Its near impossible to find skilled IT labor. The jobs that are being oursourced to other countries are the jobs that Colleges are cranking out gradutes to fill. If we expect to fill our own need in the technology world today there needs to be reform in the K through 12 grades. Students need to be tought the fundamentals of computer logic at an earlier age.
If you want to be a corporate IT drone, you should goto college. Learn what the professors can teach you. In high school I attempted to teach the programming class the basics of Java in 2 weeks, out of the 25 or so students only 1 caught on to the basics. A couple years ago I spent a semester teaching C++ at the local community college, its not the easiest thing to teach studentes that don't understand fundamental computer logic at that age. I'm not saying that I'm a great teacher, I know I'm not. I have absolutely no patience. My point, if you're going to College for IT, you should be working on advanced projects, defintely not fundamentals.
Colleges are starting to catch onto the fact that IT is not something that should be taught to people the age of college students. After the basic classes they are providing students with projects that allow them to hone their skills for the real world. If you're not ready by the time you're done with high school, this is a great opportunity.
Personally I wouldn't be where I am today if I took a job as an IT drone. The job I took when I dropped out of college was for a Project Manager. I'm definitely not condoning that students drop out of college to be a computer technician at Best Buy. If you have an opportunity that has room to grow, and will provide you with experience, I feel you should take it. 75% of the non-college graduates that I have placed in consulting positions have been hired for fulltime positions by the company that they were placed at. Some of the remaining 25% probably weren't cut out for the industry, they might actually benefit from some time in college. After a little more training they could probably fill some of the simple database programming and tech support roles (that my company outsourced to India and the Philippines).
The most important advice I can give to people is, don't underestimate yourselves and don't sell yourselves short. People who make money in this world are the people who own businesses, definitely not the people who take jobs at the bottom of a large coporation. I'm 24, own a profitable company and a not so profitable company, and spend most of my time sitting in a cushy chair in a nice office with Chief Information Officer on my door.
Another bit of advice: If you're in school, and want to be a developer, join the open source community. There are a lot of projects out there that need help and can provide you with valuable knowledge. Novell http://forge.novell.com/ is doing some great things with Mono http://mono-project.com/ and SuSE. Microsoft will enter this space soon, it will be a good place to be. Technology is due for another leap; with emerging technologies like AJAX and XMPP http://www.coversant.net/, renewed competition with Microsoft (Google), we (the IT industry) will need more skilled labor.
I have, most definitly, hired unqualified people to jobs that they shouldn't have been doing. We charged the going rate for the job being done, not the skill of the laborer. My interest in this article stems from the fact that College notorously produces unqualified IT labor. The jobs always get done, because we always have a qualified supervisor. (and we have good insurance)
You're definitely not going to make more as an IT drone. IT 'drones' are lucky if they make 20/hr around here. Skilled developers and network engineers that have experience and can handle a good size workload can do very well right of high school. They definitely won't make more than an MD, unless they try really hard. Its hard to move up in the IT industry. You have to know people, you have to be intelligent (know what you are doing), and you most of all have to be confident.
I've been an OSS developer since the early 90's. That expereience was greatly benificial to me. I was able to, right out of high school, show I had 5 years of solid developer experience. The people that make it big in this industry are the people who start young. You can't wait until you're in your 20's to get started.
I've interviewed hundreds of people for IT positions in central California over the past few years. I have only found 2 or 3 qualified people. A good programmer, network engineer, or systems administrator is hard to find.
HERE IS THE KICKER:I dropped out of college at 18 and joined the workforce. 6 years later, I'm a CIO at a medical facility. I make more money than anyone I know, including the Doctors at my organization.
College for CS is a joke. CS Professors can't keep up technology. By the time they have a chance to learn a technology something is well on its way to replacing it. Out of the hundreds of people I've interviewed for positions as network engineers, software developers, project managers, pc technicians, and systems administrators none of the qualified people had college degrees. The majority of the people with IT degrees are NOT qualified to do the jobs.
