The Great IT U-Turn

What began as a small and subtle shift has now gained momentum and the avalanche is well upon us. And at the same time, the majority of the world is learning how to absorb all this change like never before.

What am I talking about? Fair question. I’m of course referring to tech, or to be more specific, people working in IT. You know the ones. Years ago, they were seen as those boring people who worked in technology departments; those who would do whatever it took to climb the ladder out of IT and into the so-called upper-echelon of the business world.

I have a confession: I was one of them. 

I was fascinated, listening to people starting out their MBAs, explaining why they were sacrificing two years of their career (and upwards of $100,000 in tuition) to upskill and transition OUT of technology - a pretty costly transition to be a banker and work 18-hour days.

Additionally, your work would almost always fail in some dimension, and it was usually an "IT issue, again". When you were able to pull anything across the line, you were just doing your job and you were thanked by way of the next project rescue mission landing on your desk. You were layered with different roles before the rubber hit the road, supported with detailed plans about plans and governance processes that left almost no time to cut code. Oh, and did I mention you were very rarely able to interact with the customer who actually used your software?

However over the last decade (maybe a little more), my very dramatic recollection of working in IT is no longer apt. Those in IT are no longer banished to the windowless, server-filled rooms in the basement. Tech is now viewed with greater appreciation and has had its identity transformed for a number of reasons including:

1 - The line between tech and non-tech is becoming blurred.

I’m seeing business executives upskill to hold their own in technology conversations. I’m also seeing some non-tech people do whatever it takes to join a tech team. I'm talking about traders, risk officers and even lawyers attending coding boot camps, Agile courses and seeking out core tech roles in whatever shape or form to get some tangible experience under their belt. This would have been incredulous just a few years ago.

Yes, there are those who show an interest just to throw out some Silicon Valley Fintech, Pivot lingo, but for those that have made it further, their involvement is having a real impact on what ideas are brought to the table and even new approaches when it comes to execution.

2 - Technically apt decision makers have opened the gates to REAL team autonomy

I'm not sure why, and perhaps it comes down to a more confident and expressive personality trait from the typical front-office persona, but teams now have people who not only have a seat at the table but they can convince and provide direction to executives with far better information than ever before. With this level of presence, senior management are giving teams autonomy to do what they think is best, while still being accountable for the outcome. Teams are pushing innovation boundaries and looking at different approaches to achieve outcomes over deliverables.

3 - Tech teams are becoming far more pragmatic and commercial.

Would you rather have a banker directing a software engineer or two software engineers that have deep commercial experience? I know what my answer is… Teams are no longer arguing about how long tasks will take, instead there are robust conversations around what tasks should be done at all. Gone are the 3-5 year programs of work that very seldom payoff. People are coming together to form lean cross-functional teams, dreaming beyond the norm and disrupting existing paradigms.

Through short sprints, the over regulated governance processes are getting replaced with pragmatic interventions that measure progress and facilitate decision making. Perhaps there is opportunity for more teams to run as an end-2-end business with a full-blown P&L, focusing on outcomes.

 4 - The workplace is far more tech friendly.

As I mentioned earlier, gone are the days of sitting next to the server and breathing in second rate CPU fan air... Not every organisation has a foosball table and old arcade games, but even the big corporates now have dedicated innovation areas for predominantly tech led teams. They now even encourage the IT folk to work from home to attract and retain the best people - who would have thought?

And how about this: the other day I stumbled across a hugely successful team that had the following agreement - they would not start work before 9 (after a hearty breakfast was had by all), they would have an hour dedicated solely for lunch and they had to leave the office before 5:30pm, every day. Over 20 months in, they hadn't broken these rules - not once.

So what now?

Being a techie is now both admirable and fashionable. Yes Bitcoin, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Machine Learning and the media around the FANGS have lured some people in for the wrong reasons, but the bottom line is, we should now all be proud to work in the technical space.

From partners to parents, advisors to employers, we all need to embrace the change and support people making the move into tech. It’s a daunting world as is, and we need all the help we can get to make some of these outlandish ideas actually happen.

Business leaders should further encourage the dilution of the business vs technology divide. The more people in your business who can push upstream to enable decision making with the customer, technology and P&L in mind the more likely you can affect change at scale.

Sean Heydenrych is a Managing Partner at Hypothesis, a digital transformation business based in Sydney. They partner with international corporates and Australian based start-ups. Hypothesis look to change the way people see the world though building game changing digital products and transforming how their clients work.