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Networking Security IT

Cringely Predicts 2020 Will See 'the Death of IT' (cringely.com) 232

Long-time technology pundit Robert Cringely writes: IT — Information Technology — grew out of something we called MIS — Management Information Systems — but both meant a kid in a white shirt who brought you a new keyboard when yours broke. Well, the kid is now gone, sent home with everyone else, and that kid isn't coming back... ever. IT is near death, fading by the day. But don't blame COVID-19 because the death of IT was inevitable. This novel coronavirus just made it happen a little quicker...

Amazon has been replacing all of our keyboards for some time now, along with our mice and our failed cables, and even entire PCs. IT has been changing steadily from kids taking elevators up from the sub-basement to Amazon Prime trucks rolling-up to your mailbox. At the same time, our network providers have been working to limit their truck rolls entirely. Stop by the Comcast storefront to get your cable modem, because nobody is going to come to install it if you aren't the first person living there to have cable...

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) extends both the network and a security model end-to-end over any network including 4G or 5G wireless. Some folks will run their applications in their end device, whether it is a PC, phone, tablet, whatever, and some will run their applications in the same cloud as SASE, in which case everything will be that much faster and more secure. That's end end-game if there is one — everything in the cloud with your device strictly for input and output, painting screens compressed with HTML5. It's the end of IT because your device will no longer contain anything so it can be simply replaced via Amazon if it is damaged or lost, with the IT kid in the white shirt becoming an Uber driver.

Since COVID-19 is trapping us in our homes it is forcing this transition to happen faster than it might have. But it was always going to happen.

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Cringely Predicts 2020 Will See 'the Death of IT'

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  • Uh... right... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LaughingRadish ( 2694765 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @06:54PM (#59883062) Journal

    This has been predicted for years and every time someone goes "no IT", they get burned when things go wrong.

    • by The Rizz ( 1319 )

      Yeah, this entire idea is just asinine. There might be an argument that IT will have smaller departments in the future, but they're not going away. And even smaller departments is questionable - it's just likely going to be a re-balance of duties away from running crap back and forth to different departments, and to backend infrastructure and interoperability.

      • Re:Uh... right... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Retired ICS ( 6159680 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @09:02PM (#59883422)

        SASE does not stand for Secure Access Service Edge, it stands for Stupid Assholes with Simple Expectations.

        As we have seen recently "The Cloud" providers cannot keep up with demand. Google is limiting their "Cloud" because it is overloaded. Microsoft is limiting their "Cloud" because it is overloaded. These, and many other "Cloud" services have discovered that they suffered from their own stupidity. "Build it and they will come" only works *AFTER* you have built something that works and is reliable.

        If the current situation has taught us anything at all, it is that "The Cloud" is inherently unreliable and that dependance on "other people's computers" subject to the whim and fancy of the other people who own those computers is foolhardy.

        Once this current situation resolves, "The Cloud" will disappear as the ill-conceived pile of bovine excrement that it is, and IT will flourish.

        • If "the cloud" is overloaded, that means business for cloud providers is great! I'd rather have my resources overloaded so I could expand slowly than expand quickly and not be able to sell all my CPU time.

        • As we have seen recently "The Cloud" providers cannot keep up with demand. ... Once this current situation resolves, "The Cloud" will disappear

          Ah, a member of the Yogi Berra school of logic. "Nobody uses the clod anymore, there are too many people on it".

        • Re:Uh... right... (Score:5, Informative)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @05:29AM (#59884204)

          As we have seen recently "The Cloud" providers cannot keep up with demand. Google is limiting their "Cloud" because it is overloaded. Microsoft is limiting their "Cloud" because it is overloaded. These, and many other "Cloud" services have discovered that they suffered from their own stupidity.

          I'm not sure what reality you live in, but what we have seen recently is that cloud providers have reduced some back end activities and are largely coping with demand unprecedented without any actual service outages.

