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IBM and Red Hat Offer College Prep
Califa writes "IBM announced Tuesday it will work with Red Hat to bring universities up to speed in teaching college students open source skills." From the article: "The company said its research of technology training at universities around the world have shown a need for more open-standards offerings. About 75 percent of a group of CEOs interviewed by IBM's Business Consulting Services said education and a lack of qualified candidates are the two issues with the greatest impact on their business."
I wonder what exactly will be taught in IBM's ideal, new program. According to the story, "The companies' training will help teach students skills for Linux as well as IBM software and servers." What training for IBM software and servers is appropriate for a University program? For an IT-certification, training on specific IBM programs may be appropriate, but for a true computer science degree, I should think a familiarity with *nix and the ability to learn a new OS would be much better than specific training on "IBM software and servers".
Making inroads into higher-ed (and I'm not just talking in the server room, but the class room) is critical to Linux's wider adoption.
This could be a really good idea. It's been my opinion for about a year now that a class should be tought to all CS students on licensing, and ethics. OSS development directly requires a knowledge of both. But in reading the article it almost sounds as if RH and IBM would merely use the time to pimp their products versus and real world skills. I.E. "This is how you setup a RH IBM sevver 101"
About 75 percent of a group of CEOs interviewed by IBM's Business Consulting Services said education and a lack of qualified candidates are the two issues with the greatest impact on their business
Isnt this just the same issue stated twice?
I question these types of programs. What do you want an applicant to have? Familiarity with a specific distribution and a specific skill set, or the ability to learn?
I got passed over for a job or two because I didn't know application 'X'. Sure, I know the theory - I've written a TCP stack from scratch, I understand the core components of operating systems, and I've acted as a sysadmin on 6 UNIX variants for over 10 years, but I didn't know some specific keyword used in a Postgres config, so apparently I'm "not qualified"
Everytime I see something like this - the same type of programs where Microsoft sends out techs to teach people how to pass an MCSE so they can be 'network specialists' without ever explaining what a SYN packet is - I wonder what the goal of the program is. Are they trying to teach people a specific platform, or are they trying to teach people concepts and theory.
From experience, I'm afraid that they're going to train people to be the ReHhat equivalents of an MCSE - and we all know how respected they are in the 'real world.'
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Microsoft's popular with clueless university admins (and politicians for state schools) because they donate zillions of dollars worth of software. If these guys donate Linux can they get as much credit by marking it up to the same huge numbers that clueless admins will be impressed by?
Will the curriculum be "open source" as well?
I sincerely doubt there is a lack of qualified candidates considering that IBM itself is currently going through a downsizing that will eliminate 13,000 positions.
This is more posturing for the sake of the politicians. If the industry complains enough, then the newspapers will pick up that complaining, and give the politicians an easy excuse to increase H1-B's in the future.
If there really were a shortage of IT workers, companies would not be downsizing, but rather hiring. They'd be going after everyone with even dubious credentials. Wages would not be stagnant or declining, but instead going through the roof. Considering that NONE of this is happening, I sincerely doubt that there is a shortage of workers. In fact, all this points to an oversupply of workers.
In comes a bunch of trolls that cannot afford to buy an RHCE class to bash against the RHCE program.
/. and im tired about it.
Please please, just because YOU cant pay for it it doesnt mean its bad.
I just wanted to say this because its tipical in
RHCE is the best certification track for linux available. Period.
Yes, im RHCE and i dont know more now than before i took the exam (which is a REALLY good, no nonesense, hands on test of skills -simple too, if you know wtf youre doing-).
But i think most knowledgeable but-not-guru level IT people would benefit if they took it and they wanted to move to Linux.
NO SIG
Or is this another fusillade in the eternal IBM vs M$ war? As far as Big Blue is concerned, Linux is just cannon fodder.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
Three years ago I went to a community college for the computer networking program. The program was 100% Microsoft, and 100% certification driven.
By the time I graduated they were just talking about adding a Linux+ course (still cert-driven of course).
There was no mention of Macintosh anywhere. In one of my final courses, Network Integration, I did a presentation on emulation and virtualization, including Mac stuff.
Does anyone think that networking with Mac OS X should be taught in college networking programs?
As much as your post was probably intended to be a "donate something free" joke, there's an element of truth in what you say.
I work for one of the big four Universities in Sydney, Australia and well, we got (and continue to be) royally screwed by these IBM 'donations'.
Let me put it clearly: There is NO donation, the equipment that IBM claim to donate is not free. The way IBM work on these deals is that they ponce about making announcements and press releases and say look look, we gave all these free computers to this University, aren't we good corporate citizens and on the other side, they're shoving exclusive access deals under the noses of the IT purchasing folks in the individual faculties that 'benefit' from the 'donations'.
