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The IT industry was created and supported by people who didn't have 4 year computer engineering degrees, it's only in the last few years that this 4 year degree was a requirement. I think the college degree requirement is more about keeping colleges relevant than really preparing someone to have the real world knowledge to support computer systems. In the 90's you could make more money than senior accountants as a system administrator without any college or certifications. This jealousy has more to do with college degree requirements than any real necessity.
Agreed. IT has always been more about what you know than what piece of paper you have. It's still that way, if you have good experience. And believe me, I've seen a lot of peeps with certificates and degrees who couldn't do diddly even if they're given step by step instructions including screenshots.
Certificates and degrees don't mean you know how to fix things when the network takes a dump, or when you have to find and fix the problem in a million lines of code.
That's why the new economic order cannot last and some new ideology will rise up to challenge it. Islamic fundamentalism, maybe even a rebirth of Communism, is something to watch for in the future...
Islamic fundamentalism? That's a new one.
I fail to see how that can address income inequality in the world.
Islamic fundamentalism? That's a new one.
I fail to see how that can address income inequality in the world.
Doesn't have to. It just needs to be seen as a viable alternative (even if just at the cultural level) to the "religion" of "materialism" that is so worshipped in the West these days.
It's an interesting discussion and RedNC immediately smacked head-on with one of the biggest cultural divergences that exist within IT in the west, and IT in India.
In the west, 'the internet' as we know it- and systems technology in general- was created and is mostly driven by the free-inquiring, deeply creative "enthusiast". Some have degrees, some have just been 'doing it' since they were 12 years old and now, at 24, don't need a degree, simply because there's little that college can teach them that they haven't already learned. In this regard, IT was one of the last bastions of employment that valued demonstrable 'skill' over the sheepskin. As such, these people- and their freewheeling cultural precepts- have had a profound influence over the western IT field. There are lots of ponytails and earrings, very few neckties and business luncheons.
In India, it's completely different. There is an unimaginably massive cultural imperative towards information technology that is largely a result from some rather shrewd government mandates that occurred in the late 1990's. The Indian approach to IT is about as 'systematic' as it gets. Unlike the western IT mindset that is much looser and prone to drawing in those naturally inclined in that direction, in India, IT is pretty much *the* defacto way out of poverty.
If you come from a household where your parents make $3 a day and are told that by studying IT you can earn $6000 a year, you're going to do it whether it's within your natural spectrum of interest or not.
As such, a lot of the Indian IT human resources are very uncreative, very mechanical and very 'process' oriented. This isn't to say they don't have their top 10% (or whatever) who are insightful, innovative and naturally apt, but generally speaking, IT in India is simply a way out of poverty whereas in the west, people who do it are motivated by very different reasons.
Of course, the catch is, in India you're dealing with a nation that has 1,000,000,000 people and a business culture that has come to emphasize IT at it's forefront. As such, in terms of sheer volume, they have some 'bell curve' advantages that cannot be matched in the west and when you factor in the monumental wage differential, I think it's safe to say that the future of IT is in India, whether we like it or not.
Of course, at the end of the day, BPO and offshoring must have quality in order for the contracts to remain funded. IT is hypercompetative in India, to the point that wages for freelance coders around the entire globe are in the crapper and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future. If they aren't delivering the quality, there are plenty of outfits who will deliver quality at that same pricepoint.
Really, western business doesn't give a crap if it's websites are coded by a 'degreed' programmer or not. They just want them to work. They don't care if the person answering the phone is 'degreed' or not. They just want her to speak decent English and complete the tasks she's supposed to. In this regard, whether or not offshoring teams in India are hiring people without degrees has very little to do with the final outcome of the product itself. It's just more of an internal matter of policy
Reasons for knowing kind of a lot about this topic: I've project-managed the development of a few websites, worked with a ton of Indian coders, have a few friends in India, presently have a pretty meaningful amount of money invested in India IT.
