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British Computer Society Is Officially At Civil War
An anonymous reader writes "A vote of no confidence against the current board of directors has erupted in what is possibly the first nerd war, raging throughout the British Computer Society. More financial- and spreadsheet-related fixations and less computer science have made a few members cross; plus they don't like the new name 'The Chartered Institute of IT.' Here are more specific details on the extraordinary emergency general meeting on July 1, where members will vote to decide the fate of the board of directors."
When they introduced the Chartered status they automatically upgraded every member. Then the set the boundaries at a certain number of years experience, plus qualifications. Then they changed it to a framework whereby you had to have managed a certain number of people, and had a certain size budget. Then they changed it so that you had to have complete strategic accountability in a significant organisation. They're completely alienating a significant proportion of their members, who are technical professionals, not guys in boardrooms.
Here's how it goes: Somebody has a great idea to form an association of some sort. Then, the idea of the actual association gets lost. Why? Narcissistic empathy-lacking morons are attracted to it because they can control the apparatus instead of deliver actual services. Then, the people who started the service get angry and fight back, and we get the situation we have here. Usually, the good guys lose and are forced to start their own splinter group. The new group never gets as big as the original because the original group has all the clout and relationships.
I know a local "chamber of commerce" type organization. They spend all their time in committee meetings, electing general secretaries, and deciding who gets what title than actually promoting local business. Their association is a joke - it's obvious to everyone but them. To themselves, they're king ding-a-ling and they strut around like they're important people.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I did a quick course after the equivalent of high school. Mostly because I was bored, and my buddies were going that route.
I'm one of those guys who's not particularly bad at math, but just sucks at the way it's being taught in school. Anyway, this is a course mostly directed towards students who completed electronics and electrotechnics degrees. Those degrees are aimed at people who have a "scientific" mind, but didn't score well enough in math and science in the previous years. Something for everyone, right?
The first day of that degree, our math teacher informed us that most of us were going to fail math. Not because we were bad or stupid, not because we'd be smoking drugs and getting wasted every weekend, but quite simply because the stuff he'd be required by law to teach us was way out of our league, and that he expected almost half the class to be dumped by the end of the first semester.
What he aimed for, was not for most of us to ace, he would be trying to get us to not fail too badly. Out of 24 students who started the course, 10 dropped out by the end of the first year, partly because they didn't like CS, but mostly because they were completely drowned in math and physics. Out of 10 students who got to the final exams in the end, 2 or 3 passed Math.
The problem is that (in France), what the teacher has to teach the students is decided by some fat guys in suits who haven't seen nor remember what a student looks like for the past 20-30 years. They are stuck, getting insane requests from the industry, about 10 years too late, and trying to work out what might help. By the time the new stuff reaches the teachers and students, 15 or 20 years have passed. What you end up with are continuously deprecated degrees, where students come out, filled with hope and joy based on the lies their schools and teachers told them for the past few years, and are hit in the face during their first job interviews (if they ever get one) where they realise that nothing they've learned will be useful.
Now, I got my degree, and most of friends did as well (only 1 didn't get it, as I recall, so 10%), but seriously, what's the point of giving uber-hard math, where kids just drop off and don't give a shit anymore, and doesn't stop them from getting their diploma in the end anyway? I went to maybe 3 math classes in my last year, and still got my diploma with flying colours. It's not about making it easier, it's about making it useful.
It's the misunderstanding de jour, at least in the UK, that the ideal situation is for everyone to be getting top marks in every exam they take - mostly due to bloody school league tables and the "everyone must go to uni" mentality. This does of course defeat the entire point of exams, which is to differentiate people based on their level of ability in a given field, to the extent that some universities are finding that *every* applicant for certain courses have 5 A's at A-Level and so deciding who to take is often a crap shoot. The (previous) government's brilliant solution to this issue? Add an A* grade at A-Level and carry on as normal.
It will never happen. Corporations DESPERATELY do not want IT to rise back to a "skilled" level where they have to pay premium wages for it again. They want IT to be the next Factory job where you get low wages and bad hours...
Requirements = higher pay rates. And companies dont want that. They want IT people they can hire for $10-$13 an hour USD and keep them cheap. They dont want to hire a guy that is highly skilled and educated for $23.00 an hour and higher... Because he is hard to replace, while the MCSE kid that will take a paltry $11.00 an hour and think he hit he jackpot is very easy to replace.
This is why you dont see companies demanding certifications and education levels... Because they will be forced to double pay rates. and they do not want to do that.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That must be the reason every mainland country in Europe associates "Brittish soccer fans" with the worst kind of hooligans?
Sure, and the French go around with stripey T-shirts and wearing necklaces made of onion, while the Germans live on a diet of beer and 15 different kinds of sausage.
Or maybe decades-old stereotypes that apply to a tiny fraction of the population aren't very helpful.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Aussie, degree qualified developer, 20yrs experience - $US23.00 an hour is nowhere near enough to get me out of bed.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Agreed. But corporations dont want you. They want dirt cheap mediocre labor.
It's why instead of hiring a seasoned developer they outsource it for 1/5th your cost to another place and then live with the sub-par result.
They might not want to but they end up having to concede and hire a seasoned developer to clean up the mess... or be stuck with a poorly written system with operational costs running high up (eating up any savings they were expected from off-shoring.)
Doesn't matter what they want, when the rubber hits the road, they have no choice but to hire/re-hire skilled developers back. I've seen this happening in 15 years work. I've not seen any evidence to the contrary. It doesn't mean that right now there is no job shortage, but that's a function of the economy as a whole, and not of off-shoring.
In the last 10 years I've worked with 5 different companies were off-shoring played a big rule. There was a lot of job shuffling, but not the catastrophic layoffs people attribute to off-shoring. And every off-shored project going south is simply another opportunity to step up to the plate and clean it up (hopefully as a consultant with paid O/T.). If you are dumb and can't take advantage of it, then yeah, you are at risk of getting the pink slip, but that's on you, not off-shoring or IT as a whole.
The idea that companies can just get rid of skilled labor in favor off-shoring and getting away with it (and that such a thing becomes the status quo of the IT industry) is a fallacy.
Companies think they can save a buck by firing their skilled staff in favor of off-shoring for a 1/5th of a price? Let them. Let them do it and burn as they almost inevitably do. In the meantime, you re-invent yourself in some other slice of the IT sector, cleaning up the mess left by a previous badly managed off-shore effort (and make a good, steady and technically-rewarding living out of it.)