Posts tagged with reflection

I have for a long time thought that the IT industry has an issue with how people within it present themselves to the rest of the world. Everyone wants to be an "Engineer", indeed my current job title is "DevOps Engineer" (a title I am not particularly enamoured with, but that is a matter for another time). We all know that Engineers create clever solutions to otherwise very difficult problems. The issue I have with this is that in many other fields where you find Engineers there are rules, and regulations, and bodies that decide who gets to call themselves "Engineer" and what standards those people must meet. In most of these other fields there are highly defined Engineering Standards against which we can measure the ability and performance of these Engineers. In IT this is not enforced, now I have been very lucky to work with some incredibly talented and intelligent individuals, and I do not wish to deride their contributions in anyway, but without the standards to measure ourselves against, using the term "Engineer" just cheapens it. Unfortunately I have no idea what the standards should be in IT, and I have no idea what the underlying problem with the way many working in IT think that I feel is not proper Engineering, after all I am no more an "Engineer" than anyone else in IT using that title, and claiming otherwise would be a lie. And so I have joined BCS in order that maybe I can get more exposure to the rest of IT and perhaps learn more about what the standards I feel are missing should be.

I shall probably write more on this in the future, but for now here's to hoping that membership of a professional body is going to be a positive step towards understanding my industry, and how I can make it better.

So I started this blog just about 3 years ago now, and despite my intent to use it to encourage me to do something with electronics, and to show case my progress, I have done nothing much since I bought a Raspberry Pi and got it running. Indeed it is still sat in a box waiting for me to motivate myself to get back at it. I have used this blog to rant about politics far more than I have done any electronics. It doesn't help that I have hardly been out on my bike once since I started this blog, so the project I intended to build I have had no need for. So based upon my initial intentions I must count this blog as an abject failure. However, as I pointed out at the time I started this blog I have attempted to do so before, and those prior attempts always ended empty, and pathetic, killed off due to a lack of content. I have at least managed to create content sporadically for this blog. The difference this time around? I am no longer trying to post stuff that I think other people will find interesting, so I am no longer holding back when I just want a rant, or to post about an "oh shit" moment. Granted I don't have the broadest readership in the world, but that doesn't really matter, I have an outlet, and if people read it, and find it interesting, great, if not then at least I still said what I wanted to. So this time around I'm not going to delete this blog, just yet, I'll give it another few years, and see how it goes. Who knows, maybe I'll start cycling regularly again and actually do something about that cycle computer (probably not though).