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Tech Training Schools Going Bust
superflippy writes "The Associated Press reports that many tech training schools which opened during the last few years are now shutting their doors. During the dot-com boom, there was the perception that a few months of computer training could lead to a fabulous job. Now, it seems all these schools have produced are unemployed people with student loans and dubious certifications."
Outsourcing to India
Cheap College Grads (Although there are too many here also)
Experienced (more expensive) College Grads
And *maybe* a few scraps left over grads of these half ass tech schools
There is still definitely a place for a few of these schools for people wanting to add a skill or become more advanced in a skill, but the days of taking an 8 week course and then finding a tech job are over. I actually know a couple of people that went to these type schools 5 years ago and now have great tech jobs.
at least they are unemployed with only a few months worth of student loans.
seems downright enviable from my position with four years worth of loans.
lysergically yours
Funny, that doesn't seem to stop them from running ads that say "40,000 new IT jobs are opening up every year! Train now for a rewarding career!"
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
They shood do what I did and go to an acredited scholl like the University of Pheonix. Online.
During the dot-com boom, there was the perception that a few months of computer training could lead to a fabulous job.
Perception? How soon we forget - that actually happened. It happened all over silicon valley.
We'll have another unsustainable tech boom as soon as everyone forgets those mistakes entirely.
I am a professional HTML software developer with good working knowledge of Microsoft FrontPage 2000, Microsoft FrontPage 2002, Microsoft FrontPage 2003 and HomeSite. Extensive experience with back-end server management via Microsoft Web Publishing Wizard. I am looking roughly for $80-90K (plus sign-on bonus and relocation), but I can tell you the job field is not that great. I think I should learn PHP and wait for things to pick up. Can anyone recommend good PHP classes under-$5,000 range?
Now, it seems all these schools have produced are unemployed people with student loans and dubious certifications.
;)
So, kind of like Microsoft?
[rimshot!]
Thanks, I'm here all week!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
1. Kid goes through course
2. Kid does well, but doesn't really learn
3. Kid gets job $63,000/year
4. Kid has no idea what to do, but was able to talk his shit up.
5. Kid goes to teacher and begs him to help
6. Company pays teacher to do kids job $15,000
Cost to company $75,000
I know of this personally. Pretty annoying if you ask me. The kid actually still has his job too.
And that is exactly why these schools are as successful as they are.
Or, is today opposite day?
Well if we thin out the population of tech schools some, the more reputable colleges (in my case Cal Poly Pomona) will look a little better, and that degree will mean more. Therefore maybe IT degrees will mean something again...well we can hope anyways...
...in bed
A friend of a friend asked me to help him with a final project for one of his classes at ITT Tech. This was a project in ASP for an online bookstore. He was nearing completion of his associates degree in Web Design, and when I got there to show him things, he knew nothing at all. Not even HTML... When I asked him about that, he said he "sorta learned it a while ago". Last I checked, HTML was the staple of Web Development, no? All of his pages that he had made so far were all autogenerated by FrontPage. Goes to show you what good a $30,000 2-year associates degree at ITT Tech is worth.....or rather worthless.
How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
Well, no, I'm not really shocked :)
Disclaimer: several bachelor's and master's degrees work for me, as well as several no-degree people with strong skills, but as far as I know, no "certificates", which is the way I like it.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
CTO, Immunix Inc.
These schools churned out tons of useless "educated" people with little added value from their educational experience. The only purpose that these institutions had was to dilute the talent within the IT and computer engineering fields. I say good riddance!
I spent 10 months at "The Chubb Institute" gaining a certificate in Network and System Security. During the 10 months, we started with basic A+ cert type information, and worked our way up through Linux and MS ISA Server... none of each in enough detail to actually get a job done.
In fact, we spent 1 week learning Redhat where we installed the OS, Installed Samba, and FTP.
Then we spent 4 weeks (5 hours a day 5 days a week) learning how to write resumes and interview.
Somehow I feel like Linux is more important then what color my suit is for the interview. (blue vs. grey)
Lastly, they promised "Job Placement" - however, the only calls that the Graduating Security Class received were helpdesk positions.
My question is... if the Network Security class... the most esteemed program at the Chubb Institute is getting calls for Helpdesk positions... what positions are the helpdesk classes getting?
Janitorial?
I mean seriously - I was a director-level IT manager at two multi-national companies over the past 12 years, and neither I, nor any of my peers, would even think about hiring someone from one of these tech schools.
Even the smallest amount of real-world experience was far more useful than several months of training at these schools. Sure, they learned a few rote solutions, but I can teach those to a new recruit who shows a bit of intelligence in a short time.
