IT Insights Blog — Career Advice

Long ago in the middle centuries of the Roman imperial era, the emperor Septimius Severus died after appointing his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, to succeed him. The boys had an irreconcilable hatred of each other, and only managed to jointly rule the empire for about 11 months before Caracalla had Geta assassinated. Not "knifed in a dark alley" assassinated, either. Geta was murdered at a summit meeting arranged by his and Caracalla's mother

In 1955, after years of study and testing, virologist Jonas Salk announced a successful polio vaccine. Across the United States, in the four years immediately preceding the release of Salk's vaccine, polio caused paralysis in more than 16,000 patients and killed nearly 1,900 patients every year. Today there are fewer than 10 documented cases of polio per year.

It's possible that one of more members of the TestOut Continuing Education Blog Squad has (or have) recently been watching old episodes of Friday Night Lights, the pigskin-powered TV drama that originally aired on NBC and ran for five season (the last three on DirecTV). The series follows the ups and down of small-town Texas football coach Eric Taylor and the Dillon High School Panthers football team under his supervision.

There's an old 19th-century Christian hymn written by British-born immigrant historian John Jaques that attempts to frame the oft-thirsted-after concept of capital-T "truth." In Verse 1 of "Oh Say, What Is Truth?," Jaques declares that truth is the "fairest gem that the riches of worlds can produce," while in Verse 2 he acclaims it the "brightest prize to which mortals or gods can aspire."

If the IT landscape were a forest, and tech companies were the individual trees, then you wouldn't have a very pretty picture. It's commonly estimated that nine out of 10 startup companies fail across all business realms, and startups are a huge presence in IT. The IT forest would be a peculiar one, with many impressively large and noticeably thriving trees, but many more fallen, rotting, burned out, or otherwise devastated saplings.