If you are over the age of 14 and don't understand exactly how everything in a computer works, you'll never be a 'qualified' IT professional. You may be able to learn some skills that will get you a job in the $60,000 to $80,000 range, but you will never make it much past that.
For those of you who are interviewing for an IT job, and the employer seems interested, ask for twice as much as they offer. They'll be will to pay it. Over the past 5 years I've hired several hundred IT professionals for different positions, not one of them aske for even close to what we would have paid them. Even unqualified IT people can get paid well compared to other industries. And, emailing or faxing a resume is never as good as buying lunch for the prospective employer or at least meeting them face to face. When you have hundreds of applications for a position, the one person that stands out is going to be the PERSON, not the resume. And REMEMBER, when it comes to salary, ask for more. I've subcontracted people out at $150 or more an hour, and paid them between $30 and $60 an hour. I would have been willing to go up to $125/hr for some of the positions!! I'm talking about kids right out of high school.
I've been using a novatel card to get 384kbps for 2 years now. Sprint is even offering a 2mbps service in select areas. My toshiba cellphone through a usb cable averages about 300kbps.
I'm working with sprint global right now to provide a dedicated secure link to police cars in City of Atwater. The service is called Sprint DataLink. That link will be 384kbps. Soon it will be upgraded to over 2mbit.
Does this mean that the whole clone jesus thing is going to be stopped? This is going to crush all those relegious people that were counting on the second coming.
--highway
I have wireless Internet provided by elite.net. They use the 2.4ghz WaveLAN II. Its capable of 11mbit. I love my connection. I can drive around with a laptop at 55mph and browse the web at 1 mbit. I have a stationary setup in my house. I uses an ethernet bridge so its converted to 10mbit, and easily compatable with most computers. I see this as a very likely widespread option for the next phase of the Internet. I pay $45 a month for always on broadband, and I recommend it to anyone in the area. The $45 account is for a min speed of 384k/s up and down. I get well over a mbit for $45 a month. (check out elite.net for more info) --Mike Hull (highway@elite.net)
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Its near impossible to find skilled IT labor. The jobs that are being oursourced to other countries are the jobs that Colleges are cranking out gradutes to fill. If we expect to fill our own need in the technology world today there needs to be reform in the K through 12 grades. Students need to be tought the fundamentals of computer logic at an earlier age.
If you want to be a corporate IT drone, you should goto college. Learn what the professors can teach you. In high school I attempted to teach the programming class the basics of Java in 2 weeks, out of the 25 or so students only 1 caught on to the basics. A couple years ago I spent a semester teaching C++ at the local community college, its not the easiest thing to teach studentes that don't understand fundamental computer logic at that age. I'm not saying that I'm a great teacher, I know I'm not. I have absolutely no patience. My point, if you're going to College for IT, you should be working on advanced projects, defintely not fundamentals.
Colleges are starting to catch onto the fact that IT is not something that should be taught to people the age of college students. After the basic classes they are providing students with projects that allow them to hone their skills for the real world. If you're not ready by the time you're done with high school, this is a great opportunity.
Personally I wouldn't be where I am today if I took a job as an IT drone. The job I took when I dropped out of college was for a Project Manager. I'm definitely not condoning that students drop out of college to be a computer technician at Best Buy. If you have an opportunity that has room to grow, and will provide you with experience, I feel you should take it. 75% of the non-college graduates that I have placed in consulting positions have been hired for fulltime positions by the company that they were placed at. Some of the remaining 25% probably weren't cut out for the industry, they might actually benefit from some time in college. After a little more training they could probably fill some of the simple database programming and tech support roles (that my company outsourced to India and the Philippines).
The most important advice I can give to people is, don't underestimate yourselves and don't sell yourselves short. People who make money in this world are the people who own businesses, definitely not the people who take jobs at the bottom of a large coporation. I'm 24, own a profitable company and a not so profitable company, and spend most of my time sitting in a cushy chair in a nice office with Chief Information Officer on my door.
