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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?"
Most people think critical thinking is something that "haters" do.
But I guess we're cheaper if we're terrified, eh?
It's not about the Americans being not "qualified" but that a E/CE/CS degree is irrelevant to IT. IT is, in the most general sense, best served by a logic and philosophy/psychology degree. Every problem is solved by a binary decision tree.
"The computer isn't working." Well, that's hardware or software. If hardware, it's an internal or external fault. If internal, it's a part failure or install failure. If part, replace part. If install, re-seat hardware. Most any problem is a set of questions, each one narrowing down the choices, until the answer is found. The ability to break down problems like that is logic. Knowing what to ask and how to respond is generaly from experience. Dealing with the people that are experiencing the problem, or designing something for them to use is a "soft" skill that a psychology or other "soft" degree might help best with.
There isn't a good education for IT. It's never been addressed. The few places that teach "IT" generally teach to some specific certification tests, and nothing about how to apply it.
Learn to love Alaska
It isn't education, it's the lack of experience. We've outsourced so many of the entry level jobs, where are the young people supposed to learn? That's the real cost of outsourcing...without an entry-level position and ability to learn how to troubleshoot, there's no place for kids to learn how to do their jobs. Most of the really good systems engineers I know started on the help desk, worked desk-side support and then did infrastructure support (servers/network/storage/security). They understand that their jobs still come down to delivery of solutions to the end-user. They understand that the end-user doesn't care what backend BS broke, it's just that they can't do their job. We're missing that at the mid-level...and most of the really great infrastructure people are in their 40's now.
Apparently there aren't enough welders in America. Not everyone needs to be in IT, or graduate from college.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Indeed. There are rare islands of skill and competence, and you always find that in them, people care and actually like working with technology. But most people that go into IT today do not have what it takes and should have stayed away.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So you were saying?
I more or less agree with your assessment (but I'll eventually disagree ha ha!). My formal education was in music performance. However my hobbies were (and are) computer science, amateur radio, physics and theology. Yes I'm an autodidact. But have studied at two major universities.
In the realm of critical thinking... a deep theoretical understanding is priceless. Because theory is flexible. But more important in my mind is an understanding of the RFCs behind how all this stuff works. Know them, and you can really troubleshoot. Know them, and you get to be the "pro from Dover" when no other tech can solve a problem.
With a mass of knowledge- comes the possibility of thinking critically. This is of course assuming the person in question has a mind big enough to form quality theories of their own. The problem isn't always education... it's also quality of the brain. And the larger a field grows, the lower the mean IQ of it's members.
To illustrate:
I once watched a recent computer science graduate (A Truly Dubious and Short Lived IT Director) introduce a recursive loop into an Ethernet network, on an unswitched segment, which resulted in (you guessed it) significant portions of an 18 building WAN/LAN system to simply go offline. Explaining to this person why things didn't work was useless. They thought they were an expert (because of the degree). Sadly, all of the information they spouted about the problem was completely correct- except the application of that information.
You can't really teach people how to apply information, if they cannot build working models which closely match reality. Sure.. anyone can come up with an idea and call it a theory. But can you come up with a theory that works?
So in a sense, I fall back once again to the idea that the talent pool is diluted. At the same time, the equipment is becoming more and more appliance packaged.
My solution? I'm looking around for something different to do for the next 30 years. If I can get up to speed fast enough, I'll participate in AMSAT. I'll go back to performing music. Maybe even get a physics degree.
But I'll be free to be excellent.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
If he asked the junior if he knew the protocol in depth, and the answer was "yes", the junior secerely lacked criticlal thinking. If he didn't even understand the question he is in wrong place. Not to talk about packet communication. I don't even work the field, but I guess education does help in some things. You get the foundation, and a small peek of many fields, so you learn how little you actually know.
Yep, I'm one of those "IT directors" that operates interfaces. I studied EE and graduated with a Comp Sci degree.
Sure, I learned all about this stuff - circuits, logic, algorithms/math...etc. I ended up not making products, but implementing/using them. I understand how the spanning tree protocol in my switches uses a tree data structure to detect and eliminate loops - but do I really need that level of knowledge to be an effective IT guy?
The reason IT guys have devolved into "operators of interfaces" is that of efficiency. I'm the sole guy here in a small school with 200 people in multiple locations depending on me to keep the lights on. I don't have time for lengthy customization or "roll your own" IT products.
So efficiency requires that I take products out of the box "operate the interfaces" according to best practice guidelines and move on with life.
That's just the way it is.
I couldn't agree more. I recently changed jobs and re-discovered how great it is to be surrounded by intelligent and curious people who like to see why, not just how.
Cheap storage VM.