• OldFartPhil
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Another confirmation here. At my previous job, I was they guy who built Access databases and wrote VBA code. While not ideal, it was a very small business (less than 10 employees) and it was fit for purpose.

    When I got a new job at a company with almost 3,000 employees, I was like, “Finally, I’ll be working somewhere that has proper IT resources.” Ha! I soon find out that my department runs critical business infrastructure with Excel macros. And we have a proper IT department.

    As everyone has already said, if IT resources are in short supply (or the wait is too long, or building projects with IT support is a PITA), then people will build systems with the tools they have at hand. And that’s often MS Office.

    • Melkath@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Also remember, strictly speaking, IT is not software development. IT is networking and hardware management.

      Software development (and scoff all you want, but VBS/VBA are programming languages/frameworks used to develop software applications) is its own separate beast.

      They MAY report to the CIO. They could also report to the COO. Fuck, software development/process automation/business intelligence can have a director reporting directly to the CEO.

      In general, software development and information technology are not the same and don’t reside in the same chain of command.

      • HumbertTetere@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        Strictly speaking, information technology encompasses software dev as a subfield. Practically, a large software development at a company has very different needs and strategic goals than what people usually understand as the “IT guys” so what you mentioned. So they are set up accordingly in an organisation.

      • Ænðr@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        With some of my smaller clients, the CIO is the same as the CTO and the same as the IT Director. There, IT is developers, too.

    • BoofStroke
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      IT isn’t developers. What is really needed is a developer on your team, or somebody who at least knows how to lead the effort. I’ve been that guy.

      • OldFartPhil
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        We do have developers on our team. They write Excel macros :). I work in data integration, so it isn’t as simple as building a more robust tool. We still need infrastructure support or our tool doesn’t do anything.

        • Melkath@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Please at least tell me that the Macros are just a front end for ODBC connections to actual SQL servers for ETL functions, and it ALL isn’t stored only in excel…?

          • OldFartPhil
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            It’s not that bad, the macros are just front end apps. Our data is housed in a real, enterprise class database.