Do you work in IT?

[Jim Jones]

never pretend that IT is an investment, it's almost always just a cost of doing business, although we will now get 2.6 million overpaid IT people telling me it transforms people's lives.

IT should be an investment, but oh so often I get asked to spend bucket loads of time building something that will save someone five minutes a month. They're all accountants and they know how much I'm paid. I won't tell them how to do their sums if they don't tell me how to build their toys. Well actually, sometimes they do tell me how to build their toys, but I'm still not going to tell them how to do their sums - I have principals.

And yes, very overpaid. (I'll have Jim wondering about my morals now).

The IT profession is a conspiracy against all other occupational groups. ( 'till the revolution comes).

[Keef]

Back in the dark ages, I flouted the decrees of the Company Systems Department (the name for "IT" in that decade, which tells you how long ago it was), and bought four Apple IIe "microcomputers" for my product programme analysts. They were the first ""micros" in the company. That enabled the guys to do in about 15 minutes some complex calculations that had previously taken them days to do. Accuracy was a lot better, too!

We didn't get any more work done - but we were able to do a lot more sensitivity analysis on the programmes, which I like to think made for better decisions.

The Systems Dept folks were furious; they told me I'd broken this that and the other rule - but my boss outranked their boss

Within three months, I'd had to buy another ten Apple IIe, and other departments were getting them. I was assured that for my transgression, I would never work in "Systems". I never did!

For ever after, I would get calls from the "brass" saying "Systems say this/that isn't possible. What do you think?"

Then "Systems" changed its name to "Process Leadership" and I retired!

[Flyin'Dutch']

It's never an 'investment'. Kev is right - it's one of the costs of doing business - an 'enabler'.

You must either have pink tinted glasses or never have worked with a 'product' developed by IT.

Or is 'enabler' the new euphemism for 'hindrance'

[Paul_Sengupta]

I work with supplying mobile phone networks to various customers (currently mostly Vodafone in the UK). I think their networks are definitely an investment for them rather than an enabler. Mind you, I think the accountants and managers see it another way. The mobile network is just the bit they could outsource. Their real business is making money rather than providing a mobile network for people. Funny thing, most of the UK networks have outsourced the running of their networks....to us!

[GrahamB]

It's never an 'investment'. Kev is right - it's one of the costs of doing business - an 'enabler'.

You must either have pink tinted glasses or never have worked with a 'product' developed by IT.

Or is 'enabler' the new euphemism for 'hindrance'

Methinks you are confusing the potential of 'products' and the rubbish specification-development-implementation processes that often prevail. As an assumed victim of some of the NHS 'investments', you have my sympathies.

Try telling the board of any successful web retailer that IT isn't an enabler. They wouldn't have a business if IT didn't exist.

I have worked with and for organisations where IT was used to transform they way things were done for the better (cue arguments about ethics, capitalism, redundancies, shareholder value blah blah). I have also seen some disasters.

[Skyhawk-N]

It's never an 'investment'. Kev is right - it's one of the costs of doing business - an 'enabler'.

Maybe but not always. The project I'm currently working on is to migrate a company to a new system that everyone agrees is, commercially and competetively, a backward step. It's believed that the company is to be sold and that it is worth more with this new old system.

[Flyingfemme]

Used to be a programmer (IBM360 Assembler and PL/1) and analyst but "retired" at the Millennium and I'm happer now. Poorer, but happier.....

[Vince C]

Te he... of course it's an enabler. Not much we do today could be done without IT. Food production depends on it, as does power and utilities. Our cars were designed and built by it, and use it extensively in everyday running. The ATC system runs on IT, airliners are built, designed, and operated in a way that wouldn't be possible without IT - heck, even the airport flight status screens are driven by it; can you imagine going back to announcing each flight by Tannoy? It couldn't be done. Well actually it could - because without IT we'd be back to the movement numbers of the 1950s.

I can still fly a vintage aeroplane from a strip without IT (though these days it needs an effective radio and transponder, each designed and built using IT, and incorporating microprocessors).

It is very difficult to think of any aspect of life today that isn't 'enabled' by IT. Nonetheless, it remains an enabler - nothing more.

[wessex boy]

Back in the dark ages, I flouted the decrees of the Company Systems Department (the name for "IT" in that decade, which tells you how long ago it was), and bought four Apple IIe "microcomputers" for my product programme analysts. They were the first ""micros" in the company. That enabled the guys to do in about 15 minutes some complex calculations that had previously taken them days to do. Accuracy was a lot better, too!

We didn't get any more work done - but we were able to do a lot more sensitivity analysis on the programmes, which I like to think made for better decisions.

The Systems Dept folks were furious; they told me I'd broken this that and the other rule - but my boss outranked their boss

Within three months, I'd had to buy another ten Apple IIe, and other departments were getting them. I was assured that for my transgression, I would never work in "Systems". I never did!

For ever after, I would get calls from the "brass" saying "Systems say this/that isn't possible. What do you think?"

Then "Systems" changed its name to "Process Leadership" and I retired!

I spent 4 years trying to get your old department to comform to the global IT Strategy and buy our kit...I succeeded just as I moved on, but they were very begrudging of having to come back into line!

Vince, when I started we used to use a multimeter for checking if there was a break in the Twinax line and then an oscilliscope for measuring how far down the line the break was.

[Keef]

I spent 4 years trying to get your old department to comform to the global IT Strategy and buy our kit...I succeeded just as I moved on, but they were very begrudging of having to come back into line!

WHAT?! They didn't?!
You sure you have the right department? Or the right company?

[wessex boy]

Keef, the design team at Dunton had been using Sun and Netapps storage for years, I spent the first 3 years on the account for EMC just trying to get in through the door, it was only by succeeding in converting Jaguar/Landrover design over at Whitley, Gaydon & Solihull successfully and the pressure from the European CTO that they would even entertain a meeting!

[Keef]

Nah, that wasn't my lot! That was the techie lot
I was in close touch with LR and Jaguar, and we shared systems. One stonking great Oracle one was at the heart of it. Cost me millions a year, that did! Did the job well, though.

Which CTO were you dealing with? Not RP-J surely? If you'd mentioned my name to him, the reaction might have surprised you.

[wessex boy]

Which CTO were you dealing with? Not RP-J surely? If you'd mentioned my name to him, the reaction might have surprised you.

Nah, Mike M

[Paul_Sengupta]

Bump!

[AerBabe]

My excuse is that it's only 2233 local time. What's your excuse for thread zombification?