IT Insights Blog — Employment

It was huggable movie icon and didactic raconteur Forrest Gump who uttered the immortal words: "Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates. Anything that tastes sweet makes you fat." Hmm. Or maybe it was, "Life is like a box of chocolates. Either someone else eats all the good ones, or you leave it out in the sun and it melts. And then you're like, 'That box of chocolates cost me $19.99.' "

As a high-schooler, I worked for a local research firm. In the basement of our building was a secure room where the temperature was kept very cold. The only contents of the room were a desk, a monitor, and a large oblong box.

Earlier today, the the people at Disney who are in charge of movie trailers finally released a teaser trailer for the new Han Solo movie, creatively titled Solo: A Star Wars Story. If you're an objective observer, by which we mean someone whose cats are not named Threepio and Artoo, then you probably shrugged and said, "Could be fun," if you watched the trailer at all. Oh, and if you didn't ... behold:

Do you ever wonder what happens to all of the other contestants at a beauty pageant or science fair? Not the first or second runners-up, either, but the ones who fall by the wayside sometimes before the real competition has even begun. Like maybe the kid who forgets the baking soda for his papier-mâché volcano diorama, or Miss Hinterland County who finishes 28th out of 29 contenders trying to become the Miss State representative to the Miss America pageant.

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.