So apparently Britain doesn't need IT specialists...

scorza said:
Why not apply to join a professional body like the British Computer Society or the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. For full member status the BCS will review your experience* before giving member status, probably very similar for joining the IEEE. Some employers will even pay your membership fees out of their training budget.

*Must have 5+ years of relevant IT experience.
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I know people with BCS accreditation who I wouldn't even trust to be near my computer :p They rely far too much on paper qualifications and being able to pass a test rather than actually having any skills IMO.
 
I've been "playing" with computers since a young age and I only have some basic college qualifications. I didn't learn anything in college that I didn't already know or could have learnt from some research. Like PHP we spent a few weeks on that and I don't think I've learnt anything yet I created my own website a few weeks ago and I have learnt loads about PHP and CSS.

I'm currently an Assistant ICT Technician (my first job) and I'm finding it pretty easy. I learn by doing, I've already learnt loads after 9 months. Just hoping the network manager will give me some extra access to the servers :D
 
The problem is that "IT" is far too general a term that covers hundreds of different specialities, both technical and non-technical combined.

Someone working on a Service Desk logging calls over lost passwords is just as much IT as is someone Project Managing an eGovernment project or someone designing a multi-organisational identity management framework, and herein lies the problem. Not enough is being done to differentiate between the "white collar" and "blue collar" elements of 'IT' and the way they manifest themselves in practice.

The SFIA foundation tried to make a start, but failed miserably when they tried to align their levels based on job content and did not allow for cross-qualifications properly; also, the levels are incompatible to each other:for example, Research Level 5 is a typical description of the average Lecturer/recent PhD graduate, yet a Level 5 programmer can be without formal qualifications, know many different languages but be otherwise not very useful.

Perhaps practice ought to adopt a more academic view over "IT" and group IT types more along the academic separation of "Computer Science" and "Information Systems", perhaps adding the group "Support Services" (your regular helpdesk/cable monkeys). However, the typical amalgation of several different jobs (e.g Lead Designers doubling as Senior Programmer, BAs doubling as PMs) would make this difficult also.

Of course, another issue is with people's perception of their own careers as well - a lot of low-level IT technicians would consider themselves as white collar, even though their language, behaviour, and professionalism is more reminiscent of blue collar type people and they employ little specialist skills.

Many people in those type of jobs will probably be upset at my taxonomy (lots of them frequent the boards after all :p ) but similarly I'm sure that people at the other end of the spectrum feel a bit aggrieved at being tarred with the same brush as the guy carrying cables, when they are doing things which are much more advanced.

It is undeniable that IT is so varied to require more specific labels though, whatever they might be.
 
Working a support company, we support large universities and I can confirm that a shocking amount of people in these roles are clueless.
 
kiwi said:
Working a support company, we support large universities and I can confirm that a shocking amount of people in these roles are clueless.
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True, but so are a lot of the management too who hire the clueless ;)
 
I work in a technical role, and work with many different customers. It is alarming how many people who run "IT" departments dont know how to run a network trace, setup DHCP option tags, IIS configuration, and other things that people running a department should have had some exposure to.

There are exceptions of course, and i do often wonder how much my experience is tainted as generally speaking my more savy customers will never ask me a single question in the post sales support environment.
 
scorza said:
Why not apply to join a professional body like the British Computer Society or the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. For full member status the BCS will review your experience* before giving member status, probably very similar for joining the IEEE. Some employers will even pay your membership fees out of their training budget.

*Must have 5+ years of relevant IT experience.

Edit to point out that there's still Associate, Student and Affiliate BCS membership available as appropriate for those who don't have 5+ years experience.
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Is there really any benifit of joining BCS doing there little test thing it reccomends I join as a Associate Membership (AMBCS) Though depending on what it classes as experience maybe MBCS.
 
Surely though, to run an IT department, you don't need low level technical skills, you need higher level theoretical skills - with a base knowledge of the issues facing IT.

