Zero to ‘Giving IT guys a bad name’ in one commercial
*Rant Warning*
Since moving into my new house last week, I have been spending a fair amount of time in the lounge, on the questionably comfy sofa’s in front of the TV with my laptop, and today, between the countless (but enjoyable nevertheless) reruns of Top Gear on Dave, something irritated me.
The same thing then irritated me on another channel, same irritation, different company. Then again, on the same channel, but again a different company!
And this irritation is:
‘Come train to be an IT/Networking expert and make lots of money, you don’t need any previous experience and you could be trained and working as a system admin/network admin/IT consultant within months’
If you have seen these adverts, you will probably know what I mean, but if not allow me to explain my annoyance:
It’s not really the fact they are herding people by the masses into an already crowded industry (although that is quite annoying)…
It’s the people they are bringing in ‘No previous experience required’, ‘Qualified within a few months’. Some of the Jobs they are suggesting these people move into would make me question weather I knew enough to fulfill the role and yet, I have had a real interest in IT since as long as I can remember, have spend countless days researching and tinkering with technologies just because I wanted to understand them and better my knowledge in my chosen field;
Yet these people are expected to gain knowledge amounting to years of reading and practice, countless weeks of late nights trying to get something to work not to mention years spent honeing linux and networking skills, and be unleashed onto some poor company as their computing saviour within months??
No wonder the ‘IT Department’ has such a globally bad and unappreciated reputation.
So thanks, overadvertised ‘We’ll Take anyone’ IT training companies, thanks for lowering the worth and reputation of IT roles accross the industry.. Tossers.
</Rant>
3 Comments so far
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I said exactly the same thing! It just degrades the whole industry! As i said to my missus who works in HR - i could learn your job in 3 weeks, you couldnt learn mine in 3 years. No way can learning to use spreadsheets compare to learning what IOS is, how VLAN’s work, how BGP works, how Hypervisor (type 1 and type 2) compare, how to install infrastructures, etc.
Its the hardest facking industry going so piss off with your MCSE qualifications that will earn you £Fuck-All! lol
(RANT)
Enjoy being back in Salford, will be back soon! ha
Exactly! And even if someone did manage to learn all that you have mentioned, it’s still not the end of the line;
You then have to understand different implementations for the same technologies, such as Vlans (cisco VTP or 802.1q trunking). You have to know howto run internal routing protocols such as OSPF to compliment BGP4 on your border routers, and still NONE of this information is even that useful if you have never tried to implement it in a testing environment to get a ‘feel’ for it.
Glad it’s not just me that these people annoy :P
There will be a cold one in the minifridge for you lad!
//Matt
Exactly! Hugely irritating adverts. As well as these the whole situation for jobseeking compsci graduates these days angers me. It’s all about experience. Which is fair enough in limited amounts, experience is important but if you’re not one who either a) knows the right people (unfair advantage) or b) has the natural social engineering skills to blag their way into experience-opportunity-rich jobs (unfair advantage) *cough* then how exactly is someone meant to gain CV-worthy previous job experience in the subject area?
In itself this is vaguely paradoxical, if you need decent experience at a decent job to get a decent job… how do you get a decent job to get decent experience in the first place??
Pure luck, knowing the right people or the ability to blag your way in.
“well just get a low end job and work your way up”, I hear people cry. Even the low end jobs are insanely impossible to get into these days. Two examples.
Last year I sold my soul to the devil, and applied for a job at PC World. I know, I know… it was a low point in my life… I was weak :P After talking to the manager (who after a previous chat had recommended that I drop an application in as it was coming up to Christmas and they’d also just had 4 staff leave abruptly) I had to pick up a router, emergency purchase (those which PC World are only good for really) as mine had just died. The details on the packaging were illogical so I asked the nearest minion for clarification. He took the box from me, flipped it over a couple of times, ummed and ahh’d for a few moments, struck a sweat and eventually lowered his voice to say “I’ve no idea to be honest mate, I dunno how to use that bloody internet thing… don’t know why i’m even working here, haha…”
The manager never got back to me about the application.
Why, when a degree-level computer science student applies for possibly the lowest rung on the ladder of even vaguely IT-related jobs, does he have his application declined, when muppets like that guy have a solid job there?
Example two - a couple of months back I applied through some generic jobseeking website for a couple of months temp work at a tech support call centre. This is possibly the lowest of the low, lower on the ladder than selling your soul to the Dixons group, what with terrible hours… terrible pay… pimping out your expert knowledge to be forced to read generic answers from “the book” and instead of being allowed to actually help customers, having set goals for number of calls turned around per hour… it’s definitely scraping the shit from the bottom of the Computing barrel. You’d be embarassed to tell your mates about it.
Probably minimum wage. What did they say to me? “Applicant needs at least 2 years experience in a busy call centre position.”
If I can’t even get a job in a tech support call centre with a Computer Science degree then what bloody use was spending a hell of a lot of money, time and effort and putting myself in tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt?
These bring me in a very round-about way onto agreeing with your point Matt - if experience and IT jobs are so hard to come by anyway, these “Anyone can do it! You don’t even need..eyes!” training companies are doing us absolutely zero favours by flooding such a stagnant industry with idiots, and what with talk of recession in the air also, well, we’re basically pretty screwed.
Ramble over… may have got carried away..