In fact, for an entry-level position, give me a liberal arts grad with a bit of tech knowledge learned on their home computer, and I've got the makings of an excellent eomployee. People who can read, write and converse are better candiates than many of the "tech school" grads I ran into.
Frankly, I never felt these schools were worth anything, and if they are now closing, all the better.
I used to work for a small computer training center. I got to teach people on worker's comp how to repair computers (fun when they were just there to collect the check and didn't care about the class).
Basically, they were told by their rehab people that our three-month class would get them a nice 40K a year job, and they usually got really pissed when they found out otherwise.
Speaking of the original dubious certification, a 8-year old just got certified as an MCSE.
I would wager that the schools who are not doing well and forced to close their doors are the same ones running the ad's that state there are a ton of IT jobs,and then take $18,000 from you to learn test questions. But places like Globalnet and the likes who ACTUALLY teach real world use still thrive. If you don't believe me feel free to contact them and ask why they have to turn away students because their class is full. So this is a good thing in my mind. Let the schools who charge obscene amounts of money to learn the test questions go bankrupt, because the ones who teach real world experience will always be here.
**It runs through my veins like radioactive rubber pants! Do not deny my veins!**
I was required to attend one of these for Sun certification. The total cost was ~$30,000 (they used to call it a SunKey). Do you think anyone who has only a few hundred bucks at the end of the month after rent/food/etc will sign up for that? No.
These places depended on companies to send their people.
Now a days, it looks like most places get a backend rebate from the vendor of the products they send their people to get certified under. After all, if company XXX needs two SE's to sell a product from vendor YYY, vendor YYY will usually give a boatload of cash to cover the costs in sending their two SE's to training, since in the long term, company XXX will sell enough of the product to where vendor YYY will recoop all their money.
As much as I personally value education, the organizations in the education arena (from K to PhD) do a very poor job of justifying their existence (and high tuitions or high taxpayer subsidies). Common sense and aggregate data does certainly suggest that salary correlates with education, but nobody seems to be able to routinely show that a particular school leads to a particular boost in success (except for some highly debatable test score schemes in K-12 education).
What are students paying for when they get degree X from school Y? And what are they really getting?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This is from an Air-Force perspective, so think what you will:
The military is based around taking people who know very little and teaching via tech schools. We do quite well. We can take someone with virtually no computer knowledge and turn them into a basic sysadmin in about 6 months. Within 2 years, the cream will rise and those are quite impressive. Of the rest, some will transfer to administrative (paperwork) jobs and be promoted. Others will get out and become a burden to AT&T or WorldCom. But the system DOES work.
The main difference between the military and the commercial world is that we actually care about our people. Where your company provides very little in the way of mentorship, I will nurture my people till they find their sweet spot. Some will learn from books I reccomend, others from college I allow them to attend during working hours. More still will need me to hold their hands and walk them through tasks until they catch on.
Most civilians see coworkers (you call them cow-orkers) as competition. That's why a lot of good sysadmins will never develop after their civilian tech schools.
You and your company may see on-the-job training as a waste. Well, you are missing out on a lot of good people. Instead of a college grad demanding $50k+, you could look to the sub-$20k market of tech-school grads. Give them some training. Promote those who deserve it, fire those who screw up.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Finally I'm starting to see some justice! I have 18 years experience but have been out of work due to all the outsourcing and dumping of jobs overseas for the last 10 months. Nothing has ticked me off more than seeing so called private schools like ECPI and others advertising in the paper for IT and Cert courses. They advertise like there is a shortage for jobs, that they cant fill them fast enough... when all they have done is dumped untrained memorizers on the market and created a glut of available personnel. And if a business or HR department doesn't know better, the fancy paper gets these really untrained workers the jobs at cheap salaries (because they have to pay those 30K college course fees) I wish they all would shut down and go back to just being Testing centers like back in the Drake days... or am I showing my age again.
After getting a real degree (Electronics) and many years later spending ony a couple of months in getting a CNE and 3 more months in getting a MSCP - thanks to a generous company willing to fund me - I can say that these quickie qualifications are interesting, but not worth the big bucks. The only reason I have them is because my company says they have so many certified people on the staff.
Semper ubi sub ubi
In my experience the better tech people are the ones that grew up playing with the stuff as a hobby, not the ones who heard that there are money/jobs available in the field and then sign up at a tech school. I'm not going to cry for the tech schools. Go get a CS degree instead.
