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Skills Needed For a Future In IT
Lucas123 writes "An increase in the pace of change in IT has created new dynamics for jobs involving the Web, mobile computing and virtualization. For those looking to enter the marketplace in years to come, 30-somethings hoping to upgrade their skills, or those who'll be winding their careers down by 2020, skill sets are drastically changing. For example, graphics chips are doubling in capacity every six months. That translates into a thousandfold increase in capacity over a five-year period — the average shelf life of most game platforms. 'We've never seen anything like it in any industry.' Colleges are in continual catch-up mode and have only recently added project management and soft skills training to computer science programs. According to one expert, 'They're about five years behind where they need to be.'"
Five and a half years, turbodork (2^10 is eleven doublings)...
"For example, graphics chips are doubling in capacity every six months. That translates into a thousandfold increase in capacity over a five-year period"
ability to get a first post on demand. Really helps you stand out.
Don't you just need to know how to take a computer apart and put it back together?
Well, then maybe one should just study project management and soft skills. So in a few years, all we'll have will be some soft managers, thinking they know something about computer science.
These days, anyone that industry likes is an "expert."
College works best when it functions as (a) a qualification program and (b) a general, background, theoretical and broad study of the subject matter.
Qualification in this case means that you go to college to endure an extended test that ultimately shows how dedicated and intelligent you were. Made it through four years of Harvard? You're pretty good, usually.
A general background means that you study the theory and a broad survey of the topic, so that you understand the underlying issues and the basic methods of addressing them.
I don't think it makes sense to teach specifics in college, except vocational colleges like community colleges. That's the kind of stuff you learn on your first few jobs anyway, and it's so rapidly changing that trying to get college to teach it is a moving target no one will hit.
Futurist Traditionalism
The last thing we need is for mundane society to catch up with the trend and stifle it like they did to the web and are trying to do with the internet. The more they catch up the more jobs they ship overseas, the more middle management we end up with, the slower growth becomes, the less profitable it is for small business owners, and the more big business monopolies corner the market.
I hope they never catch up. I hope it's wave after wave after wave. It's better to ride the waves and surf the trends than to let the internet become controlled by the MPAA/RIAA like TV, Radio and a lot of other technologies.
They've been calling colleges out for being "five years behind" since the first Computer Science programs started. But truthfully they are always at least five years behind, but while true the skills most teach are already "soft" enough to transfer into the latest and greatest toys. Java? Now you can write PHP, or C#. C? Now you can write Object C, D, and C++.
There is always this interesting push between what I like to term the Computer Science Vs. Software Engineering people, in which the former always wants to play with new interesting toys, write code, and generally act like an impulsive teenager, while the latter wants to be an old man, being safe, writing plans, timetables, and those middle management bits that drive CS people up the wall.
I think when we're young (mentally) we're CS, and as we age we gradually turn into Software Engineers.
I've been working in IT for some time now, and I think that that any specialized hard-skils are pointless. Most of my success has been able to adapt to new technologies, languages, ideas, etc. IT is constantly changing (which is what attracted me to it). What you need is a solid background in IT concepts (how to program in A language, how to understand the TCP/IP stack, what a protocol is, etc), a solid understanding of interpersonal communication, and a willingness to change and adapt.
I was trying to read TFA but this newfangled whatchacallit, where you put lines to make pictures that together make words? I am in my thirties, I couldn't understand it, it was too hard. Also the thingies on the bottom of the pages, with numbers where you place the mouse-cross and switch the button to open a new page, I could barely figure it out!
Clearly, the story is too complex and good that those 50 year olds don't have to read it, cause obviously they are going to die off soon and won't have to work, and the 20 year olds must be feeling right at home with all those pictures of thingies that make up words, it's us, the 30-40 year olds who are fucked.
What can I say, we belong in the dumpster of history.
You can't handle the truth.
Most jobs I apply for have a silly long list of skills that seem to have nothing to do with one another. I don't see how any one can apply for a job when the list of skills is over a page long and ranges from 'knowledge of random proprietary software used only by big corporations' to Must know how to program in 'these 20 languages'. I don't see how most of these companies can expect to find a single person who can do all these things and then do it for 15 dollars and hour. Maybe the job market got more competitive or maybe people are just really good at lying about what they can and can't do but it just doesn't seem realistic to expect someone to do 40 things that are only loosely related with their 'job' as it's described.
It is funny that the the future skills that you need to develop are in fact the past one, like C (only, not C++), assembler, embedded OS (uClinuc, linux), RTOS....all of them require the good old C only skills...... Funny, ain't?
wankers
From TFA
"You bring a programmer or network administrator on board, and they don't have the big-picture view of how the business runs," he says. One recent hire, he notes, could program user interfaces but had no concept of a database. Another didn't know what an invoice was.
