By Simon Moores, 17 July 2008 15:11
COMMENT
Bill Gates is just the most recent example of a big name leaving the world of tech. With the industry notoriously unkind to the over-40s, Simon Moores is thinking of following his lead.
I'm living in the twilight zone or at least that's what it feels like to me.
Perhaps you remember, Mitch Kapor, Ray Noorda or even Philippe Khan? If the answer is no, then I'm showing my age, as the fourth and greatest software Musketeer of them all, Bill Gates, has now left the stage.
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Late last month Gates left Microsoft to spend his retirement doing good works for mankind with the accumulated wealth of the Windows revolution.
For some of us, there was of course a time before Microsoft ruled the earth. Today I can look back at episodes of the industry's history with real nostalgia: the start of a small company called Novell (UK) in London's Regent Street or when I shared a Boston taxi with a chap named Ray Ozzie, who had just been demonstrating a product called Notes to the senior management of Lotus Development.
"I'd rather see the Red Army marching down Wall Street than a thousand Visual Basic programmers," Borland's Philippe Kahn once told me when I met him in California.
It didn't quite happen as he predicted and quickly VB prevailed over C++ but the 1980s industry heavyweights like Borland, Lotus Development, WordPerfect, or even IBM with OS/2 weren't in the end a match for Bill Gates.
So now, I'm following Bill's example and planning a new future. I told the Ministry of Justice IT conference at the QEII centre in London last month that all of us need to have more than one career skill available in this business.
Our industry is demonstrably unkind to the over-40s and India alone, I'm told, is churning out 250,000 IT graduates from its universities each year, all eager to compete for our increasingly outsourced and overpaid European technology jobs.
Too old and possibly too opinionated for the IT industry, I've spent the past two years building up my aviation business, Airads, while studying to become a commercial pilot.
The CAA exams were tough as was spherical geometry and aerodynamic theory but now I'm planning a lifestyle change, perhaps one day mixing flying private charter flights, occasional research projects and technology conferences.
Once upon a time, the IT industry was a lot of fun but fun isn't an adjective I would use to describe it today. Many people I know are chronically overworked and under-resourced.
Large companies seemingly spend their time in endless rounds of reorganisation and workforce streamlining. The results are only too clear to see in the failure of so many of the UK's largest and most oversold public-sector IT projects.
At the consumer end of the market, most of us today own a PC and have a fast broadband connection of sorts and yet where in my contract as a parent, did it say that I had to fulfil the role of family IT, security and network manager?
Tonight, for example, I've just wasted an hour trying to install a tablet driver for my daughter's PC under Microsoft Vista, an OS I resent with a passion normally reserved for Hazel Blears. Sorry Bill, I've had it with Windows and I'm now saving up for a Mac.
When I'm flying an aircraft in cloud, I don't expect my navigation systems to hang or the GPS to announce its downloading a software update and will reboot in 60 seconds, leaving me to input my flight plan all over again when it's finished. That's how I feel about the industry today.
Large mission-critical systems are, I'm sure, very reliable but the interface at the consumer level has become visibly onerous, unreliable and complex with intrusive and quirky digital rights management being one of the worst culprits.
All our family laptops have failed at least twice over the past 18 months for one reason or another and have had to have the OS reinstalled.
On each occasion, the reason appeared to involve known incompatibilities in Windows Vista and it can take days to reinstall software and bring a machine back to its original working state.
Arguably, Gates has done a Tony Blair, departing Microsoft at just the right time, leaving Steve Ballmer to carry forward the company's vision in an increasingly cloud-centric world.
Gates did a wonderful job by putting a computer within reach of every family in the land.
But as I pull the battery out of my daughter's laptop in a fit of despair after two hours of waiting for Vista to finish logging off after a critical Windows update, I would remind him that 20 years ago we imagined the PC would be as simple and reliable to use as televisions.
Instead, one might argue we've become slaves to the fickle and unreliable nature of a voracious consumer technology.
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
Best of luck to you in your new career
2. Simon Moores
That's very kind of you Karen. Thank you.
I'm not saying I'm giving up IT as I have too many years and too much intellectual property invested in the subject, which I hope will remain useful for a few more years at least. Rather I'm saying that I'm steadily moving sideways towards a new challenge, which also involves technology to one degree or another. I always wanted to fly executive jets and perhaps I can now before I'm too old. We'll see.
Strangely enough, Philippe Kahn also spotted this column and caught-up with me to reminisce about the good old days. He's still using his energy as the CEO of a Silicon Valley IT company.
3. Robert Hempel
Best of luck to you Simon. Like many people in IT, I have more or less left or channelled my energies elsewhere. Strangely enough I used the same words IT is not fun anymore. It has become nasty, narrow minded. Sorry to disagree but it I think it’s vastly underpaid. China is churning almost as many graduates as India, but of both of them only 10-15% is considered good enough for western standards. IT has become a "be a professional IT person in 10 easy steps" without any of the understanding of how and why it came about. Ask the so called professional who is Hopper, Turing, Khan, Strousop and it s "huh who’s that”. So join the rest of us on the sidelines as we watch the embarrassment that has become British IT.
4. Karen Challinor
Don't forget Knuth, another name guaranteed to generate a sea of blank faces.
It's like physicists forgetting Newton, Watt, Einstein, Bohr and Feynman
No wonder the museum closed.
5. Bob Emptage
Good for you Simon. Like so many in the industry, particularly those of us that have spent many years there, you've come to the conclusion that it's time to quit. I wish I could say while the going is still good. :(
I've only (!?) working in IT for a quarter of a century but it's not the same environment any more. Where's the company that's out to increase quality, or end-user satisfaction, or even to improve their (non-IT) product through use of IT? No, it seems the only function of IT these days is to reduce financial cost, regardless of the other costs of doing so.
Good luck with the career change. I'm now making paint and far happier than I've been (with work) for many years. I hope you find similar joy.
And to the rest of your readers: Take Simon's excellent advice and have an alternative planned. It is only a matter of time before you will need it.
6. Brian Collins
Good luck with your plans.
Couple of points. When you say "I don't expect ... the GPS to announce its downloading a software update and will reboot in 60 seconds". Actually I hope you do expect that! GPS is still not approved by the CAA for navigation - partly because its reliability isn't proven enough.
And in flying, don't emulate Gary Kildall, founder of Digital Research). He went flying in preference to meeting IBM to talk about providing an OS for the PC. So IBM talked to Bill instead. The outcome was MS-DOS and the rest is history!
7. Simon Moores
I quite agree Robert. Very much so in regard to the quality of graduates from developing countries. Problem is that we have an absolute skills crisis here in the UK and no light at the end of the tunnel..!
Give my regards to Qatar - bit hot I'm sure - certainly along with the UAE one of the places to be I suspect!
8. Kasi Viswanathan
Nice article and a must read for tech savvy entrepreneurs and gadget gurus.
Wishing you all the best in your future endeavour.