A Somber Wake Up Call

Not too long ago I was given an old Apple Mac running OS 7. At the time I thought it was the best thing I could be given, since it cost me nothing, short of gas money to pick it up. Two weeks later, this machine is still sitting on my counter, gathering dust with no real use or purpose in life.

This got me to thinking, what happens when the same thing happens to people in our industry? At what point do they not feel useful any longer. As a society, our first reaction is to simply dismiss this as a fact of life, give the person a gold watch and send them to Florida. Personally, I think this is a waste. For one thing, the retired person is not mentally limited. Yes, they may not be zipping around as fast as they did in their younger years, but you will find few young people that have the life experience that the retired person has.

Now this brings things pretty close to home. At some point in my life, I will want to retire from the work I do now. Don’t get me wrong. I am still quite young (even in dog years), but as the years rush by, people do slow down. My pondering thoughts encompass the concept of me sitting in my recliner talking to some “punk kid” on the phone when I am in my 60’s. Apparently they are having issues with something related to a small business network. This young, hotshot IT person is fresh out of school and undoubtly believes that he/she has all of the answers. Since I have years of experience to draw from, I attempt to explain how I dealt with a similar situation in my more youthful past. Before I can even finish my first sentence, this kids shuts me up with the old “this is a different technology” speech. Granted, when I am in my 60s, it is unlikely that I will be as IT adept as I am now. However, this does not mean that I do not a have a similar experience that I was able to resolve through a specific, timeless troubleshooting technique.

So what is my overall point to this endless rambling? Where will we be in our golden years? Will people still come to us for advice? Or will we be left to decay in some retirement community someplace feeling left out and forgotten. Our industry is young enough that I do not have much to compare this with. The oldest IT people that I know personally are only in their late 40s early 50s. So I will have to wait and see how the industry treats them in order to gain a glimpse of what our collective futures have in store for us. Scary, huh? I mean, not knowing is almost as frightening as the coming to terms with reality of not being needed anymore. Moral of the story, make every second count while we are still able to participate in the IT game. ;o)

Let’s get digital!