How much is too much?

The most fascinating aspect of the IT industry, is its constantly evolving nature. Several years back, I had posted about surviving in this industry and how this field is yet to witness its first batch of retirees – meaning, those who’ve started their career and completing it in this field alone. While those in manufacturing like traditional business domains, have a straight forward career path with definite milestones and end dates, IT always ensures that, being in this industry is like walking on a tread mill. You need to keep walking even to stand on the same place. The tech with which one might’ve started his career, would’ve become obsolete in few years’ time and worst part being, it would take away a good chunk of his professional profile, making him redundant.

With mobile phones competing with computers for processing speed and features, gone are the days, when IT was niche and specific to those from computer background. Nowadays, anyone with a half decent smart phone, knows more about trending apps and cutting edge niche skills, than a straitjacketed IT employee. A while back, just like how engineers who do ECE, EEE were called in at homes to fix and repair any fault in electrical instruments, IT guys would be called for fixing any issue related to computers, be it hardware or software. Nowadays, its become so much different that, whenever there is any new app or any software that gets installed, the kids and oldies at home do it first and then enquire IT people for any updates on those apps. And interestingly, the so-called professionals of the field, the IT guys in other terms, are often found wanting in this sphere of updating themselves, including yours truly.

To quote from my own example, I often find myself stumped when people talk of new apps or tools or software’s that help them on their daily tasks and even more so, when they query me asking for help with the tool. Considering that, I am in an industry where learning is as important as doing, I often found myself in wilderness with the pace with which this industry evolves!! Every alternate month, some new tech or tool hits the market and suddenly it becomes the next big thing!! Agreed, COBOL is still there. But will anyone be able to survive just with their mainframe skills alone? The concept of core competency is fast dissolving and being a jack of all trades seems to be the norm of the day. Especially, if you are in a service provider company, the only thing that matters and makes you relevant is, how quickly you can grasp new stuff and troubleshoot. There are no incubation periods or Knowledge transitions or even reference documents. I knew of a friend, who “mastered” data warehousing during his 13 hour flight to US, the best part being, before he was asked to switch off the phone during take-off, then only he knew the reason for his visit – to troubleshoot DW issues. That he did manage to survive the task is a different story. But this is not an exceptional example but more of common place.

At the root, the cut throat competition could be the reason, where if you are unwilling there are more than enough groups who would go above and beyond what is requested. But my pet peeve has always been from the end client’s perspective. Are they making this investment to exhaust their budget or how truly they are aware or made aware of the need for such a solution? With product development companies going dime-a-dozen, there should be some standardization at some point, which in no way should impact the innovative nature or the free spirit to think different. To quote another example, in one of my previous companies, there was an issue which was because of incorrect and infrequent update of an excel document by multiple users. One of our guys, came up with a quick tool to move the content into the app. It was much appreciated and he got good recognition for his efforts. But the key point here was, his solution was never for the query posed by the client. All it needed was diligent update by the end user, irrespective of the option provided. Moreover the tool came with overheads like having dedicated database, a developer to ensure no connectivity related issue who would also double up as admin, plus multiple roles for multiple people. And above all it was not portable via mail!! So instead of solving a simple problem, it only ended up complicating things. What appeared as a fancy value add, in fact ended up creating new problems rather than providing the right answer. It may be wrong to generalize, but I see a similar affair ongoing with all these various chat related apps, online retailers etc.

In no way, I am justifying not knowing about tools to the reason for their existence. But, considering the fact that this industry is heavily dependent on individuals skills to learn and adapt, it might be prudent to streamline the thought process towards creating solutions. It can be tubeless tyres, nitrogen filled ones or simple basic wooden wheel, end of the day, if accessory to a wheel is what I am re-inventing, it should at least serve an unique purpose.