Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist
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Has anyone seen a real internship that actually was all that valuable compared to "just go learn it?" I love the idea, but in day to day work how many people do a huge range of interesting things in a way that benefits education? Shadowing IT people at work now and then, yeah, super valuable. But I've known no internship that after a year taught as much as two weeks of just sitting down with a book and a computer and learning some stuff.
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@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
Has anyone seen a real internship that actually was all that valuable compared to "just go learn it?" I love the idea, but in day to day work how many people do a huge range of interesting things in a way that benefits education? Shadowing IT people at work now and then, yeah, super valuable. But I've known no internship that after a year taught as much as two weeks of just sitting down with a book and a computer and learning some stuff.
I had good luck with my internship... but that may be because I was doing the sitting down with a computer and building my own lab in my spare time.
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@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
But I've known no internship that after a year taught as much as two weeks of just sitting down with a book and a computer and learning some stuff.
Never had an internship, and I did a lot of learning on my own. But I learned so much more once I was pretty much handed an environment and said "this is yours, now go and improve it, but keep it working."
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I wonder how much business training needs to be included? Like "don't confuse technical people with sales people". And of course "you are not special" and "don't get weird."
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@scottalanmiller We're all weird.
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@wirestyle22 said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
@scottalanmiller We're all weird.
Yep. Too late for that one.
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@coliver said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
y weren't as up-to-date with the tech as they thought. It was myself and a few other students who really pushed them to teach
Oh man - tell me about it - I found several training classes I took to be completely worthless.
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@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
I wonder how much business training needs to be included? Like "don't confuse technical people with sales people". And of course "you are not special" and "don't get weird."
This could be actually more important than the IT knowledge in general - so the IT people need to know this And whoever they report to!
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@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
Has anyone seen a real internship that actually was all that valuable compared to "just go learn it?" I love the idea, but in day to day work how many people do a huge range of interesting things in a way that benefits education? Shadowing IT people at work now and then, yeah, super valuable. But I've known no internship that after a year taught as much as two weeks of just sitting down with a book and a computer and learning some stuff.
See, you say this, but just a post above you shoot down classroom study. Classroom study can specifically direct students to/through the fundamentals. Granted it might not be a full semester class. it might only be a 2-4 week class, after which you diverge into what your actual specialty will be. As I understand it, that's how doctors work. They graduate from med school, their residency is the real hands on stuff, in many different departments, helping them find the thing that they like.
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@Dashrender said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
I wonder how much business training needs to be included? Like "don't confuse technical people with sales people". And of course "you are not special" and "don't get weird."
This could be actually more important than the IT knowledge in general - so the IT people need to know this And whoever they report to!
I suppose this is the stuff he expects you'll get in college. Especially if you do a business or accounting degree?
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@Dashrender said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
@coliver said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
y weren't as up-to-date with the tech as they thought. It was myself and a few other students who really pushed them to teach
Oh man - tell me about it - I found several training classes I took to be completely worthless.
I feel that way about most classes. I miss the old CBTs of ~2000.
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@Dashrender said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
Has anyone seen a real internship that actually was all that valuable compared to "just go learn it?" I love the idea, but in day to day work how many people do a huge range of interesting things in a way that benefits education? Shadowing IT people at work now and then, yeah, super valuable. But I've known no internship that after a year taught as much as two weeks of just sitting down with a book and a computer and learning some stuff.
See, you say this, but just a post above you shoot down classroom study. Classroom study can specifically direct students to/through the fundamentals.
You act like one disputes the other. Both are bad. Interns suffer for the reasons, I think, that I mention in the other post. Basically there is no good system for it. Classroom suffers because anything that involves "hand holding" or "spoon feeding" in IT is going to fail in general, it's not a field that will tolerate that long term. You have to be able to self educate or it's game over.
Books and labs, that's where I believe the learning is. Communities like ML provide better mentors than companies do (normally.) And classrooms struggle to be fractionally as useful as a book. Anything you can do in a classroom you can do better on YouTube. Classrooms, at best, are passable. But in practice, in the real world, you have mostly professors who failed to make it in the real world and who are terribly out of date and often totally incorrect (probably why they didn't make it) who take teaching jobs to put food on the table at a fraction of industry pay rates who them teach students who are trying to get away without teaching themselves. So, by and large, you have the failed teaching the lazy. It's a horrible combination. Some professors love what they do and put in a real effort. But very few because teaching is not that rewarding and the pay is bad.
