What is the biggest change to working in IT since you started your career?

[NotAllThere]

The two biggest changes are:

1) offshoring of the technical parts of IT to know-nothing incompetent dumbos, largely in India.
2) the growth of on-shore know-nothing incompetent dumbos in the non-technical parts of IT.

I'm fairly sure that 1) is a consequence of 2).

On the plus side, the priesthood of IT has largely disappeared in favour of more customer-centric models.

[vetran]

The two biggest changes are:

1) offshoring of the technical parts of IT to know-nothing incompetent dumbos, largely in India.
2) the growth of on-shore know-nothing incompetent dumbos in the non-technical parts of IT.

I'm fairly sure that 1) is a consequence of 2).

On the plus side, the priesthood of IT has largely disappeared in favour of more customer-centric models.

pretty much what I was going to say about IT organisations but you did it more eloquently.

The the consumerisation of computers,moving from a serious investment to a disposable resource has cheapened the whole thing. If its not fast enough buy more hardware not fix it has let a lot of muppets in - I suppose I can't complain

[Sysman]

Having to deal with agencies.

Which I suppose is a logical consequence of permie jobs not really being permanent any more.

[malvolio]

pretty much what I was going to say about IT organisations but you did it more eloquently.

The the consumerisation of computers,moving from a serious investment to a disposable resource has cheapened the whole thing. If its not fast enough buy more hardware not fix it has let a lot of muppets in - I suppose I can't complain

The alternate view...

Tin and wires are a commodity; your £300 desktop PC costs £3k to feed and water over its three year life, the big £6k server about £30k. Hence use big servers and virtualise on small, single purpose VMs: same maintenance cost, about a twentieth the hardware cost. The economics of having an IT department means the tin is cheap, maintenance is expensive, upgrading for capacity is buying a bigger box; updating an old one is a waste of money

Ditto code: using COTS packages and presentation layer protocols takes away the need for monolithic coding and bespoke applications in 95% of real world requirements, the effort goes into putting the information in front of the user. Computers and network are cheap, people are expensive, so you don't waste money on people to repeat what's already been done, use them where they're needed.

IT is a commodity service these days, and driven by people who represent the business consumer, not the dinosaurs like me that could build a computer room from the ground up, flood wire an office block and write a payroll application in my spare time. I see the technology as a collection of capabilities these days: but I still know how they work and interact, unlike almost all the idiot PMs who get to run programmes of work(I have a demand in my Inbox that I join an eight hour meeting to discuss the HMG Security accreditation of a datacentre with a bunch of PMs and cost planners. Nobody seems to have noticed that accreditation is a planning/transition project activity and I do BaU, and I'm certainly not competent to criticise a CLS consultant on his specialist subject. Heigh ho...).

You want to do technology proper, go join the Microsofts and Oracles of this world; don't expect to find it in the high street.

[vetran]

The alternate view...

Tin and wires are a commodity; your £300 desktop PC costs £3k to feed and water over its three year life, the big £6k server about £30k. Hence use big servers and virtualise on small, single purpose VMs: same maintenance cost, about a twentieth the hardware cost. The economics of having an IT department means the tin is cheap, maintenance is expensive, upgrading for capacity is buying a bigger box; updating an old one is a waste of money

sort of aligns with what I was trying to say, they just upgrade but they don't know why.

more hardware seems to be the default, rather than lets understand why.

Also the fact every one's PC is so fast large network applications running slow come as a shock.

We have multiple huge data centres, now if they were actually reliable as my VMware twins I'd be happy.

[malvolio]

sort of aligns with what I was trying to say, they just upgrade but they don't know why.

more hardware seems to be the default, rather than lets understand why.

Also the fact every one's PC is so fast large network applications running slow come as a shock.

We have multiple huge data centres, now if they were actually reliable as my VMware twins I'd be happy.

No, they do know why, in a well run shop with proper capacity planning. But as you say, the keyword is "proper": too many people don't know what that is and how far into the business it has to operate!

[VectraMan]

The internet probably. Back in the day I used Borland C and then Visual C which came with help files for things like the Windows SDK and MFC which is what you used for reference along with the odd book. Nowadays you wouldn't look anywhere other than the internet, not just for reference but for solutions to problems. As often as not these days you solve problems by finding some post by somebody who's already had and solved the same problem.

It's true that there's a lot more libraries and frameworks you can use, but that just means you can do more and bigger things. That doesn't change the amount of programming you do, at least not in my experience. Programming by drag and drop components is something that's been talked about for at least the twenty years I've been doing this professionally, but like many 'next big things' it's never quite worked out.

[Sysman]

The assembled congregation will be unsurprised to learn that I'm still using Borland C++ v4.52 largely because I like it. And it was free on the front of a magazine 15 or so years ago.

The Microsoft thing, not so much, never did get on very well with it.

I avoided C for quite a while, mainly because Microsoft were telling me that it was the only way to go.

I'd predicted from reading the K&R book in the 80s that this null terminated string stuff would cause problems.

Which it duly did.

I used Borland Delphi and as VectraMan observed for Borland C, it came with the MS SDK and in a format I could call from Delphi.

[darrylmg]

You lucky lucky git, the first one I played with had 4k of core and an ASR33 to type yer progs in on, with a room to itself.

When I think about it, I'm still programming machines with 4k of memory (or less), but these days they've got between 8 & 40 pins on a plastic package & if you drop some of them on the floor you have to get a microscope to find the damn thing.



The assembled congregation will be unsurprised to learn that I'm still using Borland C++ v4.52 largely because I like it. And it was free on the front of a magazine 15 or so years ago.

The Microsoft thing, not so much, never did get on very well with it.

Was that PC Plus by any chance?
I've still got a copy of Delphi 3 they gave away free.

Most change for me is the people.
There are less geeks.

[barrydidit]

Was that PC Plus by any chance?
I've still got a copy of Delphi 3 they gave away free.

Most change for me is the people.
There are less geeks.

fewer geeks