Too many companies are acting discriminatory towards technologists. They put them all together in delivery organizations that are handled as massive cost centers which need to be “optimized” and often X-shored.....
Technologists are often the only ones who are billed to other departments by the hour, similar to some very old profession. Business teams are allowed to insult technologists in their face by saying they are speaking too technical and not enough English. This #techcrimination has to end because it will very negatively impact the company and as such top management, who unfortunately often give the wrong example, should include it in the list of gender, racial and other discrimination.
Here are the five reasons why:
1) The biggest companies and richest people in the world are techies
Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, ... are all companies that have strong technical leaders. Many of their owners and leaders know how to programme or are very familiar with the highly technological nature of their business.
2) If the carrot does not help, here is the stick
All companies that underestimated the importance of technology are on their way out. Complete industries are at risk: internal combustion vehicles, high street shopping, retail in-person banking, hotels, taxis, .... You cannot be a technology leader if your top management and boards contain no technologists.
3) Digital transformation = digital blockbusters
If business people set the digital transformation agenda, then they will not make the company an API-first company. More than 70% of Amazon’s profits come from the API company that technologists invented, called Amazon Web Services. If done right technology can be an enormous profit center instead of a cost center.
The expected outcome of a techcriminating company will be the use of AI, cloud, mobile, drones,... to automate existing business processes. If you are in the DVD rental business, the customers will get DVDs recommended [AI] in their mobile app and drones will deliver them while the Netflix equivalent still drives you out of the market because nobody was able to convince upper management video on demand was possible.
4) You are likely to be having resilience, security and high turnover problems
Any business that wants to thrive in the digital age needs end-to-end automation and digital channels. However business people are more likely to invest in the shiny new mobile app and website, then the NoSQL data migration. As such modern front-end technology will meet legacy back-ends that will not be able to resist spikes on Black Friday, market crashes, or similar events. Performance and stability issues will mean frequent outages. Hackers are more likely to be able to steal data if cloud migrations are performed for a me-too reason. Guess what? The best technologists want to work for technology leaders, not for me-too companies. A high salary will be able to attract talent but is never enough to retain them. You are unlikely going to be able to afford the best any way because you do not value their skills. Since you do not know the difference between a great and an exceptional technologist, you might actually end up overpaying for the B-Team.
5) How would you feel?
How would you feel if you mention cash flow, ROI, CAGR, KPI, ... and everybody else would tell you to stop talking nonsense. Each field has their own language. I run a team where we brought together all these different fields and make everybody understand what they did not know, they did not know. The outcome has been extremely enriching and the team has adopted the slogan “faster, cheaper and award-winning”. Which is what we have done consistently...
By Maarten Ectors
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