Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
So after thinking about this further I just don't think you should separate the different roles the way you are. IT and bench people both depend on the other. This mostly explains why bench people are so opinionated about management in a bad way as IT orders stuff so often that just does not make sense on a technical level. They are two sides of the same coin. I do not think differentiating between IT and bench is even helpful. That just creates a divide between the two groups that does not need to be there.
All roles in a business are codependent, but you never mix HR and IT, or accounting and bench together just because they depend on each other. You keep them carefully separated and know exactly when a job is IT and when it is finance because you need different security, different training, different aptitudes, different unions or legal responsibilities, and you get people who want to do different things.
There is no case where it would ever be useful to see them as one thing. If it appears so, then the roles are being misunderstood. Any mixing of the two would be bad because it means a misconception of what is being accomplished.
It's a divide that is there, whether we want it or not, but it is a divide that is really important. It's different tasks. It's not me that divides it, no person can decide that. It's two different things.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
They are two sides of the same coin.
No, they are different coins completely. You are missing that they are unrelated roles. That they both use computers is very little different than how all jobs in a modern company use computers. Bench and IT don't overlap.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
This mostly explains why bench people are so opinionated about management in a bad way as IT orders stuff so often that just does not make sense on a technical level.
You are back to thinking of IT and bench as one being high level and the other being low level of the same thing. Any feeling that anything like this exists means you've not yet understood what I'm describing. The two are totally unique and separate. In no way does your example of IT making bad purchases result in what you are describing. By definition, bench cannot "fix" anything IT has done wrong, only IT can fix it. If it seems like they can, you are calling IT people bench and have mixed their roles together. Bench and IT do not overlap in this (or any) way.
You may have a lot of experiences where IT management and IT trenches don't get along. But the bench is not a reference to IT trench workers or any aspect of IT. They are different jobs.
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@scottalanmiller I agree that their skills are different from one another. There is no doubt of that. Maybe my IT people are bad but they also seem pretty common from what I have seen. Does that mean that most IT people are bad? Seems like a far stretch but who knows. I certainly wouldn't want to say that. I guess one of the main issues I have with that is the decision making progress. You mentioned before that IT people are able to look things up and make correct decisions because has not really changed in a few decades. If they never learned about tech in the first place then it does not matter as they doi not have any foundation to make good decisions correct?
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Remember that bench does not manage computers. So if IT orders computers that don't meet the user's needs, bench has no capability to fix that since bench does not manage the computers. This would be like saying that the wrong software was bought, so the electrician has to fix it.
How would the electrician / electrical department have the access, rights, knowledge or responsibility to fix software issues?
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller I agree that their skills are different from one another. There is no doubt of that. Maybe my IT people are bad but they also seem pretty common from what I have seen. Does that mean that most IT people are bad? Seems like a far stretch but who knows. I certainly wouldn't want to say that. I guess one of the main issues I have with that is the decision making progress. You mentioned before that IT people are able to look things up and make correct decisions because has not really changed in a few decades. If they never learned about tech in the first place then it does not matter as they doi not have any foundation to make good decisions correct?
Sure, but what does that have to do with the discussion? Remember, we've established that bench knowledge is not IT knowledge and no amount of knowing bench would provide the needed knowledge for IT. Your question is leading and sounds like you are going back to talking about bench as being "entry level IT" rather than a separate discipline with different knowledge.
No one is disputing that incompetent IT people make incompetent decisions - but that is neither here for there with the discussion about bench. Should university teach basic computer literacy, though? No, they should simply demand it before they accept students.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Maybe my IT people are bad but they also seem pretty common from what I have seen.
Most bench people are bad. Most IT are bad. Most managers drive companies into the ground. The average of any field is really bad. That's a given. If you go from the expectation that "normal is good" you'll struggle to understand how any field works. But when you realize that the median in any field is pretty poor and that even caring or trying to do a good job is less than the 50% mark, things make a lot more sense.
You've suggested several times that the IT you deal with is pretty poor, especially up the chain. I'm sure that that is true. But what you describe is absolutely common. Go on Spiceworks and look at the average discussion, it's horrendous. People asking the same "textbook mistakes" questions every day, day after day, and never using common sense, common knowledge, looking up what others have done or looking at popular threads of the day or week. The average isn't just bad, it's a train wreck.
