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A New Kind of Tech Job Emphasizes Skills, Not a College Degree (nytimes.com)
Steve Lohr, writing for the New York Times: A few years ago, Sean Bridges lived with his mother, Linda, in Wiley Ford, W.Va. Their only income was her monthly Social Security disability check. He applied for work at Walmart and Burger King, but they were not hiring. Yet while Mr. Bridges had no work history, he had certain skills. He had built and sold some stripped-down personal computers, and he had studied information technology at a community college. When Mr. Bridges heard IBM was hiring at a nearby operations center in 2013, he applied and demonstrated those skills. Now Mr. Bridges, 25, is a computer security analyst, making $45,000 a year. In a struggling Appalachian economy, that is enough to provide him with his own apartment, a car, spending money -- and career ambitions. "I got one big break," he said. "That's what I needed." Mr. Bridges represents a new but promising category in the American labor market: people working in so-called new-collar or middle-skill jobs. As the United States struggles with how to match good jobs to the two-thirds of adults who do not have a four-year college degree, his experience shows how a worker's skills can be emphasized over traditional hiring filters like college degrees, work history and personal references. [...] On Wednesday, the approach received a strong corporate endorsement from Microsoft, which announced a grant of more than $25 million to help Skillful, a program to foster skills-oriented hiring, training and education. The initiative, led by the Markle Foundation, began last year in Colorado, and Microsoft's grant will be used to expand it there and move it into other states. "We need new approaches, or we're going to leave more and more people behind in our economy," said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft.
Self studied and then paid a modest amount for some classes to obtain my first IT Certification in 1999.
Used that to get a support position in 2000.
Continued working my way up the ladder in IT jobs for the next 17 years.
Now making a 6 figure income
At least half the people I work with have gone a similar route and the company I work for even has an apprenticeship program for paid work/study position for one year and then advance them into an actual position and they will even take people with no computer skills as long as they have the right personality and drive to succeed in IT.
The ability to build a computer, but not understand things like von neumann architecture or how a stack machine works is essentially trade work.
I've seen guys build networks with only a rudimentary understanding of subnetting and routing and no knowledge of the OSI model.
And all of that is OK.
Do you think the guy servicing your car understands the metallurgy behind the castings that make up the block and heads? Probably not.
IT needs a formal apprentice/journeyman type of arrangement for the jobs that simply do not require collegiate level knowledge. An IT union for these jobs probably wouldn't be a bad idea either.
This model works well for many other skilled trades - it could also work well for IT jobs.
I don't have a college degree either but I got into this field in 1997 in the same way. I did attend college for almost 3 years though. I had been programming since a child and had been messing around with computer hardware as well. This is not a new thing. I have friends who did the same a LONG time ago.
The other thing is, this person's ability to tinker with computer assembly and a community college information technology course has little or no application to a role of Computer Security Analyst. I know about this, I've been in nearly every IT and Software Development role there is. When I was a Computer Science major there were also Information Technology roles and the like and those were for people who can't hack it in full on Computer Science. I have a close friend that was like this. He fully admits he couldn't hack it. Brilliant at Physics, not so much at Computer Science. So, he switched to Information Technology.
The other thing is, this problem of not hiring people has nothing to do with people lacking education credentials. People with Computer Science degrees can't find jobs. Today, many companies require ridiculous amounts of experience sometimes they even ask for more years of experience than a particular technology has existed. I do believe in many cases they make the requirements ridiculous just so they can whine and say they can't find "qualified candidates" and have to turn to H1-B Visa.
If we are going to talk about how to make more economic opportunity for people in this field, two things will make the most positive impact in this situation: 1) Companies revive the philosophy to hire smart people and provide on the job training that they might be missing for the company's particular technology preferences and 2) Shut down the unethical H1-B visa game by instituting better criteria and increasing oversight. For #1, I mean I don't understand. Let's take the NFL for example. Bill Parcells would go coach the worst team in the NFL, unlock their true potential and then make them Super Bowl winners. Why can't we do the same thing in this field and why shouldn't we?
We'll make great pets