Deatrice, one of the winners for the October 2007 drawing for the MOM 2005 Unleashed book asks:
How important is it for IT Professionals to stay true to themselves about the skills, training, and etc. that they don’t have? I notice a lot of “IT Professionals”, boost in what they don’t understand, why?
IT is a huge field, and the technology is constantly changing. Its more than the version of a product you are working with, its all the products that apply to that particular skillset, and all the ways that that skillset can grow. Let me give a historical example.
Long before my time and yours, Charles Babbage and Herman Hollerith used the punch card (first used in the 1700s to control textile looms!) for the 1890 US Census. The technology then was making holes in a card and tabulating it with a machine (the Hollerith machine) instead of keeping track using pencil and paper. Those cards evolved into a standard for data entry, data storage, and even US government checks. Starting in the mid 1970s, punch cards were replaced with terminals, although the terminals continued to display 80 columns in text mode for compatibility with existing software. Even today, some computer programs use the convention of text columns.
By saying in the mid 1950s (and 60s and into the 70s) that the punch card was the end-all of getting information into a CPU and there was no need to understand any other mechanisms for data entry, one limited themselves in their growth. By saying there are things you don’t understand, you accomplish several things:
You admit knowledge is fluid and changing and you have a responsibility to yourself and your organization to strive to learn new things.
You admit you could be fallible (it can be bad to say you know everything and then have someone expose you as not!).
You realize that the field is ever-changing (IBM only introduced its “PC” in 1981!) Growth and stretching are good!
