Paging Dr. Gregson….Dr. Gregson Stat!!!

Information Technology, is neither an exciting nor a glamorous career choice. However, I’ve always likened us to emergency room doctors, and, often, the patient is about to code.

There are many roads to get here. Some people arrive via formal education – bachelor of science, master’s degree, or some other form of higher education. Some people arrive by specific vendor training channels – Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, HP, Quest, etc. Still, others might arrive by virtue of work they’ve performed.

Regardless of how we got here, we had to merit the opportunities, likely with many a night of long hours and broken plans. It’s our specialized knowledge that organizations covet and often our organizational knowledge (“tribal knowledge”) too. We develop these as we grow, so, in my mind, I liken these types of careers to an individual’s practice.

Meditation is a practice. Attorneys, accountants, and physicians have practices. So, what IS a practice? Well, according to businessdictionary.com a practice is “a business in which a professional or number of professionals offer services..” Let’s have some fun and abstract this a bit. Working with IT systems, there’s often some level of ambiguity and inherent risk. In fact, sometimes there’s no well-defined path to move forward. Meet the world of professional services; this is where many of us live. When your next moves are weighted by what you’ve seen and experienced, to me that equates to a practice. We take our experiences, determine the best path forward, take that next step, evaluate, wash-rinse-repeat. Although, we have a framework for our process, each decision is a best effort forward in an ever-changing landscape. Each engagement is different. Our careers become our practice.

Perhaps life’s a practice too.

Ah, but maybe that’s getting too existential for a simple IT guy, so, for the moment, I’ll just stay in my lane. 😊