Tell me your views

[Cliphead]

The situation as I see it; there are very few members of management and HR that understand IT. It’s a bit like people not understanding the travel industry and lumping baggage handlers, airport shop assistants together with airline pilots and aircraft designers. Often IT directors are ignorant of the workings of the systems they manage. The industry is full of kick-backs when it comes to projects and as a result often the worst IT consultancy will be awarded the project.

Large IT Consultancies once awarded with a project will often go to the market and subcontract for the specialist services. That is one situation where we would come in. Furthermore, the corporate blame culture leads to IT employees being too scared to make decisions or handle critical systems, the IT department will then bring in contractors like us to do the tasks.

And my favourite is; where the corporate IT has messed their own system up, they quietly get in contractors fix it and let us slip away quietly.

Finally, the IT industry has been badly damaged due to the huge flood of fast track visa applicants that are supposed to be for highly skilled people but many are not and have bogus qualifications. The government can’t distinguish between a baggage handlers and pilot equivalents in the IT world.


The above is £30 worth, to you for free.

Well said Paddy.

Back in the day IT directors / managers came from the floor up. In recent contracts you're more likely to find an accountant in charge.

[MarillionFan]

Well said Paddy.

Back in the day IT directors / managers came from the floor up. In recent contracts you're more likely to find an accountant in charge.

I have always been worried over the technical capability of IT Directors. As said, very little have served an 'apprenticeship' in IT. In larger corps it's about outsourcing, enterprise and using the best consultancies to achieve corporate goals. Very little is known about the mechanics. But do they need to is the question?

[Cliphead]

I have always been worried over the technical capability of IT Directors. As said, very little have served an 'apprenticeship' in IT. In larger corps it's about outsourcing, enterprise and using the best consultancies to achieve corporate goals. Very little is known about the mechanics. But do they need to is the question?

Good management is good management but a total lack of understanding of the mechanics and technicalities frequently leads to bad decisions (in my experience). Accountants running IT departments is a perfect example of this, outsourcing on the cheap which ultimately leads to a greater cost because the cheapest player on paper isn't necessarily the best (teams of Bob's ad nauseam...).

As a contractor for around thirty years I've seen the best and worst companies, the changes for the worst over the years, exploiting niche areas and that nagging little voice in the background whispering 'the bubble will burst soon..'

A few years ago I had a choice to go the permie route but that option is gone for many reasons so I'll be plugging away as normal, keeping Plan B alive and looking for other opportunities.

PS Still love what I do and wouldn't change anything.

[suityou01]

I agree, good management is good management. Bean counters royally **** everything up and should not be allowed near any IT projects. Cost benefit analysis is lost on them. If you are talking to a project manager without any IT background it can be quite hard to explain the vagueries of the art. "Mmm do you really need to do all this testing?" etc etc

Surely the biggest destroyer of projects is company politics? Again another reason why contractors are brought in, and why it is good to be a contractor.

[MarillionFan]

I agree, good management is good management. Bean counters royally **** everything up and should not be allowed near any IT projects. Cost benefit analysis is lost on them. If you are talking to a project manager without any IT background it can be quite hard to explain the vagueries of the art. "Mmm do you really need to do all this testing?" etc etc

Surely the biggest destroyer of projects is company politics? Again another reason why contractors are brought in, and why it is good to be a contractor.

I agree with that. Present client has spent 2m and taken 3 years to get 75% their way through a project that should have cost 500k and taken 1 year. In addition, they prefer to hire contractors and consultants incase they make a mistake and get blamed. The times I have heard 'x ****ed up' or 'y ****ed up' is horrendous.

[suityou01]

I agree with that. Present client has spent 2m and taken 3 years to get 75% their way through a project that should have cost 500k and taken 1 year. In addition, they prefer to hire contractors and consultants incase they make a mistake and get blamed. The times I have heard 'x ****ed up' or 'y ****ed up' is horrendous.

And a brief root cause analysis would be?

[MarillionFan]

And a brief root cause analysis would be?

Company politics.

Poor leadership and direction allows power vaccuums to appear, that in turn allows idiots to assume that they are all powerful and effectively damage the company.

Look at the National Programme for the NHS. I went to a hospital yesterday and after Billions spent they still cannot access your patient records.

10 Years ago I was PM on a team that was the first to send a GP2GP message across the BT Data Spine as well as moving 150K patient records into a centralized repository. So where is it? Politics.

[realityhack]

I've spared Carol the hassle of having to wade through the childishness in this thread to get to the content - please don't make me have to delete any more posts, thanks.

[suityou01]

I've spared Carol the hassle of having to wade through the childishness in this thread to get to the content - please don't make me have to delete any more posts, thanks.

Checked and there's loads of childish posts left in this thread. Go back and do it properly lad.

[RichardCranium]

Well said Paddy.

Back in the day IT directors / managers came from the floor up. In recent contracts you're more likely to find an accountant in charge.

Actually, back in the old day, the whole IT department came under Finance. (More accurately, the Data Processing Department was part of Accounts.)

And in those days we were better valued, ironically.

Nowadays, the new CIO / IT Director breed is indeed merely a career manager who sees us as a service department that can be outsourced like the cleaning and catering; Finance see us a cost centre and mere overhead. And funnily enough, in such organisations the carpets are dirty, the sandwiches expensive and the IT systems tulipe.