          You want to see who is suffering, then look no further than those people who think they could do better keeping things in house. The only reason their own servers haven't melted is because their VPN is too weak to provide employees needed access. Those who have decent enough network connections or who have servers directly accessible have found those servers to get crushed under the unprecedented weight of everyone working from home. You in the cloud? All good. You want to talk to a customer who tried to run their own Skype servers, hahahaha you better hope they still have a landline or traditional VoIP phone.

          Anecdote: We're a Microsoft shop. The extent of our service outages are that automatic syncing of data between Sharepoint and Power BI has changed from the usual hourly, that Streams video defaults to a lower a quality which can be changed at any time, and that Teams doesn't download the shitty web viewer by default. Azure is still happily spinning up and down instances. Onedrive is still sinking at speeds that saturate my gigabit connection. Exchange online and any other service offered never bliped. All our backend systems running on Azure have shown full uptime for the past 2 months.

          Another anecdote: My wife's school is a Google shop. Not only have they not had any service disruption at all, but they have shown to handle the entire country entering 80+ people video conference sessions without any issue what so ever. Google also lists no service outage over the past 2 months, and no reduction in any of their cloud offerings.

          Data: Microsoft and Google's cloud offerings are so "overloaded" that they are still happily offering free services running on their cloud infrastructure. Yes that's right. Microsoft's Cloud is that "overloaded" that you can right now get free Enterprise O365 for 6 months [microsoft.com] including all of the cloud offerings that come with it. I heard about this after one of our EPCMs with an aforementioned melted down Skype server, moved that server into the cloud just so they could keep running, that happened a week ago in the middle of the chaos. Google is doing the same with g-suit.

          You know, because when your infrastructure is overloaded you give away services for free /sarcasm

          You have 35 years experience in electronics as you've said previously, please leave IT to IT people.

      • I agree 100% I work in the central IT department as a network engineer and my workload increased 5x During our first virtual all hands, people were requesting if the desktop team could provide home IT support via the ticket system. That group was more than happy to accommodate since everyone is working from home.
    • Re:Uh... right... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:50PM (#59883246) Journal
      Yeah, I can't see IT going away any time soon. Someone has to deal with all your SAAS vendors, and someone DOES need to set up your laptop.
    • Re:Uh... right... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:52PM (#59883248)

      Robert X. Cringley is a moron/conman who has somehow convinced people that he is some sort of "Tech Pundit". And this latest nonsense is just further evidence. Equating "IT" with "the kid who replaces your broken keyboard" is the rambling of a clueless dolt. The name Cringely certainly is fitting, since his stupidity makes me cringe whenever I read it.

      (Robert X. Cringely is a fake name that has been used by several people since the 1980s. It was acquired by the current holder through some sort of legal maneuvering years ago and he has been busy trying to rewrite history and claim to be the "original" Robert X. Cringely.)

    • Amazon has been replacing all of our keyboards for some time now, along with our mice and our failed cables, and even entire PCs. IT has been changing steadily from kids taking elevators up from the sub-basement to Amazon Prime trucks rolling-up to your mailbox.

      This is what happens when you've never had a real job and you've spent the last 30 years working from home as a "journalist" with ZERO knowledge of how things work in a real business.

    • by msauve ( 701917 )
      >Uh... right...

      You do realize you're taking the effort to respond to the mutterings of a minor celebrity and scam artist, don't you?

      "Cringely" was a nom-de-plume, which the asshole-at-hand blatantly stole from Infoworld (when it existed as a weekly rag). He wasn't even the best Cringely, and Michael Swaine had a way, way, better end column.
    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      But.... but... the cloud, man!
  • by ludux ( 6308946 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @06:54PM (#59883064)
    What is this guy talking about? Does he even know what IT is? Is he drunk? Who is this guy? He sounds senile.
    • by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @06:56PM (#59883070)

      It's Cringely. The man is a walking, talking clickbait.