We're a start up anticipating developing a product and being bought out by Cisco, Microsoft, HP or someone else with deep pockets. We offer your choice of stock options by the roll: White Cloud or Charmin.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The downward spiral of recent years, beyond anyone's direct control: 1) The economy going to hell 2) The resulting layoffs 3) People with years of experience competing for entry level jobs 4) A lack of entry level jobs (why hire someone fresh out of school when you can hire a former sysadmin for Dell tech support?) 5) Companies not paying nearly enough as they used to for tech positions This is not the schools' fault. A previous poster used the term 'dubious certs,' and this is completely accurate. The problem however is not the curriculum, it is the way the students study. When I attended a comp training school a couple years ago, I cannot tell you how many students used mcsebraindumps.com and other sites where they can get test questions. The percentage was huge. As a result, these people just memorized answers and did not know how to apply anything they learned (if they did at all) to real world situations. When they got out into the real world, they broke more than they fixed. As a result, companies now view these certifications with a skeptical eye. Sure, you passed the test - but what do you really know? Prove to me you can make it - but how do you get the shot if a sysadmin with ten years of experience wants that tech support job too? Answer: you don't. These schools have tried to hide this and have been largely successful, but the truth is finally coming out.
even the fancy certifications were not enough
You said it yourself. The certifications are usually anything but fancy. Most of these courses depend on your ability to memorize things and take a test. I have read a couple of the certification books and it doesn't even get close to teaching you any basics regarding the subject. I gave up pretty quickly.
The sad part is that the acronyms are deemed very important. My company actually sent out an email a little while ago urging everyone to put their 'acronyms' (MCSE, CISSP etc.) in their signatures because it creates a very good impression and I am talking about a reputed company.
I have a couple of friends who did take these certification courses, managed to get through and are doing good. WHY? The certification gave them a foot in the door and it was their persistence and hard work after that. Anybody with the idea of going through these certifications assuming that its going to get them a steady job for their life without any more effort is probably misled.
My 0.02$
Free XBox, PS2
Passion for the work doesn't come out of a crackerjack box. An MCSE or any "Certification" from a vendor, is just a manufacturers way of saying you have digested their propaganda. If you are looking to get rich quick while only working a few hours a week try No money down real estate.
It should come as no surprise that the people who went for these courses are now getting burned. The schools were unscrupulous but then again so were the majority of their students. Both parties were trying to sell sows ears as silk purses.
I am both self-taught and self-employed, and I have never once had a client ask me about my college degree (I don't have one, by choice), certifications, grades, diplomas, or anything else related.
When I managed a computer store and someone came in who was A+ certified, it was almost a strike against them. I found repeatedly that the technicians that were self-taught were far better at maintaining their skills in a rapidly changing environment.
I place zero value in any of these certifications.
I really do believe that certain certifications have a little bit of value as I've known many incompetent people in the IT fields who would've not been able to pass even the A+ or Network+ tests.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
It also has very good advice for becoming an accomplished programmer.
"Are you happy with your job? Think there's better? THERE IS (cue music). Become a certified network engineer or software developer at MADSKILLZ. Technology jobs are still paying well - our graduates make as much as $100,000 per year! Student loans available, call now and we'll throw in a comlimentary scale model Porsche - just like the one you'll be driving after you become a certified network engineer or software developer at MADSKILLZ!"
Why is anyone surprised that companies that advertise get rich quick schemes like this are going under? Dear trial lawyers - better sue quick because the IT certificate industry is going to die.
-- $G
It was interesting to watch as other post secondary institutes and even other departments at our institute jumped on the IT bandwagon. When I left the program in 2001, our institute was graduating close to 500 IT grads/year, not to mention the local University and College graduating an equal amount. Then there were the private schools were pumping out MSCEs and CNEs and now Cisco engineers.
The fact is that the market is saturated and the gravy train is over. Our school is hurting because we receive funding from the provincial government based on graduate's employment placement rate (for example: 93% employed after 6 months in their field of study). For the first time in 10 years, I've noticed that the placement rate description has changed from 6 months to 1 year and they've dropped the reference to "field of study" from the statistics. The IT programs are really hurting for enrollment also. People are wising up to the fact that it is difficult to get a job in IT with just a piece of paper.
The BSCS and Phd. CS guys that I've worked with always seemed like they were trained for research instead of getting the product shipped.
As it should be. The mistake was hiring scientists when engineers were wanted.
A doctorate is a research degree. By definition.
You don't hire an architect to hammer nails, and if he applies you have to realize he's going to need training as a carpenter.
KFG
The post talking about knowing frontpage and wanting an 80k a year salary, or the totally serious reply wanting to help.
