Life After Technology

1. Life After Technology Or….Where the real money is!

2. What will we cover today ? …. and why is my job absolutely Fab and why are we talking about this ?

3. Michael Roberts • Who am I and where am I drawing my information from ? • Private sector – 14 years management and application of IT • Whole variety of roles, but most importantly … instrumental in delivering significant business change • 3 years in sector • Member of RUGIT and a number of vendor led information sharing groups Cisco, IBM, Janet • 12 years commercial management : sales and marketing, P&L responsibility • 5 years training and application in 6 Sigma methodology • I have made many mistakes ! • I have been fortunate to work with, and for, some excellent people • Hopefully, you can benefit from both

4. The real money • What do I mean by real ? • Achievable • Substantial – i.e. a lot of money

5. A – Early career; low skilled roles B – Junior-to-middle managers Technical roles ! C – Senior Managers, VP’s, IT Directors Non-technical roles ! C D – Entrepreneurs, inventors, Guru’s etc B A D

6. The nature of generalist IT • What do I mean by generalist IT ? • Not HPC • Not mass spectrometry or Genome modelling • The challenge of the distributed workforce • The challenge of distributed creativity • Distributed transaction

7. Variety and Variance • Variety is great • Choice • Options • Power • Individualism • Variance is terrible • Engineers hate it • Managers hate it • I hate it !

8. More about Variance • Variance (or the elimination of it) is at the heart of the most satisfying IT management jobs • The key challenges I have faced have been to do with reducing variance • Reduce variance and you reduce cost, waste, time • The rise of Lean !

9. The Hard Problems • The things that make the job satisfying, challenging, interesting • The known-unknowns • People with problems …. People with solutions • Duplicated solutions • Unrealised potential

10. More about variety • Not found in all places • Don’t necessarily equate seniority with variety • But can equate seniority with reward • But not with technology

11. The well paid prisoner

12. The problems of working for a Global Organisation • You get well paid • You get great benefits • But you also get the non-IT issues • HR, budgets, audit, governance • And you don’t get the variety • Ultimately – it gets a bit boring ! • Did I mention getting well paid ?

13. So what am I advocating ? • The best jobs in IT may not be technical • Consider planning your career to ultimately arrive at • A generalist IT role • In a medium sized organisation • Look for variety

14. Do you have to be an IT expert ? • Do you have to be an IT expert ? • Yes ! • Isn’t this just general management ? • No ! • Relatively wide (not so deep) knowledge of IT • Visionary • Complementary skills • Communications excellence

15. Why work in a University ? • Not necessarily where I’d suggest you start – or spend your entire career • It’s more interesting – or has the potential to be so ….

16. Why so ? • Back to variety … • IT content variety • IT exposure variety • Environmental variety • Discipline/skills variety • Responsibility • Freedom • Resources – experiments

17. Summary Universities are far more fun than Global Banks !