Not Your Daddy's IT Force Anymore 342
Quill345 writes "The days of high-paying technology-based jobs right out of highschool are over. As writers for ACM report, the skill-sets required for jobs have grown over time. Academia has responded to the evolution with novel programs recruiting women and integrating IT into MBA programs. And as technology finds its way into every aspect of business life, the NSF is creating a grant program to fund service science, a blend of IT into other industries. Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses taken by students who are in primary tech-producer or tech-consumer majors. What are these crucial modern skills? Knowledge of laws like the DMCA? Interpersonal and group work skills? Experience with different technology platforms? The ability to discriminate between useful and useless information sources?"
Re:Cheaper jobs? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a positive thing (Score:4, Interesting)
An IT force with more robust backgrounds can only be a good thing. sweet hacker skills are of still relevant, but there needs to be more.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Personel Skills (Score:5, Interesting)
That depends. At my last job, managers were respected, and any developer over 30 was seen as past his/her prime and was the first to go. Maybe it's different now, but that wasn't too long ago. Development is seen by many as a young-man's sport (sorry ladies, you do good too) but once you're past a certain age, it is expected that you've moved beyond that point and are looking to management.
Well, at least that's how it is here on the east coast in the NY/NJ/PA area. I could see it being a different mentality out west.
It really isn't just Tech... (Score:3, Interesting)
My girlfriend is a university graduate and holds a pharmacy technician certification and license. She got them (and about 500 hours of experience in a pharmacy) because she planned on going to pharmacy school. Then, considering she wasn't happy telling people, "Sorry Mr. Goldman, the insurance company doesn't feel as though your Alzheimer's is worth treating. You got $283.43 on ya?"
So she's on the job market again and has been for the last 2 months. Bachelor's degree, high quality experience in --AN-- industry and nothing. Why? Because companies and organizations no longer gauge the value of applicants by their credentials or educational degrees. All they want to see is hard experience directly working with the company database or "... at least 3+ years working knowledge of ".
Why? I dare say as an educator that it's because the market has been flooded with bachelor degrees and MS Certification, and this certification, etc.
How can we remedy this? Make it standard for companies to supply their applicant pool with training software. You want your applicant pool to be qualified and to integrate, achieving 85%+ productivity, within a week? Then you should really post downloadable software on the website from which you advertise jobs.
Bsck to my girlfriend, she's applied for many positions at same University at which I work. She's no longer looking for something that will "stimulate her mind" as she's willing to work in the payroll department-- "entry level". But, of course "Required: 3+ years of the *** payroll system including , , "
Save your time, with the education, guys. Graduate high school, get a couple certs just to make your resume a bit more full, and make a friend on the inside. Connections really do seem to be the only way to get a job today. =(
In addition.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even after you leave that type of work, it's rough finding something with more room for growth. Your resume says nothing about your potential ability to work with groups or lead one. Several buddies of mine tried to "get a foot in the door" of an I.T. career by starting out on a help-desk or as a PC tech. - and except in one case (the guy got a government job as some type of PC support person), I don't think it gave any of them much of an advantage. If they spent the time as a manager of a retail store, I suspect those skills would have worked just as well for them.
Physics for Poets (Score:3, Interesting)
Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses
Well my experience in college was that many, though not all, liberal arts majors purposefully avoided technical subjects; they were incapable of functioning in that domain. It was like trying to teach a cat to play chess. The university policy though was that they should be educated on those subjects. The resulting compromise between the impossible and the ideal was that the university offered special dumbed-down courses on technical subjects. They taught physics without math. A waste of time for all involved.
It is the educators who need to get a clue here: stop trying to teach a subjects to the selection of students who can not learn it. Poets don't need to know computer programming, most of them are incapable of learning it, so stop wasting everyones time and the taxpayers money by insisting that they learn. A society where everyone is technical expert is an impossible fantasy. Identifying the group of people least willing and able to learn a subject and choosing to teach them that is the least-efficient plan. Naturally, that would be government funded.
The 7 layers of the OSI model. (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth is, The degree does not mean squat! Heck the experience does not even seem to mean anything. If it did (with my 15 years in the field) I would not be asked to name the 7 layers of the OSI model. The certs do not seem to mean anything. So what is left? HR people just call one of there technical people in and have them quiz the new applicant. The technical person seems to take the stance of "Lets prove I am smarter than the new guy" and add questions like "In Linux what is init level 3?" and does not accept "Anything you set it to when you edit the
More recently I was asked "Where is Apache installed on Solaris 9?" I responded with "The install is a compile time option, so it is where ever you set it to be." I was told I was wrong because the package they get from their packaging department always installs in the
The issue is that HR departments and hireling managers (non-tech) have no way to judge an individuals skills. They have found that the guys with degrees do not always know what to do, Resumes are faked or fudged, and certs can be made with a good laser printer. What is left? They start to look for people that have experience in just the apps and hardware they have then have there existing guys judge there skills. Is there a better way? I really do not know, although I would start by teaching the general IT people how to interview. It mite make it a little easier.
Re:I got a suggestion. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for that objective evaluation. I agree that a skill that an engineer or tech employee should have is project management. However, they are being hired for a tech skill, if the company wants a project manager, they will hire a project manager.
"Projects could work this way if they started with extremely
Riiiight...like I said lots of crappy management going on. This is a project management issue.
