Our Education System Is Failing IT

Nemo the Magnificent (2786867) writes "In this guy's opinion most IT workers can't think critically. They are incapable of diagnosing a problem, developing a possible solution, and implementing it. They also have little fundamental understanding of the businesses their employers are in, which is starting to get limiting as silos are collapsing within some corporations and IT workers are being called upon to participate in broader aspects of the business. Is that what you see where you are?"

Comments

oh

[Charliemopps]

This is what happens when your field turns from a niche specialist thing where only experts will have a chance to get in... into a field where they're selling degrees during commercial breaks for Jerry Springer. You want the smarts ones, you need to pay for them.

Re:oh

[kaladorn]

I, on the other hand, have had a mixed experience with Indian workers.

I worked on one team with 3 of them. One was female, the other two male. One of the males had a good business head and presentation and passable technical skills. The other fellow was out of his depth and was compensating by trying to talk over everyone. The gal was the smartest of the lot and new her stuff (the QC side of things) better than either of the male devs, but their cultural propensity to just marginalize or ignore the female (or try to speak for her) meant the best way to let her excel was to arrange interactions with her that did not involve the two indian males.

On another project I worked on, offshoring a code base for a major US Telco, I will tell you that there were some smart devs (they got what I was presenting) and there were others who struggled and I don't think ever did fathom the complex code.

Frankly, the Russians I worked with were better as far as offshore resources go - thorough, smart, logical, didn't try to claim what they didn't actually know and figured out a lot of things as required (and did a good job of being thorough).

I think the only two objections I have overall (as a generalization) to Indian workers are a) tendency to be patriarchal and not listen to and respect females and b) a tendency to say yes to everything when it comes to 'can you do X by time Y?' even if the thing they are agreeing to do is well beyond them. They can't seem to say no or it'll take longer. Everything is yes. We learned that we could not depend on any time estimates and routinely doubled their estimates and sometimes even then had to get in and solve the problems ourselves.

Any group of devs is going to reflect the amount and nature of their education and their cultural perspectives. Being Canadian, I've had some good fortune to work in very diverse settings with many cultural groups and nationalities. As long as you know who you are dealing with and allow for that, you can work well together.

In the case of IT work, the skillset required for broader business aspects of that field require a broad knowledge of many technologies, a broad knowledge of business practices, and the business to treat the IT staff less like a cost center and more like a critical piece of infrastructure - provide training, support sufficient time for projects and manpower resources, and to generally not try to get the IT staff to be responsible for everything, all of the time, in all respects, with few or no resources. That's the most common failing in IT departments - how companies see them as an expense and try to minimize that to the detriment of employee quality and their overall business in the long run.

Re:Heck yes...

[geminidomino]

In my day (I'm a year or two from 50) people made their way in IT based on ability. That was the catalyst for the entire industry. It is what built silicon valley and the economic ripples it created.

Things weren't a whole lot better then. Sturgeon's law still applies, it's just that IT as an industry has vastly expanded so that 90% is a much larger raw number now.

Remember about the old joke about the Evil Empire, before Microsoft took the epithet?

How do you spot an IBM field tech with a flat tire?
He's the one on the side of the road, changing all four tires to see which one's flat.

How do you spot an IBM field tech that ran out of gas?
He's the one on the side of the road, changing all four tires to see which one's flat.

Re:eduction system?

[dcollins]

"500,000+ welders are injured annually."

Impossible; there aren't 500,000 welders in the U.S. There aren't even 400,000. (In 2006: 393,000 per American Welding Society).

http://www.aws.org/w/a/research/outlook.html

If we add up all the OSHA injuries of all types from all construction & manufacturing industries (incl. manufacturing of food, textiles, paper, plastics, etc.), the grand total of all injury types in a year is less than 200,000 (197,000 by my count). So 500,000 welding accidents in a year is total fantasy.

http://stats.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/ostb3593.pdf