Paul Wehr's Journal

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Recipients? Not you.

A co-worker recently loaned me a book that shows while technology has made tremendous leaps in 38 years, we've made little progress in the way of actually applying that technology in productive ways:

Most business persons who want to use a minicomputer in the office take the second option, and hire a microprogrammer to do the work for them. We offer the same caveats that would apply in hiring any expert: check out his reputation and his past work, make him set a deadline, and don't pay until you're sure the programs are working the way you want them to

- Woolrdrige, Susan & London, Keith (1973). The Computer Survival Handbook (pp 149) Ipswich, Massachusetts: Gambit.

(emphasis added)

Despite this sound advice being available for nearly 40 years, the market is absolutely awash with business thinking that engaging a professional architect by the hour is the only way to go. I personally have yet to see this result in anything but epic failure.

For years an accute shortage of trained people existed. Standards for hiring programmers, for example, dropped rapidly; there just weren't enough people with degrees in mathematics to fill a fraction of the jobs open. ... The law of supply and demand operated; there were many more jobs than people to fill them, and salaries rocketed

- Woolrdrige, Susan & London, Keith (1973). The Computer Survival Handbook (pp 177) Ipswich, Massachusetts: Gambit.

There are now perhaps 5 orders of magnitude more computers on the planet than there were in 1973, while the number of qualified technical people has probably not advanced more than 2 or 3. We are in worse shape now than we were then. Bottom line is that there are more seats to fill than people to fill them. If you are considering an IT project that requires technical people, consider that the required resources may simply not be available, or would be prohibitively expensive. You may need to consider non-technical alternatives. Sure it would be great if anthropomorphic robots did all the work, but it just isn't going to happen.