Confessions of an IT Director

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

Confession number one: That quote was pre-populated into the blog template. I have no idea whatsoever about whom to attribute that quote to (neither does the internet, it seems, because there’s no evidence that Oscar Wilde ACTUALLY said that), but it’s relevant to the motivation behind starting this blog. I’m aiming to chronicle my path through the twisted world of IT… read that again, my path. However, weirdly enough I’ve been to enough training courses, trade shows, and conferences and networked with enough professionals in my field to know that while the players change, the game remains largely the same. The experiences are shared, the frustration common, and the stories… uncannily similar.

Hiding behind big, popular words like “DevOps” and “Agile” and “Process” are people who largely struggle (in my experience) with the same sorts of challenges across every vertical in this profession. That’s the good and bad of IT, really, because generally speaking, it isn’t industry specific. My path has taken me from services, to public education, legal, manufacturing, aerospace, higher education, and more… and everywhere I go, I’m still IT. 

In that same vein, however, there’s always this chasm between the business units and IT. This feeling that the business and IT don’t see eye to eye. I’d bet that’s the reason behind the high turnover in my profession, but I digress. Here’s where you get the IT-isms such as “adding value back into the business”, but it’s more than that. It’s learning to live in an IT driven world, even when the businesses don’t see it that way. 

Maybe you’re like me. You grew up being tabbed as the person who, if it plugged into the wall, you were responsible for fixing. You got calls from your grandmother about how to change the input on her TV. Your boss calls you from another country because his personal email won’t load on his (personal) iPad (true story), and your places of employment all recognize the desperate need for (IT) change, but want it to look, act, and feel exactly the same. 

Or maybe you’re not! Maybe you see IT as the great mystery – you don’t understand what we do! Or why, for that matter! I always joke that I’m like Chandler Bing (from Friends)… nobody (even in my family) knows what it is I do. 

This blog is for you. I’ll share tips, tricks, and stories about how I got to where I am, and hopefully in a somewhat humorous way, give thoughts about how to make IT normal in an IT world. Hopefully you realize that you’re not alone, that the players change, but the game remains largely the same. Then, we can walk this path together, not as the “IT guy” (or gal), but as a normal person, who just happens to be proficient in IT. If I can provide you just a little perspective on an otherwise ambiguous career path, then I see that as an absolute win!

So these are my confessions, written down so that you all can relate. Or not…. But I’m willing to bet that my experiences in this wonderful profession are more shared than not. 

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