quote:Originally posted by stilesbn: On the other hand. If you don't want to start a business but work for a business instead you almost certainly need a college degree to make above average wages.
Still often false, depending on the field. Lots of tech companies are more interested in competency than education, for example. And they definitely make above average wages.
I can tell you, from my experience in IT, the ones who majored in Information Systems or related tech majors are some of the worst IT people I've ever met. The best skills that IT people can have are the ones they don't teach in college.
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quote:Originally posted by stilesbn: On the other hand. If you don't want to start a business but work for a business instead you almost certainly need a college degree to make above average wages.
Still often false, depending on the field. Lots of tech companies are more interested in competency than education, for example. And they definitely make above average wages.
I guess that's true. Though, I very rarely see any job postings tech or non tech that don't say Bachelor's Required. If it only requires a HS diploma I've never seen the salary above 35k (And I've only seen that high once).
Those are just postings though and I'm not in IT so I don't know how serious they are. Usually they don't require everything they ask for. I mean usually they as for someone with 10 years experience, a masters, management experience, and proof of a successful trip to the moon and then offer a salary of 30k. Sometimes I want to apply and get an interview just so I can talk to them and ask them "Are you nuts?!"
The IT employee pool is...I guess the best definition for it is "Varied and weird." Some companies require a bachelor's as a minimum only as a way for HR staff to weed out the high-school dropouts. You also have to understand that the IT industry is *full* of really incompetent people, and in a recession or slow economy, IT staff are the first to be cut. In addition, dedicated IT departments don't require a high level of knowledge or specialization for people to work in most capacities. Most people who study IT in college are trying to use their degree as a way to climb the management ladder.
You also have the unbelievable glut of foreign workers in the American IT industry. India just about puts out more IT workers in a year than are employed in almost the entirety of the US. Most of those individuals work for very low salaries, which drags the rest of the salary levels down.
The high number of individuals seeking employment in IT combined with a relatively low level of actual training in terms of both quality and duration results in relatively low salaries when compared with many other industries.
Now, that's for working IT in a corporate department capacity. When you look at IT Consulting and Services, the employee pool and salary rates change significantly, in great part because consulting requires a high degree of specialization and training, because you have to have answers for the people who manage the IT departments that hire you as a consultant. If they could get those answers from their own staff, they wouldn't have to hire you. The pay range for staff consultants goes well above the six figure mark. With my certifications and qualifications, I'm probably worth upwards of 120k a year or more. But that's if I wanted to do straight federal government consulting work. I can't stand working for the government, because most people in government IT can barely turn a computer on, let alone solve any real problems. ("What do you mean I can't bridge the network connections between the secret network and public internet?" I once heard as a serious question.) I currently make a good bit more than half that, but could be making pretty close to that amount if I *hadn't* spent time going to college.
Most consulting firms will encourage you to get a 4 year degree, but will rarely list it as a requirement for getting hired. They tend, more often, to look for industry certificates and experience than formal education. At least, the ones that don't do government consulting work. Government regulations force many consulting companies to meet educational standards for their employees to perform specific tasks. As such, you can't work for a federal government contracting firm without a college degree under your belt. This is also what has contributed to the aforementioned lack of knowledgeable people in government IT. Government IT workers also have to have a college degree.
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"What do you mean I can't bridge the network connections between the secret network and public internet?" To which I'm sure this was your reaction. Posts: 362 | Registered: Nov 2008
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quote:Originally posted by stilesbn: On the other hand. If you don't want to start a business but work for a business instead you almost certainly need a college degree to make above average wages.
Still often false, depending on the field. Lots of tech companies are more interested in competency than education, for example. And they definitely make above average wages.
True! My good friend just landed an 80K intro job with NO degree at a firm that provides web-based learning management software for many universities and school districts around the nation. Quite ironic, really, that the firm who supports university course management is using non-degreed programmers.
The hiring process was as you indicated, Dan_Frank: "What can you do?" "Show us." "We don't give a rats a** whether you have a degree." In fact, he won brownie points to get an internship at a premier design firm precisely because he *dropped out* of a university program.
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quote:Those are just postings though and I'm not in IT so I don't know how serious they are.
They are usually not very serious and many tech companies are now softening the requirement to "...more equivalent industry experience."
I manage a dev team at a tech company and degrees are much less interesting to me than skills, experience, and even personality.
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quote:Those are just postings though and I'm not in IT so I don't know how serious they are.
They are usually not very serious and many tech companies are now softening the requirement to "...more equivalent industry experience."
I manage a dev team at a tech company and degrees are much less interesting to me than skills, experience, and even personality.
I would agree with this. I didn't have a degree when I got my Development job. Granted I had experience (Albeit mostly Freelance, and personal development) and also 225 College Credit Hours (Without a Degree).. But they weren't too worried about the degree so much as what I could do, and if I could communicate well etc.
I work at a tech company as well though, and tech is a lot less worried about an actual degree, although it won't hurt you either.
