• OldFartPhil@lemm.ee
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    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
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      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
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        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
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        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@lemm.ee
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      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@lemm.ee
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        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
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          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@lemm.ee
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            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.