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Not Your Daddy's IT Force Anymore
Quill345 writes "The days of high-paying technology-based jobs right out of highschool are over. As writers for ACM report, the skill-sets required for jobs have grown over time. Academia has responded to the evolution with novel programs recruiting women and integrating IT into MBA programs. And as technology finds its way into every aspect of business life, the NSF is creating a grant program to fund service science, a blend of IT into other industries. Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses taken by students who are in primary tech-producer or tech-consumer majors. What are these crucial modern skills? Knowledge of laws like the DMCA? Interpersonal and group work skills? Experience with different technology platforms? The ability to discriminate between useful and useless information sources?"
That would be a great course to offer "potental" managers.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
While technical skills are important, the ability to work in groups, follow orders, and eventually lead groups are what will advance a career. Communications skills are a key component as well. Unless you want to stay a programmer / admin forever, and always be at risk for being replaced by a newer / cheaper model as your skills decay (or are perceived to no longer be up with the latest or simply too expensive); people skills are what will advance your career.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The days of any hack with computer skills are welcomed to Fortune 500 is long gone, or at best is going away quite quickly.
Companies don't want people who can get the work done, they want people who can get the work done professionally. Well Documented designed to work with their buisness needs, not change their buisness requirements to fit the computer. There are a lot of Highly skilled and well trained college educated Technical Professionals out there. There is little reason to really hire an out of Highschool Techy guy just because he know how to program the buzz words.
A college degree at the very least shows a minum level of self control and professionalism. At least the person got up most every day to go to class and pass the exams. Vs. Out of High School who just went to school because they were required by law to go. Or a College drop out who just couldn't fit into an environment. Getting a Degree shows the company you are more then just what you want to do.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
My dad makes good money as a plumber and there are plenty who make a lot more than him.
Surely it would be better to concentrate more on those students who are genuinely interested in ('boring',normal) IT, whatever their gender?
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
Uhhm, aptitude tests in the first place? You want someone with 20 hours a week experience for three or four years while in high school.
What you don't want is someone who reads a 1" column in Money Magazine of the top growth fields by 2011 and just throws a dart.
I've seen where nearly 40% of the incompetent tech staff that I worked around in 2001 jumped right into the field of health sciences.
They shouldn't have been in IT, and the nursing profession (and patients) deserves better -- these folks never "heard their calling."
I'm glad that women aren't denied jobs because of their gender, but I don't see why people are trying to force women into IT roles -- women can do what they want and it seems to be there's general disinterest on there part. If people want to change that, the best place isn't here in the work world, it's during the whole experience known as life -- especially childhood. Want women to be more IT savvy??? How about some more non-gendered video games (what girl wants to play "I'm a big strong man with a gun, oh look at me I saved the world"). Let's give Barbie a BlackBerry and a desktop running Linux? If you want to get people to be interested in something, hook 'em while they're young! I wish there were more girls interested in IT -- I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to cuddle after a nice LAN (especially if I've been pwn3d). I believe there are less than 10 female OMIS (operations management and information systems) majors in my class. Lame!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Some of us, yes. But some of us will be designing the parts, testing the parts, refining the parts. Making the next generation of parts. And supporting people who have to install, service and use the parts.
And some of us will give up IT altogether, and go raise goats. Or something.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
As writers for ACM report, the skill-sets required for jobs have grown over time. Academia has responded to the evolution with novel programs recruiting women and integrating IT into MBA programs.
Is it just me, or is this quite the nonsequitur? I can see integrating IT into MBA programs as a potential solution, but how does recruiting women into IT adress the problem? Clicking on the "recruiting women" link leads to an article titled "CMU uses game maker's characters to interest girls in computer programming" which is one of the most condescending ideas I have ever come across.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Of course the high school kids have failed way more than they have succeeded. The only reason they were ever hired was that there weren't any more good, well educated techies left during the .com boom.
Now companies have decided to go overseas instead of high school to get their cheap green techies. And again some of them will succeed and grow and some will fail miserably.
In the end you will still have your core of educated geeks that go on.
10+ years experience trumps every degree and cert that I have seen, unless the company has some made up rule about degrees and salary. There are just so many things that you can't learn in college and with a cert.
I've always heard that 80% of why you have and keep your job is people skills. I think that number is close to being true.
Also, somebody mentioned the people going into nursing and the medical field because US News and World Reports put it as a lucrative field. I think you need to have a passion for that field to really want to help others. I can't imagine a good healthcare provider who's in it just for the money.
If "Interpersonal and group work skills" are so important, why aren't they taught? They are not really taught at school - the sports field is not the office environment (sports metaphors not withstanding) and where the environment is closest to the office (ie, classwork) working together can bring allegations of plagarism and cheating. They're not a part of any university classes I've seen either.