Where the heck are you finding your graduates? e-Click online university? I only skimmed this article, but it seems to be along the lines of "You'll need soft skills such as communication and adaptation". I thought this was already the situation, surely one can't get a job on server management skills alone right? They had to go through at least 1 interview.
Seriously, things are only changing as much as we expected them too. 5 years from now people will be as ill prepared for a career as they are now compared to 5 years ago.
> Consider, he says, that graphics chips are doubling in capacity every six months. That translates into a thousandfold increase in capacity over a five-year period -- the average shelf life of most game platforms. "We've never seen anything like it in any industry," he says.
Yes. I definitely remember my XBox 360 being 3 orders of magnitude more powerful than the XBox. I hate to cite Wikipedia, but this appears to show a 5 times increase in 4 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transistor_count&oldid=374101890#GPUs
> At the same time, colleges can't adapt their curricula fast enough to prepare students for the complexities of cloud computing and virtualization, not to mention specific technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint, observers say. Recent graduates also seem naive when it comes to business basics and how computing foundations apply to the real world, says David Buzzell, CIO at The Sedona Group, a Moline, Ill.-based workforce management services provider.
That's not new. Most colleges/universities do theory-heavy courses designed to let you learn the next big technology. If you want a MS certificate to say you grok Sharepoint, you can get that for a LOT less than a college degree.
> Another didn't know what an invoice was.
If you advertise for a someone with 2-5 years experience of a software package with 2007 in the name... http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=101&dockey=xml/0/5/0598524509067860fbf7aef52a6ae982@endecaindex&c=1&source=20
Speak Indian or Chinese
The ability to bullshit people into thinking that you know what you are doing despite the fact that half your job consists of trial-and-error attempts to work around the constraints imposed by other people that managed to bullshit people into thinking they knew what they were doing.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
College is not supposed to be vocational training. College ensures a good foundation, and hopefully some work ethic and study skills. Nobody comes out of college knowing everything they need to do their job. They come out of college knowing everything they need to be readily trained.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
10 years ago when I was in college, I asked what the future of computing was going to be like. I was told that linear algebra would probably become much more important because quantum computing was on the horizon. Quantum computing still hasn't materialized, but linear algebra is looking to be more important anyway. The cool bit about linear algebra: it's always been useful. 10 years ago, we were talking about resource problems. Today those problems still exist. A good algorithm is just as important, and understanding the computability of a problem. 10 years ago, we were talking about the importance of having a deep understanding of the languages, not just knowing "C, C++, or Java". Today, a deep understanding will still help, and knowing only the fad-language-of-the-day will still get you in trouble. 10 years ago we talked about multi-processor programming. Today we talk about mutli-core programming. Multi-threaded applications have been around for a long time. Other issues: security, project management, and software lifecycle. I've yet to see a new issue, just an old one in a different way.
6 years ago, I wrote a software requirement spec, and software design spec. In it I said the web application had to be able to run efficiently on a 300MHz processor over a 56K modem. I didn't realize that in 6 years, smart phones were going to be so predominant that people would still be using 300MHz processors over 56K connections.
Today, tomorrow, yesterday; it's all about understanding the fundamentals. The details may change, but the foundation is the same.
The last thing we need is for mundane society to catch up with the trend...
Yes, what he said. Please, for the love of God, do not spread knowledge! Keep us elites strong, and let the masses rot! The last thing we want is an economy that can keep up. When the ship goes down, I want to be the rat sitting on the tallest mast.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I find it interesting that they categorize traditional business management roles in with computer science. Perhaps the university I went to was something of a novelty, but there were two distinctly different majors. One was Information Technology, and one was Computer Science. They were not even in the same college within the university. IT was more business (classes like managerial communications, data communications, and ITIL), while CS was programming.
"...are doubling in capacity every six months. That translates into a thousandfold increase in..."
No. This is wrong. If you FOLD something, you double it. So in five years, with ten folds, that makes an increase by a factor of 512. Nice and easy. But it's not 1000 (that would take another 6 months), and it's nowhere near a "thousandfold", which would be a factor of 5.3E300.
While it may sound good for the marketers, please don't use descriptors that are factually wrong on Slashdot.
Also, people are behind the cutting edge of technology? I am shocked.
Let's make a template for this story that takes in keywords, and shuffles the order around a bit. That way we can publish it every other year and hardly anyone will notice.