    • Even at Amazon, if your computer breaks, your boss doesn't want you to just order a new one and have them pay you back.

    • I suppose if one considers desktop support the sum total of IT, this might be accurate. But thatâ(TM)s a âseriouslyâ naÃve viewpoint. Many of us in IT are pretty happy to let that portion of the field shrink.
    • by leonbev ( 111395 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:24PM (#59883156) Journal

      He's a retired tech columnist who's had a pension for making bad technology predictions.

      He probably hasn't had access to an IT department for awhile now, mostly because he hasn't had a real job for awhile now. He's been able to keep his Macbook and his iPhone running without a bunch help from Apple, and therefore he now thinks that Karen from Accounting can somehow keep the enterprise ERP system patched, secured, and running correctly without any additional help. While we're at it, I guess that Joe from Sales can keep the company WordPress cluster running without getting breached from the dozens of vulnerabilities in that software as well.

      Good luck, Joe and Karen. When you get the entire company locked out of your systems from a ransomware attack, I'm available to bail you out. I just raised my rates to $150 a hour, though.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        He's a retired tech columnist who's had a pension for making bad technology predictions.

        I sincerely hope that was autocorrect's fault. Otherwise we can't be friends.

        • Yeah, he lost it in the 2008 crash. It was already teetering after he invested most of it in Enron, but the final blow was when he cashed it out and invested it all in Bear Sterns. After all, that's what Cramer said to do, and one Expert of Prediction knows another. Like two peas in a pod.

          A little known side story is that Jim Cramer fired his IT team last week, and hasn't shown up for a zoom meeting since then. Not sure if he'll be able to make it on tv, his sound board is broken.
      • I agree, and I'll add one more. See, with all of this ransomware and other issues out there, holding together the evermore and more precious infrastructure that IS today's world of business, the need for IT will become an aspect of our society that requires insurance. It'll end up not all that much different than today's medical insurance - it'll be required. If you company uses X Y and Z servers, then you'll be required to have IT insurance.

        Like all other aspects of our society that were suddenly requir

      • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

        He's a retired tech columnist

        You spelled retarded wrong...

    • His idea of IT is "someone with an MCSE." Which it no longer is. An MSCE will tell you nothing about administering Jira or managing Salesforce. And managing windows desktops is a lot easier than it used to be.

      But truly, those certs are rather worthless these days.
      • Must Consult Someone Experienced. Those have been worthless since about 2001.

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          You mean they were ever worth anything? I always that anyone who advertized certifications was to be avoided and ignored at all costs as the certification was primarily a compensation mechanism for ignorance and stupidity (just like big fancy cars are usually compensation for deficiencies in other areas of the anatomy).

          • You mean they were ever worth anything? I always that anyone who advertized certifications was to be avoided and ignored at all costs as the certification was primarily a compensation mechanism for ignorance and stupidity (just like big fancy cars are usually compensation for deficiencies in other areas of the anatomy).

            They served me well for over a decade before I punched out of this god forsaken industry in 2014. Certainly my Cisco and security certs were more handy on a technical level, but you'd have been surprised how many proposals and contract gigs required MCSE or equivalent at that point. A lot of times it seemed like it was thrown in there for anything involving any Microsoft server or workstation product.

            I don't miss those days at all.

          • They weren't useless, and if you went on the courses and did your exams, you did learn a thing or 2. The problem is that (like most of such courses) they give you a solid grounding at best, and are no substitute for experience.

            Around the time of the dot com bubble (*leans back in creaky rocking chair*), consultancy firms like Andersen, CMG and Toilet & Douche were churning out IT "experts" by the thousands, putting kids fresh out of college through a couple of weeks of boot camp with a certificate
  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @06:57PM (#59883074)
    a /. meme at this point?

    And there's still plenty of IT. It's just mostly being done offshore in India (though bits of it are moving to Malaysia and the Philippines because India's getting too expensive). What can't be offshored is largely the domain of folks here on H1-B visas, and then there's some spill over and managerial roles.

