Has anyone else noticed... (Lack of skills) 6

[Albion]

Has anyone else noticed that the IT field is getting filled up with people who haven't a clue about computers? I have a friend who was a proxy administrator a year or so back. He'd always complain about how all the help desk issues would get dumped on him because no one in help desk had a clue about the problems at hand. It got to the point where he couldn't do his own job because he was doing the jobs of helpdesk all the time. No wonder he quit after 6 months. I had to deal with an "MCSE" who once came to me and asked what an "Insert CD" message was. What is going through the heads of these HR people? Do they see a few certs on a resume and hire these people to fill some quota? Really, no wonder so many good IT people are out of work, they're giving all the jobs to idiots who'll work for minimum wage.

Has anyone else noticed this trend in the It industry?

-al

 

[CajunCenturion]

Yes

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[flyboytim]

Me too.

 

[BJCooperIT]

On every contract.

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Consultant/Custom Forms & PL/SQL - Oracle 8.1.7 - Windows 2000
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[edfair]

It isn't new. Just getting worse. It starts with the lack of training and ends with people getiing certs because the schools are afraid to flunk people.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[xutopia]

MSCE aren't even real engineers and in many parts of the world they can be sued for using the term engineer on their resume or business card. MSCE doesn't mean a thing!

As for people inthe industry that just plain suck I agree! You notice a tenfold difference when you have a real programmer and some guy who just heard it would be easy to program if you pick up a learn C++ in 21 hours book.

Gary

http://www.xutopia.com

Haran
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[edfair]

I programmed "penny a day" on a 1401 in 1962. Are you telling me I can't claim 40 years programming experience Gary?
I was an IBM "customer engineer". Six months later, when the engineers got thru with IBM I was a worker in their "customer engineering division". Felt like I had flunked out of school.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

MCSE are just passed. I'd question if the individual actually has a MCSE certification. MCSE testing is highly regulated. I'm not saying that there aren't MCSE out there that aren't worth anything but I think that is the same in any field. If i'm going to higher someone for a MS admin type roll I'll require MCSE certification. I'd ask to see their results too. I could go into a hospital and say I'm a doctor....doesn't mean much. With any position if you have people hired that don't know what they are doing I would first look at your interview/hiring proceedures. Have probationary persiods writen into the contract. Hiring someone to have a body is stupid IMHO. There are many ways around it. I'm a fan of a multi step interview process. Panels are good to. Having a good HR person that has psychology qualifications is a plus. Good setup is atleast 1 Business Unit Manager, 1 highly skilled technical employee, 1 HR person. Teams like this that do interviews together can really work well.

 

[onpnt]

Yes, there is a greater quantity of "IT professionals" out there with a lack of skills. My personal theory and I'm sure many others, is a term of "The Certification Decade" that killed the IT field.

Example: a few years ago someone could get a $100,000 SAP Consultant job if they could spell S A P. Now the positions however are going away and I have seen the sappy SAP consultants moving to greater things like McDonalds Managers. In that though I think we've peaked on the number of them getting into the IT field as companies have started to <loosely stated>smarten up a bit</loosely stated>. I don't see the same thing as the last 10 years happening again in the age. I hope not anyhow.

One thing that does get to me is the damage these people did to the term &quot;certified&quot;. Take my standings for example. I double majored in CIS Programming/Analysis and Network Administration for associates degrees at a Technical College. In that time for the soul purpose of the need for knowledge and without the funds/time to provide to a full term university in what I wanted of a CS degree, I studied for to receive a microcomputer specialist cert., ATC web development, AS/400 programming/operations cert. and I-NET+ cert. These certifications could have brought me something if not for the others degrading them I think. I mainly took this into consideration for knowledge and I enjoyed the experiences in what classes offered, but wish this would not have come to it them be so meaningless.
I do want to add the fact not everyone stating in terms of having a certification of some type is a complete idiot. That in my eyes is revealing the truth of being a complete idiot on the speaker’s part. I would think I am not seen as one with all my dull cert.’s by most of you at TT after these couple years.

BUT, let's not get into the Cert debate again. Please!!!

My 2 bits


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[lionelhill]

I think a lot of it is because the field is new, so a nearing-retiring managing director who grew up without PCs possibly doesn't know if he's being taken for a ride by someone claiming to be an expert.