After my latest round of interviews for an open developer spot on my team, I decided the skills I'm looking for in IT can be identified by this test:
http://www.drunkmenworkhere.org/170
Notice there's no mention of code, development methodology, or any other IT concepts.
And that's fine by me, because all those things change. I don't need a Windows IIS guru, because we're likely to switch over to Apache Tomcat next year. I don't care how l33t your PHP skillz are, I want to know how useful you are going to be when we need to move all the code over to JAVA.
Basically, I want to know how well you can answer the questions I don't yet know to ask. New technologies, new challenges, new bugs. I need to know how well you can think.
There you are. That's the skill need in IT--past, present, and future. Can you think?
How can colleges be five years behind? Easy.
- They don't jump on all the silly and pointless trends that die within the first year.
- They have to wait for new things to take hold in the markets to see which ones are worth studying.
- They have to learn the subjects correctly before being able to prepare courses material.
Five years may be a huge delay, however. I bet they can shorten that to at least three years.
Until then, it's the hard skills that most companies use as the prime determinate for whether or not a given application gets a first-level interview.
IT is one of the absolutely worst industries for pigeonholing, and your last job is the one that gets tattooed on your forehead, not the stuff you know (or think you know) the best.
Welcome to reality ... for the past 20+ years, sadly. I don't see it changing soon, as that requires an actual level of understanding on the part of those that be hiring.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
"Keeping up with change can be as simple as experimenting with the latest consumer devices. Druby carries an iPad, and Sims uses three different smartphones and recently ordered an Android-based tablet. Chesnais says that at a recent meeting, half the people in the room had iPads."
Let me summarize. If you want to stay Relevant and Make More Money at work:
- Buy new gadgets and put them through their paces vigorously. Devices without touch screens == irrelevant.
- The cool people at work have iPads and bring them to meetings. Being cool == relevant.
- Technical skills are for kids. You should move into project management or some kind of leadership position now that you're ~30.
- Know how to navigate through the company. Don't do work, Navigate.
The real Take Aways here are:
- you should be thinking "Who do I have to fuck to get a management position around here?"
- iPads, Androids, smart phones are the future and graphics are so goddamn fast!. Programmers aren't.
You know, like nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... Employers only want employees who have great skills.
College is not supposed to be vocational training. College ensures a good foundation, and hopefully some work ethic and study skills. Nobody comes out of college knowing everything they need to do their job. They come out of college knowing everything they need to be readily trained.
College for my generation is what highschool was to previous generations. Only college costs $50,000 while highschool was free. Yeah thats progress...
I've been reading articles like this since I was a teenager. The first one had some stuff in it about how "Tomorrow's systems analysts need to be learning dBASE but Universities are behind". A few years later, "Schools aren't teaching Rational Rose techniques". Give me a break. You should be learning *concepts* in school, not *tools*. When I was in college, I learned a lot of engineering concepts, and only the tools I needed to do the labs. Today, the tools have changed completely, as they always do. I'm quite glad I took a course in Digital Logic Design, rather than in something like "Espresso Logic Minimizer", which hasn't been used in years.
And what is up with that guy studying Six Sigma and businesses processes (and "lean manufacturing"). Why would he think purposefully giving himself brain damage would be good for his career? Is he getting a Certificate in Buzzwords?
Our (US) position in the world of commerce is specializing in things that change quickly and often. Commodity products and tasks tend to drift overseas where the labor is cheaper.
Given this situation, we need a Just-In-Time higher education system. The degree system is insufficient for this niche. Something akin to technical certificates could perhaps be melded with traditional education. Degrees would focus mostly on timeless theories (if there are such things), and certificates on recent trends and specific tools and languages.
A "degree" student would be required to select so many certificates to get the 4-year degree; and at the same time seasoned practitioners could get the certificates from the same school.
Table-ized A.I.
Virtualization is a required skill nowadays(as I unfortunately found out during a 9 month unemployment period), and to go with that required skill, in order to be certified by VMWare(which regardless of what people feel about them/the product they are a market leader), you need to take their required courses to qualify. The required courses cost $3500. You don't directly need to take a course to qualify for an Advanced cert, but since you need a VCP to qualify for an Advanced cert, you need to take the course anyways. It's really a lovely racket. Not even Microsoft stoops to that level
I've been working in IT for almost 20 years and what I notice are there are people that are good, there are people that get by, and there are people the flounder. The people who flounder should find a new line of work (though sometimes they can make a career out of it). The difference between the people that get by and the people that are good is more mentality than anything. The people that get by acquire skillsets but can't relate their different skillsets unless it is specifically taught to them. The people that are good see it more as a continuous flow, that skills are acquired and lost, but 1 && 1 is always 1 (i.e. the fundamentals stay the same)
Skills you need in IT:
The ability to solve complicated problems by breaking them it to manageable pieces (Work as an mechanic or in construction to hone this skill)
The ability to solve complicated problems with practical and workable solutions (Again, work as an mechanic or in construction to hone this skill)
A desire to build and an imagination (Play with Legos)
Cross-platform Scripting (I'd go with Perl, but Python works too)
A lower-level programming language (C or C++)
Basic OS administration (Learn Windows and Linux, you'll need them both)
Everything else can vary. Technically you don't even need the lower-level programming language, but it helps, try to at least be able to read it.
