In case you wonder, the last few days I’ve been busy doing projects on dotnetnuke. I did not really have much time to update this blog. So today everything has been sorted out, and I regain my breathing space to update this blog =).

Okay, a few days back Mr. Ramon Padilla wrote an article at TechRepublic looking at the career progress in IT. He thinks that the current practice in the workplace will put you, either in the “I” category, or the “T” category. He defines the “I” category as an employee with understanding the needs and goals of the business side, whilst the “T” category as an employee with a good handle on the nitty-gritty of technology.

Although I am not disagree with him, I think that the classification only applies–most of the time– in medium/big companies. If you happen to work for startup companies, believe me, both your “I” and “T” skills definitely will be put in test. I happen to know a good friend who works as the Business Consultant, Designer/System Analyst, Developer, Debugger, all in one package. Contrary to another friend which works as a Test Engineer and responsible mainly for creating test-cases for the Application.

So let’s identify jobs that are related to IT and try to assess which one is dominant, the “I” or the “T”

1. Programmer

   Programmer a.k.a Code Monkey (I am one!!!) is required to have a well versed skill on the programming language. In order to be able to do their job properly, they should know the technology well. If your programmers did not master the technology, prepare a huge time buffer for your project delivery date.

2. System Analyst

   System analyst will convert customer requirements into the solution design which later given to the programmer to develop. The better the system analyst, the less headache the programmer have.

I know there are many other jobs related to IT such as Helpdesk Staff, Test Engineer, QA QC, Web Designer, Graphics Designer. Which none of them I ever professionally work as, and I better not risked myself bad-mouthing a profession. These jobs are related to how the IT Infrastructure are implemented in a particular company. For best practice of IT Infrastructure implementation please refer to Information Technology Infrastructure Library.

If you want to share about your profession, and help me to complete the list, please elaborate it in a comment and I will be delighted to incorporate it here. You could also mailed it to me at sodeve@sodeve.net

I want to be an IT Manager, Should I go the “I” or the “T” way?

From my experience, to climb up the leadership ladder the “I” plays more important factor than the “T”. If we analyse IT Managers from their background, the ones from “T” category most of the time were promoted because they have better understanding on “I” aspects than the rest of his/her peers. On the other hand, it is quite common to have IT Manager with lesser “T” knowledge than his/her staffs. Remember Dilbert?

My Two Cents: if we want to climb up the leadership ladder, make sure we brush up your “T” skills to somewhat acceptable level, before we upgrade our “I” skill. This way we can become a manager, without having disgruntled staffs that think our hair is somewhat pointy.

Legends

• or refers to a high “I” or high “T” skill
• or refers to a average “I” or average “T” skill
• or refers to a low “I” or low “T” skill

When I’m travelling on Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT), I often make myself busy with my HP RX3715. Especially when the MRT is not crowded and I’m lucky enough to get a seat. The comfort condition is really supporting your creative mind, so better not waste it. Most of the time, I will open up Pocket Word, and jot down whatever ideas running in my head. Occasionally, I will revisit my old ideas and amend if not improve it.

I have been had this idea of creating a mini Bus Guide in Street Directory-style in my HP RX3715 for quite sometimes. Although I yet to have clear way on the implementation, I’d like to share the idea with you all hoping for your feedbacks.

ALAS, apparently such guide is already created. But it is a static document. Anyway, I will carry on with this project, hopefully I will learn something about Embedded System utilising J2ME/.NET Compact Framework/C++ from this.

So far my idea is represented in T-SQL syntaxes.

Any Suggestions?

Have you watched the movie titled Lord of War starred by Nicholas Cage? It’s about a weapon dealer(Nicholas Cage) selling arms illegally to the warring parties in Africa. The movie chronicles his journey which started by selling guns and pistols to street-gang members, and growing to the point of purchasing machine guns, tanks, and even jet-fighters from East European countries and selling them to African Warlords.

imdb.com
Trailer

Apparently the true story-inspired movie is not far from reality, a Singaporean man pleads guilty for supplying illegal arms to Tamil Tigers. He was conspiring with two Indonesians to provide arms and ammunitions to Tamil Tigers, which is listed as a terrorist organization by US.

Since the criminal offence was committed in US soil, they are bound to the US law. The three of them are currently under US Federal Government Custody in Maryland. They are facing maximum 15 years and USD$500,000 fine sentence.

I’m not a war/suicide bombers/terrorist person. I love peace :-). I believe that resolving differences using physical/weaponry power will degenerate us back to the jungle, where the mighty rules and the weak suffers. So I hope all the guilty parties in this case will receive the punishment that they deserved. For the rest of us, let’s start small by trying to resolve any of our differences using dialogues, not fists.

From Singapore with love!

Sources

Yahoo News

News Archive @ ETAN