Information Technology as a Profession

To say that there’s such thing as a 0 defect or perhaps 6 sigma achievements for IT implementations is like saying that you porked 6 million women and no one’s pregnant cause all of them were sterile. Odds are; you’re the one that’s shooting blanks.

The problem with IT is that it’s not a professional degree, if you extrapolate the word “professional” contextually, you could say that IT is not even a “profession”. Accreditation is not governed by any one body but MANY bodies. Most of them disappear after the company goes belly up or swallowed by another company. There’s no need to be “licensed” to practice and a vainly worded “software disclaimer” notice is all you need versus a professional indemnity insurance. On top of that, you can charge USD1K-5K per day for services; depending on how Caucasian you look or SGD1K-5K depending on how Caucasian you sound.

IT FACT 1: There’s no real way to tell whether the person you hired is good just by paper qualifications; because most of it are gobbledygook.

Try to spot the differences - CISSP, CISA, CCNP, CCIE, MCITP, WTF, MILF, ROTFL and MOFO

IT FACT 2: Even if the so called IT professional is good in one thing, it doesn’t make him good in the practice of IT.

If IT was medicine and the professional a heart transplant specialist then; the heart valve would come from Cisco, the tissue replacement from Intel and the whole heart from IBM and on the side, the doctor would be pushing you a Java based heart from open source market on the cheap. Plus he’s probably certified by HP and has never worked on IBM equipment before but claims that it’s “all the same”.

IT FACT 3: Because there are no professionals, you; the customer can dictate pricing, parts and scheduling. Best part is, the IT “professional” almost always agrees.

“Doc, I don’t give a shit what you say, I have my honeymoon coming up so I want my heart transplant done in 2 hours and discharge me immediately. I plan to boink my wife all through the trip! My friend says that the doc next door can do it in 2 hours so I won’t have anything less!!!”, the doctor smiles reluctantly, calls the nurse to page the 10 other doctors on duty because a 20 hour operation can be shrunk to 2 by sheer number of doctors.

IT FACT 4: I have no balls Sir, I have a punane (No offence to people who have punanes)
That pretty much describes IT management. The customer is always right and everything can be fixed by having the staff not sleep, and sheer resource math. Then there’s the gwailo coefficient, the whiter he is, the better the perceived outcome of the project. There’s also this argument by a manager, let’s go live first and see how it works, all the testing in the world is not going to help find real world bugs. It’s like a chief engineer going “let’s have the building load up with people to see if it collapses...”

IT FACT 5: There’s no such thing as failures, just delays and more budget requirements.
As long as the project objective is met, it’s ok that the sutures are still bleeding out while you’re screwing your wife. If you die, statistically, the operation is still a success as more than 50% of the patients survived.

My message to all you “customers” and “managers” out there who feels validated in dictating IT timeless, budgets and resources, I say this – "‘May you be stewed and boiled by a high fever, you son/daughter of a dog.’"

To IT Managers who acquiesce and paints this wonderful picture that everything is possible – "KOOS IMEK...!!!"

Ending
To end I was even more surprised discovering that Divinity and Ministry is offered as a 1st Professional Degree. Information Technology degree was no where in sight, closest I suppose was “information science” but no where was Computer Sciences or IT, deemed a professional degree.

Sure, I’ve already mentioned that, but consider this - studying the invisible man in the sky is more “professional” than studying vapourware.