    How anyone in the industry can pretend to not know this (I refuse to believe anyone doesn't know something so obvious) is beyond me.

    And we're all gonna get dragged back into the office in 2-3 months (Pandemic or not) because that's where our managers want us.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • You should have that list in your _head_. It's what makes you an IT "Professional", not just a box-swapper. A surgeon doesn't need a menu of approved tools to pick from, they use the 10-20 surgical tools they KNOW that will be needed to allow them to do their job completely and thoroughly.

        There may be corporate approval and restriction to a certain sub-set of tools or programs, but those you need should be on the list, or you should see to it that they are added to the "Top 10%" list as indispensable nec

    • Every company I've worked for still has an IT department. A lot of things they used to do has gotten automated, but they also have a lot of new tasks (setting up Zoom rooms, dealing with SAAS vendors). When wifi isn't working, you don't want to call someone in India (or anywhere offsite).
    • by mattb47 ( 85083 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @08:18PM (#59883314)

      There's still lots of local IT. Because those offshore people in India, Russia, Philippines, etc. can't help you rack or cable a server. Or fix the network when it's down. Or mount and cable a wireless access point out on the ceiling of your warehouse. Or fix a server if people never setup the iLO/iDRAC/etc. properly (or upper management was cheap and the company didn't buy a license). Or completely setup a new laptop. (And it's cost prohibitive to ship imaged laptops from overseas. An previous large employer of mine had a cheaper IT operation in Memphis, TN for imaging new laptops/desktop, which then then shipped to wherever in the US.) Or properly transfer data from the old laptop to the new one. Or stick new toner in the printer. Or clean viruses off an infected laptop that shouldn't be on the network. Etc. -- I could go on for a while.

      And, also, those overseas people can be good, but the onshore people are better on average.

      And going all cloud? Broadband still isn't cheap enough. Sure, use cloud email (e.g., Office 365 or Google Apps) -- it's a LOT less hassle. But have fun running time sensitive and heavy i/o databases that need to talk to/from your local office. Or specialized apps. Sure, we're more cloud-centric, but local servers are far from dead.

      • by Cyberax ( 705495 )

        There's still lots of local IT. Because those offshore people in India, Russia, Philippines, etc. can't help you rack or cable a server.

        Server? What is it? Ah, a box that does some calculations and that is not in the cloud. Why would anyone need it?

        Or fix the network when it's down.

        Our ISP has a managed network offering. If anything happens, they'll send a technician right away to fix it. And they guarantee the network performance.

  • Seems legit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Peptidoglycan ( 5157521 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:04PM (#59883094)
    Covid19 remote work has gone completely smoothly, Amazon has been able to deliver all the custom images and workarounds preinstalled on validated hardware to all our end users and implement unforeseen network design changes needed to get devs access to needed systems across the VPN as well as explain to Karen why loading paper in the wrong tray made her printer stop working. Yep this has definitely signalled the end of IT, the help desk has been playing cards for the past week.
    • lol, yes. I was about to post something similar, but I see you've already got it covered. A big general thank-you to IT departments across the world for their work over the past couple of weeks.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It's a pen name (Score:5, Informative)

    by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:06PM (#59883098)

    Robert X. Cringely is an alias used by a number of computer columnists. You could look it up. The "persona" specializes in controversial predictions. If I'm not mistaken, there's even been some court action over who owns the moniker. Whoever the current scribe is, he or she has to generate clicks to stay alive. Hey, sounds like a science fiction plot...

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:07PM (#59883106)

    This guy is the Stephen King of computer blogging: he once wrote exciting and insightful things, but he's way past his prime, and whatever he pens now is mildly disappointing at best.

    This article takes the cake. I stopped reading at "both meant a kid in a white shirt who brought you a new keyboard when yours broke": if that's what he thinks IT is, then he's completely lost it. Sure IT isn't exciting - and is more and more outsourced to low-income countries nowadays - but there's a lot more to it than that.