The indian people have been capitalizing on that stereotype that they all good at IT since the beginning. i know some africans and american indians to be claiming to be indians here in the US and I have met so many indians with fake resumes. a lot of them have mastered the faking of resumes and passing interviews by copying the job opening description into their resumes and undercutting the prevailing rates. I've even witnessed competitive consultants expose each others 'fakeness' to both their destruction. the indian people are so divided by location theyre biting each others heads off in this industry
Those of us in the US in IT know we have to stay on the cutting edge of Technology and be highly specialized in order to keep our jobs. This requires multple seminars and taking the classes from the vendors as soon as the software comes to the market. India will not do this due to the high initial expense required to do so. They wait until there is enough education on the cheap to do this type of training which is approx two years. Once there is enough material out there to create a scripted manual then they will bid for those positions. This is a majority of the call centers in India. I've had numerous times where I've had to email them copies of the manual for them to resolve a situation. If I dont, they kick it out as not part of contract. Which sets off all sorts of alarms. And of course keeps me working.
But as to the title of this thread, this has been going on for numerous years. In India there are so many company names that there is no way to verify who is who. Basically they create a name and get a mailing address. Their initial office is a folding table with a telephone on it. A contract comes up for bid and a group of people write up a response to it under a few different company names and submit it. Once (if) one the names win the bid they go out and hire an initial 18 people, rent some space in a call center building and set up shop and work up from there. If you think this is an odd way of doing this, well you're mistaken. We taught it to them. In the old days it was called "Boiler Room Telemarketing".
Any basic phone tech support I've ever run across has to follow a script anyway, so I can see them cutting costs this way.
I mean, really, how many degrees does it take to hold up the tech support end of a conversation like this?
"Hello, this is Joe. I am your tech support technician. May I have your name please?"
"Harry Chickpea"
"May I calling you Harry?"
"Yes."
"Good day Harry. How may I being of helping you this fine day?"
"Its raining and there is a tornado outside, and I just saw Toto and Dorothy flying by on a bicycle."
"I am sorry that it is raining there on this fine day. How may I being of helping you?"
"My R-2 unit has a bad motivator."
"Have you tried re-booting your R-2 unit by removing the power cord and then plugging it back in to the wall socket?"
"I don't have any wall sockets. I get my power from a fakir over in the science forum who is living on sunshine and has a socket between his buttocks."
"That must be Steven. He was let go recently as was looking for more suitable work. He is a very bright fellow. Have you removed the power cord from Steven's buttocks and then reinserted it?"
"Uhhh, no."
"Please do that now. I will hold."
(sounds of scuffle and screaming in the background)
"Well I'll be darned. That seems to have solved the problem!"
"Is there anything else I can helping you with today, Mr. Harry?"
"Nope, that'll do it."
"Thanking you and have a nice rainy day. My name is Joe, and I will write that your problem was solved."
Steven is a pseudonym. We all know who he really is.
I dread anytime I need to call tech support. After I educate the 1st 2nd and 3rd lvl guys on their own product, I usually get a basic "I'm sorry I can't help you.".
Thanks for wasting my time
I once had to explain to a tech support guy what a male and a female connector were so he could tell me which connector the device I was looking at had. It was sort of funny how offended he was at first. I've never had anyone in that line of work almost hang up on me before.
For those of us (programmers) that are coders and just love the complexity and creativeness of creating something from nothing..there's the Open Source Community.
You find some from India and China that participate but not many compared to the sheer numbers they are churning out of the universities over there. They like the rote, the practiced, the documented.
With R&D going over there..I have to wonder how innovative they really are. I know PhD's are easy to come by and cost much less than US types but how creative are they really.
Innovations in R&D usually take a few years holed up in a lab before the public gets a view of the technology. I just wonder what we'll see out of India and China in 5-10 years.
In the meanwhile..I train for a new field. My Plan B for if/when I get layed off and my job offshored.
There will always be Linux and OpenSource for those coders that just enjoy coding and using bleeding edge software just begging to be run under a debugger and fixed
With fairly rare exception, it's all that ever mattered. That's the nature of business. The problem is these mental midget managers only look at short-term gain vs long-term, and easily visualized savings vs the more abstract things which nontheless cost them more, often far more, in the long run...eg the offshore hiring. I had plenty of experience w/this and we spent many more man-hours working on things and had numerous problems we wouldn't have otherwise had due to this. Nice "savings"
Quote:
Originally Posted by RedNC
The IT industry was created and supported by people who didn't have 4 year computer engineering degrees, it's only in the last few years that this 4 year degree was a requirement.
Sorry, wrong. If anything, degrees matter less now than they used to, but even now many - I'd say in fact most - IT jobs require a Bachelors Degree.
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