I find the idea of private tech schools to be abhorant and I find it equally abhorant that our federal (Canadian) government so willingly supports them. Federal job creation schemes will pay up to 2/3 of a $20,000.00 tuition plan for a student to attend a private school, because their programs are typically only nine months long. The bean counter feds see this as meaning the students will get into the job force quickly, but they fail to see that the student does NOT get a job. The same federal department will not pay one cent for a person to attend a 3 year program at an accredited institution (where the tuition is typically less than for a private school, for the full 3 year program!), where the student takes longer to get into the job force, but is pretty well guaranteed a job. This makes me want to scream.
I have a 3 year technology diploma, but a few years ago I was unemployed for several months, and entered a private school for some "upgrading". What a farce. Basically these schools guarantee that if you pay the tuition, and attend the correct number of classes, you WILL get a "technology" diploma. They DO NOT guarantee certification, etc. If you are smart enough, and can hold enough useless data in your brain for long enough, they can even forcefeed some students enough facts to pass those hilarious "certification" multiple choice "exams" private industry uses. Not meaning to belittle them, but I was in class with people who, just a few weeks ago, were hair dressers, taxi/truck drivers, waiters, secretarties, etc. These people were assured (and they beleived), that in just 9 short months they would magically become computer "specialists", and they could compete with me for jobs. That's pretty amazing, when you realize that I had a 3 year technology program, 2 years of university, and over 20 years of work experience under my belt. Because of these outright lies and misrepresentations, I for one am happy to see most of the private "technical" schools disappear.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but certs mean little nowadays. People on the NANOG list, SF lists, IPSlists they all argue this. Companies who hire strictly on certs should be ashamed of themselves. Now I'm not saying all cert holders are stupid, hell many know their stuff inside out, but studying for an exam is not equivalent to knowing your stuff.
How many people have come across someone on a mailing list asking for help for typical stuff all the while their attachment has their proudly pimped status written on it... CCNA, CCDP, CISSP. I've seen them all, and I've seen one too many times big corporations with clueless rejects administrating their networks:
I don't mean to pick on this one person, I know too many times I see the same stuff over and over, and wonder how the hell could companies hire clueless people. I remember I worked for a company who if you sent a resume in with your newly acquired MSCE cert staus you met Mr. Shredder. I also remember meeting three people who supposedly had CCNA's only to find out they were forgeries and the company I was working for never checked them. So again, from my perspective certs mean you have the capability to read and grasp something, but admining something at 4:00am is a different story altogether.MoFscker
Unless you are at a shit school, a CS Major should have a damn good idea how a computer works. What university did this person come from? Your second comment on the person with the Masters in CIS screams bullshit also unless this person came out of a diploma mill.
Here is another wonderful example: A kid finishes a university, does not really learn anything except to kiss ass, starts working for a major company, works there as tech support, decides it's not enough money, goes to another company and after a couple of months of 'programming' moves into more senior position by presenting other people ideas as his own. The kid never stops to do that because it seems to work really great for him, the salary grows, so do the lies and brown-nosing. The kid with only 2 months of programming and 2 years of 'architecture' moves into management positions by playing golf with the 'right' people. The others who work their asses of watch the kid zoom by them even though literally everyone knows how he is doing that, only management does not care, they like flattery and lies and backstubbing. Well, the kid is still there.
I would never want to work anywhere around such people but there seems to be an abundance of those.
You can't handle the truth.
Most of those scools were scams. My work paid for me to continue to stay on top of my certs. I would get stuck in these classrooms sometimes filled with truckdrivers, highschool dropouts, etc, all sold on the idea of getting rich quick with an mcse. Some didnt even have a home computer!!! But for $7,000 they could get a job making $70,000. Dumb people may deserve to lose their money, but these scamming training places also deserve to go bankrupt.
These firms are run by people that have already made thier money, at significant taxpayer expense, and are now looking for another path to mooch of the corporate welfare system. The actual closing of the schools is insignificant, as the damage is already done.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Wow... all these posts and nobody mentions the many fine public community colleges!
Quality of courses and instructors varies widely--and with open admissions, I suppose many students may lack aptitude. But you have reasonable tuition rates, stability, and accountability. Not to mention accreditation.
I just started teaching Visual Basic programming (yeah, I know, I know...) at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. I feel a place like CCC is a pretty good alternative to for-profit private tech schools, although as a liberal-arts snob myself I am glad I attended a very competitive four-year private college.
As with anything else, there are good and bad community colleges. But I'm surprised nobody mentioned them as an option.
