Why IT?

Recently, someone asked me why I decided to work in IT way back in the early 1980s. Great question! There were two primary reasons.

First, when I was conducting research for my master’s report at The University of Texas at Austin, an Economist article speculated that the global IT consulting industry would grow to $4 billion in annual revenue by 1985. Figured I could survive on one percent of $4 billion! This projection now seems laughable given just one global IT consulting company, Accenture had revenue of $61.6 billion in fiscal year 2022.

Second, while working full time at the IRS while studying at the University part time, we decided to replace the punch card driven payroll system with an on-line data entry system. As manager of the timekeeping unit, I represented the “end users.” Once a week, a programmer would meet with me to discuss the project progress. He wore black rimmed glasses with thick lenses, a short-sleeve white shirt, skinny black tie, black pants–and yes–a plastic shirt pocket protector stuffed with pens.

Whenever I asked for some function that would improve the productivity of the timekeeping team, he would say “no.” More often than not at the next meeting, he would say, “OK, I can do it.” I realized that he was trained to say “no” to all my requests and check-in with his boss before committing to do anything. I also learned that I would be held hostage my entire career by someone like him, if I did not get some IT training. And given the growing importance of computers in the workplace, IT training was exactly what I needed.

There was another part-time student at the University whose husband worked in the management consulting division of Arthur Andersen & Co. She introduced us and I discovered that the firm had an outstanding training program. Thankfully, I was invited to join Andersen and over the course of 22 years received a wide-range of training and hands-on experiences in coding, functional and technical design, all phases of testing, change management, software applications, systems development methodologies, and project management at scale. The management consulting division became Andersen Consulting, and in 2001, was rechristened Accenture.

IT has changed a lot over the years, yet many of the concepts, methodologies, and project management approaches endure. I will always be grateful to that guy with the pocket protector and Arthur Andersen & Co.