Dear Bob ...I read an article today (http://www.computerworld.com/newsletter/0,4902,110724,00.html?nlid=CAR ) about people changing careers into IT jobs. I've seen a lot of this first-hand over the years and have always been a little confused about the subject. I have a bachelor's degree in computer science and have worked in a couple different IT departments where it was common to have people w Dear Bob …I read an article today (http://www.computerworld.com/newsletter/0,4902,110724,00.html?nlid=CAR ) about people changing careers into IT jobs. I’ve seen a lot of this first-hand over the years and have always been a little confused about the subject. I have a bachelor’s degree in computer science and have worked in a couple different IT departments where it was common to have people with various business backgrounds working in IT. Sometimes this worked out well and sometimes not so well.I’ve always wondered why this approach has been so accepted over the years. If I applied for jobs in different functional areas like human resources, finance, or marketing, I definitely wouldn’t get very far. In fact, I would probably be laughed right out the door because I don’t have any educational background in those areas. Why is the same not true for IT? Why does it sometimes seem like the only qualification for working in IT, or even managing IT, is that the person has used a computer in the past? What’s your opinion on this topic? – GroundedDear Grounded …I’m on the other side of it, I think, probably because I’ve worked with IT professionals who had excellent computer science pedigrees, who would have done an outstanding job of coding a highly efficient sorting or indexing subroutine but who at best had only a cookbook approach to understanding what IT’s business partners were trying to accomplish and to translating that knowledge into useful software designs. I’ve also, by the way, known many IT professionals of all backgrounds who went on to succeed in diverse careers in everything from marketing to law to manufacturing operations. I sure hope you aren’t looking at your computer science degree as a straightjacket. Depending on the assignments you’ve worked on I see no reason anyone would laugh you out the door for gaining experience outside IT.Quite the opposite: With modern methodologies of the Agile sort, businesses need fewer and fewer pure developers. What they need are do-everything programmer/analysts.That, at least, is my opinion. The last statistics I saw on the subject, by the way, showed that for the past 25 years or so, about a quarter of the IT workforce has had formal training in computer science, and that’s a pretty good description of the comparison between the supply of graduating computer science majors and the demand for IT new hires.– Bob Technology Industry