I Gave Up At SMS

Something rather startled me today, it wasn't the mounting pressure of project nearing completion nor was it the fact I can't even recall what day of the week it is, it was something a technician said as we were discussing System Center 2012. Let me set the scene

His name is Mark, he's been a technician (3rd line support) for about 15 years now, working at the same office in the same server room all that time. Its safe to say that he knows his environment inside out as literately every I.T change that's occurred in the last 15 years, Mark has been the guy that's installed the software that runs his organization. So he's invaluable to his company. We struck up a conversation around where Config Manager 2012 fits into the private cloud, he looked at me with a blank expression and said "I gave up at SMS". Those 5 words hit me right between the eyes and left me dazed, and it got me thinking again, rather a lot.

Things is, I couldn't comment, I've never used SMS. Ever. To me SMS was an old wives tale. I'm of the understanding that SMS got the nickname "Slow Moving Software" (Greg Shields told me that one) and that's it, my knowledge is exhausted. You see, I'm of the generation where everything is 100mph, things like 3G, Smartphones and Facebook were just there, all the time, its how people communicated, it's considered the norm. It made me reminisce in the same way you would say "Wow Grandad, World War 2 doesn't sound like a nice time away from Granny at all". I'm never going to see a war on my home front on the scale of what was seen in 1939 - 1945, but I can imagine it must have been terrible.

It quickly dawned on me that I'm still a guppy in the ocean of I.T. I can make a few things tick over on Config Manager 2007 and 2012, mostly 2012. And that puts me at a disadvantage I fear as I wasn't there in the good old days when things just never worked, or worked all the time depending on the individual at the time.

That leads me onto the question of is it getting easier or more and more difficult to step into I.T at high level? I mean think about it, you never really leave support do you, even the guys who are in the management and infrastructure teams are still supporting the business and ultimately the application owners and end users is some way. Where do you start? at the bottom of course, I think these days its getting harder and harder to make a solid move in the I.T game without moving organizations or getting a job at Google.

Point is, I'm still in a state of Flux, being my age and advising guys who have seen and done it all has its challenges, but I would assume that keeping your head down and simply moving on seems to be the best way forward.