Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Yes..I'm back

Its been a while since my last post, but alot has happened in that time. The most exciting thing that happened was I got married. Yes, the Goatette is now Mrs Goat (or Dr Goat, as she is the proud owner of a Phd). Love you babe...

Another thing that happened was the bold move to change careers. Having had a gut full of I.T crisis' that weren't really all that important, I decided to make a move to Accountancy, seduced in part by the cool cinema ads in Australia that show young, energetic people over sea's enjoying themselves and finding some time to do the numbers part time. The CA ads are beautifully made, extremely well positioned to their target demographic and I'm sure responsible in part for the increase in Uni registrations in Accounting courses throughout the country.

But when I was employed as an Accounting consultant and experienced the real accounting side of things (low pay, the most boring work and people in existence) I realised that it was all smoke and mirrors. Who ever created those ads produced gold out of bullshit.

So after returning to the mothers milk of I.T, it made me realise that if they can spin Accountancy into seemingly an excellent career choice, surely someone can do the same with IT. IT does have some things going for it..Semi-interesting work, good pay, a variety of career options from techie to project manager. It has some issues though..a reputation as a "geek" profession, no chicks and dubious job security.

What the industry needs is a vision to produce the IT professionals of tomorrow. Not necessarily the grunt work of IT (Coding, Administration, support...these will almost certainly be off shored). But the leaders, the visionaries, the analysts, commentators and managers. I.T needs to think of its self as a bit like Electricity. There are electricians and electrical engineers. The electricians are the doers, the engineers, the thinkers. Lets be the thinkers for once.