If IT were an abundant, only marginally useful commodity, United Airlines wouldn't be fighting to give as many as 600 tech professionals bonuses equal to 20 percent of their annual salaries. United proposed the bonus plan in a federal bankruptcy-court filing earlier this month, just two months after cutting the pay of most other employees, to keep its IT pros from leaving for rival airlines and other companies. "They have highly marketable technical skills, and we feel it's essential to our restructuring to retain them," a United spokesman told the Associated Press. In other words, IT expertise, particularly as it's applied to airline efficiency and safety, remains scarce, even if some of the factors that underpin airline reservation and navigation systems are becoming commodities.
The big difference between IT and commodities like electricity is complexity. When you buy electricity, you buy it according to set standards. Even for IT infrastructure, the range of variation and choice will be much wider for the foreseeable future.
Tech professionals must understand the complexity of the products they deploy and manage. Their ability to do that, and to then align the technology and products with business goals, is what makes IT matter.
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