    Cringely, just retire already. This is getting embarrassing...

  • Cough, Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)

    by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:12PM (#59883120)

    both meant a kid in a white shirt who brought you a new keyboard when yours broke. Well, the kid is now gone, sent home with everyone else

    No... That's not IT; that might be something a desktop repair technician did, but that is not the function of IT: that is just one of the ancillary supporting things that has to happen for Technology in the workplace to function.

    IT is the function that worked with the business to determine what software and equipment would be available and to used to carry out business, and organized the deployment, maintenance, update lifecycles.

    IT Employees chose what security solutions protect the Enterprise.

    IT Employees registered the company's internet domain, and administer and maintain and co-ordinate things like company website operation, e-mail services and employee mailboxes.

    IT Employees designed, deployed, and maintain that VPN that allows you to work from home; as well as the technical security policies and configurations behind it.... The firewall and other security monitoring solutions on the network that keep those functions running.

    All the business IaaS and SaaS services, regardless of whether they are running in the cloud or on-premises require proficient Technologists (IT Personnel) to organize, co-ordinate, and administer the business' use of those services; to keep the servers running, to design and manage the integrations between applications and business processes, to maintain various security and compliance auditing standards, etc.

    There are Numerous IT Functions which cannot be replaced merely by ordering some product on Amazon.

    • by Scutter ( 18425 )

      Cringley thinks I.T. is the kid who fixes your broken keyboard and that all of the backend processes that connect all of those computers together, all the SQL database administration, all the security, all the reporting, and everything else happens entirely by magic. This entire article is written by a tone-deaf moron who doesn't have even the slightest inkling of what he's talking about and thought it would be just a great idea if he showed his ass to the world as publicly as possible.

  • by Vermonter ( 2683811 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:13PM (#59883126)

    Are you going to call Amazon the next time you brainlessly kick the power cable out of the back of your PC and can't figure out why your computer is stuck with a black screen?

  • The kid in the white shirt replacing keyboards is an example of helpdesk, not IT. IT is just transforming into cloud admins and merging into Devops team, but while "everyone" loves the cloud there are many that still won't ever adopt the cloud and traditional IT will have a long life.
    • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday March 28, 2020 @08:30PM (#59883346) Homepage Journal

      The help desk is part of the IT department.

      It's not the whole thing, but it's still IT.

      Regardless, there will still be a need for the whole IT department.

      It's never going to be cheaper to get quality service by contracting it from a vendor. It's cheaper to get software that way, but not support. It's cheaper to get software that way because many parties share the costs.

      There is one exception, software that doesn't fuck up often, and is easy to use.. But that's rare. In any sizable organization, in house IT will always have a superior price:performance ratio.

      The people who could really use contract IT are in small business. Alas, that service is usually garbage.

  • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:21PM (#59883144)

    The guy who brings you your keyboard isn't really what you should be thinking about. That guy is traditionally an entry level employee, who with experience and training could become highly valued.

    Maybe some discussion around Systems Architects, Database Administrators, Security Analysts, Network Analysts, Project Managers... is in order.

    If you want to dump all your stuff onto Office365 and Azure, and use them from your phone, feel free, there never have been any issues with outsourcing like this when you have no idea of what you're doing.

    Make sure your SaS do their own metrics about availability, and billing. Don't ask any questions, and you'll be all set. /s

  • What a stupid fucking article. IT is in more demand then ever, what they mean is the IT support kid with little to no IT skills is being replaced....well yeah no shit.
  • From what I know about him, he's most likely never worked on an actual office situation that required constant IT support. My office of 100 people only has 3 IT personnel and they barely are able to keep up. We could easily hire 2-3 more people and keep them all busy.

  • We're going to replace hundreds of small networks with millions of devices on them with giant networks with millions of devices on them. So these giant networks will just run themselves? The servers will run themselves too? It's the same amount of work, just distributed differently.

