Techie's Disgruntled History

Not me, I promise

Just read an article at ZDNet (AU) regarding job satisfaction, specifically 'most-hated' jobs. Four of the top ten were in the IT field and the most disgruntled was the Director if Information Technology. (http://www.zdnet.com.au/it-dominates-most-hated-jobs-list-339323134.htm). The article faults the "end user" which is basically everyone outside of the IT field.


Being in the industry for over decade now and seeing all of the changes that accompanied that time, this is not at all surprising. In 1998 when I snagged my first IT job, we were rock stars. I didn't need an education, much experience, or references. I just had to be able to speak enough tech jargon to out-wit the HR person. And, because we were stars, we were paid well above anyone else with our same credentials (most in the field at that time had graduated from Year 12 and that was about it). We also had that rock star swagger to us, after all we were smart, over payed, and we were the nerds making it rich. We were extremely arrogant.


Then came the bubble bust after Y2K. Those who had taken the initiative to educate themselves and get certified in specific areas maintained their level of awesomeness (luckily I had), while those that rode the lazy train were dumped off at the 'end-of-fiscal-year 2000' train stop (if they made it that far). We maintained our status in companies because tech stars were performing voodoo witch tricks that no one could comprehend. And we sure as hell weren't going to tell them how easy it actually was.


Then a couple things happened. People started to get PCs into their home. Worse yet, they started to understand the mystical creatures. Techs had to start digging deep and begin to specialize. There was some level of witch-doctoring maintained if we dug deep enough and buried ourselves in those crevasses which "end users" did not explore. Also, for some reason, businesses learned from their Y2K mistakes and techies no longer had free rein. 


What happened after that is really important in the evolution of the techie. Up to this point we were your typical INTJ or INTPs with little regard to our social skills. We didn't need to be. All of the other fields had to learn political games, relationship building and communication skills. Those skills worked against us having technology covered in a shroud of mystery, so we ignored them and tried to work against them. But the more people understood, the more us techies seemed like immature, uneducated grunts rather than the valuable rock stars we once were.


Also around that time CIO and Director of IT positions became numerous. Often, because of our uninformed view of the macro company vision and culture, techies were overlooked for such positions which were typically held by accountants of all people. They had the same strengths and deficiencies in their core personality, but they had learned to navigate the politics and relationships.


Ever since that place, techies have been playing catch-up. For many people in the field, a relationship with a computer is much easier than that with other human beings. So it is not a surprise that techies are disgruntled about their job, and even less surprising that all of the stated issues that contribute to the disgruntled feeling involve people as opposed to situation-based issues. Also not surprising is that there is a general lack of respect for those in the IT field. Our 'Wizard-of-Oz' history doesn't exactly build credibility.


So there we are, in my opinion, where we generally deserve to be.