But I get very anoyed with people studying computer science who assume it's just a matter of picking up a little of the buzz-vocabulary of the latest database/OS/whatever and then cashing huge pay cheques for ever more. I can't be bothered with computer science graduates who can't be bothered with Knuth (or even 'numerical recipes in C') etc., &quot;because it's too complicated and not really relevant....&quot;

 

[infoman67]

I am a consultant on the other end of the problem. Certs are worthless because they only teach basics. Ever hear of someone getting a masters degree in 4, 8 hour sessions? What most employers want are results. You want good people? Check their references. I too agree that there are too many people who have too little experience in what they do. The problem is not them. One concept to learn is Supply and demand. If there were'nt a need they wouldn't get hired. Perception is reality. I see so many workers complaining about being overworked(while talking at the water cooler in between their 30 minute breaks and 2 hour lunches) Then when management hires help, they complain they could do work themselves. There are 2 main types of work at a company. &quot;Day to day&quot; and &quot;New&quot;. Day to day work requires experience of the environment to complete. You can't teach this. &quot;New&quot; work requires subject knowledge. This can be taught but experience with the subject is worth tons of teaching. It has always been this way. I have never lost a position because I had 5 yrs. experience but someone else had just went to the class. Certs just give an introduction to the subject matter. They don't create &quot;instant&quot; experts. Also it is easy to complain people don't know what they are doing in the context of &quot;They don't know the environment&quot;. Most people do have skills if allowed to use them. It is easier to judge than to accept the fact the person has some value. No one is perfect. The fact we are discussing this issue is a testament to this. Next time you complain of someones lack of skills ask yourself if you were placed in that persons position with no background of the environment or support from staff would you be successful. More than immediate knowledge it takes the ability to learn quickly to be successful in todays IS environment. How long are certs relavent? ...about 6 months now. Given 6 months of experience is worth more than any cert. Why would anyone want one? On the money. It isn't easy to live on the road. Anyone who critisizes people for making more as contractors should become a contractor if they think it is worth the personal sacrifice. Where are all the canidates? If there were more the rates would be crap. I'm glad most people just complain about their situation and do nothing. Makes it easier for those who to take action.

 

[wbg34]

Info,
I agree that most of what you are saying is how it should be, but as someone who has been actively looking for work for the last 8 months that hasn't been my experience. As someone who has over 5 years experience as a network admin with Novell, Win2k, and NT and excellent referrals lined up I've only gotten 2 callbacks out of over 40 resumes sent. When asking why my resume wasn't held for closer review I've always gotten the same answer. No Certs or no Bachelors degree. From the HR managers that I have talked to they are putting alot more weight into Certs and a Bachelors degree (I only have an associates) then they are experience. In fact most of the Want ads out there are requiring some version of a cert. I wish that my resume would get equal play based on my experience and references because I would have had a position a while ago. Unfortunately, more times than not mine doesn't get a second look because it lacks those all important accronyms. Until Experience and good referrals take precidence over certs, then problems with paper tigers will continue to haunt the IT industry.

 

[Albion]

When you're a manager and an employee is hired as a &quot;Server administrator&quot; you'd expect them to know what to do when the OS asks them for a CD. You do not expect them to come running to their manager every time they have a problem. This is what I am talking about when I say &quot;no skills&quot;. IT is not about knowing everything, it's more about knowing what resources are available to get your job done. I believe 35% of your job skills should be product knowledge based on experience, 60% knowing where to get the answers if you don't have them, and 5% education.

&quot;Most people do have skills if allowed to use them.&quot;

I don't agree at all. Perfect example. I had a server admin come to me once and ask &quot;Do you know what Event ID <whatever> is?&quot; I asked him if he had checked any other resources before bothering me. What do you think his answer was... NO. Then I said, please refer to &quot;TechNet, &quot;eventid.net&quot;, &quot;usenet&quot;, or &quot;web resources&quot; long before you come to me with your problem. It's your job as an administrator to know these things, especially TechNet. This guy had no clue what TechNet was; I was floored. What MS server admin doesn't know what TechNet is?

&quot;if you were placed in that persons position with no background of the environment or support from staff would you be successful.&quot;

If you have no background in the environment then what the heck are you doing in that environment? I want someone who knows what they need to do, not some snot nosed 22-year-old strait out of college with an CS degree or some secretary wannabe administrator because she knows MS Word. They can go to some whore box shop, slap together PCs for a year or two at $8/hr and learn the industry. After that they can go work for a network-consulting firm and bust their butt on the road for a few years installing wiring, and workstations. If by then they still don't have the 35/60/5 ratio I mentioned above they might as well get themselves a cashers position at McDonalds because they'll never make it in IT.