Tassach (137772) wrote : "There are some good tech schools and some bad ones. I went through AF programmer tech school in '89, and it was, IMHO, pretty much a waste of time. IIRC the 12 week course consisted of: 2 weeks intro to basic computing concepts (basically the OSI network model), 3 weeks of pseudocode, 4 weeks of Cobol, 2 weeks of assembly, and 1 week of ADA. As far as I can tell, the purpose of this "training" was to weed out the people who couldn't understand the basics like looping and control structures. My real training happened once I got to my permanent duty station, where I was fortunate enough to work with some *brilliant* people who taught me how to develop good software. (Thanks Capt. Block!) "
So, where are the bad and where are the good schools? anyone?
You're not freakin' kidding. Far too many people "get into computers" because they heard you can supposedly make a ton of money in it. A couple of examples for you--
I had a Intro to C++ professor who had horrendous handwriting, so what he wrote kinda looked like the following:
ofstream din;
din.open("ci\\data\\datafile.dat");
So of course, someone who shouldn't have been in the class raised his hand and asked, "Is that an "i" after the "c"?
It was all I could do not to turn around and scream "Hello!!! Have you never seen a command prompt before in your life? Is there any way it be an "i"? It's a colon . There's no way it could be anything but a colon. You need to drop the class."
Later, when we learned about user defined functions, here's what was on the board(more or less):
int myFunction(int x){
x +=5;
return x;
}
So (I'm pretty sure it was the same guy) raised his hand and asked, "Is this a void?" Hello!!! Is "void" spelled "int"? Do void functions return a value? AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!
It's kind of embarassing to confess to this, but I attended one of those technical colleges for a few weeks before I got sick with mononucleosis and had to drop after the first class finished. Sure, it set me back financially when I had to repay part of the student loans I had gotten (thankfully they were federal loans because the school was accredited), but I'm glad it happened. That, of course, was back before the whole dot com bubble burst, and had I stayed there, I most likely would have trouble finding a job today.
Instead, I'm about to graduate from a real college with two non-related degrees. I recently landed a job doing web design and system administration precisely because I have some real world experience with PHP and MYSQL. That, and I've been practically living on the computer since my family got a PC Jr. many years ago. Oh, the days of hacking my Bard's Tale character stats with a hex editor!
Anyway, the point I want to bring up here is this: I was up against graduates of that same technical school and my employer isn't impressed with them. Why? All their resumes look the same, they have no real-world experience, and almost without exception, the reason why they went to that school to get a computer "degree" was because they heard you could make a good living doing it.
Bottom line, there are decent-paying tech jobs for those who have it in their blood and know what they are doing. Also, because the stupid US government projected such unrealistic salary and job growth in the field that the market is saturated with idiots (and "schools" for them) whose credentials suck and are only in it for the money.
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Lots of free sample tests. http://www.transcender.com/products/productlist.as px?tab=td
When I was young, I had to rub sticks together to compute.
Being out of work, I am very tempted to start isolating these morons, and sending off some mail to their company explaining how they have a moron working for them (and I would be a better choice). Hmm.. I have some time on my hands right now...
I've been annoyed by certs for years. I recall my last position, IT Director of a defense contractor.
.... shit I have no excuse. Ohh well.
A few resume buffs included:
9 years on the job experience, in senior management.
Master's in CS from the U of A, GPA 3.76 (too much beer?)
Primary languages: C/C++, VB (ick), Java, Cobol, ASM, Perl (LOVE Perl! *smooch*)... and, of course, every geek knows HTML/DHTML, JavaSCRIPT, Basic (ehhh), and a multitude of worthless languages that you learned because
4 total MRP/ERP conversions, blah blah. An impressive resume for the area I lived in, to say the least.
During my interview, they (CEO and COO) asked if I was MCSE certified. I flat out laughed. At the time I thought it would cost me the job. Though, it eventually came out that the CEO was MCSE certified.
To say the CEO was computer illiterate would be the understatement of the year. Yet, this man was MCSE certified -- I'm not specifically sure, even now, why he asked if I was.
Though, I would also like to point out that what we see today as certifications are _NOT_ what certifications were 15 years ago.
Microsoft (or so I primarily attribute) is greatly responsible for the influx of worthless certs in my opinion.
I suspect MS's intention was to flood the job market with "Windows only" workers - who only knew how to resolve the problems with Windows that Microsoft wanted them to. An example, is again, the MCSE - where you learn mostly how to resolve/workaround/[rarely]fix "_KNOWN_" problems with various versions of Windows.
Years and years ago, there were no Computer Science degree's available from any college - you went to tech school and got certified for the various skills that you felt would help advance your career.
An example would be my Father, whom has dozens of certifications related to technology -- all of which were not available at any college during his time. He, instead, obtained a degree in Physics.
On his way to N.A.S.A, the program was cancelled -- and so he sought to continue his way through technology. To do that, he could only get certified.
