compile a program, or
even use a package manager... they don't know how to read logs or
change permissions on a directory.... the mind boggles. I've had
senior IT people tell me that they're "not technical" and it turns out
they've arrived on some "management track" from an arts-history
background.
I'm not knocking arts history, or being "elitist" I hope, but this
raises serious concerns for me. What is going on in IT? Have cloud
services, tick-box webmin interfaces and packaged solutions led to a
brain drain?
One could argue that modern IT people don't need "geeky computer
skills" any more, because Google and Microsoft have solved everything.
But that doesn't pan out, because when simple things go wrong they
cannot fix them (which is their job). Right now I am dealing with an
international university whose impeccable pedigree is bedrock in
computing history - and their IT people cannot fix a simple email
issue, to the extent the staff and students have to set up their own
servers. The fact is, they just don't have control over it any
longer. I think the entire senior ranks are just marking time till
they can retire.
Having been that IT person early in my career, responsible for networks, firewalls and policies, what you say sounds cruel. But I could not agree more. Today there is a tragic de-skilling in ICT. When I speak to modern corporate or academic IT people I make the best faith assumptions. I assume they are like we were in the early 90s and speak to them accordingly with technical respect. Then I discover they cannot configure a mail or web server, cannot compile a program, or even use a package manager... they don't know how to read logs or change permissions on a directory.... the mind boggles. I've had senior IT people tell me that they're "not technical" and it turns out they've arrived on some "management track" from an arts-history background.
I'm not knocking arts history, or being "elitist" I hope, but this raises serious concerns for me. What is going on in IT? Have cloud services, tick-box webmin interfaces and packaged solutions led to a brain drain?
One could argue that modern IT people don't need "geeky computer skills" any more, because Google and Microsoft have solved everything. But that doesn't pan out, because when simple things go wrong they cannot fix them (which is their job). Right now I am dealing with an international university whose impeccable pedigree is bedrock in computing history - and their IT people cannot fix a simple email issue, to the extent the staff and students have to set up their own servers. The fact is, they just don't have control over it any longer. I think the entire senior ranks are just marking time till they can retire.