IT Industry Blues - Part 1.2.1: Team Playerism - A Little Theory

So what exactly is it that motivates Team Players to stop being human beings and begin being Gantt-a-holics? Stupidity? Ignorance? Naivety? Misinformation? Dysfunctional childhoods?

I have a little theory.

In my little theory, nobody makes a conscious, planned decision to go into IT. They go into it as a last resort, when all the other options are used up, when the jobs they have become so unbearable that it’s a choice between retraining to go into IT or cut off an arm or a head.

When nobody else wants you, IT has a place for you, especially the eLearning industry. It’s like an arranged marriage for the doomed, and once the marriage is consummated by that first overtime hour without pay, the full realization of the mistake reveals itself and the doomed throw themselves into a never-ending cycle of project-to-project Team Playerism – working night and day and weekends and holidays and even sacrificing vacation just to dull the senses and hide from the fact that, yes, that was the frying pan … this is the fire.

Or something like that.

And always remember: People do not exist to fulfill the needs of work, work exists to fulfill the needs of people.