Maybe I left something out. I'm sure some other slashdotters will let me know :)
The IT labor market has been intentionally tanked by the US government. It's expensive to train up and pays shit. There is no future in IT.
A) People skills. You HAVE to be able to work with other people. There is nothing in 'information technology' that does not require you to operate in a collective. The point of IT is making hardware and software communicate to allow people to communicate. This starts with people communicating without technology or with prior technology and most certainly includes you. The people hiring you to provide IT services require that you are capable of communicating well with them and with others associated to the project. This is not language alone. It includes understanding, compassion, and the ability to stand your ground when you know you are right.
B) The skill of acquiring new information, knowledge, abilities and skills that pertain to completing the task at hand. Staying relevant is what keeps a person or business alive.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
"Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
I'm a physics grad student. I have a bachelor degree in physics and I can tell you that by the time you finish that programme, you're barely familiar with stuff that was developed 70 years ago! 50 if you're lucky.
You think IT guys have it hard? Try catching up as a physics student!
"You bring a programmer or network administrator on board, and they don't have the big-picture view of how the business runs," he says. One recent hire, he notes, could program user interfaces but had no concept of a database. Another didn't know what an invoice was.
Business rules are the business analyst's job - not a programmer's. A programmer's job really isn't the big picture. His job is to implement a design. It's one thing if the job description is a business analyst who can code but it's another to expect a programmer to also be a business analyst.
The key, he says, is to keep investing in yourself, through reading and training, in both IT and business areas. One rule of thumb suggests spending 3% of your salary and time in self-training, he says. Buzzell attends industry conferences and has been doing research in lean manufacturing, Six Sigma and business processes.The key, he says, is to keep investing in yourself, through reading and training, in both IT and business areas. One rule of thumb suggests spending 3% of your salary and time in self-training, he says. Buzzell attends industry conferences and has been doing research in lean manufacturing, Six Sigma and business processes.
When I mention self training, I am always asked, "How much on the job experience you have with that?"
"None"
"Sorry, we need people with experience."
Here's the only decent advice I saw in the article:
Silver emphasizes the importance of diversifying your skill set, possibly through job rotation programs. "If you've been writing code for a while, maybe there's a project management rotation you can take, or you can work in different business units," he suggests. There will be a growing need for people with business intelligence skills, as well as leadership and communication capabilities, he adds.
Yep. Here's the sucky thing about it, though: everyone else will be trying to do the same thing. There's only so many management positions available. If you're lucky, you'll be with a bunch of folks who have this attitude, "I'm technical. I don't do the business shit."
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
It's not the purpose of a university to keep up with whatever happens to be the fashion of the day in IT industry. If you want to educate yourself about that you can watch product advertisments from Microsoft and IBM. Academia should focus on underlying concepts, theoretical computer science, and mathematics. At the core there are topics such as Turing completeness, computational complexity, Gödel's incompleteness theorem, algorithms, numerics, program verification, chomsky hierarchy, computer algebra, predicate logic, and the like.
However the IT industry (like the rest of the industry) is ruinously short sighted and extremely conservative when it comes to adopting/learning "new" technology which has been around for decades.
his name is The Plague, and you need to know how to ride a skateboard, wear a trench coat, and to bang Lorraine Bracco.
Learn to write clearly, effectively, and succinctly. Do not use me as an example. Seriously, UNlearn everything blogs and Facebook treasures.
At least TAKE a course in ethics or philosophy. Why you do things is at least as important as how, and will be mpre so in the future.
Don't leave hobbies or avocations behind. The synergies between fun and work are important. Music teaches things you will use at work. Even seemingly unrelated stuff, glassblowing or target shooting, will keep you using the parts of your brain and psyche that are otherwise unused. No, shooting your co-workers does not count as a hobby. Maybe, MUDing your office, but that's something the ethics class might teach you something about.