I think IT workers get unfairly lumped as people with "poor interpersonal and group work skills", simply because people with a more introverted dispostion are attracted to it than to other professions. A lot people assume that just because you're quiet, you lack interpersonal skills, completely ignoreing the fact that a lot of extroverts aren't actually that good when it comes to interpersonal skills - all that talking is assumed to be an example of "good interpersonal skills" when it's actually a lot of BS and politics (with a good amount of backstabbing). Most introverts where I know work really well with other people, while a lot of I know extroverts (and especially the ones I know at work) are great at blowing hot air but don't work at all well with other people.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
I totally agree that girls need to learn technology when they're young if they're ever going to get insto it. A person pushed into IT in their high school or college years can learn the basics, but she's never going to have the passion for it that will really make her successful and happy in that career. I got my first computer when I was 6 years old, and I love technology. Most girls aren't exposed to technology that young (or worse, their brothers are and they aren't - grrr) but it would get a lot more of them into IT later on if they were.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
"Graduate high school, get a couple certs "
That's pretty lousy advice. Considering you're basing this on your gf's story, maybe the lesson is don't specialize in something you think you don't want to do. Quitting your career because of uninsured people is a silly reason to piss away your experience and education. Who's going to hire someone who willy-nilly has random ethical problems? She comes off like someone who refuses to be part of the environment she chose to work in. What employer wants a flakey person like that? Here's some real advice:
1. Finish school.
2. Don't be a martyr.
3. Become flexible to adapt to different environments.
4. Have fun and make connections.
5. Remember a job is a means to an end not an end in itself.
Also, I disagree that the market is flooded with useless degrees and certifications. Its flooded with people competing with her for that payroll job. The person with payroll experience will win. This is nothing new. Whether or not they have degrees or certs is merely incidental. The entitlement attitude you and your gf have because you just have some degree isn't going to fly. Advising people to stop going to college because of your bad attitude is pretty ignorant and petty.
Yet somehow this difference does not extend to the workplace
Women are better at school than men are. The problem is that school doesn't work like the corporate world does. People who succeed in running a business learn that mistakes are wonderful learning opportunities. School teaches that mistakes are bad and you are punished for making them. People who are good at business are rewarded for creative thinking. People who are good in school are punished for not doing it the way the teacher said to even if the result is technically correct.
By-and-large, women are good at details and strictly following step by step instructions. There is no step-by-step instruction book for building a successful business. Schools are run mostly by women. No wonder women do better in school. School is geared for the female brain.
Guys don't like school because they aren't good at it and generally are wondering to themselves, "why do I need to learn poetry to build a good business." Many guys aren't going to buy some petite school-teacher's argument about why poetry can help them. They're gonna skip college or leave college after the first year and get on whith their own business. Many people of this mentality succeed. The step-by-step people get hired to work for high-school grad business owners.
People seem to forget that running a business is something you have to create for yourself. Nobody hands you an instant CEO scholarship because you got a 4.0 gpa.
This I have to totally disagree with. While I would never expect anyone to be an expert in even more then a couple of areas, the point of general education is to "round-out" everybody's understanding of the world they live in. Things like geography, math, chemistry, literature, language, history, socialology; these aren't just poopoo topics. These are things that MAY be exciting to someone, and denying the opportunity for someone to discover their love of a field is saddening. In a world where education is moving more towards specialization sooner, I think we really are missing a large chunk of who we are as people by not teaching the "soft" subjects to the technical, and the "hard" subjects to the technically-disinterested.
As a software developer, I have to say that I also love history. I might never have discovered this had it not been for Mr. Riley. To you sir, I thank you for opening a world I would never have normally been interested in discovering.
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
Things will only get worse for compaines untill they realize that they can't get something for nothing.
I have been out of work for 6 months, this is an example "Help Wanted" that I recently read:
Minimum MUST HAVE requirements:
5 Years Oracle
5+ Years Windows System Admin
5 years Help Desk
5 years Citrix
7 Years C++, VB, (and a few others)
Salary Range: $20,000 - $25,000/year (Canadian)
They are trying to fill 4 jobs with 1 person who would work for $10/hour!
Computers are my passion, but with many places pulling shit like this I think I'll keep it as my hobby and go look for another career.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
The whole wave of off-shoring shows the first phase of this maturation process. If you can spec it you can out source it. If you can our source it then someone can generalize it. Once it is generalized then IT as an internal service goes away. In the not so distant future, IT functions will be turned over to the facilities department and the maintenance folks - same as heat, water, electricity, phones, etc.