"Most Engineers understand you need to have marketing sell products and
1) I agree with your overall point that marketing departments can get in the way.
2) I wasn't referring to marketing as what is being misunderstood by engineers.
"IMO. The most efficient method of managing teck projects is to have teck people, working all other departments involved in the project, "
Not sure if I am understanding this or not. If you are implying that tech folk should be doing things other than some project management and actual technology-related tasks, I would have to disagree. There is no way that tech folk should have anything to do with the preparation of marketing or advertising, as one example.
"...create a detailed plain of action which is then vetted though upper management to align it with overall strategic planning. "
(which may change the plan/product/timeline entirely)
"Management then oversees this project to keep things going and keep Engineers focused on creating adequate if not perfect solutions to the problems at hand."
Agreed.
"...management is unable to determine how complex changing "small details" is..."
That's correct, managers dont understand. Because they are not working with techies who explain it to them. You have to communicate the issues to the manager without sounding like a 5 yr-old complaining about beans for the 80th time.
Good points, and like I said, there is a ton of garbage management going on out there. My "perfect world" examples are from a company that has its shit together (and yes, some actually DO).
Cheers
Re:Personel Skills (Score:3, Interesting)
This is particularly true of industries which have used IT for a long time (e.g., the airline industry), but it can also be true in smaller shops. I contracted with a glass-making company a few years ago, and they had 25 or so people in their IT department, but I'd say roughly half were my age or older and half were younger.
When I was at NWA, I was the youngest on my team of a dozen or so folks even though I had over 13 years of experience and had just turned 39 when I left. Currently, I'm 43, but my mentor/manager here (who also writes code and is a programmer in all but name) is almost 20 years my senior, and almost everyone here I've met is at least my age. Most are substantially older. Many have been in the airline communications industry for 20 years or more and know all about weird communications protocols like MATIP and P1024.
Re:Things haven't really changed where it counts (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, you have to recompile the coffee grinder's kernel every time you want to use a different roast. And rather than a button you press to turn it on, there's just a bare wire that you touch to a terminal to select your grind. And you have to keep another grinder around so guests have something to use and because it doesn't work with some commercial coffees. And the thing is built into a shoe box, so it's too ugly for most people to tolerate. These guys generally don't switch roasts very often, don't care about drinking more than one type of coffee, don't have friends to worry about, and haven't got an aesthetic bone in their bodies. They're happy with it just the way it is. In fact, they're so happy, they don't even finish the coffee grinder and instead move on to designing a better microwave.
Don't you think it's possible the product would be better if they brought in some people who drank coffee in a different way? Someone who maybe cared about how user friendly, or attractive, or easy to learn the coffee maker might be? Maybe a woman or two? Or a guy from some other continent where they might use a different type of bean?
Re:Things haven't really changed where it counts (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, because there are so many dual-income families, home prices have inflated to that market and now many people have to be dual-income to afford a home. Not really a win/win situation for society at large.
Re:Unreasonable expectations. (Score:3, Interesting)
5 Years Oracle
5+ Years Windows System Admin
5 years Help Desk
5 years Citrix
7 Years C++, VB, (and a few others)
Salary Range: $20,000 - $25,000/year (Canadian)
They are trying to fill 4 jobs with 1 person who would work for $10/hour!
Perhaps. Although it sounds to me like you may be reading too much into this. Reading this, it sounds like a not-for-profit community hospital (or something similar) seeking desktop support. In affect, they want somebody with 3 or 4 years of help-desk support. Because of the oracle and citrix requirements, you can pretty much tell that the database is remote hosted. The 'windows system admin' requirement tells you that they have a bunch of desktops with citrix clients they're wanting support for.
Basically, they're asking for 5 years experience, and are going to probably settle for 3. Considering the salary, I'd say that this is a Jr. level desktop admin position. They're not expecting a database administrator, or a programmer, or they would have asked for 7 to 10 years of experience, or more. And if you knew how Oracle and Citrix setups are run, odds are that this company has outsourced their IT anyhow. The clueless HR people are just trying to find a warm body to do some tech support. Had it been a real programming job or networking job, they would have been listing other obscure stuff.
Also, I would recommnd remembering that there are people in this field that have 20, 30 or 40 years of experience. When you get into the higher salary levels, the requirements get more rediculous, like:
> 10+ years architecture experience > your own patent portfolio
> programming code samples
> masters degree in CS/IT, etc.
> # of shipped products
etc. etc.
The point is, it appears as though you might not be thinking big enough. You're thinking of having 5 to 7 years experience, as opposed to having 20 years of experience. A small company of 20 somethings that's been around for 10 years might offer a $50K to $80K salary, and advertise '5 years Windows Admin, C++, Oracle, Citrix' experience, expecting to get a programmer to develop new applications. A 100 year old community hospital would offer $30K to $50K and advertise exactly the same thing, '5 years Windows Admin, C++, Oracle, Citrix', and expect a jr. level desktop support engineer. The difference is the first is thinking narrowly, in the
And you never know. That $20,000 - $25,000/year job might have *the* best damn medical benefits, pention plan, and related benefits that you can find in your area.
On the other hand, you're looking at working for somebody else, rather than for yourself. That, in of itself, is going to put you at the disadvantage, economically speaking.