Superstar bankers, like Zoe Cruz, have Harvard MBAs. Marketing champs, like Richard Branson, laze about on their own personal islands. Property tycoons, like Donald Trump, live and breathe under badly styled combovers. Lawyers wear Savile Row and HR people are best friends with everyone in town. Birds chirp. Dogs bark. But what, oh, what, do IT people do? What’s the condition of our stereotype these days?
As Bob Cringley once told us, we’ve moved on from the seventies, where big men, with big beards spent hours programming their Apple II to control model train sets. But what’s the situation like now?
All this thinking started last Tuesday at around 2pm. I got an interesting phone call. It was Pricilla from our marketing department. Sweet as she is, I just don’t think I can sit through another one of their “research sessions.” Seriously. After the usual niceties, she says to me: “one of our IT clients wants us to market a new product. And anyway, we really want to get inside, like, the head of an IT guy. You know, like just to find out what they’re all about, what they’re into, what do they do on weekends, that sort of stuff. You know? Anyway, wanna come upstairs? We’ve got heaps of free coke.”
What “they” are into. Almost as if to say “we” are members of another species. Mmmm. I see. What would “we” do on weekends that’s different to other human beings? Faced with the invitation to this ridiculous meeting and the prospect of installing the latest addition to our server room, I thought let’s go and see what this is all about.
So there I go. Up to level 14, to meet with the marketing prima donnas, expecting to be poked, prodded and probed. I open the door, only to almost collapse under the weight of 10 looks of Blue Steel. And if being confronted by the entire cast of Zoolander wasn’t enough, there was Pricilla, welcoming me with the free cans of coke she promised.
“Come, sit down,” she said, while patting the chair beside her. As I caught a hint of her perfume, I thought to myself, “this may not be so bad, in fact, I could get used to these marketing research sessions.” So I got comfortable.
Big mistake. The second I do, one of the glamours turns around and goes “so, what makes someone like you tick?”
Someone like me. Oh that’s right, because someone like you is just worlds away from where I’m at. Maybe he’s right. I mean, I’m not one to be smugly assuming or patronising, so it’s probably a good thing I’m not lumped in the same demographic as mister chiseled cheek bones over there asking the big questions.
Refraining from telling the truth, that right now, about the only thing that makes this entire existence of mine worthwhile would have to be the 10 milligrams of potassium benzoate in the can of coke I’m about to consume, I stop myself and think. Do I tell the truth? Or do I send them on a wild goose chase?
Who are “we” really? As a collective. As a group. What do “we” do? I mean, I never realised I was part of a “we” – I’m not religious, I’m not into brands, I don’t do rituals. Whether it’s pub-going or football watching, it just aint my thing. See, there’s nothing about me you can pin down. Okay, okay, I confess: I categorically hate being pigeonholed – full stop. That’s one thing I’m a fundamentalist about. Oh yeah, and I’ll never miss anything on screen by Aaron Sorkin. Don’t know if that counts as a ritual though. But yeah. That’s what this blog is all about. I mean, if we’re all part of this “we” business, “we” might as well have a voice. And since I’m one of the few IT guys who (a) moonlights as a screenwriter and (b) can actually find the first 10 digit prime found in consecutive digits of e, then that voice might as well be mine.
Now back to that goose chase. What, oh what, do I tell them? All those dated misconceptions about IT people – sure, I secretly wish Lara Croft was my girlfriend. Yes, I think the light sabre was the best invention of the 20th century. And yes, my memory is almost as good as Charles Simonyi’s, and my head has been indexing phone numbers since I was three years old.
I mean, do you ever see me inviting the marketing folks downstairs, bribing them with tap water, to do some research to extract a few measly crumbs of feedback so that our intranet can be made just that little bit more idiot-proof? I think not.
Containing the strands of my mild-mannered rage, I sit back, and instead, try to make the most of my situation by releasing the goose.
“What makes me tick? You know those books of Sudoku puzzles that are out at the moment?”
Pens flying. Words scribbled madly onto paper. Goose released. They were loving it – lapping up my nonsense about sudoku, chess strategies and how I apparently love spending time on my own.
Send them up a few more stray paths, I thought, down another can of coke and then head back to the grind. So there marketing folk, stick that in your designer Paul Smith pipe and smoke it.
Got something you’d like to have picked apart by an analytical IT guy? Then suggest a topic.
