As a programmer in Scicon (a consultancy, no longer around); my first assignment was building an internal dosimetry system for BNFL.
How has the world of IT changed since you first started in the sector?
I've been in IT for 30 years. I started in midrange and mainframe programming. The changes have been so vast in the way we deliver technology that it would take too long to list them. What is constant is that we need great people to do technology.
What do you think are the most important skills people wanting to enter the IT job market should have nowadays?
Creativity, perseverance, and a can do attitude.
Apart from the perennial do more for less, I worry about where our great technologists of the future will come from if we lose the training ground of delivering systems to outsourcers and offshore.
What advice would you give someone thinking of entering the IT jobs market/your younger self?
Make sure you spend some time understanding business as well as IT.
What is the biggest challenge facing IT professionals at the moment?
Apart from the perennial do more for less, I worry about where our great technologists of the future will come from if we lose the training ground of delivering systems to outsourcers and offshore.
What technologies/trends are you currently watching and why?
Mobile, pervasive and web' futures [in terms of them] determining the way we and our customers will consume technology in the future.
Conversely, what current technology/trend are you not interested in and why?
As technologies can de deployed in so many weird, wonderful and unseen ways, I would never write off a technology or trend.
