I’ve been doin’ some thinkin’. I know, it sounds dangerous, but I’ve
been doin’ it regardless. Jason Olson’s post on the Tech Ed keynote by
Ballmer started my train of thought. In his post, he says:

“Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the keynote (mostly because of Steve
Balmer directly), it wasnt as good as I was hoping for. This is mostly
because the keynote definitely seemed more targeted towards IT Pros
instead of developers, methinks. While there were several developer
topics discussed, it was definitely geared towards IT Pros.”

I’ll be honest, until I read this post from Jason, I didn’t even
realize that Tech Ed had anything to do with IT Pros (like myself). I
figured it was another conference for developers to go and do what they
do; talk about code, network, etc.

Maybe Jason’s expectations were set incorrectly. Maybe he thought that
Tech Ed was only for developers as well. Maybe he thought that he was
going see Ballmer running around the stage sweating himself and
whipping himself into Howard Dean-esque frenzy while shouting out his
famous mantra, “Developers, developers, developers!”

Jason is certainly entitled to his opinion on the keynote; one that I’m
not debating. What I do wonder is why does it have to be 100%
developers, 100% of the time? Do IT pros even matter?

In the field of IT, there seems to be a us-versus-them mentality when
it comes developers and IT pros and it’s almost as if in this
clique-of-nerds, IT pros are looked down upon by developers (now this
may not actually be the case, it’s just what I observe). It’s
as if we are only IT pros because we weren’t smart enough to be
developers; flunkies of the IT world as it were.  It reminds me of
the movie Meet the Parents where Stiller’s character Focker is
snickered at for being a nurse instead of a doctor; as if he wasn’t
smart enough to be a doctor. At the Portland Developer Dinners…I
mean Nerd Dinners that I attended, I often felt like I would be making
a fool of myself if I said “I’m not actually a developer, I’m a
Sysadmin.” I should add that while I sometimes felt uncomfortable at
the Portland Nerd Dinners, I was never actually made to feel
uncomfortable by the people there. With that being said, it’s hard to
have anything to say when most of the conversations revolve around
refactoring, web services, software factories, assemblies, etc.

Outside the field of IT, developers are often seen as wizards; masters
of evocation that can create vast wonders of splendor out of nothing
while IT pros are often seen as nothing more than
over glorified janitors. Sometimes I feel like I am down in the basement
hoping that my red swingline stapler isn’t taken from me. Is our role
to a corporation less important to those of developers? If so, why? I
believe that developers and IT pros are equally
important to any organization; one works in collaboration with the
other. All the pretty programs, web sites, and web services in the
world wouldn’t be jack squat if someone wasn’t in the background
maintaining the infrastructure behind the scenes. You could have the
best bank web site in the world but without an IT pro managing the
firewall, routers, applying patches, and maintaining the equipment how
many people would use it? The answer is none, it would be unusable.

So back to my original question, do IT pros even matter?

One more thing. Jason,
I know you got a lot of love for me so this post isn’t directed at you,
so please don’t take it that way. Your post just got me thinking.