I've had the same conversation with multiple people - during your career, no matter what your background, you will fit into one of two "directions" - managerial or functional specialist. To get more pay through organisational structuring, you need to go up the managerial route. To get more pay through the specialist route, you have to become like a super specialist that people refer to. The question I guess I was asking, was how can I work out how far along the "super specialist route" I am if thats the direction I want to take in life?
 
Quite.. Managers don't need the technical skills, and it's a failure on behalf of the technicians to think that they do.
 
hargi said:
Is there really any benifit of joining BCS doing there little test thing it reccomends I join as a Associate Membership (AMBCS) Though depending on what it classes as experience maybe MBCS.
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I think like most things, you'll get out what you put into it. If you're prepared to put the work into something like the BCS professional development scheme, then I certainly think there's benefit in that.

I think I've basically come to the same conclusion as the OP with regards to the way the IT industry is going. I see these adverts where a bin man does a course, probably comes out with a MCSE and ends up running an IT department on the "average IT salary of £37k" (prolly included Bill Gates' salary in that calculation :p ) and cringe. Maybe snobbery on my part, but I really don't see myself as and the people who go down that route as competing in the same job market. I think there needs to be greater differentiation between the different levels of working in IT also, and think that membership of a professional body is one way to go about that.

Believe it or not after my little sales pitch, I'm not a member of the BCS or any other professional organisation. I keep hmm'ing and ahh'ing about joining though, it's always interesting to read people's opinions about it though before I chicken out of asking my boss to sign off my membership subscriptions again :p
 
Dj_Jestar said:
Quite.. Managers don't need the technical skills, and it's a failure on behalf of the technicians to think that they do.
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I think thats a flawed statement, or at least one that requires clarification.

People who speak to me are SUPPOSED to be technical, I am not talking about Director level management who might now be out of touch at least on current technology.

*edit*
It also heavily depends on the IT department you are speaking about. If its a multinational company with 1000's of staff, the IT Director might not be up on his technical know how. However, if he is running a small retail chain, the IT manager is far more likely to be (or should be) technically competant.
 
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Malt_Vinegar said:
I think thats a flawed statement, or at least one that requires clarification.

People who speak to me are SUPPOSED to be technical, I am not talking about Director level management who might now be out of touch at least on current technology.

*edit*
It also heavily depends on the IT department you are speaking about. If its a multinational company with 1000's of staff, the IT Director might not be up on his technical know how. However, if he is running a small retail chain, the IT manager is far more likely to be (or should be) technically competant.
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Managers are hands-off. Else they wouldn't be managers. They need a small insight, but nothing more than "I'll speak to the network guy(s), if there is a network requirement". They don't need to know how to set up that network, they just need to know who to ask.

And the failure is that of technicians who try and retort with "Why you having a go at me? I don't see you setting up networks you lazy oaf!" (usually quietly to a colleague or on a forum somewhere because they don't actually want to say it to their manager)
 
Dj_Jestar said:
Managers are hands-off. Else they wouldn't be managers. They need a small insight, but nothing more than "I'll speak to the network guy(s), if there is a network requirement". They don't need to know how to set up that network, they just need to know who to ask.

And the failure is that of technicians who try and retort with "Why you having a go at me? I don't see you setting up networks you lazy oaf!" (usually quietly to a colleague or on a forum somewhere because they don't actually want to say it to their manager)
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I think we shall have to differ on this, I suspect we work in very different environments.

My departmental managers have always been technically competant, and people i could get advice from and bounce ideas off. Thats my idea of a manager in a technical environment.
 
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I to am fed up of the do a 1 week course and then get a £4000 a day job adverts on tv.
After only doing a Foundation degree in someway I don’t see my self as a really clever person especially when comparing myself to people on here. But then comparing myself to the people at work I see myself as been high up in the IT knowledge stakes. What I have done is found a niche for myself that I’m specialised in. This now is taking me away from the technical side of things and brining in more how to use the technology than getting it to work.

Scorza how much work needs to go in to BCS
 
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