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."

Comments

Civil war?

[gzipped_tar]

At first I thought it was about British Computer Society declaring war against the UK government.

Meh. nothingtoseeheremovealong

Re:Civil war?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not just a couple of nerds throwing a fit. It is an important professional organization and whose interest it should server. More information: here. The question is whether or not the organization should represent practicing IT professionals or management.

Re:Civil war?

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Civil war?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

Re:I was asked to join this ..

[beelsebob]

Basically, you can attain levels of experience that you can then use to demonstrate to potential new employers that you have experience, and skills used in industry. Unfortunately, it's all very management biased, and anti actually doing any computing biased. For example, IIRC, the various programming skills start at level 1 qualifications max out at level 6, while management skills start at level 5 and max out at level 10.

Brilliant!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to meet with a bunch of BCS reps when my course was re-accredited, and the experience matches up with what the summary says. They were obsessing over whether the mathematics of CS were too difficult and all kinds of bogus concerns

I think their problem is that higher level courses are (inherently) not an "everyone's invited" thing. Because not everyone will succeed. And that's how it should be. They're difficult if they're done right, because they include a lot hard-line theory behind the soft 'Let's do Java' exterior. The BCS just can't seem to accept this though. They want to pervert the courses to make them easier, basically

More people on courses = more power to them? Or maybe they get extra money for getting a certain % of the population onto courses? I have no idea of their motives but whatever they are, they're going about them the wrong way

Re:Brilliant!

[Spad]

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.

Re:Brilliant!

[jayegirl]

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.

Perhaps some of the point is, for once in the cess-pool that is the modern, utility and mediocrity obsessed tertiary education system, to attempt to provide broad-ranging bases of abstract knowledge to the students who actually want to learn, and are capable of doing so. That way we'll at least get some people who can work at the coal face of knowledge creation as opposed to just another batch of clueless, money-grabbing code monkeys?

The sort of useful you're talking about is concerned with places where all the interesting, hard problems have already been solved. Sounds dull as dishwater if you've got a brain in your head.

Nothing beats a good CV (resume)

[niks42]

Having membership of the BCS gives you nothing when it comes to getting a job. A CV glowing with past achievements; actually doing things, delivering things and demonstrating that you have the cuts and weals from real-world engagements is worth much more than being a fellow of a society. I'd have to explain to potential employers who the BCS are and what they do.

Slow..

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the no confidence voters have been a bit slow to get their message out, the BCS has already sent out shiny information packs explaining why you should vote for them (I abstained due to this information shortage). I voted no about scrapping the rule of 50 members for a vote of no confidence though, seems like a nice democratic safeguard to me.

Definitely the BCS has been dumbed down successively over the past 16 years I have been a full member, I suspect that this is because they basically want more members so lower the entry bar, in order to get the membership funds in their coffers. I definitely did not like the CITP membership level, it is the British COMPUTER socienty, that should cover anything in the field of computing and not just information technology.

Anyway, I think a rocket up the ass like this is good for any organisation so we will see what comes out of it.

The BCS is an irrelevance

[Viol8]

Its a society run by and for people who cut their teeth on 1950s and 60s mainframes. Nothing wrong with that, but people seem to assume it has any relevance or authority today. It doesn't. No one I know in IT belongs to it or is even the slightest bit interested in it. Its the computing equivalent of a historic car club with similar types of people as members.

They're an elitist waste of space

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Bad choice of words

[SimonInOz]

>> Officially at war would mean a deceleration of war.

Slowing down of war - I like the sound of that.