  • I prefer Criswell Predicts.
  • Nobody cares what glass ball Nostradamus here "predicts"! What is this? A gipsey fair?
    If so, then can I see the bearded lady and the headless geek?

    Stop posting that astrology crap!
    He has never been right; not even once, am I right?

  • So, how much does Amazon charge to have their delivery truck driver figure out why the officer worker's computer won't connect to the corporate network and why the proprietary in-house software won't run?
  • Where I live, the NOC and IT departments of state universities, schools and research networks have been starved of resources in every conceivable way, including personnel.

    At this point, all these organizations are waking up to a situation where both their human and computing resources are completely inadequate to carry out the load in bandwidth (incl VPN), online courses, directory services, mail services, everything. The slashdot effect is coming back with a vengeance. If there is one loud and clear realiz

  • Well, I tried reading his article, and once I got past some bullshit about fashion, I quickly learned that this guy doesn't know what IT is.

    He should stick to talking about fashion.

  • ...without IT

  • by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @08:09PM (#59883300)
    DisplayPort is the king of display connectors today but 90% of people have never heard of it. What they HAVE heard of is HDMI because that is a consumer media connector. Both will be supplanted by a newer tech soon enough and the great unlearning will begin again. Apple works as hard as it can to shield its customers from technobabble but even their empire succumbs to these shifts in tech. For years Lenovo has had DisplayPort on all their laptops. Now DisplayPort is hidden in Thunderbolt and they only put an HDMI on their ThinkPad line. There will always be a need for those who understand these nuances and can handhold those who do not. Add to that the fact that most users don't want to learn the new tech in the first place and you have a buffer between shifts.
  • Gonna need somebody around to show you how to buy those bitcoins when you download that bullshit that was supposed to make your computer faster, but instead encrypted all your files and you're fighting the clock.

  • No (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jetboy01 ( 550638 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @08:13PM (#59883306) Homepage

    When 90% of my users can't tell the difference between a USB port and a Network Port, I feel secure in my job.

    When user calls repeatedly because "remote desktop won't connect" but the laptop has been switched to 'airplane mode', I feel secure in my job.

    When users call because "Outlook has frozen" but their wireless mouse battery has died, I know that IT isn't going anywhere.

  • The major flaw here is the misunderstanding of just how inept so many folks are. I work on a consumer product that is a combination of hardware and software. Since I do occasionally deal with the UI/UX side of the house we'll often go through our customer support tickets to understand how, when we design a UI, we can avoid them.

    The answer is almost always: you can't. We get around 10% of support calls that have nothing to do with our products. We've had customers call because their dish washer isn't work
  • SASE [networkworld.com], pronounced 'sassy,' combines elements of SD-WAN and network security into a single cloud-based service.”

    I don't think security and cloud belong in the same sentence.
  • In a word, no. IT isn't going anywhere for quite a while.

    Everyone knows how to plug in a USB keyboard nowadays, but there's a lot more to it than that. Anyone who works for a company that has more than 100 office employees knows very well why IT isn't going anywhere soon.
    • Everyone knows how to plug in a USB keyboard nowadays, but there's a lot more to it than that.

      There's unplugging it from the USB 3 port and re-plugging it into the USB 2 port -- 'cause it's just a keyboard -- or into the only one the freaking BIOS recognizes at boot time (I hate that so much). Bunches of stuff.

  • Idiocy. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @08:44PM (#59883376)

    Idiocy. Clickbait. Disssonance.

    I love dissonance -- IN FUCKING MUSIC. Not in IT.

    Someone has to engineer the solution, whatever task needs solving.

    Leave it to a vendor?! What, like Microsoft, or Cisco, or Effective Consulting?! HAHAHHAHAH! Oh man my sides hurt from the laughing.

    It ain't going nowhere. We're still doing our jobs remotely, because we always fucking could. It's just the fucking old-thinking cunts in the lofty C* slots that think we can't.

