This is an idea that's a little... well, stupid really. The basic premise I'm talking about is that having a programmer on staff negates the need for a dedicated IT person. For you programmers, here's the basic idea:
$programmer = 'You';
$it_guy = $programmer;
To your average, sane, programmer or IT guy this is common sense but to the layman, or... ahem... management, this idea makes perfect sense sometimes; usually at the beginning and end of a company though.
Yet, I've seen it at more companies than I'm comfortable with.
(BTW, for all intents and purposes I use IT guy to mean anyone who has anything to do with sysadmin or general IT related work and programmer to be anyone who's primary responsibility is writing code.)
It boggles the mind man...
I've argued the point a few times and it's been about 50-50 split on actually creating change in the company I'm consulting for. Fast forward a couple years and I now face this same dilemma with my own team and my own company and I have yet to make any headway in fixing the issue. I'm a little embarrassed by this.
My usual argument has centered around a couple key concepts; context switching pain, a lack of complete crossover between the two disciplines and the harm both can do to quality.
Let me be clear about this: writing code and being an IT
Take the Foo Fighters as an example. Dave Grohl played every instrument on their first record. He sang, played guitar (rhythm and lead), bass and drums and did all of them incredibly well. This is the exception though.
Since none of my usual arguments worked I thought I'd hit up Stack Overflow and see if the community had any insight into how to convince management programmers suck at IT.
Issues:
Context switching pains and the cost in pain and delays
- Incredibly complicated specialties with only basic crossover at the elementary levels
- Harmful to quality