A communcations degree seems to be a really popular second concentration in almost every area except maybe, well, actually, most everywhere.
A broad experience is helpful, not just to improve your employment opportunities, but to also to improve your flexibility. If you cross-train at the gym, you get the idea. Multiple disciplines train you better than one, even if you specialize.
Being able to write gives you a leg up communicating with users and management. Ethics is underappreciated, which should be obvious if you read news of Facebook's priacy choices or what happens when your first job goes flat as the company goes broke.
Technically, there are so many choices. I won't even pretend to advise on languages, structured/OOP/whatever, project management, ack, too many choices, and there are lots of /.'rs to advisors.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
also the need BS or MS for some IT jobs does not help.
By 2020 will it be PHD for help desktop level 1?
BY 2020 will help desk level 1 need a PHD in some places seems how now days you need a BS or MS for a level 1 job at some places.
That sounds like a ridiculous attempt to sell higher education to people who have long been out of school and don't need it. It's like selling extra education to Einstein in his 40's, or an advanced degree to Newton. Seriously, do they think the guy who wrote java needs to go back to school to get a refresher course, or maybe Linus does? Who are these professionals with decades of experience that somehow need to return to the University to learn about the software that they wrote? School is a great way to learn the basics, but a terrible way to keep pace. Money has kept many out of the brightest minds away from the University, and it's a sick joke to think Universities would have something to teach people with degrees that are out in the field and working.
Think of it this way. My wife has an MD/Phd, done a 4 year residency, is the valedictorian of her 4 year college, and will have a minimum 2-3 year post doc. She will be in her late 30's, possibly early 40's, before she ever gets to use her training to actually run a lab. The training requirements keep going up, because there are people dumb enough to let the Universities act as gatekeepers for their profession. In return, the Universities profit immensely off 20,000 a year Phd's, and 40,000 a year MD's, who are still "training", despite decades of hard work. She has foreign colleagues who are even worse off. Many of the Chinese researchers are stuck working as Post Docs (for 40K a year) until they retire. So, we have people with Phd's, who officially never finish training, making less than a McDonald's manager or truck driver. In contrast, we have this wonderful situation in Computer Science where we actually get paid for our work, and where we can start earning a reasonable salary in our early 20's. This is NOT a problem that needs to be solved. It's only a problem for the Universities, who would love to find a way to cash in on our profession.
as well as English.
"For example, graphics chips are doubling in capacity every six months. That translates into a thousandfold increase in capacity over a five-year period — the average shelf life of most game platforms."
I'm pretty sure Gordon E. Moore might disagree with that claim.
Granted, "capacity" is a nebulous term:
They're sure as hell not doubling ram (the most obvious "capacity" part) that fast (4GB is the absolute maximum on dual GPU cards) and that would imply 1GB was the maximum a year ago, 256MB two years ago and anyone with a 3 year old gaming PC would be chugging along on 64MB of ram.
They're not doubling in clock speed (substitute MB for MHz for a rough equivalent to the above).
Single chips are running ~1600 stream processors. That'd be 400 a year ago? 100 two years ago? 25 three years ago?
Clearly my ~$200 8800GT that still works just fine for most games was delivered from the future by a flying Delorean.
The 1,000x/generation is marketing hype by console manufacturers who're trying to sell you on how superawesome their new system is. With certain code optimizations, performing certain tasks, certain aspects of the rendering pipeline may be 1,000 times faster but I'm pretty sure a PS3 or XBox 360 would weep at running GTA:San Andreas at 15,360p (32x in each direction of the PS2/XBox's 480p).
Reality is, we're seeing something closer to Moore's law.
Though that would make a less sensational article, "SHOCK HORROR: Programmers today need to advance to stay relevant at exactly the same pace as every other programmer for the last 30 years."
Some of the languages used in my college course at MIT. Only one is still used a bit today.
Yes, you heard me: skills aren't important - at least long-term.
Skills come and go. I used to be skilled with Active Directory and C#, but I was messing with them every day. Now I'm messing with other things, and I'm skilled in them.
There are skills, and then there are competencies, life skills, and fundamental comprehension. Some of these things come through experience with many different systems over time, but others are foundational.
If you don't understand the foundational basics of computing sciences, nothing about these modern technologies will make sense in a short period of time. Hell, if you don't have that foundation, chances are you don't truly "understand" those technologies - you'll just be able to use them. To someone who understands the hardware changes and differences, hardware based virtualization is just (basically) splitting ring 0, and a GPU is just another type of processor capable of x computations in y cycles, or z transforms, or what have you.
