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May 02, 2004
Solving problems
Back from a weekend spent with a long-time friend (and family). Interesting talks (as always) as he's been in the IT business for longer than I have and we always have something to talk about. Now, my friend has always been the techie/hacker guy, knee deep in code - and liking it. So, even though we both see IT from different angles, our main topic on a long Saturday walk was how IT just isn't solving enough problems. The IT companies are too eager to market or sell the next big thing and don't spend enough time listening to the everyday problems their users (and customers) may be having. Things like the number of (incompatible) "information buckets" you'll find inside any company. And no easy way to consolidate and synchronize data between those buckets so you only need - say - one address book instead of 3 or 4.
Posted by Matthew at May 2, 2004 07:13 PM
Comments
First off Matt, good name and site. I pop into #Mobitopia on occassion at matt_degeorge. I spent 6 good years in IT and have been out of IT completely for almost 2 years and it has given me a much better perspective on peoples frustrations and I agree, I think IT wants the NEXT BIG THING and tend to spend too much time firefighting and not enough time solidifying things. Its like anything tho people get wowed by the latest and greatest and forget the basics, programming is just one thing bitten by this bug. The basics of anything from Accounting to Programming will always stay the same no matter what else changes. While the style of accounting for Microsoft, a high tech company might use different techniques than a local mom and pop store, accounting is accounting.
They call it customer service, time to LISTEN to the customer then get the basics done, a well running computer system so that improvements with the latest and greatest can be done. I worked as a contractor for UMASS Memorial Hospital in Worcester MA and that was the best IT team I ever worked with and we did a migration from various Windows PC's to Windows 2000 Pro on desktops and once done was 1/5 the problems as before. Back to Basics is never a bad thing.
Posted by: Matt Degeorge at May 3, 2004 05:07 PM