Re(2): Re(2): The future of computing -- MIDRANGE-L

Hi Chris,

MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com writes:
>as a Senior P/A, you may not be often charged with making such
>choices. 

Actually, you might be surprised how much input I have (it's a small
company, and titles don't actually mean a whole lot).

I really do agree with a great deal of what you say, and I'm not sure it's
worth anyone's time to keep picking away at the rest. Maybe it boils down
to just a different way of saying essentially the same thing. If I may, I
think your point, basically, is that IS professionals should make every
effort to become as familiar as possible with a wide range of
technologies/tools/solutions, so that when they are asked for an opinion
they can be as informed and unbiased as possible. I completely agree with
that. Further, I think you are saying that IS professionals who say they
don't need to learn anything new because they already know enough are
doing their companies/clients a disservice. I agree with that, too.

Following up on a point that Steve Richter touched on, though, I think the
real problem may be that in many cases the recommendations don't come from
IS professionals at all, but from managers higher up who have little (if
any) technical experience). At my last job, the CIO came right out of
marketing, and his main qualification was that he  had been the CEO's "Mr.
Fix-It" for years. He went to a Micro$oft conference in 1995 and came back
talking about how Exchange Server was going to be the base on which the
entire corporate information infrastructure would be built (never mind
that it didn't actually "exist" yet). At another job, the Chief Knowledge
Officer had a chemical engineering background, and his main approach was
to find flashy websites advertising consulting services and then bring the
companies in to do marketing presentations. He pretty quickly decided that
XML was the future ("'native' XML", actually), and he kept producing
powerpoint presentations showing that as the basis for everything.

This isn't a question of someone knowing one solution well and ignoring
possible better alternatives; it's someone not really knowing much of
anything being bowled over by hype. In my experience, it's very difficult
to deal with these people -- they are convinced there is a simple,
silver-bullet solution, and they are frankly bored (and threatened) by
people who try to point out that the situation is more complicated than
that. Are they hurting their companies? IMHO, "yes". Are they IS
professionals? IMHO, "no". But may be they are the bigger problem. . . .

JMHO

Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@juddwire.com

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