I am successful because I climbed the ladder to get where I am. I didn't expect to start in the middle making $65k a year at some firm doing administration.

Last week I heard a commercial for a training shop called PC Productivity that claimed there were 500 thousand unfilled IT jobs last year with entry level wages starting at $50k/year. Anyone with no experience could easily land one of those jobs with only 18 months of training from them at $40,000. I couldn't help but laughing at that commercial. No wonder there are so many unskilled people in the industry.

&quot;Anyone who criticizes(sic) people for making more as contractors should become a contractor if they think it is worth the personal sacrifice.&quot;

I never said anything about contractors, I was speaking about all people in the industry, whether a contractor or a hire. First there is a distinct difference between a contractor and a consultant. A contractor works for a firm which places them long term into another firm to work on a project, thus &quot;contracting out a project&quot;. A consultant works for a firm and does short term network/hardware setup, maintenance, repair, or software installs. I've done both and I believe that both are legitimate steps on the way to becoming a good administrator. But I don't believe there are many people who can skip those steps and head right to the top.

Personally I believe a good IT person starts off sitting in his mom's basement playing on the computer when all the other kids are outside in the sun. They're the kind that get excited when I give them a new project because they want to learn something new. Like the commercial says, &quot;I knew he was right when he said that he dreamed about code.&quot; Maybe the solution is IT upper management taking a larger role in the hiring process instead of leaving it to the right brainers in HR. Who knows...

-al

 

[lionelhill]

But Albion, do I notice a slight trace of &quot;I went through Hell, so they should too&quot;? I agree with a lot you say, but it's important not to make life unnecessarily unpleasant for really talented people coming out of very good courses. They're not the same as untalented people who see $-signs in IT and get themselves some sort of trumped-up certification to get interviews out of IT-clueless human resources departments.

Oh, having said that, unfortunately I agree with your last paragraph altogether. I finally realised why my first stab at a chess program was no good when I heard how quiet my second one was (i.e. heard the interference of far-jumps causing calls to memory, interferance with the sound card, while in my 2nd attempt everything was in the processor cache.... ran silently) It's things like that that make you realise you're a nerd, and hope the world still wants nerds.... Playing around with a sinclair spectrum or whatever, was good training. What's really sad is today's programming is so sophisticated that it's hard for a young-'un to get that &quot;I could do this better&quot; feeling. We had it easy, coming in when a tennis game was a little square that bounced around going bleep.

 

[palbano]

Of course. Why would you expect the IT field to be different from other comparable fields Given the pace of the industry the past 12 years, and of course don’t forget the DOT BOMB era, it is reasonable to expect the situation to be much worse than in comparable fields.

-pete

 

[jrbarnett]

I went for an interview last year doing tech support for a well known antivirus company; the guy taking it said he interviewed an MCSE who didn't know what a batch file was, let alone how to create one.

I didn't get the job however, I was told I was too technical to speak to end users.

John

 

[Albion]

&quot;But Albion, do I notice a slight trace of &quot;I went through Hell, so they should too&quot;? &quot;

That wasn't really my point, although there is a slight bit of that in there. My point was more in the line of, &quot;You can't get to home plate without first going through first, second, and third base.&quot; Unless that person is one of the few very talented people, probably the same percentage as those who skip a grade in school, there's a path, I believe, that is a necessity in this industry. And those bright few are usually the people who go off to work in R&D at some microprocessor or security firm. But, without that path you just don't learn the personal and professional skills that are required to have a upper technology role in this industry like a server admin.

 

[dogbert2]

Well, as a 21 year veteran of IT, I see more clueless people working in this field than ever before. However, it the number of clueless people allows me to charge $200 an hour to clean up their messes (usually in less than 15 minutes).

The end result of the certification and dot-com/bomb is a multitude of people who got into this field (who should have never gotten into it in the first place). Now with the loss of IT jobs, and the start of a decline in enrollment to IT/IS/CS schools, perhaps we can get the numbers back to where they should be.

Had dot-com/bomb never gotten started, I would imagine the IT field would have had the right number of people working in it. However, the people who want to make a lifelong career of this, will find a way to do so. The people who don't better start looking for another job, or perhaps another line of work.

 

[onpnt]

perhaps another line of work.

I recall suggesting horticulature to one individual after they deleted the writer for a out q on a 400 box once and then blamed it on a system malfunction.

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[Tarwn]

Why am I getting the feeling that I really need to get around to learning 400