[Sigia-l] AIfIA Goals 2004 Survey Results

[Listera]

"david_fiorito at vanguard.com" wrote:

>> Bureaucracies love standards.
> ... and that automatically makes them evil?

To the extent that IT bureaucrats concoct standards to propagate their
inefficiency and ineptitude, yes.

> If Vision is the tool of choice in an enterprise

That's doublespeak. It's often not a tool of *choice* (as in actually
polling all potential users and considering the ramifications) but of
dictate. 

> and someone comes in lacking the skill or desire to use it then they will not
> fit in unless they are willing to learn to love Visio.

And whose loss is that? The only positive in that is that innovative
professionals are *not* drawn to rigidly bureaucraticized workplaces and
they continue to outsmart and out innovate the IT bureaucrats by a long
margin. Nobody wins by the propagation of IT bureaucracies as vast seas of
mediocrity, in the name of conformity.

> That's reality.  I would love to be working on a Mac, using Omni Graffle, and
> dressing in casual clothing but that will not happen here so I need to be able
> to conform to the system.

As long as you understand these corporate 'standards' are tools of coercion
without any intrinsic merit whatsoever...Mac/OmniGraffle will easily meet
the needs of the vast majority of IAs out there and even most of the Wall
Street offices here haven't had a problem with casual clothes for a number
of years now. It's strictly your *choice* to stay in your rigidly coercive
environment. Just don't use that to justify meaningless bureaucraticization
for the rest of us.
 
> Licensing is not the issue.  Defining a profession is not licensing.

Are you kiddin'? Licenses take great pains to define a profession and who
can practice it, how and where. Go back and reread the thread on IAs banned
in Ohio. 

> I know that each of these professions is deeper and more complex than my
> simple equations demonstrate but when it comes time to sign the
> requisition for a position its easier to justify the existence of writers,
> designers, and programmers because they are known quantities.

Take a look at any job reqs, say, for a programmer and notice the great
length of enumeration of qualifications to define the role. It would be
utterly laughable to advertise for a "programmer." What would it mean? There
are a thousand different categories of programming. Same with designers and
writers. Same with any profession. Your deliberate simplification grossly
misses the point.
 
>> There's no substitute for critical thinking, whether or not you choose to
>> acknowledge it.
> 
> Agreed, and critical thinking can create a solid set of standards for
> those who need to be guided in their work.

So there's a class of IAs who can't think for themselves and "need to be
guided" by the dictate of others? This, indeed, is the genesis of IT
bureaucracy.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba