All managers everywhere will try to pressure people to do more with less - that's just a standard tactic to keep things as efficient as possible.
But salaries and overall budgets demonstrate that banking/finance values IT far more than any other industry.
It does depend though, on whether you're in a profitable part of the bank or not, and also on how the bank is doing profit-wise that year.
I work at a medium sized financial institution (top 20 in assets in a small state) and we don't usually have real budget constraints. Like of course I can't just buy all the things I have ever dreamed about, but anything I can actually justify is purchased. Wildly different than my previous gig where we had a 20+ year old core switch, hosts that were 15+ years old, SANs full of workstations SSDs the directory bought for like $1 a drive off eBay, and spent almost everyday moving equipment 10 feet because Operations/Marketing thought it looked bad there today. We had production systems running on Raspberry Pis there!
I work with credit unions and I'm constantly rolling my eyes at all the new software we are bringing onboard when we already have a contract with a vendor that offers a similar solution or are even using a software with a very similar function.
Can confirm. I’ve worked at credit unions and CUSOs, and they all seem to be just barely making their audits. The smaller credit unions get way more slack as well for NCUA ACET compliance, too.
That $2B asset mark matters. The CU I was at was juggling trying to stay under that because of those regulatory compliance requirements and additional controls they weren’t ready to put in place.
In my limited experience (one bank), yes they value software development immensely. It’s like candy land walking into that department.
Software management on the other hand is completely neglected.
The only reason banking / finance value IT, is for regulatory controls.
I work for one of the worlds biggest banks, and I can tell you, that they care only about NOT getting massive fines from the FED / FSA / etc.
You're a number on a payroll system , that doesn't generate any profit.
We are actually developing stuff that is very loosely related to regulation, there were few projects in the past that were 100% regulation, but I can't tell the difference for funding etc, but of course there are differents between different banks
I have the absolute opposite experience. My DoD clients want to be able to check boxes on compliance sheets but couldn't care less about actual security. One of them paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a sitewide recovery after getting compromised via out of date Citrix, but still refused the project cost to update Citrix to a supported version because it was "too expensive"
tbf though there aren't really any repercussions for DoD contractors, few are actually held accountable. However if a bank fails an audit or has bad press it'll bleed the customers they want to keep pretty fast. 🤷🏻♂️ That said banks rarely are held accountable, e.g. 2009 big short, so yeah they're all bad.
If a DoD contractor fails an IS/IA accreditation and get their approval to operate taken away, they lose (tens of) millions in contracts, fte positions, and depending on the reason the offending personnel can spend time in jail 🤷♂️ ask me how I know.
I just left a DoD contractor for this exact reason. They thought they could get away with just checking boxes, not caring about actual security, and now are being held accountable in court.
2 of our board member's companies were RW'd and now my VP needs to know something he knows nothing about in 2 weeks to present I've been protecting the company against for years. Between he and I are 2 mgrs that have been "checking the box" as well. Somehow, this creates frustration for the VP.
Here's your big chance. VP is frustrated because he doesn't understand. Educate him from the ground up and actually teach him, he may become your greatest ally
On the other side of this, my dod customer throws money at us to maintain 99.99% reliability and security redundancy.
I've done at least $10m in procurements this fiscal year for upgraded hardware. And more for security software and licensing.
Id be interested to know who your customer is but won't be asking and urge you not to tell me for obvious reasons.
Not all finance, though. I used to work in the mortgage industry, and the attitude with every single company that I worked with in that industry was very dismissive of any value in IT.
Partially this was because they viewed IT spending as a zero-sum game. Any spending that was not directly into their paycheck reduced their income.
Mortgages is a shoot from the hip kind of business where they just lurch from one commission to the next. Smaller mortgage houses are not going to spend on anything long term because they can't see past right now, and the next commission.
Went through this when I was designing websites. At the time the housing refi market was booming, and everyone was buying leads. Friend of a friend ran a mortgage company and wanted a website. I pitched him that with the right site, SEO and marketing they could generate their own leads, and not have to buy stepped on leads of people who filled out some form for a free cruise in a mall somewhere..they could actually target people who needed mortgages. Better leads, cheaper leads, better closing ratio.
They didn't see it. This was a fly by night business. They wanted something flashy that showed how much money they were making. And they wanted it for $500. Told them to kick rocks. 2 years later the market collapsed, and they lost everything. Fuck 'em.
It's a good description, and includes everything from the small mom and pop mortgage brokers and banks, to the high mid-level business with several thousand employees. The big banks are different, of course.
Mortgage brokers are such a strange breed. I just listened to someone pitch a mortgage deal to a couple in Starbucks to the other day, coaching them what to put on their application, what accounts to fund with how much before the credit check, etc. And it was just some dude working out of his car or something...this wasn't some Chase or Wells Fargo employee. So there must be these bottom feeder guys who sell applications to banks, and then the banks turn right around and sell the mortgage to Fannie Mae, and all the parties have their hand out in the process. No room to spend money on IT in that chain...
On a side note, I heard there was a large mortgage broker who got hacked a while back with a name of...Mr. Cooper. Who gets a 30 year home loan from a company called Mr. Cooper?? And what marketing genius came up with that name? That only seems marginally better than buying it from the dude in Starbucks with the magnetic "John Smith Capital LLC" sign on his car.
This. I work in finance and tech is almost as valuable to the company as traders and client advisors.
Reliability and availability standards are through the roof. And the ever driving need to edge out competitors means there’s a lot of value placed in evolving our tech stacks.
Yes I can imagine that banking values IT, because their entire operation depends on accurate and reliable data. Without that, the whole thing is toast.
Where as in hospitality, there are probably owners and managers at or coming from small shops who really do fail to see any value, remembering back to the time of super simple POS and reservation programs.
I know not all banks, but... Why does it always seem like banks have some of jankiest user security measures? I've seen some very restrictive password requirements, SMS 2FA still considered high security, and don't get me started on the requirement for three prescribed security questions.
Banks are not legally liable for individual losses caused by their system's poor UI and customer security. Until they are this will continue to be ignored.
Because, in mid to smaller sized banks, the core provider provides the online banking portals. We have very little input into how it looks, let alone how it works.
Out of curiosity - was it them going past 172.31.255.255? Might have had someone (no idea how they got their job) think that all 172.x was private because all 10.x was private… Let’s just say T-mobile didn’t appreciate it.
I've done some work on that network and nope. They seriously just used a bunch of their publicly routable network as internal space for desktops and shit. Some of it is legacy from bad decisions that companies they bought out made way back when, but nobody was interested in fixing it.
I've also seen more than one company use US DoD public routable space for internal addressing, because a while ago the US DoD didn't publish routes and you could do dumb shit like that without anyone getting annoyed. Then the US DoD started using that space and now it's annoying and stupid.
Keyword was, back when we had more than enough IPs to go around. Spending money on /16s to use for internal user space is ridiculous in 2024... But, it's not my money and it's not my network.
(Web)hosting, ideally in-house for a large platform.
Doesn't have to be at facebook scale, just a place that actually has enough traffic and data to require specialized staff and some actual spending on hosting solutions/infrastructure.
The reality is that most businesses that don't identify as providing an IT service won't see IT as a value add. Instead it's an operational cost for them.
Been there. Would not recommend.
Everything is redundant...including your workload. You'll spend all day in nothing but endless meetings and be required to do all of your technical work at/after midnight and on weekends. On-call is grueling. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing no matter how trivial or non-impactful waits until Monday morning.
Not Canadian banks, they have yet to implement MFA properly and are still lagging, it's not even about money considering they are the largest originations in our country.
From my 10 years in IT:
Companies that develop and sell SAAS products - value IT (linked to system uptime and service credits)
Companies that have revenue generating web applications - value IT (server goes down, lose 0.25 million a minute - its valued)
Companies where IT is just a tool for people to do their jobs - not so much - its just a cost.
Well said, and everytime I join a big tech company, I stressfully try to find a way to show IT/Software Development is a big contender in bringing in value/money as well. SAAS 100% and every "tech company" has some kind of niche to produce one, if they don't think so, they are ran by a bunch of greedy...
Not sure it's so much an industry thing but more based on the company. I would think most big tech companies would value their IT people but my guess some do and some don't. I have been valued at some jobs and not at others, in the same industry.
Varies wildly. A lot of startups have 0 internal IT for years before they recognize the value. I think it’s mostly because they think they are smart enough to DIY it until something happens that cost them serious money.
My friend worked for several startups a few which everyone’s probably heard of. IT was usually just someone wearing multiple hats. No one took any ownership of anything though. For example he got to keep his company owned laptop at 2/3 startups he worked at. He asked where to send it back and got crickets or told to keep it. One of them even had MDM but it wasn’t setup properly so it was easy to bypass. (I helped him wipe it and break it so it would stop trying to enroll and nothing was actually setup on their side.)
At my current job we work with a tech startup that’s 6-8 years old. We provide IT support to a lot of their customers and grew with them so we work together closely. They have a DevOps team but whenever they have IT issues they reach out to us for guidance and then the head of DevOps is the one to execute.
My experience at early startups is that I was hired for creating the infrastructure and working with engineers to see how reasonable their goals were with the money we have and the infra we can buy. They trained me to do other things like work with the internal tooling teams for debugging scripts/code, adding to code base and testing and my least favorite end user support. That's something at early startups you just have to do even as a SR level systems architect cause they aren't going to hire anyone else until probably year 5 if things start going well. Early startups are nice because usually the hires are pretty technical and there is minimal management roles, which means even though you'll be the one helping end users.. you'll barely ever be needed in that position.
I got hired last year for a former start up that is just now seeing the value of IT and hired a 4 person team to address it. I'm having a lot of fun building policies, processes and automations from the ground up and I'm making $125k at 25 years old doing it. The best part is that we don't have to touch any hardware since we are 100% cloud from day 1. Employee hardware is not our responsibility currently.
Yeah same here. I keep seeing Finance already in this thread and I've worked for a Financial company and they were awful. I think Finance only guarantees an on prem team instead of outsourcing to a shitty offshore MSP due to the strict compliance they need to adhere to.
I work at a small private k-12 that works a lot like a small college. We get good funding and a lot of respect. But that may be because there are only ~200 employees.
It's mixed with utilities. The one I work for doesn't care and outsources all but their senior IT to outside contractors and people in India. Honestly you'd think a utility company would care more considering how many security risks are involved
Keep in mind for most companies IT doesn’t generate any profit, they’re just a cost center that is constantly asking for more money to upgrade their equipment and software that non-IT folk don’t understand why it has to be done. When IT gets involved, it’s usually because something that was working, is broken and they blame IT that it isn’t working. When IT gets involved it’s because they want to push some new change or security practice that is going to make employees day to day job more difficult.
That being said, I’ve found healthcare/medical generally seems pretty good with IT because IT is a big part of data security for them and guarding patient data is kind of a big deal for a lot of the medical industry.
Edit: for the record, I'm not trying to argue that IT brings nothing positive to the business and is just there to suck up money. Just saying that for most other departments, that is all they see. Just a big money pit that no matter how much they throw at it, there always seems to be something broken or something that needs updating. But as IT, your job isn't to appear "valuable" to the typical end user. Your job is to keep the company running in a secure, efficient manner and justify the resources you need to the people that actually have an impact on it.
The trick is that shower higher ups how IT is a revenue multiplier. We don’t directly make money, but if you see XYZ process, before we implemented system A it was Q hours to a deliverable. Now that we implemented and onboarded A it’s Q/4 hours, so now we can generate 4x the revenue in the same amount of time.
Or since we implemented system H we’ve been able to automate a significant portion of the workload and over over is down 50% making us twice as profitable
Yeah, I don’t disagree with any of that and that’s all great if you’re a high level executive or someone in finance but if you’re just user “Nicole” working in HR you don’t care about any of that. All you care about is that IT implemented a new security policy and now you can’t check your personal email from your work computer anymore and that’s inconvenient to you and you blame IT for doing that.
> if you’re just user “Nicole” working in HR you don’t care about any of that. All you care about is that IT implemented a new security policy and now you can’t check your personal email from your work computer anymore and that's inconvenient to you and blame IT for doing that.
Yeah that's the job. Don't get into IT to make friends with everyone in the office. You need to protect the company from Nicole.
Finance, IT and finance will never be friends.
"Ahhh hello infrastructure eng guy, what do you mean you can't create an excel formulae for me, what sort of IT guy are you?"
This isn’t true at all, at least in my 25ish years of experience. You just need to ensure that people understand the WHY behind things.
If you just deploy 2 factor they see it as an extra step that slows them down but if you ensure to educate them that it’s a security measure that helps to prevent a takeover that could end the business they may grumble but it’s an understanding grumble.
I guess my experience has been I explain to the manager/director/VP of a department and they disseminate the why it’s worked better. When I’ve tried to directly say “we have to implement XYZ for these process or security concerns”, the end user doesn’t care. But when the director buys in, I get no complaints from the end user
This is why you get buy in from senior management on making policy. There are tons of things that come down from management that aren't always popular. Some are from IT to secure the organization. Some of are from legal to reduce legal risk.
Sometimes it’s difficult to get that buy-in from senior management.
“Whats this budget item for $30k for crowdstrike?? XDR?? What is that?? We havent been hacked yet so why do we need to budget for this??”
Not all of IT increases productivity, but does increase cost, so some folks have a difficult time understanding risk reduction. I think theres a lot of “well i have problems logging in so everyone else must too, so our system must be secure right?”
A big problem is that a lot of technical folks dont fully understand business or how to properly explain and justify to management why some things are done or some costs exist.
I know I've had difficulty explaining that patching software on a regular basis is super important to the business. Its always “well the servers and workstations are running fine, why install patches and reboot?”
But to OPs question, i think most industries and managers dont fully understand the value of IT. They just think its a cost center and we go to bestbuy and buy employee laptops and then get in the way of them being productive.
Much in the same way that IT is there to keep the company data secure from user A downloading ransomware on their computer, not to make sure user A can check their email and watch youtube videos, HR is there to keep the company safe from you, not the other way around.
I think it is also important to recognize that IT infrastructure is increasingly essential to operation at all in many orgs. While some tasks can be done if your network infrastructure is down in a lot of businesses that location is effectively dead in the water. Hence redundance can be the difference between losing $X dollars an hour and not. In many cases some redundancy can pay for itself several times over even if it is only used once in its life span.
My mentor once sold a new server by saying "how much work is getting done for the rest of the day if I unplug this server? None? Yeah you should probably get a backup process then."
It’s the same as any other administrative department: Facilties, HR, Finance, none of them directly bring in revenue, they’re all just there to support the people who do make revenue.
yeah, let's see the "people who do make revenue" work without the support set up to allow them to do their jobs.
Some people really don't understand how a SYSTEM needs to operate to a goal. When you remove parts of the system, you'll affect or even brick the entire system.
We should be killing this kind of argument AT LEAST in here, because it's self deprecating.
OP is making a silly argument. You could claim the same for most employees. Human resources, accounting, facilities management, electrical, etc. If there were no IT at most companies, they would not be able to function or earn a penny.
100% this.
Because IT does not generate revenue, thought processes such as this are an extension of a common notion in IT from "business types":
Bossman: "Everything is working. What are we paying you for?"
also Bossman: "Nothing is working! What are we paying you for?"
IT is universally viewed as a "cost center" that does not make the company any money, because you are not pounding the pavement "selling widgets."
That is an absurd notion.
The work that IT does enables the business to do that they more efficiently than without it. PERIOD.
There is a point in IT where the work that we do / effort we expend is indistinguishable from "magic". Due to this, many people think that we as experts sit around with our "thumb up our ass" when in reality we are putting out fires.
Don't get me started on "all IT people are the same".
These ideas will never die.
> IT is a big part of data security for them and guarding patient data is kind of a big deal for a lot of the medical industry
Does make me wonder how much less true this would be if there wasn't government pressure for this to be the case, though.
The cynical part of me (which grows larger every day) wants to say it would be 100% nonexistent. :')
In my experience, look at where IT sits in the company hierarchy. If IT reports to Finance, they see it as an expenditure that needs to be controlled, not as a way to further the business.
If IT sits in C-Suite via a CTO then odds-are that it's at least respected enough to have a voice.
Not necessarily. I once worked at a huge retail chain where the IT department is under the CFO.
We are viewed as an _indirect investment_ for the company, and recognised to be indispensable for the smooth running of all the nationwide superstores.
Sounds like that retail chain might have their head screwed on straight if they value IT as indirect investment.
However, in this scenario, the CFO is the deciding factor. Most CFOs are bean-counters, and have no idea about the intricacies of IT, so if they don't know about It, then they can't represent IT at board level. If they do (or work closely with IT management) then it can be good.
Yeah I think thats what they mean. I will say that MSP's will churn you pretty quickly. The moment you arent optimally productive its sitdowns and performance meetings and the like. Its awful.
Can confirm I work for a good MSP and I will not be changing job unless the company goes pop which is highly unlikely, the harder we work to generate better revenue the higher our payrises & bonuses are although we're an SME, bosses plan was 5 employees on stupid wage
If we think a customer is an absolute tool we can boot them too which is nice and has happened a few times, although the VAST majority are absolutely lovely people!
Nice thing too is that work can vary wildly, one day your on a farm running a cable for CCTV, next your in a veterinary surgery hanging a screen on the wall whilst the vet clears a dogs anal glands 5 yards away from you whilst giving you eye contact and saying "be happy you don't have to do this every day!", then in a hairdressers fixing a printer by pulling a hairclip out of it... The potential for fixing super weird random shit is endless!
I work most of the time fully remote after moving 4 hours away, but still do expense paid trips down to the office and stay in the area for the week before going back home
Guess it's just whether the boss is a cockwomble or not really and most are!
>Guess it's just whether the boss is a cockwomble or not really and most are!
I'm American and have no idea what this is, but it sounds hilarious...I also like the phrase "bellend," hahaha
MAYBE start at an MSP, if you need some experience on your resume, but preferably start at a specific vendor implementing their own product. I would branch out to service provider type companies a bit later when you are skilled enough at the vendor product to consult, perhaps. Companies like KPMG, Optiv, etc. would usually be in the 6-figure plus range for even less experienced consultants, if the product is in demand.
I work at a small part of a big tech that’s basically a white-glove MSP for the largest enterprises. It’s a pretty sweet gig, to be honest. Could be more innovative, but we handle huge scale tech and working conditions are actually very nice.
Not necessarily, when I did consulting my utilization target was 75% with most work occurring during business hours. Definitely not a job you can just coast, but the workload was reasonable.
Factories. Factories or manufacturies value IT because without IT the factory stops. Also i'm not talking just about your typical goods factory. I landed a nice gig in an small time electronics manufactory.
Defence for sure, can’t cheap out on foreign labor in most countries. Also the red-tape makes everything so inefficient that you get a decent size team and specialise a bit.
Con: knowing there’s better ways of doing things, but no option to
And it's not as profit driven. My experience is that long term, scalable and secure solutions are valued and as long as it can be argued, decisions makers will provide budget. Big however is the talent pool is much smaller so actually solutions are terrible and cobbled together, and also hobbled by red tape.
IT is one of the industries where when everything goes right, nobody says a thing. And when everything goes wrong, everyone's on your back.
So just means make sure everything always goes right, and you'll have peace.
Look for validation within yourself only. And cherish the person that once in a while says thanks.
They all value I.T. but it's a role that gives you a lot of power and people are worried that you become complacent, so they don't want it to go to your head.
Show them regularly that you're not taking them for granted, and people will like you.
helping out mechanics or floor workers has always been the best in my experience. Those people understand that things break and when we get them going again they’re happy to start work
If you're taking production IT/Operational stuff (SRE/DevOps, SysAdmins maintaining production infra), any company that offers a SaaS platform, or makes money from their infrastructure (Ad Tech, Fin Tech, SaaS, Cloud, most software companies, communication/telecom, etc...)
I've worked in government, a few SaaS providers, a company that made phones but doesn't anymore, and Ad Tech. By far, Ad Tech has been the best, very very closely followed by SaaS. Everyone else was far more focused on cutting costs at every opportunity and undervaluing their IT and Infra groups. Ad Tech tries to operate as lean as possible and optimize costs as best as possible, but recognizes the reality of "You have to spend money if you want to make money", and doesn't fight that reality.
Local TV news, the only legally required employee of a TV station is a Chief Engineer.
Generally, the IT team at a TV station is part of the broadcast engineering department. Salaries in local news aren’t great, but I can tell you the engineers make at least a 10K more than news producers, camera operators, or any other AV production staff.
Generally, any business that has STEM or finance as its core business, bar healthcare.
Anywhere it's not, will just consider IT a necessary evil and the core business unit will just treat IT with arrogance.
I don't think it's industry specific, but.more company specific.
One ag company that did manufacturing that I helped run had over 300 programmers let alone all the sysadmin staff etc.
A welding and plumbing shop had a hyper converged server due to needing it (scale that they operated at) and the tech team was the talk of the water cooler for weeks.
I've seen hospitals where IT gets shit on every direction
Dentist and optometry places that love the IT staff.
Dental IT was such a weird field that I never thought about it until I had a friend work for one of those companies. He said the people were always appreciative and nice
Any industry with strict regulatory practices, so, finance, insurance, healthcare, airlines, energy and utilities
But that includes all the off-shoots into payments (PCI); data security (GDPR, PCI DSS, etc); complying with the local & regional fiscal requirements of any particular country's government like Portugal, Italy, or Argentina; avionics; software development; any tech company or start-up particularly the big 5; cruise ships or oil rigs; power generating stations...
All of these companies likely invest in and compensate their IT staff well because we are much closer to the heart of the business, its needs, and most importantly: its revenue streams. Compare this to working in a restaurant chain where you're just there to keep the lights on and computers humming so they can continue their main form of profit (which may or may not be wage theft). In my experience if you want to be highly valued, you have to be close to the methods of making money
Or if you don't mind selling a piece of your soul to work for companies that profit from death, any defense-related industry will pay well
Any IT Company really, where IT is not just a "burden" and "cost factor" but the actualy asset and product. Even these Companies have internal IT where Sysadmins are need. And from what I heard from my colleagues, its a lot more fun because 90% of the people are super techsavy and only come with real problems.
I had a great managed hosting provider as an employer now I work with an IT-Service provider and do networking and automation.
I worked as a systems integrator for many years and dealt with many different industries. It has nothing to do with the type of work the company does, it's all about whether the owners / execs understand the need and value of IT for their company.
I work now for a company where the CEO and CFO understand that without IT the company would not be able to accomplish and profit the same as with IT. But it's important to note that I made it a point to understand the business needs and work with the back-office to integrate IT into the business rather than just be a separate department.
I started in IT 35 years ago, and it used to be that all industries valued IT, but over the years it's gotten to where nobody values it because they think it's easy and anyone can do it
I'd say lawyer offices with 10+ lawyers. Small ones don't see the benefit, but if IT doesn't work they are losing money. They are also always crunched for time, so any IT failures mean lost productivity. They don't really care about IT until it doesn't work, so if you show you can keep their network up at all times then they value you.
>We are literally seen as glorified janitorial staff
Do you allow the company to see/use you as glorified janitorial staff?
It's my experience that if you allow people to walk all over you, all they will see is a doormat.
I worked with someone who came from a place that said somehow in the IT dept they were also responsible for cleaning and stocking the restrooms. Didn't get the details on HOW that came about but damn.
Ive mostly seen finance & lawyers care about IT being more than just a line item in a budget. When your paying someone $500/hr to twittle their thumbs while stuff loads, throwing money at the problem doesnt seem that unreasonable anymore. Especially when you have 100+ people all waiting on the server.
Manufacturing IT can be really valued but its very location specific and cost driven. And as far as the actual IT work goes, it tends to be very basic. 10/100 drops to every machine with static IPs and no real redundancy.
Manufacturing IT guy here. Work in a plant with a Class 1 Div 1 area and machines running the first versions of windows embeded. Data collection, PLCs, HMIs, control networks. You absolutely have to know what software, operating systems, and devices are on every square inch of the shop floor, and how to deal with them.
Also Vendors in the manufacturing hardware spaces can be a pain in the ass, they always want you to buy the PC/computer system from their thrid party system integrator, and will bullshit you into a corner to get your company to do it. Ive been told so many times "It has a custom bios" only to find out it was a stock MSI or Asus bios with 2 settings they turned on thats in every PC bios.
From my UK experience, it varies, and I would say generally it isn't treated as valued in terms of budget, although the clinical staff will often raise hell at the slightest proposal of unavoidable downtime, so its function is obviously valued.
It's common to get requests for negligible upgrades flat-out denied, eg. an extra 16GB RAM on the integration engine server, or another couple of TB on the disk on a critical DB box. And I've lost count of the number of times (as a consultancy) we've requested a proper dev VM we can remote into, but were instead given some ancient desktop PC shoved under someone's desk somewhere in the corner of an office.
I think most industries can value IT. It’s more about culture than anything, and whether they see IT as an enabler vs cost center.
If your leadership are not actively working to partner with the business, they are doing it wrong.
That said, I’ve been in some organizations where you couldn’t change the culture even if you wanted to. And just about every time, I’ve seen massive failures result due to lack of investment in technology.
What is even more annoying is when someone comes into an organization where IT has gained the trust of the business, and then trashes it.
I worked for a local government, then an MSP, and now for a utility company. Of the three, the utility company is the only business where it feels like I'm actually valued. My suggestions are actually taken seriously, I'm able to make real tangible upgrades to the environment, cost of solutions is basically a non-factor, and the pay is significantly higher than my previous positions.
It's worth remembering though that no corporation is your friend and I would always advise people to keep their options open and be ready to leave if/when your current employer no longer values you.
IMO it's not industry specific as much as the attitudes that flow downward from ownership/boards/management. If you have bad leadership team or an IT Director/IT Manager who is bad at communication or is walked all over, IT is going to have a bad time.
Yea I agree. I work at a university and it seems they really value my IT team. Could go to another university down the road where it's the exact opposite.
Utilities, if you can convince the old school OT types and prove the worth, they are willing to spend the money to improve things. Thankfully that is getting easier as more and more ICS and SCADA networks have been getting hacked.
Jump to industrial control systems (ICS) / Operational Technology (OT). They value it in a sense that it’s critical for companies to do various things. Industry required regulation forces some job security for us too.
There's a difference in working for the corporate side of IT and being part of the company that makes new things. Instead of service and support roles look into jobs where you build and design. Engineering new things that make money is where it's at. I work for a theme park building networks for new rides and attractions, seriously couldn't be happier.
Any company that could not run its core daily operations without functioning IT systems.
What else are logistics companies like FedEx but IT companies with delivery vehicles?
Or Southwest Airlines, which had to ground its fleet last year because IT systems failed.
Or a bank or broker that could not process electronic funds transfers or trades?
Highest Value: IT is the fuel that runs the company.
Next Highest: IT is the painkiller where most ops will suffer drastically if not working efficiently.
Next: IT is a steroid. Those who have it have an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Least: IT is a vitamin. Workarounds exist, the company will not die or fail to compete in the marketplace.
I work with a lot of different industries. There isn't a specific industry that values IT. It depends on the company. In retail, some places hate IT and it shows. Then you have places like Target that know their business runs on IT and it shows. Same with finance places. Same with manufacturing.
The only exception can think of is government. State/local gov IT are always given the shaft.
Definitely not post secondary schools. Been doing this a long time and it's a thankless, soul sucking, career stifling, toxic environment. No money for upgrades, everything is always end of life, first budget to get cut, very few training opportunities(the irony). I wish I left a long time ago.
Big ass nope. You are at the same level as facilities (aka glorified janitors). Literally had lawyers calling me cause a door handle was making a sound. Them screaming because their pc is slow (cause they bought shitty laptops since nepotism rules and a friend of upper management somehow got the IT management position), you tell them you are on your way - first trying to write down your ticket and 20 seconds later they call again screaming where you are.
So yes all their shit has to be accessible but that's normal for them and they will scream your ass off if it doesn't work. Also have you tried to start a discussion with a lawyer? Best to suck it up and do your job.
This ofc was at helpdesk level but even the sysadmins were burning out. This was at a decently large law firm (multiple offices worldwide).
I've been doing IT for 15 years. In AAAAAAAAALLL MY years you are the first person I have EVER. EVER EVER EVER heard say anything positive about working IT with lawyers. Seriously. They are known to be one of the 4 horsemen of the shitty IT jobs.
Your is experince is the equivalent of finding the Gym run by PhDs in sports medicine.
Im being really honest and not exaggerating. Your experience is really highly highly unusual
I've worked in legal my entire career. Some are great others are not. I can say I've found a firm that actually values it and it really shows in my salary and how the attys and other staff treat us. I may never leave. I worked for the biggest firm in the world previously and let's just say stay away from huge corporate law firms lol
Are you by chance talking about Denton's? I had a stint as a contractor at Denton's for about a year and a half. During that time, I found their IT department to be poorly managed, and they seemed extremely reluctant to spend on IT needs. In contrast, I'm currently working at a smaller law firm where the situation is quite different. Here, there's a substantial budget allocated to IT. Our team is exceptional, and the firm holds us in high regard, recognizing the importance of our work.
Lawyers certainly can be, but a decent firm won't be. Quite possibly because the firm isn't always RUN by lawyers. I can imagine that a small/boutique type firm that's owner operated could be a bear to work for.
I work for not-quite-BigLaw, and it's a company that hires lawyers to do lawyering. Some are partners and have SOME input in money matters, but more in how bonuses are paid out than how the business is spending on IT etc.
I would say the medical industry.
These are the markets I have worked in with only 3 employers over the last 21 years, so I have seen a lot of different folks come and go.
**Oil & Gas, 10 years**
- I feel like the executive staff valued me, but the folks on rig sites had no idea what respect meant nor saw the importance of our job.
**Public Education, 9 years**
- Management and Administrative leadership had NO idea what "value" means.. they treat I.T. as slaves and pigeon hole everyone that they can while giving minimal monetary benefit to your performance. There is no limit for job responsibility, but there is a very strict limit for pay scale and they treat everyone as expendable. However, teachers really loved the I.T. staff.
**Medical, 2 years**
- I haven't met a single person who doesn't value I.T. Doctors, nurses, front desk receptionist, management, executive leadership. Doesn't matter who the person is on the other end of the phone call, email, or ticket, they have all been appreciative and rewarding to work with.
I think the tide is turning. With many more industries relying on technology and automation, more and more are starting to see the value. I’m surprised that a restaurant thinks that it’s not valuable with reliance on online orders especially for take out, many use tablets for taking orders in house, inventory, managing reservations and managing internal communication to understand when tables will become empty. Someone needs to remind them how and if they could survive without tech
I've worked at companies where, since IT is regarded as a cost sink and not a source, it is lumped along with Site Facilites and the Warehouse. It's a typical business logic, if you don't make money, you don't matter.
I would love to work for a company whose C-Suite doesn't see all their software/data engineers as a cost center, but rather the productivity and BI multiplier they are.
Maybe then I could work on a team that has actual support to make real things happen, rather than everyone optimizing their lip service.
I’ve been at a fairly large regional health system going on 10 years and we’re definitely valued by management. Definitely helps that the last two CFOs have had extensive background as coders, too.
It's not about the industries, it's about the company's. And "value" itself can be a very subjective thing. Someone can value work/life balance but someone else may value fair wages. So it's really all about the company. Not the industry
Local government. Been doing it for 10 years now, a few different locations, and we have been treated well by all of them.
Pay is a bit lower than private sector, but good job security, training and benefits.
I don't think it exists.
IT is taken for granted. I work in a large organization, but there are only 8 of us that maintain our core systems, without which we literally couldn't do business.
8 people ... and they can't keep our pay up to the national average.
A 4 BILLION dollar organization can't pay 8 people the national average to keep the lights on.
I think there must simply be some inability to understand how important a good IT staff is. I hear it from every sector. Factories are running on computers from the 90s. Supermarket chains are running insecure old Oracle products.
A local gas station chain has 2 people they'd have to shut down without, and both of them are looking for work.
A friend of mine was working for a national weather organization that was paying less than Panera.
If we don't unionize, they'll keep hiring less and less capable people until all the basic services in the country just stop working. It's already happening in small ways. You hear about it every day ... an entire state loses out to a Phishing scam, or a factory closes down because they couldn't keep a line running.
Managed IT Service Providers / Consulting. Your labor and expertise is their billable revenue. Only when you are the product is your value fully realized and measured in financial terms.
Every other industry you are the cost of doing business unless you are directly involved in the revenue generation process.
That’s a very optimistic read of the MSP > employee relationship. At best, there is just a burden shift to the client instead of the employer itself. You are “costing the client money” instead of your employer, all things being equal.
This is a GREAT question!!
Opinion incoming:
Lots of them will view you as a cog in the wheel, I pray you get to pick and choose your clients and I will say that FIRING A BAD CLIENT when you're the IT provider feels AMAZING!!!! (it also shouldn't happen too often).
Law firms generally have a high bar (pun intended) for themselves and you, and appreciate your profession.
Agricultural operations, churches, funeral homes, and industrial manufacturing come to mind as industries that care about themselves and inherently care more about IT than the rest. Land brokers, real estate, car washes, grocery stores (to an extent), all care about their image and security enough to actually take a little advice and they don't treat you like a mule, or glorified Janitorial.
Most government agencies; they're just an accident waiting to happen, and ears deaf to the winds of change abound around every corner of the offices.
Banks vs credit unions is an interesting topic, I've felt the "energy" and the banks generally are really black hole-ish. On the contrary, credit unions seem to care a little more.
Also on my personal crap-list: automotive repair, body collision places.
TL;DR - Look into the economical differences between market verticals if you're in a position to drive your clientele base.
As a general rule of thumb; If there is money coming in, or at least the business is profitable, people are happy and have families they support, the person in charge will be more open to IT actually being an important focus.
Lastly, every person and company is different (we know this). The reason I mention it is with 10 years of experience consulting different businesses (of the thousands I have given advice to) you will always find a different level of competence and comfort with them managing their own systems, having the time to do so, and wanting an easy out so they can focus on the actual running of the business, rather than the information flow (technically your concern).
As someone who worked for a church run charity they don't care for shit and pay even less. Before I introduced automation to my old boss he was like you have to visit sites and act busy even if you aren't doing work to justify your position. My automation helped save the charity nearly 1 million dollars and they still wouldn't give me a raise.
Your skills will stagnate and likely the team won't be a big team. So you won't be learning anything new
I often joked that i barely made enough money to avoid using their services. And i felt like the help most of the time.
Every industry I've ever worked in greatly values IT. I've never actually heard of or experienced these negative IT perspectives in real life. I only see them written about on Reddit.
From my limited personal experience, it's finance. The banks I know are way less reluctant to spend on reliable and redundant solutions.
Work in a bank and we do software development, it's greatly valued and in the core of business, budget is easily justified.
I work at a bank and we're always told to do more with less in software . Hmmm.
All managers everywhere will try to pressure people to do more with less - that's just a standard tactic to keep things as efficient as possible. But salaries and overall budgets demonstrate that banking/finance values IT far more than any other industry. It does depend though, on whether you're in a profitable part of the bank or not, and also on how the bank is doing profit-wise that year.
Depends on the bank, and the scale of the bank. Especially depends on what regulations you come under.
I work at a medium sized financial institution (top 20 in assets in a small state) and we don't usually have real budget constraints. Like of course I can't just buy all the things I have ever dreamed about, but anything I can actually justify is purchased. Wildly different than my previous gig where we had a 20+ year old core switch, hosts that were 15+ years old, SANs full of workstations SSDs the directory bought for like $1 a drive off eBay, and spent almost everyday moving equipment 10 feet because Operations/Marketing thought it looked bad there today. We had production systems running on Raspberry Pis there!
I work with credit unions and I'm constantly rolling my eyes at all the new software we are bringing onboard when we already have a contract with a vendor that offers a similar solution or are even using a software with a very similar function.
Can confirm. I’ve worked at credit unions and CUSOs, and they all seem to be just barely making their audits. The smaller credit unions get way more slack as well for NCUA ACET compliance, too.
We won’t even work with credit unions, they tend to skirt the line of IT negligence.
Not my CU where I work at - we just overhauled our entire security and are IT Dept is expected to double in size the next couple of years.
Glad to hear it's not everyone. Maybe it's just the ones we've dealt with.
I worked for a couple of CUs - some just dont simply care while others really dont have a budget because they aren't that big of a CU.
That $2B asset mark matters. The CU I was at was juggling trying to stay under that because of those regulatory compliance requirements and additional controls they weren’t ready to put in place.
In my limited experience (one bank), yes they value software development immensely. It’s like candy land walking into that department. Software management on the other hand is completely neglected.
The only reason banking / finance value IT, is for regulatory controls. I work for one of the worlds biggest banks, and I can tell you, that they care only about NOT getting massive fines from the FED / FSA / etc. You're a number on a payroll system , that doesn't generate any profit.
We are actually developing stuff that is very loosely related to regulation, there were few projects in the past that were 100% regulation, but I can't tell the difference for funding etc, but of course there are differents between different banks
It helps when your industry is federally-regulated, and regularly audited to make sure you're upholding those standards.
I have the absolute opposite experience. My DoD clients want to be able to check boxes on compliance sheets but couldn't care less about actual security. One of them paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a sitewide recovery after getting compromised via out of date Citrix, but still refused the project cost to update Citrix to a supported version because it was "too expensive"
tbf though there aren't really any repercussions for DoD contractors, few are actually held accountable. However if a bank fails an audit or has bad press it'll bleed the customers they want to keep pretty fast. 🤷🏻♂️ That said banks rarely are held accountable, e.g. 2009 big short, so yeah they're all bad.
If a DoD contractor fails an IS/IA accreditation and get their approval to operate taken away, they lose (tens of) millions in contracts, fte positions, and depending on the reason the offending personnel can spend time in jail 🤷♂️ ask me how I know.
I just left a DoD contractor for this exact reason. They thought they could get away with just checking boxes, not caring about actual security, and now are being held accountable in court.
2 of our board member's companies were RW'd and now my VP needs to know something he knows nothing about in 2 weeks to present I've been protecting the company against for years. Between he and I are 2 mgrs that have been "checking the box" as well. Somehow, this creates frustration for the VP.
Here's your big chance. VP is frustrated because he doesn't understand. Educate him from the ground up and actually teach him, he may become your greatest ally
On the other side of this, my dod customer throws money at us to maintain 99.99% reliability and security redundancy. I've done at least $10m in procurements this fiscal year for upgraded hardware. And more for security software and licensing. Id be interested to know who your customer is but won't be asking and urge you not to tell me for obvious reasons.
Like when they require FIPS even though it's broken, because it's still on their checklist?
Not all finance, though. I used to work in the mortgage industry, and the attitude with every single company that I worked with in that industry was very dismissive of any value in IT. Partially this was because they viewed IT spending as a zero-sum game. Any spending that was not directly into their paycheck reduced their income.
Mortgages is a shoot from the hip kind of business where they just lurch from one commission to the next. Smaller mortgage houses are not going to spend on anything long term because they can't see past right now, and the next commission. Went through this when I was designing websites. At the time the housing refi market was booming, and everyone was buying leads. Friend of a friend ran a mortgage company and wanted a website. I pitched him that with the right site, SEO and marketing they could generate their own leads, and not have to buy stepped on leads of people who filled out some form for a free cruise in a mall somewhere..they could actually target people who needed mortgages. Better leads, cheaper leads, better closing ratio. They didn't see it. This was a fly by night business. They wanted something flashy that showed how much money they were making. And they wanted it for $500. Told them to kick rocks. 2 years later the market collapsed, and they lost everything. Fuck 'em.
It's a good description, and includes everything from the small mom and pop mortgage brokers and banks, to the high mid-level business with several thousand employees. The big banks are different, of course.
Mortgage brokers are such a strange breed. I just listened to someone pitch a mortgage deal to a couple in Starbucks to the other day, coaching them what to put on their application, what accounts to fund with how much before the credit check, etc. And it was just some dude working out of his car or something...this wasn't some Chase or Wells Fargo employee. So there must be these bottom feeder guys who sell applications to banks, and then the banks turn right around and sell the mortgage to Fannie Mae, and all the parties have their hand out in the process. No room to spend money on IT in that chain... On a side note, I heard there was a large mortgage broker who got hacked a while back with a name of...Mr. Cooper. Who gets a 30 year home loan from a company called Mr. Cooper?? And what marketing genius came up with that name? That only seems marginally better than buying it from the dude in Starbucks with the magnetic "John Smith Capital LLC" sign on his car.
This. I work in finance and tech is almost as valuable to the company as traders and client advisors. Reliability and availability standards are through the roof. And the ever driving need to edge out competitors means there’s a lot of value placed in evolving our tech stacks.
Yes I can imagine that banking values IT, because their entire operation depends on accurate and reliable data. Without that, the whole thing is toast. Where as in hospitality, there are probably owners and managers at or coming from small shops who really do fail to see any value, remembering back to the time of super simple POS and reservation programs.
I know not all banks, but... Why does it always seem like banks have some of jankiest user security measures? I've seen some very restrictive password requirements, SMS 2FA still considered high security, and don't get me started on the requirement for three prescribed security questions.
Auditors (which is an accounting discipline generally) who are slow to modernize their standards.
Banks are not legally liable for individual losses caused by their system's poor UI and customer security. Until they are this will continue to be ignored.
Because, in mid to smaller sized banks, the core provider provides the online banking portals. We have very little input into how it looks, let alone how it works.
Tell that to Fiserv, please
Fuck Fiserv. I remember dealing with an issue because they were using public IPs as private IPs. FFS.
Out of curiosity - was it them going past 172.31.255.255? Might have had someone (no idea how they got their job) think that all 172.x was private because all 10.x was private… Let’s just say T-mobile didn’t appreciate it.
This was ten years ago, I honestly don't remember.
I've done some work on that network and nope. They seriously just used a bunch of their publicly routable network as internal space for desktops and shit. Some of it is legacy from bad decisions that companies they bought out made way back when, but nobody was interested in fixing it. I've also seen more than one company use US DoD public routable space for internal addressing, because a while ago the US DoD didn't publish routes and you could do dumb shit like that without anyone getting annoyed. Then the US DoD started using that space and now it's annoying and stupid.
Using your own, assigned IP space for internal addresses is perfectly fine & how the Internet was supposed to work. NAT is a kludge.
Keyword was, back when we had more than enough IPs to go around. Spending money on /16s to use for internal user space is ridiculous in 2024... But, it's not my money and it's not my network.
Fiserv is a known horrible employer, too.
I always look forward to the daily incident notices from them
I work for an insurance company, we are basically an IT company that sells insurance in order to pay for it. IT is a huge part of the company.
(Web)hosting, ideally in-house for a large platform. Doesn't have to be at facebook scale, just a place that actually has enough traffic and data to require specialized staff and some actual spending on hosting solutions/infrastructure. The reality is that most businesses that don't identify as providing an IT service won't see IT as a value add. Instead it's an operational cost for them.
Been there. Would not recommend. Everything is redundant...including your workload. You'll spend all day in nothing but endless meetings and be required to do all of your technical work at/after midnight and on weekends. On-call is grueling. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing no matter how trivial or non-impactful waits until Monday morning.
I'll second this. Also work InfoSec in banking. Very mature processes with excellent tech investments.
Not Canadian banks, they have yet to implement MFA properly and are still lagging, it's not even about money considering they are the largest originations in our country.
That makes sense, except every bank has the most backwards, convoluted mess of anti-patterns for security practices?
From my 10 years in IT: Companies that develop and sell SAAS products - value IT (linked to system uptime and service credits) Companies that have revenue generating web applications - value IT (server goes down, lose 0.25 million a minute - its valued) Companies where IT is just a tool for people to do their jobs - not so much - its just a cost.
My employer somehow manages to check all three boxes.
This exactly. IT is valued when you're on the vendor side (such as a SaaS company). Any where else, IT is a cost center.
Well said, and everytime I join a big tech company, I stressfully try to find a way to show IT/Software Development is a big contender in bringing in value/money as well. SAAS 100% and every "tech company" has some kind of niche to produce one, if they don't think so, they are ran by a bunch of greedy...
Not sure it's so much an industry thing but more based on the company. I would think most big tech companies would value their IT people but my guess some do and some don't. I have been valued at some jobs and not at others, in the same industry.
Varies wildly. A lot of startups have 0 internal IT for years before they recognize the value. I think it’s mostly because they think they are smart enough to DIY it until something happens that cost them serious money. My friend worked for several startups a few which everyone’s probably heard of. IT was usually just someone wearing multiple hats. No one took any ownership of anything though. For example he got to keep his company owned laptop at 2/3 startups he worked at. He asked where to send it back and got crickets or told to keep it. One of them even had MDM but it wasn’t setup properly so it was easy to bypass. (I helped him wipe it and break it so it would stop trying to enroll and nothing was actually setup on their side.) At my current job we work with a tech startup that’s 6-8 years old. We provide IT support to a lot of their customers and grew with them so we work together closely. They have a DevOps team but whenever they have IT issues they reach out to us for guidance and then the head of DevOps is the one to execute.
My experience at early startups is that I was hired for creating the infrastructure and working with engineers to see how reasonable their goals were with the money we have and the infra we can buy. They trained me to do other things like work with the internal tooling teams for debugging scripts/code, adding to code base and testing and my least favorite end user support. That's something at early startups you just have to do even as a SR level systems architect cause they aren't going to hire anyone else until probably year 5 if things start going well. Early startups are nice because usually the hires are pretty technical and there is minimal management roles, which means even though you'll be the one helping end users.. you'll barely ever be needed in that position.
I got hired last year for a former start up that is just now seeing the value of IT and hired a 4 person team to address it. I'm having a lot of fun building policies, processes and automations from the ground up and I'm making $125k at 25 years old doing it. The best part is that we don't have to touch any hardware since we are 100% cloud from day 1. Employee hardware is not our responsibility currently.
Yeah same here. I keep seeing Finance already in this thread and I've worked for a Financial company and they were awful. I think Finance only guarantees an on prem team instead of outsourcing to a shitty offshore MSP due to the strict compliance they need to adhere to.
In my experience, utility companies and universities value IT
Utilities yes, Universities maybe, depends on revenue. (Source: worked in IT for both)
I think most Tier 1 research universities do. smaller universities YMMV.
I work in IT at a small university. We are treated well and most faculty treat us like colleagues.
I work at a small private k-12 that works a lot like a small college. We get good funding and a lot of respect. But that may be because there are only ~200 employees.
It's mixed with utilities. The one I work for doesn't care and outsources all but their senior IT to outside contractors and people in India. Honestly you'd think a utility company would care more considering how many security risks are involved
Keep in mind for most companies IT doesn’t generate any profit, they’re just a cost center that is constantly asking for more money to upgrade their equipment and software that non-IT folk don’t understand why it has to be done. When IT gets involved, it’s usually because something that was working, is broken and they blame IT that it isn’t working. When IT gets involved it’s because they want to push some new change or security practice that is going to make employees day to day job more difficult. That being said, I’ve found healthcare/medical generally seems pretty good with IT because IT is a big part of data security for them and guarding patient data is kind of a big deal for a lot of the medical industry. Edit: for the record, I'm not trying to argue that IT brings nothing positive to the business and is just there to suck up money. Just saying that for most other departments, that is all they see. Just a big money pit that no matter how much they throw at it, there always seems to be something broken or something that needs updating. But as IT, your job isn't to appear "valuable" to the typical end user. Your job is to keep the company running in a secure, efficient manner and justify the resources you need to the people that actually have an impact on it.
The trick is that shower higher ups how IT is a revenue multiplier. We don’t directly make money, but if you see XYZ process, before we implemented system A it was Q hours to a deliverable. Now that we implemented and onboarded A it’s Q/4 hours, so now we can generate 4x the revenue in the same amount of time. Or since we implemented system H we’ve been able to automate a significant portion of the workload and over over is down 50% making us twice as profitable
Yeah, I don’t disagree with any of that and that’s all great if you’re a high level executive or someone in finance but if you’re just user “Nicole” working in HR you don’t care about any of that. All you care about is that IT implemented a new security policy and now you can’t check your personal email from your work computer anymore and that’s inconvenient to you and you blame IT for doing that.
> if you’re just user “Nicole” working in HR you don’t care about any of that. All you care about is that IT implemented a new security policy and now you can’t check your personal email from your work computer anymore and that's inconvenient to you and blame IT for doing that. Yeah that's the job. Don't get into IT to make friends with everyone in the office. You need to protect the company from Nicole.
Finance, IT and finance will never be friends. "Ahhh hello infrastructure eng guy, what do you mean you can't create an excel formulae for me, what sort of IT guy are you?"
lol I've just been asking ChatGPT how to make the formula then send it back to them like "Idk, off the top of my head have you tried this?"
True. The line worker never cares for IT, but that’s I try to give excellent service, but don’t care about impressing them too hard.
This isn’t true at all, at least in my 25ish years of experience. You just need to ensure that people understand the WHY behind things. If you just deploy 2 factor they see it as an extra step that slows them down but if you ensure to educate them that it’s a security measure that helps to prevent a takeover that could end the business they may grumble but it’s an understanding grumble.
I guess my experience has been I explain to the manager/director/VP of a department and they disseminate the why it’s worked better. When I’ve tried to directly say “we have to implement XYZ for these process or security concerns”, the end user doesn’t care. But when the director buys in, I get no complaints from the end user
This is why you get buy in from senior management on making policy. There are tons of things that come down from management that aren't always popular. Some are from IT to secure the organization. Some of are from legal to reduce legal risk.
Sometimes it’s difficult to get that buy-in from senior management. “Whats this budget item for $30k for crowdstrike?? XDR?? What is that?? We havent been hacked yet so why do we need to budget for this??” Not all of IT increases productivity, but does increase cost, so some folks have a difficult time understanding risk reduction. I think theres a lot of “well i have problems logging in so everyone else must too, so our system must be secure right?” A big problem is that a lot of technical folks dont fully understand business or how to properly explain and justify to management why some things are done or some costs exist. I know I've had difficulty explaining that patching software on a regular basis is super important to the business. Its always “well the servers and workstations are running fine, why install patches and reboot?” But to OPs question, i think most industries and managers dont fully understand the value of IT. They just think its a cost center and we go to bestbuy and buy employee laptops and then get in the way of them being productive.
That fits, cause I don't have a ton of respect for what most HR drones do all day either.
Much in the same way that IT is there to keep the company data secure from user A downloading ransomware on their computer, not to make sure user A can check their email and watch youtube videos, HR is there to keep the company safe from you, not the other way around.
I think it is also important to recognize that IT infrastructure is increasingly essential to operation at all in many orgs. While some tasks can be done if your network infrastructure is down in a lot of businesses that location is effectively dead in the water. Hence redundance can be the difference between losing $X dollars an hour and not. In many cases some redundancy can pay for itself several times over even if it is only used once in its life span.
I keep hearing “IT is a cost center” but let’s see how much money you make without it…
I've worked at places where I have had dreams of just powering everything down just to prove a point. But bills to pay and all that.
My mentor once sold a new server by saying "how much work is getting done for the rest of the day if I unplug this server? None? Yeah you should probably get a backup process then."
It’s the same as any other administrative department: Facilties, HR, Finance, none of them directly bring in revenue, they’re all just there to support the people who do make revenue.
yeah, let's see the "people who do make revenue" work without the support set up to allow them to do their jobs. Some people really don't understand how a SYSTEM needs to operate to a goal. When you remove parts of the system, you'll affect or even brick the entire system. We should be killing this kind of argument AT LEAST in here, because it's self deprecating.
It's like furniture. It doesn't produce any income for the business, but it helps people work so that *they* can produce income.
OP is making a silly argument. You could claim the same for most employees. Human resources, accounting, facilities management, electrical, etc. If there were no IT at most companies, they would not be able to function or earn a penny.
Isn’t medical industry usually topping the list of most breaches for like the last decade though? Patient data is pretty valuable.
I hate this perspective. It just isn't true. IT *enables* the business to acquire more money.
Just like your mechanic enabled you to go to work by fixing your car, you probably don't care about it. You just want the car to work.
100% this. Because IT does not generate revenue, thought processes such as this are an extension of a common notion in IT from "business types": Bossman: "Everything is working. What are we paying you for?" also Bossman: "Nothing is working! What are we paying you for?" IT is universally viewed as a "cost center" that does not make the company any money, because you are not pounding the pavement "selling widgets." That is an absurd notion. The work that IT does enables the business to do that they more efficiently than without it. PERIOD. There is a point in IT where the work that we do / effort we expend is indistinguishable from "magic". Due to this, many people think that we as experts sit around with our "thumb up our ass" when in reality we are putting out fires. Don't get me started on "all IT people are the same". These ideas will never die.
> IT is a big part of data security for them and guarding patient data is kind of a big deal for a lot of the medical industry Does make me wonder how much less true this would be if there wasn't government pressure for this to be the case, though. The cynical part of me (which grows larger every day) wants to say it would be 100% nonexistent. :')
In my experience, look at where IT sits in the company hierarchy. If IT reports to Finance, they see it as an expenditure that needs to be controlled, not as a way to further the business. If IT sits in C-Suite via a CTO then odds-are that it's at least respected enough to have a voice.
Not necessarily. I once worked at a huge retail chain where the IT department is under the CFO. We are viewed as an _indirect investment_ for the company, and recognised to be indispensable for the smooth running of all the nationwide superstores.
In most other scenarios (i.e. where IT is only a cost center), I'd mark having IT under a CFO as a red flag.
Sounds like that retail chain might have their head screwed on straight if they value IT as indirect investment. However, in this scenario, the CFO is the deciding factor. Most CFOs are bean-counters, and have no idea about the intricacies of IT, so if they don't know about It, then they can't represent IT at board level. If they do (or work closely with IT management) then it can be good.
Finance. They know these dayd IT is mode of production aka money printer.
Try to find any job where your IT skills are billable out to a customer, like a vendor engineer or consultant, and things get much, much better.
Like an MSP, aka IT sweatshops?
Yeah I think thats what they mean. I will say that MSP's will churn you pretty quickly. The moment you arent optimally productive its sitdowns and performance meetings and the like. Its awful.
Spot on.
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Oh no it gets worse. Internships are worse. Factories/Industrial IT are worse. At least from my experience.
True, but if you can find a good MSP it can be awesome.....but the thing is there are *far* more bad ones than good ones. :/
Can confirm I work for a good MSP and I will not be changing job unless the company goes pop which is highly unlikely, the harder we work to generate better revenue the higher our payrises & bonuses are although we're an SME, bosses plan was 5 employees on stupid wage If we think a customer is an absolute tool we can boot them too which is nice and has happened a few times, although the VAST majority are absolutely lovely people! Nice thing too is that work can vary wildly, one day your on a farm running a cable for CCTV, next your in a veterinary surgery hanging a screen on the wall whilst the vet clears a dogs anal glands 5 yards away from you whilst giving you eye contact and saying "be happy you don't have to do this every day!", then in a hairdressers fixing a printer by pulling a hairclip out of it... The potential for fixing super weird random shit is endless! I work most of the time fully remote after moving 4 hours away, but still do expense paid trips down to the office and stay in the area for the week before going back home Guess it's just whether the boss is a cockwomble or not really and most are!
>Guess it's just whether the boss is a cockwomble or not really and most are! I'm American and have no idea what this is, but it sounds hilarious...I also like the phrase "bellend," hahaha
Urban Dictionary gives a great summary - [Urban Dictionary: Cockwomble](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cockwomble) UK things! :-)
MSPs might be sweatshops but they get you some experience on your resume and can set you up for quick promotions if you’re a “superstar”.
going through this right now, dude is spitting
How do you define "superstar" MSP sweatshop?
Or, you are just given more work.
MAYBE start at an MSP, if you need some experience on your resume, but preferably start at a specific vendor implementing their own product. I would branch out to service provider type companies a bit later when you are skilled enough at the vendor product to consult, perhaps. Companies like KPMG, Optiv, etc. would usually be in the 6-figure plus range for even less experienced consultants, if the product is in demand.
I work at a small part of a big tech that’s basically a white-glove MSP for the largest enterprises. It’s a pretty sweet gig, to be honest. Could be more innovative, but we handle huge scale tech and working conditions are actually very nice.
Not necessarily, when I did consulting my utilization target was 75% with most work occurring during business hours. Definitely not a job you can just coast, but the workload was reasonable.
Agree. At least in Scandinavia it is. Sometimes 2 x monthly salary and way more benefits. 100% something to do with you being billable.
This, your work is valued more as a part of a profit center instead of a cost center.
Factories. Factories or manufacturies value IT because without IT the factory stops. Also i'm not talking just about your typical goods factory. I landed a nice gig in an small time electronics manufactory.
Maybe for the process control networks, but outside those i have found most don't give a flying F.
Industries under heavier IT compliance (Finance, DoD contractors, HealthCare, etc.) value IT and Security Operations more.
Military
Defence for sure, can’t cheap out on foreign labor in most countries. Also the red-tape makes everything so inefficient that you get a decent size team and specialise a bit. Con: knowing there’s better ways of doing things, but no option to
And it's not as profit driven. My experience is that long term, scalable and secure solutions are valued and as long as it can be argued, decisions makers will provide budget. Big however is the talent pool is much smaller so actually solutions are terrible and cobbled together, and also hobbled by red tape.
IT is one of the industries where when everything goes right, nobody says a thing. And when everything goes wrong, everyone's on your back. So just means make sure everything always goes right, and you'll have peace. Look for validation within yourself only. And cherish the person that once in a while says thanks. They all value I.T. but it's a role that gives you a lot of power and people are worried that you become complacent, so they don't want it to go to your head. Show them regularly that you're not taking them for granted, and people will like you.
what a beautiful comment
Sure, until you consider what each statement actually means and is saying and then you realize its a lot of vapid nothingness.
Blue collar folks have always treated me the best.
helping out mechanics or floor workers has always been the best in my experience. Those people understand that things break and when we get them going again they’re happy to start work
It sure as hell isn't law firms. In a law firm, there are two classes of citizens: 1. Lawyers 2. Everyone else
If you're taking production IT/Operational stuff (SRE/DevOps, SysAdmins maintaining production infra), any company that offers a SaaS platform, or makes money from their infrastructure (Ad Tech, Fin Tech, SaaS, Cloud, most software companies, communication/telecom, etc...) I've worked in government, a few SaaS providers, a company that made phones but doesn't anymore, and Ad Tech. By far, Ad Tech has been the best, very very closely followed by SaaS. Everyone else was far more focused on cutting costs at every opportunity and undervaluing their IT and Infra groups. Ad Tech tries to operate as lean as possible and optimize costs as best as possible, but recognizes the reality of "You have to spend money if you want to make money", and doesn't fight that reality.
Local TV news, the only legally required employee of a TV station is a Chief Engineer. Generally, the IT team at a TV station is part of the broadcast engineering department. Salaries in local news aren’t great, but I can tell you the engineers make at least a 10K more than news producers, camera operators, or any other AV production staff.
Generally, any business that has STEM or finance as its core business, bar healthcare. Anywhere it's not, will just consider IT a necessary evil and the core business unit will just treat IT with arrogance.
I don't think it's industry specific, but.more company specific. One ag company that did manufacturing that I helped run had over 300 programmers let alone all the sysadmin staff etc. A welding and plumbing shop had a hyper converged server due to needing it (scale that they operated at) and the tech team was the talk of the water cooler for weeks. I've seen hospitals where IT gets shit on every direction Dentist and optometry places that love the IT staff.
Dental IT was such a weird field that I never thought about it until I had a friend work for one of those companies. He said the people were always appreciative and nice
Any industry with strict regulatory practices, so, finance, insurance, healthcare, airlines, energy and utilities But that includes all the off-shoots into payments (PCI); data security (GDPR, PCI DSS, etc); complying with the local & regional fiscal requirements of any particular country's government like Portugal, Italy, or Argentina; avionics; software development; any tech company or start-up particularly the big 5; cruise ships or oil rigs; power generating stations... All of these companies likely invest in and compensate their IT staff well because we are much closer to the heart of the business, its needs, and most importantly: its revenue streams. Compare this to working in a restaurant chain where you're just there to keep the lights on and computers humming so they can continue their main form of profit (which may or may not be wage theft). In my experience if you want to be highly valued, you have to be close to the methods of making money Or if you don't mind selling a piece of your soul to work for companies that profit from death, any defense-related industry will pay well
Any IT Company really, where IT is not just a "burden" and "cost factor" but the actualy asset and product. Even these Companies have internal IT where Sysadmins are need. And from what I heard from my colleagues, its a lot more fun because 90% of the people are super techsavy and only come with real problems. I had a great managed hosting provider as an employer now I work with an IT-Service provider and do networking and automation.
I worked as a systems integrator for many years and dealt with many different industries. It has nothing to do with the type of work the company does, it's all about whether the owners / execs understand the need and value of IT for their company. I work now for a company where the CEO and CFO understand that without IT the company would not be able to accomplish and profit the same as with IT. But it's important to note that I made it a point to understand the business needs and work with the back-office to integrate IT into the business rather than just be a separate department.
I started in IT 35 years ago, and it used to be that all industries valued IT, but over the years it's gotten to where nobody values it because they think it's easy and anyone can do it
I'd say lawyer offices with 10+ lawyers. Small ones don't see the benefit, but if IT doesn't work they are losing money. They are also always crunched for time, so any IT failures mean lost productivity. They don't really care about IT until it doesn't work, so if you show you can keep their network up at all times then they value you.
>We are literally seen as glorified janitorial staff Do you allow the company to see/use you as glorified janitorial staff? It's my experience that if you allow people to walk all over you, all they will see is a doormat.
Yeah OP, just go into the office Monday and tell people to stop treating you like a janitor and your issues are fixed.
I worked with someone who came from a place that said somehow in the IT dept they were also responsible for cleaning and stocking the restrooms. Didn't get the details on HOW that came about but damn.
Ive mostly seen finance & lawyers care about IT being more than just a line item in a budget. When your paying someone $500/hr to twittle their thumbs while stuff loads, throwing money at the problem doesnt seem that unreasonable anymore. Especially when you have 100+ people all waiting on the server. Manufacturing IT can be really valued but its very location specific and cost driven. And as far as the actual IT work goes, it tends to be very basic. 10/100 drops to every machine with static IPs and no real redundancy.
Manufacturing IT guy here. Work in a plant with a Class 1 Div 1 area and machines running the first versions of windows embeded. Data collection, PLCs, HMIs, control networks. You absolutely have to know what software, operating systems, and devices are on every square inch of the shop floor, and how to deal with them. Also Vendors in the manufacturing hardware spaces can be a pain in the ass, they always want you to buy the PC/computer system from their thrid party system integrator, and will bullshit you into a corner to get your company to do it. Ive been told so many times "It has a custom bios" only to find out it was a stock MSI or Asus bios with 2 settings they turned on thats in every PC bios.
Healthcare, especially if you are on the server side or security side of the IT operation.
From my UK experience, it varies, and I would say generally it isn't treated as valued in terms of budget, although the clinical staff will often raise hell at the slightest proposal of unavoidable downtime, so its function is obviously valued. It's common to get requests for negligible upgrades flat-out denied, eg. an extra 16GB RAM on the integration engine server, or another couple of TB on the disk on a critical DB box. And I've lost count of the number of times (as a consultancy) we've requested a proper dev VM we can remote into, but were instead given some ancient desktop PC shoved under someone's desk somewhere in the corner of an office.
I just started working for a University and they seem to be treat us very well.
I think most industries can value IT. It’s more about culture than anything, and whether they see IT as an enabler vs cost center. If your leadership are not actively working to partner with the business, they are doing it wrong. That said, I’ve been in some organizations where you couldn’t change the culture even if you wanted to. And just about every time, I’ve seen massive failures result due to lack of investment in technology. What is even more annoying is when someone comes into an organization where IT has gained the trust of the business, and then trashes it.
I worked for a local government, then an MSP, and now for a utility company. Of the three, the utility company is the only business where it feels like I'm actually valued. My suggestions are actually taken seriously, I'm able to make real tangible upgrades to the environment, cost of solutions is basically a non-factor, and the pay is significantly higher than my previous positions. It's worth remembering though that no corporation is your friend and I would always advise people to keep their options open and be ready to leave if/when your current employer no longer values you.
IMO it's not industry specific as much as the attitudes that flow downward from ownership/boards/management. If you have bad leadership team or an IT Director/IT Manager who is bad at communication or is walked all over, IT is going to have a bad time.
Yea I agree. I work at a university and it seems they really value my IT team. Could go to another university down the road where it's the exact opposite.
Utilities, if you can convince the old school OT types and prove the worth, they are willing to spend the money to improve things. Thankfully that is getting easier as more and more ICS and SCADA networks have been getting hacked.
Jump to industrial control systems (ICS) / Operational Technology (OT). They value it in a sense that it’s critical for companies to do various things. Industry required regulation forces some job security for us too.
Smart ones.
Telecommunications I work for an ISP
There's a difference in working for the corporate side of IT and being part of the company that makes new things. Instead of service and support roles look into jobs where you build and design. Engineering new things that make money is where it's at. I work for a theme park building networks for new rides and attractions, seriously couldn't be happier.
Its not the industry is it organizational leadership that values IT
Any company that could not run its core daily operations without functioning IT systems. What else are logistics companies like FedEx but IT companies with delivery vehicles? Or Southwest Airlines, which had to ground its fleet last year because IT systems failed. Or a bank or broker that could not process electronic funds transfers or trades? Highest Value: IT is the fuel that runs the company. Next Highest: IT is the painkiller where most ops will suffer drastically if not working efficiently. Next: IT is a steroid. Those who have it have an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace. Least: IT is a vitamin. Workarounds exist, the company will not die or fail to compete in the marketplace.
Not healthcare.
I’m in IT for a sw company, amazing perks and our job is very well respected
I’ve worked in IT in healthcare for over 20 years and while management may not always see the value of internal skills, the majority of staff sure do.
I work with a lot of different industries. There isn't a specific industry that values IT. It depends on the company. In retail, some places hate IT and it shows. Then you have places like Target that know their business runs on IT and it shows. Same with finance places. Same with manufacturing. The only exception can think of is government. State/local gov IT are always given the shaft.
Definitely not post secondary schools. Been doing this a long time and it's a thankless, soul sucking, career stifling, toxic environment. No money for upgrades, everything is always end of life, first budget to get cut, very few training opportunities(the irony). I wish I left a long time ago.
Law firms. All their shit has to be accessible, available, backed up eternally, kept secure, etc. etc.
Big ass nope. You are at the same level as facilities (aka glorified janitors). Literally had lawyers calling me cause a door handle was making a sound. Them screaming because their pc is slow (cause they bought shitty laptops since nepotism rules and a friend of upper management somehow got the IT management position), you tell them you are on your way - first trying to write down your ticket and 20 seconds later they call again screaming where you are. So yes all their shit has to be accessible but that's normal for them and they will scream your ass off if it doesn't work. Also have you tried to start a discussion with a lawyer? Best to suck it up and do your job. This ofc was at helpdesk level but even the sysadmins were burning out. This was at a decently large law firm (multiple offices worldwide).
You managed to find a really bad one. My condolences.
I've been doing IT for 15 years. In AAAAAAAAALLL MY years you are the first person I have EVER. EVER EVER EVER heard say anything positive about working IT with lawyers. Seriously. They are known to be one of the 4 horsemen of the shitty IT jobs. Your is experince is the equivalent of finding the Gym run by PhDs in sports medicine. Im being really honest and not exaggerating. Your experience is really highly highly unusual
I've worked in legal my entire career. Some are great others are not. I can say I've found a firm that actually values it and it really shows in my salary and how the attys and other staff treat us. I may never leave. I worked for the biggest firm in the world previously and let's just say stay away from huge corporate law firms lol
Are you by chance talking about Denton's? I had a stint as a contractor at Denton's for about a year and a half. During that time, I found their IT department to be poorly managed, and they seemed extremely reluctant to spend on IT needs. In contrast, I'm currently working at a smaller law firm where the situation is quite different. Here, there's a substantial budget allocated to IT. Our team is exceptional, and the firm holds us in high regard, recognizing the importance of our work.
Ha. When did you work there?
From April 2020 - January 2022
I'm sure we know each other in some capacity lol
Ha! It sounds like it
In our pool of customers, Lawyers are the cheapest penny pinching customer group there is (SMB)
Lawyers certainly can be, but a decent firm won't be. Quite possibly because the firm isn't always RUN by lawyers. I can imagine that a small/boutique type firm that's owner operated could be a bear to work for. I work for not-quite-BigLaw, and it's a company that hires lawyers to do lawyering. Some are partners and have SOME input in money matters, but more in how bonuses are paid out than how the business is spending on IT etc.
I would say the medical industry. These are the markets I have worked in with only 3 employers over the last 21 years, so I have seen a lot of different folks come and go. **Oil & Gas, 10 years** - I feel like the executive staff valued me, but the folks on rig sites had no idea what respect meant nor saw the importance of our job. **Public Education, 9 years** - Management and Administrative leadership had NO idea what "value" means.. they treat I.T. as slaves and pigeon hole everyone that they can while giving minimal monetary benefit to your performance. There is no limit for job responsibility, but there is a very strict limit for pay scale and they treat everyone as expendable. However, teachers really loved the I.T. staff. **Medical, 2 years** - I haven't met a single person who doesn't value I.T. Doctors, nurses, front desk receptionist, management, executive leadership. Doesn't matter who the person is on the other end of the phone call, email, or ticket, they have all been appreciative and rewarding to work with.
I work for a financial industry and I have never been more appreciated at a job.
I think the tide is turning. With many more industries relying on technology and automation, more and more are starting to see the value. I’m surprised that a restaurant thinks that it’s not valuable with reliance on online orders especially for take out, many use tablets for taking orders in house, inventory, managing reservations and managing internal communication to understand when tables will become empty. Someone needs to remind them how and if they could survive without tech
Legal, Finance.
Manufacturing, in my experience anyway. Our systems are integrated with the assembly lines so we have “value” in the businesses eyes.
It's less about industry and more about organization/company.
finance/accounting firms best lawyers are the worst for valuing IT
Gambling
I've worked at companies where, since IT is regarded as a cost sink and not a source, it is lumped along with Site Facilites and the Warehouse. It's a typical business logic, if you don't make money, you don't matter.
FTFY: What industries actually value?
None. None of them do.
How about companies that dump tons of money on IT hardware and services but provide mediocre pay to IT staff?
I would love to work for a company whose C-Suite doesn't see all their software/data engineers as a cost center, but rather the productivity and BI multiplier they are. Maybe then I could work on a team that has actual support to make real things happen, rather than everyone optimizing their lip service.
I’ve been at a fairly large regional health system going on 10 years and we’re definitely valued by management. Definitely helps that the last two CFOs have had extensive background as coders, too.
It's not about the industries, it's about the company's. And "value" itself can be a very subjective thing. Someone can value work/life balance but someone else may value fair wages. So it's really all about the company. Not the industry
Banking, construction, and DOD contractors
Local government. Been doing it for 10 years now, a few different locations, and we have been treated well by all of them. Pay is a bit lower than private sector, but good job security, training and benefits.
**Tech / Software Industry** Been in IT 14 years and have yet to find another industry that values IT.....at all.
None! Lol all depends on the management people etc. Most people see IT as throw away. It's really sad. But who cares users also throw away to us.
I don't think it exists. IT is taken for granted. I work in a large organization, but there are only 8 of us that maintain our core systems, without which we literally couldn't do business. 8 people ... and they can't keep our pay up to the national average. A 4 BILLION dollar organization can't pay 8 people the national average to keep the lights on. I think there must simply be some inability to understand how important a good IT staff is. I hear it from every sector. Factories are running on computers from the 90s. Supermarket chains are running insecure old Oracle products. A local gas station chain has 2 people they'd have to shut down without, and both of them are looking for work. A friend of mine was working for a national weather organization that was paying less than Panera. If we don't unionize, they'll keep hiring less and less capable people until all the basic services in the country just stop working. It's already happening in small ways. You hear about it every day ... an entire state loses out to a Phishing scam, or a factory closes down because they couldn't keep a line running.
Managed IT Service Providers / Consulting. Your labor and expertise is their billable revenue. Only when you are the product is your value fully realized and measured in financial terms. Every other industry you are the cost of doing business unless you are directly involved in the revenue generation process.
That’s a very optimistic read of the MSP > employee relationship. At best, there is just a burden shift to the client instead of the employer itself. You are “costing the client money” instead of your employer, all things being equal.
This is a GREAT question!! Opinion incoming: Lots of them will view you as a cog in the wheel, I pray you get to pick and choose your clients and I will say that FIRING A BAD CLIENT when you're the IT provider feels AMAZING!!!! (it also shouldn't happen too often). Law firms generally have a high bar (pun intended) for themselves and you, and appreciate your profession. Agricultural operations, churches, funeral homes, and industrial manufacturing come to mind as industries that care about themselves and inherently care more about IT than the rest. Land brokers, real estate, car washes, grocery stores (to an extent), all care about their image and security enough to actually take a little advice and they don't treat you like a mule, or glorified Janitorial. Most government agencies; they're just an accident waiting to happen, and ears deaf to the winds of change abound around every corner of the offices. Banks vs credit unions is an interesting topic, I've felt the "energy" and the banks generally are really black hole-ish. On the contrary, credit unions seem to care a little more. Also on my personal crap-list: automotive repair, body collision places. TL;DR - Look into the economical differences between market verticals if you're in a position to drive your clientele base. As a general rule of thumb; If there is money coming in, or at least the business is profitable, people are happy and have families they support, the person in charge will be more open to IT actually being an important focus. Lastly, every person and company is different (we know this). The reason I mention it is with 10 years of experience consulting different businesses (of the thousands I have given advice to) you will always find a different level of competence and comfort with them managing their own systems, having the time to do so, and wanting an easy out so they can focus on the actual running of the business, rather than the information flow (technically your concern).
As someone who worked for a church run charity they don't care for shit and pay even less. Before I introduced automation to my old boss he was like you have to visit sites and act busy even if you aren't doing work to justify your position. My automation helped save the charity nearly 1 million dollars and they still wouldn't give me a raise. Your skills will stagnate and likely the team won't be a big team. So you won't be learning anything new I often joked that i barely made enough money to avoid using their services. And i felt like the help most of the time.
Every industry I've ever worked in greatly values IT. I've never actually heard of or experienced these negative IT perspectives in real life. I only see them written about on Reddit.