He then spent the next 30 years of his life working on Mainframes -- technology and information now in short demand - even in the IT field. And when they are available - companies want someone with a degree in CS -- something that was not available in his time. He has been out of work longer then any of you could imagine. 100% of the jobs he has applied for have been filled by H1-B visa workers from India. He started tracking them about 3 years ago - to see who was getting the jobs.
Though, I must admit -- he deserves no pitty. He makes roughly 8 times more then I, simply as an investor. He says he wants to work for the 'sense of accomplishment and comradory' that he once had. Some of the things he had done for IT in general are fascinating to hear about.
His fatal flaw, though, is he just doesn't 'get' personal computing. In his world -- there is no such thing as graphics. Something I can understand, greadly, as I feel that any GUI confuses a simple world. To work through the command line is a beautiful thing. It's a shame so many distort that by using a GUI in situations where it shouldn't.
Okay, just ranting here I suppose.
Regardless, certs now deserve to be recognized as trash. Most of them are. It's a shame, too. I think this was largely inflicted by the influx of morons armed with Microsoft certifications that are as ignorant to the inner-workings of the technology they supported as the users who sought them for advice and service. A far cry from what things were many years ago -- and certainly something that should be exposed for what it truly is.
Seconded. A couple years ago, I was standing in the local Borders back home, browsing the tech section, when a woman walked up to the networking section, and started looking at CCNA books. I heard her say, "I really wish they had these as audio books, I just don't have the time to read all this technical stuff..."
It really seems like the people who get these certifications, or at least as their primary means of education/self-improvement toward a job, are otherwise clueless, lazy, and really shouldn't be around a computer to begin with.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Interesting points.
My career isn't over yet, so who knows, but I may be a corrolary argument. I think having your eyes opened from a good diverse university experience can prepare you for business, even if your path was CS.
I've got a CS degree.
I've been in the field for approximately 8 years. I've worked up to management level, but am still in a technical role - primarily acting as a generalist, helping develop corporate IT strategies and providing coordination and communication both to director-level management above me and technologists below me.
Until a few years ago I looked at things much the way you describe - focused on the mechanics of software creation. Don't get me wrong - there's a huge share of business-focused people whose idea of work is 5 hours of talking about their kids, 30 minutes of coffee breaks, an hour of lunch, and 90 minutes of focused work. However, if you find some good development or corporate leaders, they demonstrate quite quickly how naive it is to be focused on the mechanics of software creation.
There's a heck of a lot more to focus on and weight appropriately if you want to successfully run a business. Managing to a P&L or the amount of dynamics an organization can cope with is significantly harder than choosing among several technical alternatives to find the one with the most merit - in a lot of cases that choice with the most merit may be impossible for the business to take on.
A part of me will always crave the "look back and see how much grass you've cut" qualitative nature of software creation, but there are significantly more challenging problems in leading IT, and they often require more in the way of personal devotion to achieve a solution.
Are those that cross fields, venturing into new areas. Since you mentioned Linguistics and Comptuers, and those are two of the areas I'm studing I figured I'd chime in:
Right now there is quite a bit of research being done on computers and language. We want to make them speak it, listen to it, but above all, to understand it. This is a difficult problem, more difficult than most people think. I'll ignore the speaking and hearing part and just talk about the understanding:
To understand a language, a computer must not just have a bunch of symbols in memory that make up the words, it needs to be able to perform operations on those such as to derive what it meant. Well that invloved three fields right there, CS, linguistics and philsohpy. The CS of course is the actual implementation of the algorithms. But what algorithms to implement?
Well that's where linguistics come in. You need to analyze natural language and figure out how it actually works. Try and write rules that dictate what is and is not a correct utterence, how different parts of speech are usedm etc. Also you need to produce a database of words, meanings, parts of speech and so on. A lot of this has been done.
So what about the philosophy? Well the thing is, current popular linguistic theory doesn't work right for language as humans use it. It describes literal, direct speech only. Well humans aren't like that, most of our meanings are at least aprtially context dependant and not entirely direct and literal. So language philosophers are working on trying to develop empirically testable theories for how humans actually communicate, and how the process the different kinds of communication with ease. The field is called Pragmatics.
But this adds yet another part to the study. It's all well and good that we come up with a nice theory that everything fits in, but does that have anything to do with reality? Do humans ACTUALLY process language in such a way and does it really adiquately describe communications? So we turn to psychological tests to try and verify or falsify theories of language. Only through emperical testing of actual humans can we figure out how this works.
Those theories then need to be studied in the context of the actual spoken language and have rules developed, and those rules then need to be implemented as algorithms in a computer.
