I keep on running into large companies who say they are not a technology company. All I want to do is shake them and say, “Don’t you get it? We’re all technology companies today.”
But instead, software gets treated as “IT” and outsourced or managed as a utility. Too often, they don’t hire for creative people; they don’t differentiate creative product teams versus sys admin and IT infrastructure (very important functions, but different); they don’t create cross-functional, problem-focused teams; they don’t empower bottom-up, results-driven innovation.
Talk about missed opportunities.
We are all now technology companies.
Will your senior management embrace that fact and run with it? Will your company hire for it? Will you learn how the best, young software companies operate, and bring those practices into your culture?
In 2011, Marc Andreessen wrote an influential WSJ op-ed title “Why Software Is Eating the World“. I agree with his thesis. Ultimately, the question facing all these companies is, do you want to get eaten by software, or do you want to do the eating?