[mmsimanga]

Then are tech workers working in none technical organisation. A programmer in financial services or retail company. IT is seen as just a cost centre and there always seems to be mistrust between the IT department and the business. Most tech jobs in my country are not with tech companies but within industries.

[fragmede]

If your tech company sees IT as a cost center, then you're not working for a "Tech" company as described in the article. The mythical, utopian "Tech" company the writer wanted to be at is built on top of gossip about the perks of working for Facebook and Google, where free lunch (M-F) is assumed, so the question is what are the breakfast specials and dinner options? How many free Uber credits do I get per month? When is massage-day?

IT for this kind of "Tech" company is not a cost center. There's a closet or a vending machine chock full of Apple magic keyboards and magic trackpads at ~$100 a pop, plus all the USB-C adapters that you could want (because everyone new gets a touchbar mac).

The attitude is that it's not worth anybody's time to sit there to dispense $100 keyboards or mice, and that promotes the feeling that the company just... trusts everybody there. However, it's undoubtedly more expensive to stock Apple mice and keyboards that way, than it would be to have much cheaper wired alternatives and a minimum wage worker to gatekeep - at least in terms of IT's balance sheet. However, if any employee has to taking an hour off working, to replace their mouse (starting with filing a ticket with IT), the company has lost more than the cost of basically giving away $100 keyboards in productivity.

[ljw1001]

That whole distinction between "IT" and "the business" makes me nuts. No one refers to marketing, sales, finance, production, etc., a thing separate from "the business" yet IT is just as fundamental to many businesses as any other function. Hearing IT people do it is worse.

[mmsimanga]

:-) I will be sure to be more specific. Actually, I think it is the other way round. All other business units marketing, finance, communication are fairly well understood by everyone. When it comes to IT they don't understand why the DBA seems to earn a big salary but he cannot help fix the MS Word issue. Afterall it is IT. Therein lies the problem.