Another bit of advice: If you're in school, and want to be a developer, join the open source community. There are a lot of projects out there that need help and can provide you with valuable knowledge. Novell http://forge.novell.com/ is doing some great things with Mono http://mono-project.com/ and SuSE. Microsoft will enter this space soon, it will be a good place to be. Technology is due for another leap; with emerging technologies like AJAX and XMPP http://www.coversant.net/, renewed competition with Microsoft (Google), we (the IT industry) will need more skilled labor.
I have, most definitly, hired unqualified people to jobs that they shouldn't have been doing. We charged the going rate for the job being done, not the skill of the laborer. My interest in this article stems from the fact that College notorously produces unqualified IT labor. The jobs always get done, because we always have a qualified supervisor. (and we have good insurance)
I'm very much for real.
You're definitely not going to make more as an IT drone. IT 'drones' are lucky if they make 20/hr around here. Skilled developers and network engineers that have experience and can handle a good size workload can do very well right of high school. They definitely won't make more than an MD, unless they try really hard. Its hard to move up in the IT industry. You have to know people, you have to be intelligent (know what you are doing), and you most of all have to be confident.
I've been an OSS developer since the early 90's. That expereience was greatly benificial to me. I was able to, right out of high school, show I had 5 years of solid developer experience. The people that make it big in this industry are the people who start young. You can't wait until you're in your 20's to get started.
I've interviewed hundreds of people for IT positions in central California over the past few years. I have only found 2 or 3 qualified people. A good programmer, network engineer, or systems administrator is hard to find.
HERE IS THE KICKER:I dropped out of college at 18 and joined the workforce. 6 years later, I'm a CIO at a medical facility. I make more money than anyone I know, including the Doctors at my organization.
College for CS is a joke. CS Professors can't keep up technology. By the time they have a chance to learn a technology something is well on its way to replacing it. Out of the hundreds of people I've interviewed for positions as network engineers, software developers, project managers, pc technicians, and systems administrators none of the qualified people had college degrees. The majority of the people with IT degrees are NOT qualified to do the jobs.
If you are over the age of 14 and don't understand exactly how everything in a computer works, you'll never be a 'qualified' IT professional. You may be able to learn some skills that will get you a job in the $60,000 to $80,000 range, but you will never make it much past that.
For those of you who are interviewing for an IT job, and the employer seems interested, ask for twice as much as they offer. They'll be will to pay it. Over the past 5 years I've hired several hundred IT professionals for different positions, not one of them aske for even close to what we would have paid them. Even unqualified IT people can get paid well compared to other industries. And, emailing or faxing a resume is never as good as buying lunch for the prospective employer or at least meeting them face to face. When you have hundreds of applications for a position, the one person that stands out is going to be the PERSON, not the resume. And REMEMBER, when it comes to salary, ask for more. I've subcontracted people out at $150 or more an hour, and paid them between $30 and $60 an hour. I would have been willing to go up to $125/hr for some of the positions!! I'm talking about kids right out of high school.
I've been using a novatel card to get 384kbps for 2 years now. Sprint is even offering a 2mbps service in select areas. My toshiba cellphone through a usb cable averages about 300kbps.
I'm working with sprint global right now to provide a dedicated secure link to police cars in City of Atwater. The service is called Sprint DataLink. That link will be 384kbps. Soon it will be upgraded to over 2mbit.
Does this mean that the whole clone jesus thing is going to be stopped? This is going to crush all those relegious people that were counting on the second coming.
--highway
I have wireless Internet provided by elite.net. They use the 2.4ghz WaveLAN II. Its capable of 11mbit. I love my connection. I can drive around with a laptop at 55mph and browse the web at 1 mbit. I have a stationary setup in my house. I uses an ethernet bridge so its converted to 10mbit, and easily compatable with most computers. I see this as a very likely widespread option for the next phase of the Internet. I pay $45 a month for always on broadband, and I recommend it to anyone in the area. The $45 account is for a min speed of 384k/s up and down. I get well over a mbit for $45 a month. (check out elite.net for more info) --Mike Hull (highway@elite.net)