Additionally, experience with different architectures and platforms additionally gives you a staging point for future changes. "x? Oh, that's just like y, which was pretty common 20 years ago."
Of course, once you get to the point where you're experienced in many things, with a core set of competencies, you become a contractor and fix all the shit other people break, don't understand, etc.: the brighter, more competent IT people who have developed soft skills do this; everyone else leaves the industry (see: high unemployment rate), go into IT management, or find a lower paying IT jobs (see: Progress 4GL and the like).
There hasn't been a future "IT" since around 2000; businesses have seen to that. Hell, IT sees to it, as our goal is to reduce the amount of human hours are necessary not only for us to do basic jobs but for our clients to do their jobs - ergo making us redundant. If IT organizations today managed networks in ways which were common even 5 years ago, there'd be twice the employment in IT as there is.
One final thing I will add: virtualization is a double edged sword. It's damn convenient for small and medium shops to take their aging NT4, 2K, etc. servers and throw them on new (virtualized) hardware. We've not been doing it long enough to see the end game, but I gaurantee you this: we will never get rid of legacy systems if we just keep virtualizing old, unsupported hosts. Virtualization turns those turds into immortal nightmares: no updates, security holes galore, and absolutely no support. Pray to whichever God you believe in that you won't be burdened with the support of these machines 5, 10, 15 years down the line. (And yes, I fully suspect we'll still see Windows 2000 hosts on our networks then - with custom ERP/MRS/etc. software, requiring IE6).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The ability to learn quickly and of course troubleshooting skills, but that has to be gained over years, but fortunately are transferable to most of IT.
A strong liver is without a doubt the most widely-applicable and unchanging skill an IT person requires. The amount of alcohol it takes to get over a day's dose of users is not for the faint of heart (or liver).
These are all hip new fields, buzzwords. they may stay, they may come and pass.
what you need for a future in i.t. in 'future', is to know to LEARN. adapt. know to seek and FIND.
learning tools a plenty now. you may not know something, but, if you know how to search and find it, you will see that someone else before you solved the exact problem and posted it on the web. you will be able to implement an elaborate expertise requiring solution even if you are relatively green in that area. because, the recipe is right out there, in the common 'mind' of the society, in internet.
so, the assets for future is knowing how to learn, and knowing how to find.
Read radical news here
Hunting and gathering should be near the top of the list.
Ignoring the article, which has gems such as "Compared with Gen Y, he says, they [Gen Xers] are less adept at working in groups, more entitlement- than achievement-oriented, and less willing to accept advice or mentoring" I only have one bit of advice for somebody who's wondering what sort of tech to focus on - intrusion detection, data security, and that sort of thing. A TS/SCI clearance helps a lot. Defense industries and agencies in the beltway are hiring such like mad. Other than that, most employers seem to be looking for either people with experience that can hit the ground running (and it won't matter to them how much certification or education you have if you've never actually done the work) or are looking for entry-level helpdesk bodies (and again, the same stuff won't matter.) You can only really swap to new techs through moves internal to your existing company, in my experience.
As a seasoned IT person, I came up through the PC revolution with DOS, Windows 3.1, Novell IPX, etc and had a good foundation on the basics before the mass virtualization hysteria that we are in 2010. I remember learning about hex addresses, IRQ's, COM ports, SCSI and all that. Then we moved up to servers: Novell, Windows NT, direct attached storage, domains, active directory, etc. Networking with point-to-point, Frame-relay.... now MPLS and VPN.
Am I trying to boast? No. But I want to point out that everything these days (Vmware, SANs LUNs, VLANs) builds on previous knowledge of how standalone servers and networks used to run. I wouldn't expect somebody to come out of College knocking down the intricacies of server virtualization, storage virtualization and network virtualization without first understanding the physical elements that brought us there.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but there is more to learn than most 20 year-olds can handle in a four years of College. Almost everyone I work with who is worth their salt is close to my age. Everybody younger has major gaps of knowledge. Is it required? Maybe.... but like everything else, when the amount of knowledge doubles every year, it's certainly harder to get started.
I saw some time ago this matrix about the requirements to be a good programmer, and i found it very enlightened. Here is the link: http://www.indiangeek.net/wp-content/uploads/Programmer%20competency%20matrix.htm
Get out of IT while you can. Take your tech skills and blend it with business/management skills. Unless you are doing something crazy (like firmware, medical imaging, or weapons guidance systems) programming is pretty much a commodity. Don't be seen, nor heard—get in, do your shit exactly to spec (written or non, possible or impossible), and get the hell out.
