IT skills (The pros of double degrees?)

[richard@auscoms.com.au]

At 1:35 PM 26/11/98, Matthew Allen wrote:
>>who then must learn about those issues, but to information management
>>specialists who, if needs
>>be, can learn some heavy technical stuff but probably don't need to

Tony wrote:
>Worked for me. And you _do_ need to.


Indeed, Tony. People need to know more, not less, and the fiction that "you
don't need to know about this" is a con-job. 

<rant>
I suspect the attitude that "this is something you don't need to know about"
makes me splutter. It's a fiction put about by various people:
1) Sales reps, who would rather sell to people who _don't_ know (better for
sales); and would rather sell to "upper level management" (better for the ego);
and happily find the two co-incide;
2) Some journalists, who would rather not have to learn about things to write
about them (easier that way); would rather write for "upper level management"
(the ego thing again); and find it's more fun to cover "how department x screwed
up its system, thereby wasting ten billion dollars of taxpayers money" (ego plus
career prospects).
3) Market researchers. A report of detailed technical content goes to technical
people; fluff goes to executives; guess who has the bigger budget?
4) Outourcing advocates: the less the organisation knows, the less it is capable
of doing itself; the executive only needs a pocket calculator to look like an IT
hero (until it comes unstuck); and people can toss around phrases like "a new
focus on our core business" without asking whether control of their IT
capability _is_ part of the core business.
</rant>

Richard Chirgwin