    We can do this from the beach, we can do it from the house, I haven't seen my datacenter in three weeks and I *know* she's running just fine. *provided the networks stay up.*

    2020, the year that went TARFU. Mark my words, this is a bigger shift than 9/11, a bigger shift than anything since WWII.. ....and it's going to go in the reasoning man's favor. Not in the old-fashioned chain-your-workers-to-the-desk old-timer's favor.

    The aftermath of 2020 will take years to shake out. This is the year illusions were shattered, on so, so many fronts.

  • You'd have to be pretty goddamned gullible to believe a load of horse-shit like what this asshole is shoveling at us. 'IT' isn't going to 'die' any more than the desktop computer was going to die the dozen-or-so times some other asshole 'predicted' it. Laugh in this d-bags' face and move on, nothing to see here.
  • There will always be a need for "IT" workers, Divergent skilled workers. It is very hard and quite exhausting to try to just take care of the current issue. Cable pullers and, cable/ internet tech's, also someone that can just replace your failed HD, better someone the can take take your old PC and make it exactly like new and new. DB admins and programmers. Those that specialize in email and now virtual meetings. Security experts. And developers of coarse. Also some who do a bit of it all, except web desi
  • The basement dwelling kid in the white shirt with the new keyboard is going away, but someone has to re-install the virus ridden laptops, set up the business apps, maintain the VPN, and remind office staff that if all the apps disappeared off of your tablet and suddenly the wallpaper has changed to Spongebob, you've accidentally switched with your child (probably), go trade back.

  • A lot changed in the field since King wrote that epic novel about the subject.

  • by beelsebob ( 529313 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @09:33PM (#59883512)

    How ridiculously insulting. Iâ(TM)m a software engineer and will take any opportunity I can to have a gentle dig at the IT guys, but this is just off the charts bullshit. Yeh, thatâ(TM)s right, the IT guy just runs around the office delivering peripherals to people.

    I mean, if he thinks everything is going to go cloud (which I doubt), then whoâ(TM)s going to configure those cloud services? Whoâ(TM)s going to run them for you? The reality is that the IT guy has got a new name - operations engineer. Because it shows a bit more respect for what theyâ(TM)re doing.

  • Because that server is going to magically fix itself at 2am on a Sunday.

  • by acoustix ( 123925 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @10:09PM (#59883568)

    Hardware monkeys are barely IT. IT != workstation support. The fact that Slashdot even posted this makes me wonder is this really news for nerds anymore.

  • by Beeftopia ( 1846720 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @10:46PM (#59883632)

    Is when they commoditize a data center and allow you to have a cheap, easily scalable datacenter in your building. Also, that will get around the fact you are putting your data on another company's system, giving them a great deal of influence.

    I mean, offsite backups are good, but that suggests some onsite presence. Full offsite has always struck me as... an accident waiting to happen.

  • by misnohmer ( 1636461 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @10:52PM (#59883636)

    The kid in a white shirt bringing you a new keyboard has already been replaced, but not by Amazon - rather by an IT vending machine. The downtime cost while waiting hours or days for Amazon to deliver a new keyboard to an employee whose keyboard no longer works would be way to high. Need 2 days off, spill a coke on your keyboard - call it the Amazon Prime holiday. Lol.

    That said, IT is will here and doing well - including during now during the "everyone WFH" times. IT is not going away until someone can ship a complete end-to-end solution with zero software bugs, 100% uptime, and techs (or software) that set up new users or infrastructure without making a single mistake (and yes, sometimes you need IT because some other IT guy misconfigured something when making unrelated changes).

  • by redback ( 15527 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @11:00PM (#59883642)

    Anyone who works in IT will tell you that 99% of people are fucking stupid and couldn't even plug their own keyboard in.

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @02:12AM (#59883924)

    Why does this idiot get any attention when he has been consistently wrong about everything?

    All his predictions have been either obvious stuff we already knew or total falsehoods.

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