As a programmer, you are bottom of the ladder. Nobody cares what you think. Since all you are perceived to do is tell people why they can't have their physics defying request—most hate you too.
Oh, and the pay is shit, and it will only get worse. Why? Because since other people do most of the (perceived) work, they figure you are just a dude on the assembly line--you add no value to the project. You are just the person who does the assembly.
Bottom line is get out. Get to a career path that doesn't have you building the software but designing it. Or better, get into a different industry altogether. Say biotech or something.
Not that I'm bitter... I saw the writing on the wall years ago, but the recession (er global meltdown) threw a hitch in my escape plans.
(posted as anon because I don't want this associated with my name.)
smarties or techies already live like that......
pls.....smart gurus never need MBAs......becoz they r by themselves.....
--edfardos
Water pumped steroid corn that has patents on it, and is harder for animals and humans to digest? Actually causes problems in animal studies but they sort of ignore that point because they have millions to bribe with, in political circles and at the ag colleges? Those "wonder" seeds? That academic and industry developed shit that is one of the main causes of obesity and diabetes, that stuff? Plus, you can't save seeds practically or legally with their crap, meaning you are in economic thrall to some other place forever and two days, have to pay what they demand, plus use their brand chemicals to even make the seeds work, again, whatever they demand in price??
No thanks, I'll stick to my country hayseed bumpkin non academic open pollinated seeds, save the very best ones from my yield every year, then plant those the next year. Well, as much as I can, until their patented crap has spread so much you can't do that any longer.
I don't care how much you alter them, you aren't developing *exact* good seeds for extreme specialized and local cases, the individual farm. I know my weather is different from just ten miles north of here. You have academic developed seeds to deal with that? I'll answer that, no, you don't.
If you want to do some actual research and learn something, go look how much franken academic/corporate whored off seeds have destroyed all the wonderful little specialized corn crops in Mexico, replacing nutritious corn with generic puffed water "almost could be called food" corn, and is causing economic chaos and a drop in the health of the people there because of it.
Just because you get more bushels an acre doesn't mean it is better quality, more nutritious, or even economically advantageous. It's economically advantageous to the seed and chemical companies and the asshole loan shark banks and wall street speculators and hustlers, that's it. You wind up *needing* more bushels an acre just to break even with increased costs of production.
The "green revolution" was due to cheap oil and cheap natgas and cheap phosphates and cheap weed and bug killers (especially when they didn't give a crap about long term environmental effects from those), none of which is true any more.
I farm and garden, and you can "plant" your monsanto and similar franken seeds where the sun won't shine on them.
Now, I think your point has some merit, some but not entirely, because your analogy didn't work based on real life stuff once you see through the PR propaganda that the corporate/ag-ademic heads push out. Ya, they can do it, but is it really a good deal? Just because you *can* do something like that, make cross species franken seeds, isn't the only reason that you should.
I also think you'll find the bulk of the youngerish pro farmers today have at least some college/university education and are usually *better* at general tech than most specialized IT people or pure career academics. Because they have to use such a variety of modern tech to make a living, they get more flexible at problem solving, because real life always has unexpected problems, wildcards.
There's a case to be made for single specialization, and just that, and obviously we need *some* people to do that, the very small in numbers extreme far out deep thinkers who can't tie their shoelaces or anything else much, but there's a better case to be made for higher level generalized knowledge in the "practical" world where stuff gets done. You won't get that in academia very much, it takes out in the "field" work to do that, the ag field or the shop or the data center or the factory floor or the design office, etc. Because that's where the wildcards show up that have to be dealt with *today*, thee is no luxury of another year or ten research, it has to be fixed *now*.
And that's what the article is about, in general terms, if you over specialize in just one thing, you can get shafted fast when reality changes, whereas if you do a high level gener
i've been working in IT/computers since before the ibm pc, before the (classic) macintosh, before dos, before windows, before the internet, before the imac, and before the ipod -- and the more things change, the more they stay the same.
the particular technologies and interfaces change, or increase (hugely) in capacity -- but the concepts remain the same. you've got to be interested in what you're doing - you got to love it, and read about it, and breathe it - learn to apply troubleshooting principles -- divide and conquer, isolate reproducable phenomenon..
"A vulgar mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done,
but if he is in error, he knows not how to find it out and correct it;...
Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure,
force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub."
(Isaak Newton, in a letter to Nathaniel Hawes)
digital plumber since 1982.
jp
It also helps if a company hires someone trained in IT for the IT department. I worked at a job where they filled to job openings and the two workers has BS degrees. BS degrees in teaching..... WTF!!!?!?!?!
