IT 2.0 thoughts

June 6, 2008

ReadWriteWeb had a thought-provoking article up today about what the future IT worker would look like.  More specifically, what sorts of skills this person would need to have to be successful.  Not surprisingly, the recommendation was, in a nutshell, the ability to communicate with other members of the business on their terms.  I don’t think I’m dumbing the article down – that’s the gist I took away from it.  And it’s not a wrong prediction, it’s just one that’s continually being made, and I don’t really see the situation changing dramatically.

I should start off by saying that I’m never considered myself the type of software developer that was mentioned in the article: “You know the type – the stereotypical introvert, who’s more comfortable behind the glow of computer screen than interacting with the rest of the human race. The one who likes to speak in acronyms that only he or she understands. The ones who know how to do everything from a command prompt. These folks will be a dying breed…at least around the office.” I’ve had more than a few people comment over the years that they didn’t think I was a programmer.  I’ve typically not dressed like the ‘typical’ developer, or had many of the same interests as the stereotypical developer (Simpsons yes, Futurama no, gaming no, etc.).  I’ve always wanted – nay, needed – to know what’s going on in other parts of the business to try to get a full picture.

Trouble is, that’s never worked out very well.  One may argue that the way I went about it was never the ‘right’ way, but at the same time, I’ve been at places that paid lip service to ‘teams’ but still had the ’silo’ mentality regarding information.  To be fair, I think widespread use of intranets may make that type of mentality less useful or even accepted in more companies, but even most intranets I’ve seen are very locked down – users in group X can *only* see group X documents, and can’t see what group Y sees, for example.  There’s a certain attraction to that way of operating, I can see, but it continues the ‘us vs them’ inside many companies.

The example in the article about knowing “blogs, wikis and rss” is useful, in that it makes another point without perhaps meaning to.  Currently knowing those terms and understanding how to implement them puts one at an advantage when being able to address company needs with technology.  A few years ago, these concepts were black arts, but today they’re commoditized to the point where people can understand and implement them on their own.  You don’t need to be the real hardcore software guy to put together those sorts of solutions, and less technical guys can get by with dealing with business needs on that level.

What’s not commoditized yet?  A next wave of business needs is only now starting to get addresssed are business intelligence stuff (reporting engines, OLAP stuff, etc.).  These sorts of technologies can still require full time geeks – not the sort of people that necessarily attend every business meeting, but more the sort described above: more comfortable behind their monitors.  Successful businesses still need those people onsite.  In a few years when we have ‘OLAP in a box’ and you get these sorts of apps for free in web developer magazines (like we do now with blog engines), we’ll be on to other more ‘cutting edge’ technologies which will still require some of the geeks to be around.

Certainly there’ll be a continued, if shrinking, need for hardcore geeks who work odd hours, have bad hair and sing Monty Python songs at random intervals throughout a work day.  I’d grant that much with respect to the point the RWW article was trying to make.  I just don’t think we’ll see a day when those types of people simply don’t exist at all in many companies.

Posted in Business, Society, Software, Web