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Comment by maaaats | Hacker News Reader

> People in IT should really stop to pretend that they are the only smart people that know how to run a business.

But one problem I have seen as a consultant is companies don't realize they are software companies now. For instance, they are no longer a bank having a small IT department, IT is now their core business and should be treated as such.

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No, IT is not their core business. Banking is. IT is a means to that end.

Not to be nit-picky, but the 'means' to provide the result are in the core-business of the enterprise inseparable from 'the business'. Being in the 'conceptual' banking business without the means to do banking isn't going to fly. Same as casting a farm as a 'food produce provider' and telling them that farming is not what their core business is about. Semantically correct, but not useful for most purposes.

Grandparent said IT is a means. There are other means to provide the core business of banking. There are banks who outsource / spin-off not only their IT, but even transaction processing and settlement.

> Same as casting a farm as a 'food produce provider' and telling them that farming is not what their core business is about

The correct analogy would be the other way round: a 'food produce provider' whose core business it is to distribute food produce. Here, too, the farm is a means to the end, but it's not the only means.

Depends on the company, maybe some methods seem primitive by our standards but they can be extremely effective nonetheless. I strongly suspect a lot of it unnecessary, I've seen a VC funded startup tackle the same problem that someone solved with a mailing list. Software expertise seems to be the most expensive generic skill set that you can hire for anywhere today -- even if you hire the people they still might be crippled by having to work with legacy infrastructure; I've seen a live SCO Unix server not too long ago.

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