Are you really confident that colleges are churning out graduates with those "good foundations"? Among other flaws with this concept:
1. Many college graduates seem to THINK the whole purpose of that expensive education was to prove they now know all the things they need to know to be handed a job in their field of choice. These people can't be "readily trained" because they've already shut that part of their brain off, thinking after 4+ years of it, they're "done for now". ... hence some of the recent backlash about the value proposition of going to colleges, especially for "Liberal Arts" type degrees.) "Well rounded individuals", unfortunately, tend to be "jacks of all trades, but masters of none". They may be better conversationalists than someone with less education, or who focused on a specialty ... but not sure it puts them in an advantageous position in the job market? What REALLY matters is if the individual has the desire to KEEP learning the specific skills of relevance after school is done. But those types will look equally good/proficient whether they did this after a 4 year degree, or they did it on their own while skipping college. ... but that makes me question why we don't emphasize vocational training more than we do? Other countries seem to advocate it more than we do, offering students opportunities to go the vocational training route early in school -- and without the social stigma we still attach to it. College seems like it's great for people who want to become teachers or pursue an art. But it's almost disingenuous for them to offer degrees in things like I.T. -- when a good vocational school could provide FAR better preparation for that field.
2. Considering how many courses in college have NO relevance to a given job, I'd question how good a "foundation" much of it really provides? (I think many others question it too
3. You're absolutely right that college is "not supposed to be vocational training"
I've been seeing MS degrees required for tier 1.
What really gets me are the job descriptions that ask for degrees, certifications, and the ability to lift 80 to 140 pounds. I've had warehouse jobs, and it was an explicit rule that you should get a second person to move anything more than 35 pounds. I'm not sure it's even legal to require an individual to lift 75 pounds.
sounds like some read a box and just put that on the list of stuff needed.
"I would advise students to pay more attention to the fundamental ideas rather than the latest technology. The technology will be out-of-date before they graduate. Fundamental ideas never get out of date." -- David Parnas However, people doing the hiring are only concerned with the latest fashion. So what are you going to do?
And posting your own little custom solutions you come up with to add to the pool.
to jump from language / framework De Jere at the drop of some PHB's hat, ("Yeah I know I just came on board,.and I know you guys have been doing all of this in Ruby but, well, I just don't like Ruby so we are writing all new code in MindFuck).
BIG plus if you can be an expert in ALL of them.
Even bigger points if you can write a web-server ( with all associated modules) in MindFuck.
Extra Bonus if you have absolutely no life away from a computer.
Even BIGGER extra bonus if you will work for $15.00 an hour!
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
This article was all about saying GenX thinks this way and GenY thinks this way. What a load of bollocks. Apparently an entire generation of millions cannot work well in a group, are entitlement-driven and see restrictions instead of challenges. While another generation of millions of people all know how to work in group and don't know what's impossible.
How someone can make such discoveries and not be given a Nobel for breakthrough insights into the human condition is deeply disappointing.
Thanks for playing.
I love to learn ...but ...
In all my years of successful IT work, I still have not learned:
a) how to find a "good" job agency
b) how to process the gibberish that those useless "consultant" pricks wrote down in their expensive "design review documents".
... could bring a company to the moon but...... they don't need all this expertise :(
Usually most of the jobs are about dealing with clients and suppliers, solving basic problems, giving simple support or about programming according to ripetitive patterns and other trivial issues.
Complaints about lackness of right skills are really inappropriate: a good engineer, even if he is at his first experience, has the "forma mentis" to do EVERY complicated job.
...and of course those of us who are 40-somethings or beyond should just give it up and switch carreers to Walmart greeting.
I checked the CS program at my Undergrad (BC) a year or two ago, and I found they were offering the *exact same* courses they did in 1998 when I graduated (they did add a Java course. Yay.)
I'm sorry, but this country's push for everyone to be management is bullshit and is why we are where we are economically. We don't need more queen bees, we need more workers. Management is already overpaid, over inflated and the end result is too many people making a lot of money needlessly for doing very little.
The ability to work in a project managed atmosphere is great which I assume is the potential goal here, but if the system in place doesn't lend itself to bringing in outside help quickly and easily without training, you are doing it wrong. Not everyone is going to know every management style and focusing on that instead of the skills to get the job done is a waste of effort.
what is doubling every 6 months on graphics cards? it's not RAM, memory bandwidth, or transistors. it's nowhere near even close. going back from the time of the 8800 GTS, video cards should have 24,000,000,000 transistors if that were the case. even if i combine the increases of all the different aspects of a card, it doesn't seem to equal a doubling of general capacity every 6 months.