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."

Comments

Which skills?

[Agelmar]

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".

About time...

[glamslam]

This is very welcome as we are looking to hire people with Open Source experience... but everyone we have talked to says, "I've been wanting to try that Linux thingie. I just downloaded Linux 9.0 and I hope to install it someday!"

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.

My Opinion

[BioCS.Nerd]

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"

A question of goals

[ProfaneBaby]

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.'

Re:A question of goals

[Skapare]

They are trying to flood the candidate pool with paper techies to help drive down the salaries so managers will see IBM's and Red Hat's products as lower cost than the others. You might not get some job because of not knowing all the magic keywords or menu layout for application X, but when you do get a job, you can be sure your new boss will tell you, when you try to negotiate the lowball pay up a bit, that he has 50 other fully qualified candidates and that you should consider yourself lucky to be getting the offer (as if he picked your resume out of a hat).

Re:A question of goals

[supabeast!]

"I got passed over for a job or two because I didn't know application 'X'. Sure, I know the theory..."

That used to happen to me all the time. I blew one job interview by knowing how to configure something in BIND that worked a little differently in whatever they were using, and another by not doing a BASH loop the way one of the interviewers liked to write his, and there were several other cases like it. The problem is that most IT managers are techies who get promoted to management instead of good managers who got into tech, so they don't have the management skills and knowledge to realize that giving someone to a week to figure out the ins-and-outs of your particular software choice and it's config files is a lot easier then spending weeks or months looking for that "perfect" candidate.

Every time I look back on stupid shit like that I remember why I got out of IT and went to art school.

Re:A question of goals

[kfg]

are they trying to teach people concepts and theory.

They are training NOC monkeys. People who are trained not to think,to perform a specified business task, mechanically and interchangably. Parts is parts.

The above is expressed somewhat cynically, but it is not a troll. It really is what they are up to, and they not only know it, it is a codified business practice. Never stake your business on that which cannot be replaced, since the business fails with the failure of the irreplacable. People are guarunteed to fail. Mediocrity, by definition, can be easily replaced.

Of course this is why a small outfit comprised of a few exceptional people can come out of nowhere and eat the lunch of some big establishment, but in doing to they become a big establishment. . .

Rinse and repeat.

Besides, we both know this is more marketing than anything else, to make sure the future NOC monkeys jabber for IBM and Red Hat kit. Gentoo on a beowulf cluster of old PIIIs need not apply.

KFG

Yeah, but can they donate as expensive software?

[team99parody]

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?

Re:Open Source Irony

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Maybe a bit OT, but MIT has basically open sourced alot of thier stuff (pretty cool). MIT's OpenCourseWare

'Donation' - IBM speak for 'Pwn3d'

[B747SP]

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

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.

Unwilling to invest in training

[boner]

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