15 Year Coma

I worked for a Big-4 as an IT-Auditor about 15 years ago. Since then I went to work in IT security.

The thing about IT Security was that the whole time I was doing it, I thought to myself 'Everything is changing all the time, I always feel like someone knows something I don't know; there is always something new to learn, something to do better, a better solution to a problem. Skills are very perishable'

I recently took a new job working on SOX controls--Filled with meetings with two different Big-4 firms. After attending their meetings, seeing the spreadsheets, PowerPoints, and control mappings I realized something:

I could of been in a coma for 15 years, woke up, and done their same job. Literally nothing has changed. Nothing has gotten better about how things are done. The exact same purely academic discussions about controls continue on with a new generation of auditors. Every new circumstance is just something to map to an existing paradigm of doing things the same ol' way.

I can't believe that this business has changed zero in 15 years.