I have worked in IT for around 30 years. To start with the techies ran everything and we survived by the seat of our pants because we were good at the technical side. DR and testing were not top of the agenda but the industry was great fun.
Later computers became more mainstream and most medium sized companies had a handful of mini computers. The managers knew nothing but just kept out of it.
Today the management consultants have got their claws into IT and so someone who has no experience of IT but has attended a couple of ITIL courses gets put in charge. They have no understanding of the fundamental concepts of IT systems and so they spend all their time on paper shuffling, meetings and politics.
My job today is endless meetings and reporting and going over the same issues time after time without very much progress being made.
The jobs have also become more and more specialised. I remember when I ran the OS, the DBMS and the network. Now there is a team of specialists for each of these. Consequently the specialists have no understanding outside their discipline and fault finding has been replaced by a standard set of question and answers with replace or rebuild as the fallback.
I think that the best days of the IT industry are behind us.
I have heard that this is the trajectory of most new technologies.
When the telegraph was invented there were a few people who could operate the morse code machines and they were paid well. These operators became so good that they could recognise each other by the way they tapped the code out. But eventually telephone replaced telegraph and today a telephone engineer's job is probably no more than board swapping.
We’re stuck in it because we’re good at it and it pays OK. Too late to start on something else and what else has the chaotic energy of a new industry?
