Hong Kong Computer Society - enterpriseinnovation.net

COVERSTORY
HKCS: 40 years
IT – Black box mystique
Stephen Lau has no regrets after leaving behind chartered accountancy in the UK to
assume a career in IT which at the time held a mysterious allure and fascination
By Chee Sing Chan
Computerworld Hong Kong (CWHK):
Describe how your career in IT started?
Stephen Lau (SL): After studying
Physics in UK I decided to try chartered
accountancy at a city firm in London in
the mid-1960’s. At the time computers
were very new and only just coming into
the commercial world. After six months
there I was attracted to join a computer
science MSc course at London University
and left the accountancy firm. In
hindsight if I had stayed on with my
article clerkship and returned to Hong
Kong I would have been one of a handful
of fully qualified chartered accountants
of Chinese origin in all Hong Kong—
things could have turned out to be quite
different, but no regrets.
Being an overseas Chinese I was grateful
to have been accepted at a city firm in
London but auditing accounts and cross
checking statements were not something
I thought I could do for the rest of my
life. So after graduating I joined ICL
in the UK as a trainee which was a big
supplier to the UK government and after
a while I came back to Hong Kong
in 1968.
Working as a technical support specialist
to the government I specialized
in processing census data which also
led me to work with projects in Malay-
sia, Indonesia and Burma, in addition to
Hong Kong.
CWHK: And how was IT perceived as a
career during that time?
SL: At that time when IT was seen very
much like a “black box” of mystery with
an air of mystique. To be honest for
those in the field it wasn’t that much of a
mystery but to most people it was something
of an unknown art. Computing was
genuinely regarded as an elite profession
and very much at the cutting edge.
It was this allure that pulled me from
my accountancy job and into the world
of mainframes and data processing.
CWHK: So what attributes did you need
for a career in IT at that time?
SL: One observation from the 60s and
the 70s is that there were very few real
IT focused degrees or programs. As a result
the question in the industry was how
to evaluate and assess capabilities, particularly
with fresh recruits. Incoming
programmers often took aptitude tests
to assess their ability to apply logic. The
assumption has always been that if you
were good at maths then you could be
a good programmer—that’s not the case
as logic is the most important attribute.
As a result, you would find computer
operators and programmers from a variety
of backgrounds, from guys that
studied music, to French and archaeology
– it was a real mix. And from being a
computer operator you could quite easily
progress to other roles and get up the ladder
to senior positions if you were bright
and intelligent.
That’s almost impossible today as any
incoming IT professional needs to have
an IT qualification and be specialized.
But you look at some of today’s senior
figures at OGCIO for example and figures
such as John Wong and Dennis
Pang have come through the ranks as
Stephen Lau, current advisor, HP Enterprise
Services, former chairman of EDS and Distinguished
Fellow of the Hong Kong Computer
Society
28 Computerworld Hong Kong Nov 2009 www.cw.com.hk