Welcome Technical IT Team Professionals (Techies) to FromTheRanks™ of IT.
By Techies I mean anyone and everyone in IT who helps build systems in a direct hands-on way. Whether you are a junior programmer, senior developer (software engineer), senior architect, database administrator, network engineer, business analyst, communications engineer, help desk expert, security guru, quality control tester, technical writer, … you happily fall into this category.
And we all know that, while plans, strategies and budgets support IT (all of which is important) nothing actually gets done without Techies.
So, welcome Techies to this new site which is dedicated to just one thing. Helping you and all of IT to not only survive the current ”mess” it is presently in, but to turn it around so IT can grow and become a vital, viable force in the business community once more.
If you haven’t already read my “About DP Harshman” page, under the “About” tab, then you do not know that I’ve spent a great deal of my IT career in the trenches, so to speak; starting as an absolutely green junior programmer I worked my way up to The Director role, with a whole lot of others in between. (In other words, I’ve been there and done that, and have the ball-caps, post-cards and t-shirts to prove it.)
Therefore, I know that in many ways Techies have it the hardest.
You get rare acknowledgment of your successes, you hear about “glitches” (real or imagined) almost instantly all hours of the day and night; you spend a tremendous number of, often-unpaid, hours building and supporting systems that make and save companies millions and billions of dollars; and yet, when “things” get tight you are among the first to be cut loose.
So … why do we do this?
Because, we have a passion for IT that is virtually unmatched by any other trade or industry.
And it is that passion that is driving me to invest my personal time and money into this site.
Now, you might be thinking that you, as a Techie, don’t need to be bothered with such “stuff” as will be posted and discussed here. Almost nothing could be further from the truth.
Calling it like I see it: there is a disease that has spread rapidly throughout the IT industry. And it needs to be cured. We all have a stake, a huge stake, in ensuring that IT gets well. We each have a very personal vested interest in halting the spread of constant out-sourcing, near-shoring and off-shoring of our IT roles and functions.
The good news is:
This organizational disease can be cured. But. It will take all IT professionals, from all levels, to do it. Not just the Executive Level. Not just the Executive and Manager Levels. But all IT professionals. Very much including you.
I wouldn’t suggest that this disease could be cured unless I felt I had a “fix” for it. A fix which defines the primary reason why IT is in such a sickly situation.
In my humble opinion, the primary cause is that the Fundamentals of IT have either been (a) lost, (b) ignored or (c) never noticed and thus never learned. Without these fundamentals … well, without them IT is in for a long difficult recovery.
By re-establishing and re-invigorating these fundamentals we can go a long way towards restoring IT’s health so it remains here, wherever here is, for all Techies, for a long time to come.
By the way, this “illness” has spread to many countries. The “sourcing elsewhere” bug is hardly exclusive to the U.S. The sad part is that there is absolutely no reason any IT functions should be shipped anywhere else than where you live. None. Well. Except for not knowing the Fundamentals Of IT.
Why this is true will become more and more evident in the days, weeks, and months to come as I roll out Posts that go in-depth into the Fundamentals Of IT. Posts based on hard-won experience rather than “ivory tower” theory imagined by someone who hasn’t pounded code under intensely tight dead-lines, or built servers from scratch in the wee hours of the morning, or spent days and weeks doing requirements analysis, or done exhaustive database recovery operations over a holiday weekend, or …
I invite you, for my sake and yours, to subscribe to the upcoming Posts, for one way or another they will be relevant to your current role, the success of your future career, and the success of all IT organizations. If you wish to become more involved, become a registered subscriber so you too can anonymously, from a Techie point of view, comment on and participate in the discussions around each Post.
Thank you for visiting. As long as you follow the Rules Of The Road (see that page under the “About” tab) you are welcome back anytime.
DP Harshman
P.S. The soon to be revealed TechNotes category is almost exclusively for you Techies. Initially its Posts will cover the entire process of building this site, from the ground up … but other subjects will follow. They will address technical issues such as architecture and design principles, coding standards, dealing with cranky PM’s and Managers … and other highly relevant topics.