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@StrongBad said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
@Dashrender said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
I wonder how much business training needs to be included? Like "don't confuse technical people with sales people". And of course "you are not special" and "don't get weird."
This could be actually more important than the IT knowledge in general - so the IT people need to know this And whoever they report to!
I suppose this is the stuff he expects you'll get in college. Especially if you do a business or accounting degree?
Yes, exactly. Universities are pretty decent at teaching that broad "soft" stuff.
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@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
You have to be able to self educate or it's game over.
Isn't this the case in nearly any professional field though? Sure doctors can go to lectures, but they are just as likely to read things and watch video as to attend a lecture or watch someone do it live.
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@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
But very few because teaching is not that rewarding and the pay is bad.
I'm not sure what you consider good or bad pay, but our local community college pays around $30/hr for teachers, $60K isn't bad. Sure it's no senior IT Admin.
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@Dashrender said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
You have to be able to self educate or it's game over.
Isn't this the case in nearly any professional field though? Sure doctors can go to lectures, but they are just as likely to read things and watch video as to attend a lecture or watch someone do it live.
No, not in most. There is little to no need to self educate to any significant degree in any major field. Those who do have benefits, of course, but many fields force non-self education to keep the brightest from getting too much advantage. No matter how much you know as a medical student, you don't get to just be a functional doctor. It's not about how much you know or how competent you are, it's about paying into the system. So self education isn't very valuable. And the same stays true throughout later their careers.
What career requires daily or weekly or whatever updates like IT? Almost none, maybe actually none. Think about an accountant - how much new stuff do they need to learn year over year?
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@Dashrender said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
But very few because teaching is not that rewarding and the pay is bad.
I'm not sure what you consider good or bad pay, but our local community college pays around $30/hr for teachers, $60K isn't bad. Sure it's no senior IT Admin.
That's horrific. So a starting enterprise Linux admin on Wall St., that's someone with no college, no experience was nearly double that a decade ago. Think about that. And who do you want teaching classes? It needs to be someone that knows the material, knows the field, has experience and is a viable teacher on top of that. So in reality, anyone that you want to even remotely consider as a teaching is going to be able to earn $120K - $180K somewhere in the field. And there is little to no upward mobility in teaching, there are huge amounts of politics and career risk, there is little opportunity if you end up not liking the position or coworkers, almost no flexibility to do anything. There are big vacation benefits, but at locked in, awful times (only when there are big crowds and high prices.) You give up far more than most fields require and in return, you get very low pay.
If your professor can't just walk into any Senior IT level interview (for their discipline) as a top candidate, what use are they in teaching students? If students hope to graduate above the level of their professors, there is something really screwed up.
So while $60K salary might be decent if you get to live in a low cost area, have a low stress job that you like, get soft benefits that make it make sense; I'd say it is a guarantee that the university system cannot possibly provide any reliably meaningful form of IT education.
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I do realize that Wall St. is on the high side of salaries. But we are talking entry level people in systems administration. In Texas we were going to pay more than that for high school kids if they could show a little Linux aptitude.
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@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
I do realize that Wall St. is on the high side of salaries. But we are talking entry level people in systems administration. In Texas we were going to pay more than that for high school kids if they could show a little Linux aptitude.
Not just high, extreme and rare outside of wallstreet is what I would say - perhaps also on the london equivalent.
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@Dashrender said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
@scottalanmiller said in Of What Should Baseline IT Education Consist:
I do realize that Wall St. is on the high side of salaries. But we are talking entry level people in systems administration. In Texas we were going to pay more than that for high school kids if they could show a little Linux aptitude.
Not just high, extreme and rare outside of wallstreet is what I would say - perhaps also on the london equivalent.
But it's not. Yes, it's on the high side. But most people don't even claim that to be the high paying industry. The start up industry is paying $300K for system admins these days. You can make nearly $200K in non-profits. And the big boys like Google, MS, Amazon, FB, Oracle, IBM.... they can't pay much less. Less, sure. But they can't fundamentally pay less or they can't hire. These are huge sectors that can't get enough people. These jobs are actually out there.
