The analogy between working in IT and playing sports
I recently had a conversation at the gym with 2 friends of mine who are in a romantic relationship together. Both have 2 different jobs, she has a job as a sales development manager (fancy ain’t that) and he is working in IT, just as I am.
He is specialised in blockchain and I’m a Linux system engineer.
I asked him about the new book he wrote called (*insert product placement* 🤓) Decoding Blockchain for Business and while we started talking, his girlfriend said that she doesn’t understand anything the book was about and called it
a book about “IT”
to which she suggested I would understand. This is a normal assumption as a lot of jobs in “IT” are a bit hard to wrap your head around if you’re not really tech-savvy. The vast majority of “IT”-jobs are now done in, for what most people see, a virtual environment. There are seldom any tangible products involved.
At that moment I tried (and succeeded) to make a point of clarifying that “working in IT” can be compared to “playing sports”.
The comparison
The IT people
Let’s say that you’re working in a company that builds tailor-made software for its clients. In order to deliver this software the company that builds it depends on its employees. All of these have different roles within the company’s structure.
- There are the developers that create the software in a specific programming language, let’s say they use Java as an example
- The data that’s being processed by the software needs to be kept in a database, for which they need database administrators
- Once the software is going towards a state of completion, it needs to be tested thoroughly by the test engineers
- The software needs an environment to execute its tasks in, therefor we need servers. These servers are deployed and maintained by the system engineers
As you can see there are a lot of people involved in this process, every one “works in IT” but every one fulfils one or more specific tasks that each require a specific skillset.
The sports(wo)men
Now let’s translate the previous skillsets into sports terms and use an olympic delegation for a country as an example.
This olympic delegation is the software company from the previous paragraph. In order to represent their country and strive to win medals they bring the following athletes:
- Gymnasts who excel with their agile and sharply timed movements
- Basketball players who use their team spirit and ball dribbling skills to bring home the victory
- Billiard players with nerves of steel and very precise aim
- Heptathlon athletes who have to be skilled in 7 athletic disciplines
As you can tell, none of these athletes above can just switch between sports and deliver the same performance as the actual athletes from the given sport.
Reconsider
So the next time you think of asking that person who “works in IT” as a software developer, system engineer, and so on… to
- hack some website,
- fix your printer,
- create a spreadsheet formula,
- Photoshop somebody out of a picture
- assist them in any software suite or online tool;
ask yourself, would you ask a
- soccer player to pole vault?
- cyclist to wrestle?
- rugby player to do a somersault on a pommel horse?
Nonetheless, as a system engineer with 15 years of experience in my field of work, I can grasp concepts that are out of my usual knowledge. Just like a professional athlete knows the dedication it takes to improve in a sport or what (not) to eat and drink.
This knowledge and understanding comes with years of experience in your profession.
My job
As for myself, I recently came across the next image that explains my job as a system engineer.
