You can’t do sh without I.T.*

Last Friday I woke up without a job for the first time in about 15 years. It’s weird and not because I don’t have a job to task-list through every day but because I have a million crazy ideas I can finally pay attention to. I also have a mortgage and adult shit that I need to be real about so I have a million reality based concerns as well. One thing is clear, though; I know what I hate.

IRL I have about 14 years of professional IT experience. To take a guess, roughly four of those years, I thoroughly enjoyed because I either consulted with IT customers, worked on non-traditional IT projects, worked with folks that really wanted to provide a rich experience for their users or could run things how I saw fit. In the last case, the user and their experience always, always won.

But still, we’re talking about terrible work to fulfillment ratio (7:2.) The majority of my work was fighting some stupid platform battle, hobbling users and their machines, integrating proprietary systems with proprietary systems then explaining why this was a bad idea in the first place or reacting to past bad ideas and general neglect.

My IT philosophy, if I can be so bold as to use that word, is this: IT should be agile, invisible, enabling and the user’s needs always win. The Good Ninja.

Today, I was fortunate enough to talk to someone about an IT job. It wasn’t an ideal position but it was something that could attach me to this company in the hope that the environment would change enough in the future to allow me to slide, coax or batter my way into a currently non-existent position that I want.

During our conversation, I expanded on my approach to IT. This didn’t go over well and exposed a contempt this person held for “his” users. “Users,” he said, “suck.” “Things would be a hell of a lot better without users.”

This was a joke. This was not a good joke because it’s an old refrain in the IT industry.

I countered his statement and he made it clear by way of talking shit that his joke came from a place of real disdain.

Our conversation meandered after this and ended with a pleasant, “Thank you. We’ll be in touch.”

Like I said, I know what I hate and I hate this attitude. Wish me luck!

*Years ago, I had a Café Press store with for the “You Can’t Do SH without I.T.” phrase. I sold a few t-shirts and mouse pads but that was it. I was young and stupid about how IT should operate. The attitude expressed in the phrase is wrong.

Disclosure: If I thought I could make a buck selling shit with this phrase, I do it in a heartbeat. #unemployed