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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.
We've seen that tech is being more and more commoditized. Pretty soon, tech jobs will be no more than plugging in parts. We will become plumbers.
All those guys that landed cushy, big-dolloar jobs out of high school often failed miserably. IT projects are notoriously risky. So many have failed, and many of them have failed spectacularly. As a result the IT community is now looking for seasoned techs. Guys that have some experience and wisdom in the fiels. Its a good thing. I know where I am, the easiest way to scare the hell out of management, is to tell them we are rolling out a new application. This is based on past experience.
An IT force with more robust backgrounds can only be a good thing. sweet hacker skills are of still relevant, but there needs to be more.
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
Women are pushed into the workforce instead of being pushed into the kitchen. Instead of breaking the cycle and pushing women to rationally choose what they want, based on comparative advantages and disadvantages, things have just shifted from one sexism to another.
I'd like to call academic feminists "useful idiots" in that respect, but that'd be letting them off the hook as they have often whole-heartedly promoted the idea that women have no legitimate right to choose a traditional housewife role.
We aren't much closer to a culture where women choose the lifestyle that fits them. The pendulum has just swung from one extreme to another.
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."
It really isn't just the Tech Industry that has raised its standard. Almost everyone has. The problem for most, however, isn't the lack of certifications or education, but the lack of experience pertinent to individual positions.
My girlfriend is a university graduate and holds a pharmacy technician certification and license. She got them (and about 500 hours of experience in a pharmacy) because she planned on going to pharmacy school. Then, considering she wasn't happy telling people, "Sorry Mr. Goldman, the insurance company doesn't feel as though your Alzheimer's is worth treating. You got $283.43 on ya?"
So she's on the job market again and has been for the last 2 months. Bachelor's degree, high quality experience in --AN-- industry and nothing. Why? Because companies and organizations no longer gauge the value of applicants by their credentials or educational degrees. All they want to see is hard experience directly working with the company database or "... at least 3+ years working knowledge of ".
Why? I dare say as an educator that it's because the market has been flooded with bachelor degrees and MS Certification, and this certification, etc.
How can we remedy this? Make it standard for companies to supply their applicant pool with training software. You want your applicant pool to be qualified and to integrate, achieving 85%+ productivity, within a week? Then you should really post downloadable software on the website from which you advertise jobs.
Bsck to my girlfriend, she's applied for many positions at same University at which I work. She's no longer looking for something that will "stimulate her mind" as she's willing to work in the payroll department-- "entry level". But, of course "Required: 3+ years of the *** payroll system including , , "
Save your time, with the education, guys. Graduate high school, get a couple certs just to make your resume a bit more full, and make a friend on the inside. Connections really do seem to be the only way to get a job today. =(
In my 8 years of experience in this industry, the most useful skills have been communication/interpersonal skills. It's strange, I leave a high paying job behind a bar (i make great money now, but made far more working Thurs, Fri and Sat nights in popular watering holes) where I develeped great communication/interpersonal skills. Problem is, most people I commuunicated during work were drunk and wanted something from me. Now I it is usually me wanting something from someone else all the while wishing I was drunk.
Seriously though, the communication/interpersonal skills are far more valuable. I have seen many people who have no talent or skill in anything technical make it very far while the person with the technical knowledge remains where they are.
PS. My skills learned from the bar make me a great conversationist, but not being a sycophant I am not afraid to say "NO!" to a manager who has no tech skills, but wishes to impress the client regardless the cost. This has made my career static and somewhat digressive.
As if geeks didnt have enough trouble getting chicks...Now we have to show crack at work?
Methinks that will not help matters at all!
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.
I'd say that finding oneself a job where it's even *possible* to do these things is key. For example, I've worked as a computer technician before in jobs where it was taken for granted that I was going to be holed up in the "back room", doing my thing. I enjoyed it, because I was free of much of the "office politics" and could just concentrate on getting the work done. But ultimately, you don't advance that way. You're generally never given an opportunity to lead a group, because nobody in the company views you as suitable for that role. You might get a raise based on your performance, but that's only because they're treating you as a number. "How quickly are we getting broken PCs turned around with this guy working here? Do we have X percentage more capacity to take on additional repairs now?"
Even after you leave that type of work, it's rough finding something with more room for growth. Your resume says nothing about your potential ability to work with groups or lead one. Several buddies of mine tried to "get a foot in the door" of an I.T. career by starting out on a help-desk or as a PC tech. - and except in one case (the guy got a government job as some type of PC support person), I don't think it gave any of them much of an advantage. If they spent the time as a manager of a retail store, I suspect those skills would have worked just as well for them.
Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses
Well my experience in college was that many, though not all, liberal arts majors purposefully avoided technical subjects; they were incapable of functioning in that domain. It was like trying to teach a cat to play chess. The university policy though was that they should be educated on those subjects. The resulting compromise between the impossible and the ideal was that the university offered special dumbed-down courses on technical subjects. They taught physics without math. A waste of time for all involved.
