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Fox or hedgehog - which type of techie are you?
CIO Forum: And don't throw the geek out with the bath-water, either...

By Tim Ferguson

Published: Tuesday 16 October 2007

The skills needed for tech jobs are now much broader and more business focused than previously, according to IT execs speaking at silicon.com's CIO Forum.

Mark O'Neill, CIO at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, said tech workers need to be more rounded in terms of their skills. Citing an old proverb, O'Neill said: "The fox knows many things [but] the hedgehog knows one, and that one thing in depth. We need to become foxes."

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He added: "Technology is very much part of a mix of skills."

But O'Neill emphasised this doesn't mean technical knowledge and skills are any less important: "The challenge for us is not to throw out the geek with the bath-water." And he added: "The people in the organisation that look inside and outside the organisation are the IT crowd."

In terms of how to attract people to the industry, he said: "One of the things about IT is that it offers lots of opportunities. What you need to do is give people career paths that are realistic."

Ben Whishart, Whitbread's group IS director, agreed that the demands of tech jobs are changing. He said: "I think in the departments we work in, the world, is changing. Just running IT is not good enough."

Adam Thilthorpe, professionalism programme manager for the British Computer Society agreed, saying IT is no longer just about the geeks in the basement.

He added: "Now and in the future, it's about change. But it's not about IT for IT's sake."