I wasn’t sure what blog to post it, my professional blog or this one. It’s on the theme of Why I Hate IT.

I don’t like the initials for Information Technology. IT was a broken concept from the beginning. IT’s roots began in the late 1980s when PCs became a mainstream product in corporate or enterprise settings.

There are two types of approaching technology, IS for Information Services or Systems and IT. The former was more focused towards users, focusing on solutions and outcomes and the understanding of how to craft a piece of software for the users.

IT brought a very different concept (and people as well, even though you had cocky IS people here and here.) This concept is where I feel the robots took over the world and brought security at greater risks. PC’s cousin initials, Political Correctness was also the IT’s mantra. Basically if you didn’t follow ether or PC, then instead of being racist, you’re “old fashioned”, “in the past”, or defending proprietary standards. There was always religious wars (like Macs over PCs, PDPs over System 360s, etc.) But the world of IT brought these wars on the same radical level in the political and social worlds at that time.

IT has been all about:

• personal computers
• servers
• general purpose operating systems (like Windows)
• standardized networking (like TCP/IP or the Internet)
• standardized business practices (everything should be the same)
• standardized approach to solutions (because no system or service or customer or user needs to be “different”)
• heavy focus on marketing and sales, and manipulation
• same as above but worse, selling a beige or black box with a generic operating system and push the customers (way beyond coaching) saying “just follow this path and you’ll be good” as the IT guy or sales types have no idea that the joke should be on them!
• IT people write like a Party Girl on MySpace by MiXInG AcRoNymS wHen SAiD AcRoNymS are ReAllY AbbReAViTonS
• Complete disregard of end users as “lazy”, “whiners”, “clueless” as IT managers sit around in their guarded cubicles tweaking the networks during the business day as they have nothing else to do to keep their job from being fired.

IS was about

• mainframes
• servers (like NetWare or Windows NT)
• less people in the department
• Focus on software because the hardware would “just work”
• prayed upon reliability
• anything that had to do with information was their role (as opposed to IT where if anything wasn’t made after 1980 and didn’t have an Intel chip or a Microsoft operating system running on Cisco networking gear – well you’re shown the door.)
• Some IS units were reporting under Facilities
• IS units had to know business
• IS had to understand users
• IS would closer to end users as opposed to IT
• IS people had to know how to write properly
• Some IS people were cocky, but not as obnoxious as IT guys
• Vendors of IS software or hardware, had their customers in mind, and the customer’s customers.

In terms of business outcomes, many IT units never had the customer or user in mind, but often the shareholders or the Officers

• IT types have been in managerial positions where their sole duty was to cut costs to please shareholders. Also IT types were trained to work up the ranks to be the next clueless CIO. IT types had learned the idea of saying no to long term investments in tech spending on Cap Ex but Op Ex because the technology changes every 3 years, or so the marketing people brainwashing the IT managers. These people are white collared hacks
• IS techs learned the hard way of a penny saved is a penny earned. They weren’t ageists, they looked a piece of software and never looked at a “sell by” or EOL date. They looked it at just software or hardware. These people were Cap Ex spenders, which is a good thing. The Vendors had to be on call 24x7x365. In the world of IT, gawd forbid you had to come to a customer on Christmas to resolve a problem. This is a blue collared type of a job that is dead.

IT managers have zero social skills and often will interrogate users if they make a “mistake”. IT people take things, to use the cliche literally and they lack the ability to ask follow up questions without making them look guilty. Guilt trips always worked in IT. IT people will never talk to a user on a discussion group, by passing the buck to give them a URL to another website, without it being shortened or alt texted. If you want to help, then why aren’t you really helping them? And gawd forbid you are in a small shop where you spent Cap Ex on second hand hardware (and yeah it exists out there!) and you state it on a site and instead of getting a direct answer, you have to perpetually be reminded the product is past EOL (like we already know that.)

Lastly is security. IT was never built on the foundation of security. Except for NetWare, most PC based operating systems were basically the client or workstation class with some added abilities to be a server. Many domain controllers were sitting in offices with larger than life towers or on wire racks before the move to server form factors became the standard in the early 00s. IT’s best defense is to “be on the latest and greatest” on the most reliable and secure software and hardware network. IT people will scare your pants off and say if you are still on Windows 2003, you’ll get hacked. And yet even a supported operating systems was likely to be blamed for the Target breach as Point of Sale or POS terminal versions of Windows XP was and is still in support at the time, but never let the facts get away of a good sale.

I’ve dealt with egotistical people for most of my life, and for my entire life. I do not like the idea of IT, the business model, and how users are being treated under this broken model has to end. Say what you want about clouds, but at least with IT, clouds will finally break the barriers of this overrated groups of control freaks once and for all. Because your CCIE or MS Certified skillsets won’t weather you from this storm of destruction to the IT world!