It is the educators who need to get a clue here: stop trying to teach a subjects to the selection of students who can not learn it. Poets don't need to know computer programming, most of them are incapable of learning it, so stop wasting everyones time and the taxpayers money by insisting that they learn. A society where everyone is technical expert is an impossible fantasy. Identifying the group of people least willing and able to learn a subject and choosing to teach them that is the least-efficient plan. Naturally, that would be government funded.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
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.
That seems to be the first question I am asked in a technical interview. Why would an UNIX admin/manager need to know the 7 layers? 2 or 3 of them, sure but all 7?
/etc/inittab!"
/opt dir.
The truth is, The degree does not mean squat! Heck the experience does not even seem to mean anything. If it did (with my 15 years in the field) I would not be asked to name the 7 layers of the OSI model. The certs do not seem to mean anything. So what is left? HR people just call one of there technical people in and have them quiz the new applicant. The technical person seems to take the stance of "Lets prove I am smarter than the new guy" and add questions like "In Linux what is init level 3?" and does not accept "Anything you set it to when you edit the
More recently I was asked "Where is Apache installed on Solaris 9?" I responded with "The install is a compile time option, so it is where ever you set it to be." I was told I was wrong because the package they get from their packaging department always installs in the
The issue is that HR departments and hireling managers (non-tech) have no way to judge an individuals skills. They have found that the guys with degrees do not always know what to do, Resumes are faked or fudged, and certs can be made with a good laser printer. What is left? They start to look for people that have experience in just the apps and hardware they have then have there existing guys judge there skills. Is there a better way? I really do not know, although I would start by teaching the general IT people how to interview. It mite make it a little easier.
How is it possible for anyone to discuss this? The article requires an account on the ACM website. I would have been happy to read it, but both PDF and HTML are unavailable to anyone who doesn't have access. Anyone who has that would do a kindness to the rest of us by posting some of the relevant bits here, please.
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal. (Mark Twain)
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 think that the misconception in many of the comments is that this program is designed to turn the average college student into somewhat of a "quickie-techie". It is not.
The program is designed to supplement the courses that a technology-area major takes ordinarily. The idea is that your English, Speech, Health and other core College courses would be technology infused, thus showing you the connections between the theory of technology you're majoring in and applications to other fields. The hope is that by the end, students will know the breadth of career possibilities instead of getting pipelined directly into the average help desk career.
Besides the tech-infusion into typical courses, the program also concludes by having students create a simulated technology business in the classroom. They're asked to go through the process of coming up with an idea, business model, marketing plans, and then working to "sell" that product. This connects their technology knowledge with real world business practices, as well as forces them to read about the current state of the industry, all while imparting those critical communication, groupwork and other soft skills.
The real question here is what skills need to be infused into the Liberal Arts courses so that in their final course they are able to and feel confident in starting their own tech-based business.
"The days of high-paying technology-based jobs right out of highschool are over."
Those days never existed and for christ's sake I wish IT-types would stop perpetuating the myth. Yeah, sure, there were excesses during the dot-com boom-bust cycle, but rarely, VERY rarely were those excesses bestowed upon 17 year-olds. It was bad enough when people were insinuating that every CompSci graduate in 1997 was getting a 135K/year job with a free Mercedes. Stupid shit like that happened, but the psychology is akin to one Amway triple-diamond sales manager pulling up in his new Maserati, causing the 300 people in his "downline" running around telling all their friends that they're getting Maseratis too. Then, when the whole thing falls apart, they don't have the Maserati, and everyone gets into a big schadenfreude orgy watching the giant fall...from a height he never attained.
The other aspect of this that is maddening is the implication that utterly normal salaries for middle-of-the-road positions are "high." Take a garden variety IT job that pays about $65-70k today. Well, in 1995 dollars that's $49-52K -- and that WASN'T a great deal of money in 1995 for a skilled occupation. Constantly screaming out this mantra of "high IT salaries" communicates to people that they are unjustified. Go to the BLS and pull up similarly skilled occupations. You'll find that by and large, IT salaries are--and have been for some time--totally in line with, say, being an electrician or a telco engineer... or a PLUMBER for christ's sake.
The bubble was a five-year abberation that has been over for five years. Get over it and please stop perpetuating and exacerbating what is largely urban myth based on what are at best statistical outliers. In short, shut-the-fuck-up already.
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 days of high-paying technology-based jobs right out of highschool are over."
Those days never existed and for christ's sake I wish IT-types would stop perpetuating the myth.
Actually, they did exist.
My first job, in 1980-1982, was as a Power Engineer for Tek Cominco (back then Cominco), and it paid $12 when I started as an Assitant and I was making $22 within a year. Back then, that was more than a wealthy white collar worker made, and even CEOs only made about $40 an hour then.
When I moved to Seattle, shortly after the tech boom hit, and many people were getting four or five job offers at 100K+ if they left work in one place, in the late 1990s. I remember having a job end, going on vacation to go surf in Santa Barbara, and getting two job offers the week I was surfing, starting work the day after I got back.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.