I'm the youngest person at my company, I'm 25 and the rest of the employees are all either 40 or older (save for a few 35's). It's a telecommunications company where the IT guy can't even access the companies FTP server and where another higher-up thinks that SCSI hard drives are still the best medium for storing data.

Honestly, I find that most of the precautions set forth by the CIO and the people who run the company are little more than outdated superstition. Until recently (like last week) we didn't even have a wireless network because one guy in charge thought hackers would, quote, 'monitor and steal everything'.

The fact of the matter is, the lines have blurred between what is 'earned' and what makes the most sense for a business. A CIO title is just that: a title. It doesn't mean that you know more than I do because you're older than me. One would hope a good CIO did, but that isn't always the case and to assume so, can hinder progress.

For instance, I recently helped bail the whole company out of a situation using completely open-source software. This was after weeks of sitting in on meetings where I was told not to do anything while my superiors plotted crazy solutions that would have been brilliant...ten years ago. Long story short, I took some open source software and code and managed to finish the project at one of the meetings (while they were still talking). Sure, I wasn't exactly following protocol, but the job got done.