rhyme wrote:
If I could come back to IT as a CXO out of my MBA program, I probably would consider it. I'd even take Director. The reality is I'd probably came back into IT as a junior PM or maybe a test manager or analysis manager or something - and thats just not especially enticing.
The way I look at it - and the biggest thing that keeps me from coming back -- ... no matter what position you end up in IT, with maybe the exception of CTO, you are reactionary not visionary.
Your job is always aligned with the decision someone else made. You might be a decision maker within your area, but you are never truly strategic. You are never on the front lines, defining company direction. You never get to vision a direction for the firm, you merely implement someone else's vision. Your projects, your existence, your entire line of work is, and will always be, a support role. The only exception to this is obviously a firm like microsoft, oracle, etc - firms where the software is the product. Everywhere else - banks, consulting firms, law firms, consumer product companies, ad agencies, marketing firms, steel manufacturing plants, dance studios, restaurants, government, healthcare, - whatever - IT is always secondary. It is always the bastard child to the true decision makers.
A professor at Georgetown once said to me when I was 16 - "You want to be the guy telling them what to do, not the guy doing it." - And that, is fundamentally, the difference between a senior level position in business and a senior level position in IT.
I don't have much to add to this thread except to say that Rhyme's post is a fantastic explanation of IT's role in most businesses, and really explains why the majority of IT professionals pursuing MBAs want to switch out.