[LINK] new IT council

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Tom Koltai wrote:
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au 
>> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of 
>> Bernard Robertson-Dunn
>> Sent: Monday, 11 May 2009 10:24 PM
>> To: link
>> Subject: Re: [LINK] new IT council
>>
>>
>> stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> <SNIP>
>> I am assuming that John Grant studied civil engineering, which was 
>> probably a requirement for working as a civil engineer with Brisbane 
>> City Council.
>>
>> What is it with the IT industry that we have so many people in senior 
>> positions in industry bodies, vendors and user IT departments with no 
>> formal qualifications in Electronics or Computer Science?
> 
> I think I could hazard a guess at this.
> 
> Firstly - there were no compsci degreses in the '70's or the early 80's.
<snip>

Not true, I did computer science as part of a Bachelor of Science at UWA
1979-81, before joining the Public Service in Canberra. At the time, Curtin
(then WAIT) also offered a "more business orientated" IT course - a friend,
who graduated from that course, also started work in Canberra but then moved
to Sydney and Westpac.

Since then, IT education seems to have moved into Engineering and
Business/Economics. So, in my view, more recent graduates miss out on
the Scientific Process/perspective/grounding of ICT.

But let's take a quick look at a couple of CEOs as an indicator:
IT Geek runs Commbank and Anthropologist runs Telstra

I do have some reservations about Civil Engineers and ICT/innovation.

Civil Engineering is an established profession and necessarily conservative in its
approach - otherwise even more buildings and bridges would have collapsed,
though perhaps fewer tunnels could have been built in Sydney. But maybe this can
provide some useful insights/recognition/and much needed structure to the ICT
Profession.

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: (+61)0414 869202