And that's just the beginning.
Thing is, this ISN'T an insignificant field. All the big computer companies like MS and IBM would LOVE to be able to produce a computer that people could speak to naturally and it would do what they wanted. Then there are people like the NSA that are highly interested in have a computer that can analyze the content of intercepted communication and do a real good translation and breakdown of it.
It's a field where there is quite a bit of money to be made, and a whole lot of work that needs to be done. However, what it really needs is people that aren't just one trick dogs, that have studied some in ALL of those fields (and others) to be able to work on designing and coordinating experiements and statical analysis of language to try and actually get a working system off the ground. Not just someone who knows code and nothing but code.
As a side note, I'm not studying this to go in it, just because I think it's a neat interdiciplinary degree to get. I'm a computer support guy by profession.
Also, search Usenet for AICS (ACCIS' former name)--IIRC, that institution had been using bogus accredidation from the "World Association of Universities and Colleges" (WAUC) before the name change. That alone is enough for me to steer far clear.
In any case, good luck!
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Generally, people with the aptitude and attitude to be successful in IT don't choose tech schools -- they choose a university with a genuine 4-year technical degree, or they get a computer and teach themselves real programming (not HTML creation with Frontpage). The tech schools then get left mostly with people who could do neither.
Of course, the weak curricula doesn't help them either. But it's the quality of the people they attract that is the deciding factor.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
I propose a new Shashdot rule:
You can't bash any Cert. or Degree until you've earned it. Otherwise it's just sour grapes. Let those who've taken the time and effort to improve themselves decide its value.
I know that we're about to be overwhelmed with claims that:
1.) Certs are useless.
2.) Tech schools are useless
3.) BS degrees are useless
4.) Experience is GOD (and you can't get any)
and we'll hear stories like:
1.) I knew an MCSE who couldn't find the power switch on my server.
2.) My friend graduated from a Tech school and earned his CCIE and he can't even read.
3.) I never graduated from elementary school and I'm the most productive employee in my company's IT department.
Well isn't that special (and meaningless)
There are good and bad everything. Schools and certs are no different (except that they are harder to outsource).
I do contend that now IS the time to get into IT. If schools are closing, and no one wants to go into Tech then we're on our way to an eventual shortage. Shortage equals Opportunity.
I have an interesting view on things since I do computer support for a research university (University of Arizona). I'm full-time staff, but also have been taking classes and am about to get an undergrad degree not at all related to computers. My technical skills are all self and on the job learning. And I do have a couple certs.
I am wary of university degrees as well as certs because I see two big thing that happen with alarming frequency:
1) Assembly-line grads. These are people that go to school to get a job. Period. They generally do quite well in class and they totally devote themselves to school. But notice I say school, not their education. They learn what they need to learn to graduate. They do not learn how to think on their own, and do not learn what they are doing MEANS.
Like CS grads that don't undersand how microprocessors or operating systems work. So you can write code, great, but do you know what your code DOES? How does it get translated? What is it ACTUALLY causing the system to do?
These people I find become the stereotypical "code monkey". They can write code well, but lack the ability to solve unique or complex problems, or solve them with a hack if at all. They also tend to be bound to only languages they've learned, and can't pick up new ones quickly since they understand only the language, not the language as a means to program an imperitive device.
2) Ivory-tower, out-of-touch, academics. These are the people I support. It amazes me how clueless and out of touch some of these professors are. They know lots of theory but little application, and often are stumped because the tech world changes so fast. They also tend to get walled in and can think only about their narrow field, and can't apply their knowledge to anything, even if it is very similar and they should be able to understand it.
Now this certianly isn't ALL grads and professors, there are a great many quality ones, but this is MANY of them. There are plenty of people who's BS is just a bunch of BS. They have minimal real abilities.
So what does this have to do with certs? Well, they, like degrees, can be representitive or not representitive of someone's skills and knowledge. Ya, if someone has no practical experience and just crams a book to get a cert, you're going to get a person with a head full of useless facts that they can't apply to anything. However if someone who works doing something gets a cert, it is a confirmation of their knowledge, and also in the process probably helps them round it out.
My CCNA was quite valuable to me because it forced me to learn about IPX and some WAN technologies. I had plenty of experience with routing and switching on quite a large LAN, plenty with IOS and so on. However all I knew about WANs was the basic link types. I could tell you the bandwidth about a given link but little more. Of IPX, I knew even less. The CCNA forced me to learn how frame relay worked, how IPX was routed, and take the time to go and set some up in the process of learning. All in all, it made me round out network knowledge in ways I otherwise wouldn't have. CCNP study is now doing the same thing to a much greater degree.
