IT Careers in 2010 - Learn a business 170
feminazi writes "Business knowledge and domain specific skills are becoming more important to IT workers, according to Computerworld's special report on IT careers in 2010. The most sought-after corporate IT workers in 2010 may not have deep-seated technical skills at all. Traci A. Logan, vice president of information technology and vice provost for academic affairs at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. says, 'That [business skill set] is going to be more important than the straight technical skills they know, because you're going to see a closer marriage between the business and IT.'"
Yea! (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I got a question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do they just make this up as they go? (Score:3, Insightful)
I always get the idea that the "authorities" who right these articles don't have a clue about the real world.
BS Bingo Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bottom line is diversify your portfolio of skills. Pick one or more of the math, engineering, financial, public speaking, etc. skills and you will have a better chance in the future.
Re:Hey, I got a question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not consistant with my observations (Score:5, Insightful)
This runs completely counter to the outsourcing and cost focus of todays businesses. Indeed even people hired "permanantly" are usually seen as expendable at the end of major projects. These are the ones with the most domain knowledge. Business types tend to be "visionaries" and whip crackers. Rarely do the excel at requirements or planning. I have worked for major corporations since 1990 and I see the gulf between management and software professionals growing widerthan ever with the increasing sophistication of tools and the increasing complexity of projects. Engineering culture has all but disappeared.
A nation of managers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Until push comes to shove. (Score:3, Insightful)
Business skills being more important doesn't make tech skills non-essential.
TRANSLATION (Score:1, Insightful)
I can't UNDERSTAND our H1B slaves.
I need a middleman who'll be willing to work for entry-level IT wages, but do essentially all my management work for me, keeping my servants on task and getting the job done, meanwhile able to speak to me in plain MidWestern English and occasionally pick up my dry-cleaning.
That will be all.
I am sick and tired of this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Until push comes to shove. (Score:5, Insightful)
Coding is skilled labor that the company prefers to acquire as needed on a contract basis. The 'professional' job is the business analyst, technical analyst, and architect.
Look whose talking (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh, or COURSE they wish IT people knew their line of business. So why don't we start looking at the courses they'd like CS majors to NOT take in order to make time for the business courses. Databases? Obvious nope. Programming languages or operating systems? Not a great idea if you want them to pick up new platforms / languages quickly. Algorithms? Don't hire that person to a project where you need advanced warning that something won't scale well. Computer graphics? OK, maybe that one is rarely necessary, but that's just one course.
My point is whether or not the author knows it, they're asking to eat their cake and (still) have it too. They want someone to study the line of business more, but ignore the dumbing-down effect that has on their IT skills. Taken to that extreme, you may as well just offer a few extra "IT" courses within the business department, and let those people be your company's IT staff. Which in most cases is moronic for well-known reasons.
Maybe I Haven't Been Around Long Enough, But... (Score:2, Insightful)
stop and think about it (Score:4, Insightful)
You aren't born with business/writing/accounting know-how, nor with IT knowledge. People already spend a lifetime trying to be an expert in their respective fields. You can't be an expert in every field, especially those that require distinctly different skills.
The author is happy with "dumbing down". (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but that's a huge warning to me.
So, the "most sought-after" IT worker will be one who can
Why? Because
Translation:
2010 management will demand IT staff who can understand the business and technology sufficiently to manage the out-sourced projects.
Said out-sourced projects will be the actual writing of the software that supports the company and the end-user support of the remaining company employees who use the software that was written by other people outside the company.
Welcome to the "Titanic" business model.
I'm sure you can all imagine the fun that that will be. With the out-sourced support staff blaming the out-sourced programmers and the out-sourced programmers blaming the support staff
Not surprising... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hey, I got a question... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are vastly over-rating the time and effort involved in running a business. If you are technically good, and have invested in acquiring a basic set of business skills, then running a business is no big deal if you're talking about a single person consultancy.
The things you need:
1) Basic accounting (and I mean VERY basic--my accountant does all the hard stuff. And besides, most of advanced accounting is learning ways to lie with numbers while still remaining a respected if not respectable member of the community. The least honest developer I know once voiced a desire to become an accountant, and I can well understand why.)
2) Basic business law, especially contract law (lawyers are a lot more expensive than accountants, but the cost of failure is also higher. Tread carefully.)
3) Presentation skills. Stay away from all the bullshit seminar stuff. Join your local community theatre group.
4) Reputation. Every business contact you have, ever professional contact, is marketing. Every arm's length interaction you have is marketing for your future business. Businesses don't start in a vacuum and they are essentially based on relationships of trust based on reputation. Build yours carefully and it will be your greatest asset when you strike out on your own.
It just isn't that hard to be in business for yourself. There is a certain level of complexity you have to deal with, and a lot of discipline required to deal with it (I update my books religiously ever Friday morning, for example--keeping on top of the paperwork is vital.) But 90% of my time is spent on purely technical work. I just get to keep 100% of the profit from that, instead of paying most of it to support an ignorant manager with a big ego.
It took me five years to move from academia to being in busines for myself. Every career move I made within that time was aimed at getting me closer to the goal. I took jobs so I could learn particular business skills or get a closer look at how a small business is run. Anyone with a brain can do this, and acquire sufficient business skills to run their own show. It just isn't that hard.
Make sh*t work (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you'd damn well better have the needs of the business in mind in any position. But if Company A decides they're going to have manager types who don't have IT skills doing skilled IT work, they're going to find out real quick that sh*t don't work and there's no one around who can fix it.
Let's cut to the chase... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Anyone can pilot the ship in calm weather. (Score:4, Insightful)
And that is the essence of "tech viewpoint" vs "business viewpoint".
May I dare to suggest that you develop tech skills and business skills? I am not employed in management, and don't intend to be, but understanding some of the skills/viewpoints of management allows me to:
1. Better understand the priorities of management (you know, those guys that sign the cheques?)
2. Be more skilled at promoting my ideas to management (the stuff alot of workers find really difficult, but is really valuable to the company)
3. Deal with customer issues more succesfully (for some reason our customers are more concerned with being profitable than with being assured by me that our product is within the ordered specification. This sometimes involves coming up with solutions that require some knowledge of business)