{"id":143,"date":"2014-09-17T05:52:22","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T05:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/?p=143"},"modified":"2017-01-17T15:49:33","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T15:49:33","slug":"nashville-dont-call-us-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/2014\/09\/17\/nashville-dont-call-us-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Nashville – Don’t Call Us IT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally Published in http:\/\/www.southernalpha.com<\/a><\/p>\n

My wife and I recently moved to the Nashville (just south of Nashville actually) from Silicon Valley. We were drawn to this city over others because of nearby family, great schools for our kids and the fact that it had a growing tech community that would allow us to continue doing what we love for work.<\/p>\n

Nashville\u2019s investment in technology and programs like Hack Nashville, Healthbox, Entrepreneur Center, Jumpstart Foundry, and Nashville Software School are just a few examples of the strength of the tech and entrepreneurship community here. \u00a0But, there is something about the Nashville tech community I don\u2019t quite understand \u2013 no matter what your role in the industry might be, I keep hearing people lump their teams together under the title of IT.<\/p>\n

Now, I am not knocking IT people here, they play a really important role in the tech ecosystem, especially for larger companies. \u00a0But, for all of my years in this industry I\u2019ve never worked in IT, called myself an IT person, or looked for a job in IT. \u00a0I am a software engineer.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s the big deal?<\/p>\n

Simply put \u2013 \u00a0IT and engineering are two completely different things. \u00a0To put it in more traditional Nashville terms, confusing IT and software engineering is like calling an audio engineer a songwriter, although to be fair there are probably several people in Nashville who can do both.<\/p>\n

IT is the deployment, integration, and maintenance of hardware and software products to an organization. \u00a0Software developers\/engineers are creators of software. \u00a0We build apps, launch new products (and companies) and use code to create much of the technology that consumers enjoy every day.<\/p>\n

IT and developers work together \u2013 in the case of enterprise software, the software that developers create is deployed by IT or, in many cases, is sold to consumers. \u00a0But, grouping all technology functions together as IT undermines the expertise of each contributing team member. By distinguishing a class of technology workers who are creators, you recognize the way each role works together to bring entrepreneurs\u2019 visions to life. Not to mention, companies must be able to identify and hire for each role with intention.<\/p>\n

As Nashville becomes a focal point of technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship, identifying the people who help create from the ground-up, those who execute and deploy technology, and everything in between, is crucial. We need to be synchronized with our peers in the industry and across the nation. \u00a0The top companies outside of Tennessee aren\u2019t hiring IT when they are referring to software engineers, and we shouldn\u2019t be either. Finally, let\u2019s retain the top talent coming out of our Nashville schools and let them know we understand their technology expertise and need their skills here in Nashville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally Published in http:\/\/www.southernalpha.com My wife and I recently moved to the Nashville (just south of Nashville actually) from Silicon Valley. We were drawn to this city over others because of nearby family, great schools for our kids and the fact that it had a growing tech community that would allow us to continue doing … Continue reading “Nashville – Don’t Call Us IT”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eventbrite","category-nashville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themayesfamily.com\/blogs\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}