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quote:Originally posted by stilesbn: "What do you mean I can't bridge the network connections between the secret network and public internet?" To which I'm sure this was your reaction.
You have no idea...
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quote:Originally posted by Boris: I can't stand working for the government, because most people in government IT can barely turn a computer on, let alone solve any real problems. ("What do you mean I can't bridge the network connections between the secret network and public internet?" I once heard as a serious question.)
As a mid-level government employee in IT, I can say that your characterization is pretty accurate. That's why most of our work is contracted out... to people barely more competent.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Boris: I can't stand working for the government, because most people in government IT can barely turn a computer on, let alone solve any real problems. ("What do you mean I can't bridge the network connections between the secret network and public internet?" I once heard as a serious question.)
As a mid-level government employee in IT, I can say that your characterization is pretty accurate. That's why most of our work is contracted out... to people barely more competent.
Oh man. Don't get me started on what the Contractors do to screw over the government. Most of the contracting companies, when bidding for contracts, pad their offers with resumes by calling people and asking to use their resume for a bid, "Let us use your resume for this contract bid and we'll give you the job if we get it." They say. 6 months later, when the bid is finalized and the project is granted, none of those people are available, so they hire the cheapest people they can find.
Then there was the time the contractor I worked for hired a CISSP trainer to teach a class to all the employees. 25 people attended the class. 25 people took the test (I took the test a week later on my own dime without going through that training, because I was on a contract at the time). 2 people passed the test. My friend who I had gotten a job with the contractor and the guy who had just graduated highschool and was making about a quarter of what everyone else was. I also passed the test. The average level of experience with IT security among the people who took the test was about 10 *years*. And they didn't learn enough in that time to pass a test that I studied for 3 months on and took on a whim.
This is why I don't do government work anymore.
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This is why everyone should know the basics of contract law. All you need to do is make them sign a contract with an express condition that they hire you for the contract they are using your resume for if they win the contract. Sadly, most people don't do this even though you could most likely make that a binding contract through an oral agreement alone.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Black Fox: This is why everyone should know the basics of contract law. All you need to do is make them sign a contract with an express condition that they hire you for the contract they are using your resume for if they win the contract. Sadly, most people don't do this even though you could most likely make that a binding contract through an oral agreement alone.
See, that's the thing. By the time those companies get around to actually hiring people, the people they got resumes from have moved on to different projects or jobs and usually aren't willing to switch jobs. What needs to happen is the government should start requiring contractors to actively employee workers they submit resumes for. Aside from that, I personally think businesses that derive significant portions of their revenue from government contracts should have strict limits on executive pay and bonuses. Like tie the maximum complete compensation package for any employee to the average of all employees in the company. In order for executives to get raises, the company has to give raises to everyone else first. (Realistically, this is how *all* businesses should run, but strapping something like that on the private sector might be more problematic than doing so with public sector contractors).
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Market distortion bro. If what you say is true then the problem doesn't seem to be the employers, but the nature of the business. What would be easier would be a government regulation that required that a company can only submit the resumes of employees who they are employing on a full-time basis, and that if those employees are let go or quit at any point in the contract process then the firm has to inform the government.
I don't think the executive pay thing is really going to do much. Especially when a lot of executive pay isn't actual money dollars, but stock options and other liquid assets, not straight up cash. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. would also be really pissed off.
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Quite a bit of the problem here is the mandate that price is the deciding factor. It's a race to the bottom. Contractor A gets the low bid. Next time around, B undercuts them, then hires all of the folks that A can no longer pay... at a paycut. Each time this happens, the better ones find new jobs. This has repeated several times over the last YEAR.
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quote:Originally posted by Swampjedi: Quite a bit of the problem here is the mandate that price is the deciding factor. It's a race to the bottom. Contractor A gets the low bid. Next time around, B undercuts them, then hires all of the folks that A can no longer pay... at a paycut. Each time this happens, the better ones find new jobs. This has repeated several times over the last YEAR.
I actually saw the opposite on the contracts I worked, but then I was about the only person in town with more than 1 or 2 industry certs. I routinely got offers for jobs that were paying upwards of 20k more than I made with the contractor I worked for, but I felt like sticking with them for a year minimum (personal policy). By the time the year was up I was completely disgusted at the shape of the DoD, not just from a government waste standpoint, but from the fact that there was absolutely nothing I could do to help close the gaping security holes I found (contractors on my project were prohibited from making direct changes on production systems. We could only recommend changes, and those changes were rarely implemented).
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. would also be really pissed off.
I see that as an advantage of the proposal.
Exactly. Lockheed, Boeing, et al can go blow for all I care. They have plenty of incompetent fools in middle management who can take over for the incompetent fools at the executive level and it would have little to no impact on their productivity. I mean, if you look at how well the F-35 project has progressed over the past few years, it's pretty plain that you can't get much *less* productivity out of those suckers.
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I agree that Boeing and co. can stick it, but they have a strong lobby, which would generally make it harder to go directly against their will. Easier to find a compromise that gets the same or better end results than fight them all the way through.
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