Basically, what IBM really say is "agree to buy all of your IT infrastructure from us for the next n years, or the donation is off".
Since the big announcements have often already been made, you're trapped between a rock and a hard place.
From a technical administration and IT purchasing point of view in these instritutions, 'donation' is just IBM-speak for 'Pwn3d'.
Once IBM have pwn3d you, you're screwed. On simple factors: It takes me 10 working days to get a written quote out of IBM for a thinkpad. I can generate the same written quote for a Dell Lattitude online in minutes - Dell give me direct access to the corporate ordering system. It taks IBM six weeks to deliver a Thinkpad once I've ordered it, an equivalent Dell takes a maximum of ten days. If I call IBM for support, I get patched through to darkest India (this is large corporate support remember - I get better IBM support from google). Dell give me no-extra-charge Gold Client support, speaking to actual English speakers who are actually in the same city as me.
But no, IBM made a 'donation', so I've got to be the good corporate citizen and buy from IBM.
So don't for a minute be suckered by this good citizen stuff IBM would have you believe. IBM don't even piss about with that long term strategy of building product knowledge into kids who will buy out of familiarity when they reach positions where they make reccomending and buying decisions, no. IBM set out to pwn their victims short term, first generation, right now. The load schools with tech equipment and reap the benefits 10 years later is a relatively honourable approach that Apple pioneered in the early eighties, but IBM are way too impatient for that.
Fuckers.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Red Hat has all the limelight because they deserve it.
1) Red Hat and Fedora together have over 2 million active servers according to Netcraft, whereas Suse has under half a million.
2)Red Hat does a ton for the community, are experienced, and make a very easy to use distro while retaining the full power of linux.
3) Red Hat's core and only business is Linux. Novell just jumped on the Linux ship because it was failing in other areas, and if Novell sees another oppurtunity to make more money with something else, they'll jump off the linux ship and move on to whatver else they want. Red Hat's whole business is linux.
3) Read this.
Red Hat takes the initiative and keeps the community moving foward. They deserve everything that comes to them.
Regards,
Steve
When the CEOs of companies complain of lack of education and skills, what they are saying is that they cannot find people that have the right mix of skills for the job. Having worked for a large IT company for nearly ten years I have been involved in many interviews. When you enter an interview with a specific skillset in mind, most of the candidates will not be a good match, however, if you are willing to dig deeper and actually look at the way they think and approach problems, you will find people that could exceed your expectation.
Turning towards universities so that they can provide IT level classes to their graduates is nice for product placement and breeding familiarity. It is however totally useless if you want to teach them the specific skills that are so in demand.
Most companies work under operational constraints that limit the amount of time and money they can invest in training people so they are looking for the dark horse out there that has all the skills and is willing to work for a lower salary. Unfortunately, most all those companies are finding it extremely tough to (a) find the people and (b) keep them.
Once a company has found a person that can do trick A, they will make him do trick A all the time. Whenhe discusses his career development he will be limited to performing trick A over and over again. Not many people I know will stick around.
Having worked with the folks of IBM services, I have seen a large spectrum of people, some very good, some abysmal. Yet, in those projects no college graduate would have been any use with skills advertised in the article.. Why, because real IT problems are caused by real IT needs and are usually the result of decisions made a few years back, therefore an understanding of that type of environment is a requirement to being effective.
If universities really want to train their graduates on IT skills, then they should take all the money RH and IBM are willing to spend but also open a consultancy service for small and medium companies. That will expose students to the realities of IT, not some class. As we say in the group I work for, 'we are looking for the people with the scar tissue in the right places'.
And yes, we do hire out of university, but mostly PhDs
1. Layoff people that challenge or otherwise annoy management.
2. Layoff people who are expensive
3. Layoff people who are working on poorly performing projects.
4. Layoff people who are weak performers
5. Layoff people who are good performers but not "buddies" of the founders.
6. Layoff the buddies
7. Close the doors.
Where is SusE/Novell in all this?
Right here:
Novell Drives Linux into Academia with Training and Technology
Here is the first paragraph:
WALTHAM, Mass.--19 May 2005--Novell today launched a new introductory Linux training course designed for academic environments, giving educational institutions a powerful new tool to promote open source training and students a new option for learning Linux. Unique among Linux vendor offerings, Novell's new course maps directly to one of the most widely recognized vendor-neutral certifications in the Linux market, CompTIA®Linux+, newly updated for 2005.Novell also announced it will donate $1.5 million in SUSE LINUX software and training materials to educational institutions to help promote Linux adoption.