So certs, like degrees, are what you make of them. If you take them as a confirmation of skills and a leaning experience, they will help you. You'll learn thing and you might not otherwise in your chosen field. If you just take them as a series of tests to be passed, you'll come out with little in the way of real knowledge or skills.
I think both certs and degrees are things to look for. They give you indications of areas that a person ought to be knowledgable and skilled in. For example if you are looking for a network guy, the Cisco certs are a good thing to watch for. Do the necessiarly mean they are good? No, but that is something you then test for both by looking at job experience and with questions.
My favourite way is to pick something they ought to REALLY understand, based on their alleged skill set and question
He had passed the 4 (?) core exams for the win2k mcse. A jobs program had put him through a boot camp. When he got to me, I asked him to bring up the control panel.
Deer in headlights.
Ok. Hit the start button and go to control panel.
More bambi.
O.k....lower left corner. Left-click...
I am not making this up. It's possible the guy went into cranial vapor lock under pressure, but even in brainlock you should be able to find the control panel. Or at least the start button.
Nice guy, good attitude, might be some aptitude, but the thought that he was going to get hired as an admin somewhere after his internship was weird.
Sadly, you can learn a lot more by buying cheap equipment of your own and tinkering than you can in 2 years at a community college. During my tech stint, I went from tinkering on PCs to running network security (firewalls, ids, etc) for a couple different companies. The upside was I learned everything on my own time by spending a lot of my time and money during my lackey years on equipment to screw around with. (switches, old routers, various windows and linux servers, even some old sparcs and SGIs)
The downside was, when the market went to the shitter and everyone and their dog were looking for a job, my lack of a degree kept me from getting anywhere.
My advice to you...stick it out in the CC, then try and get into a 2+2 program with a 4 year college to finish off a bachelors in Info. Tech. or something similar. Learn most of your real world skills on your own. Use the degree to get a foot in the door.
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"Uh, huh. And the "do it for the love" got into it because they heard you can make practically nothing in it."
I'm not into the industry because it makes any money...
Been using and enjoying learning about computers since the 5th grade...
Its not because theres big money in the field, but rather, this is the only thing I'M GOOD AT.
THe example taken is a legitimate question of sombody that is clearly getting to grips with the vagueries of Solaris in particular and UNIX in general.
This person is not claimin he is a guru or that he is a super duper certified Batman.
If that is the best example you could come with, it clearly show things are not as you make them appear to be.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I never opened my first computer until 2 years after graduating, just out of natural curiosity, but I could have lived happily ever after without doing so.
By then I had improved algorithms to search hughe databases with data stored on magnetic tape, been working in a research Institute building their infrastructure, connecting them to the Internet, and had installed and configured full datacentres all around my country with cutting edge technology.
Your worldview seems pretty narrow to me, a view in which is you don't waste time opening computers you are not worthy of doing real computing work.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
My story is an interesting one. Basically I have been using/breaking/fixing/learning and loving machines since I was 11. I took rudimentary computer logic classes at that age to(basic)(got thrown out for some reason or another...)Anyway, I was pretty much a fuk-up from 13 to 18 in regards to not taking school seriously(raves, skateboarding,girls,(ILLICIT_ACTIVITY_HERE),etc and not really learning or, rather, expanding my horizons academically. At 18, girlfriend gone, raves suck, still skating, life is bleek. Tried going to school for english, I did pretty well and decided to re-hash my interest in computers past Street Fighter 2. Start going to Katharine Gibbs School for programming. I got in with a GED I JUST GOT(gotta love me)and started classes. Turns out I LOVE PROGRAMMING and do pretty well(top 2 in my class) shit gets deeper... It came to the point(very quickly) that the work was watered down to suit the instructors lack of real teaching skill or initiative. There are at least 5-6 classes on the curriculum which I was made to buy books for and never took the course for. Teachers would not show up for class and randomly quit in between quarters(whoa)on some,"Yeah, well...do you guys know any SQL/JAVA/C++,etc.". Long story short. I was put in the position where I had to GO THE EXTRA MILE MYSELF because if you want to learn, you will. I studied C++ for 6 months before I even went to the class, any job I could(can) get even WORKING with a computer I will take. My resume probly sux, but I don't know many peeps who can physically install and configure a T1 line from start to finish and then do the SQL/ACCESS Admin thing all by themselves with an asshole boss clocking me... (but I still know those who can even do FAR more than that...;)If you love this isht, you will ALWAYS go far in some regard. I want to get paid to but somethings are more important than money/ or the next asshole boss/ to know how to learn is the most essential and priceless of the above mentioned.:D F**k EM ALL!