But look at the average bench tech. The average is a Geek Squad worker. They earn $12/hr, get no respect and most don't have the first clue about any kind of technology modern or otherwise. Sure, they might know the brand names of the coolest water cooler or fastest GPU but that's about where their knowledge ends. Need to know about RAID, hot swap, UREs, SSD survival rates and they don't even know the terms. Nor do they need to. But go to a big box store and talk to their bench guys sometime, the average is really, really bad. Their knowledge isn't even useful for where they are, let alone to be taken and used in IT somewhere.
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Remember that in the business world, 85% of new businesses fail in the first five years. Over 50% in the first year - which means that they started a business without thinking through how to even get it to the point of maybe starting. The failure rate of normal business thinking is very high. IT is a business endeavour. IT has to do business, but in a vastly more technical way, without the benefit of getting to be openly honest about the challenges of IT nor that they are actually a business function. IT has one of the hardest jobs out there, in all seriousness it's an intense field. That the failure rates are astronomic is to be expected.
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@scottalanmiller Ok interesting video. I guess I did not realize that the average bench and It person were so bad. I do have a story about that though which confirms what you said. A few years ago I went to an Altex store and asked their management person what I would need to do to use SAS drives just because I wanted to learn the technology of them and building a good server. He had never heard of that term and said it did not exist as there was only regular and ssd drives. So I'm just proving your point. I would not, a good lawyer, make.
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@scottalanmiller So IT is making business decisions and solving problems for users on a logical level and
bench is just working with the hardware? -
Yeah, retail bench manager is likely pretty far removed from enterprise bench and/or IT needs. Knowing what SAS is is pretty casual tech knowledge, but Altex is just a store and not a technical one really. At least from the time that I've spent there, they are very physical in nature (racks, cables, trays, etc.)
What's odd is that in general bench tends to be way less technical than IT, even though bench is all tech and IT is only tech on the side. Good bench is really good, but even being purely tech there is surprising little tech that actually happens on the bench side.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Remember that in the business world, 85% of new businesses fail in the first five years. Over 50% in the first year - which means that they started a business without thinking through how to even get it to the point of maybe starting. The failure rate of normal business thinking is very high. IT is a business endeavour. IT has to do business, but in a vastly more technical way, without the benefit of getting to be openly honest about the challenges of IT nor that they are actually a business function. IT has one of the hardest jobs out there, in all seriousness it's an intense field. That the failure rates are astronomic is to be expected.
Guess I need to go watch your entering IT video. Just realized I had missed it. I want to get to the point where I make business decisions so I need to figure out the best path for that.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller So IT is making business decisions and solving problems for users on a logical level and
bench is just working with the hardware?Right. The only normal bench interactions with users come from working in retail or needing to ask users to move out of their cubicle while the bench guys work on the hardware.
Let's take a VERY end user interfacing process and see how it breaks down between the two...
- User has a need that requires a GPU.
- Helpdesk takes a ticket that something for graphics processing is needed <- IT task
- Desktop team looks at ticket and determines the GPU needed <- IT task
- IT Procurement acquires the GPU requested <- IT task
- Part arrives and is delivered to the user's desk <- facilities / mail room task
- Bench tech is deployed to the desk to open the case, install the GPU and ensure that the computer turns back on and that the helpdesk can reach it remotely <- bench task
- GPU is configured, drivers install, applications configured to leverage it <- IT task
- Helpdesk circles back with the end users to make sure that things work as they should and closes ticket. <- It task.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Guess I need to go watch your entering IT video. Just realized I had missed it. I want to get to the point where I make business decisions so I need to figure out the best path for that.
Probably you mean making big business decisions. In all IT levels you are typically making IT decisions all day long, but they are generally small and the business aspect of them is so assumed that we actually forget or don't realize that we are doing it. Not absolutely every decision, but most are business decisions. They are mostly just under the "business knows we are doing it" threshold.
But definitely, the higher in IT you go, the more of the business you impact.
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Another interaction:
- Hard drive dies in server in datacenter.
- System Admin decided that we need to replace the failed drive. <- IT task
- Datacenter tech is dispatched to get replacement drive. <- Bench Task
- DCT (Data Center Tech) acquires proper part number drive for the server hardware. <- Bench Task
- System Admin coordinates with business unit as to timing on drive replacement. <- Grey area, normally IT Task
- DCT does the drive swap. <- Bench Task
- System Admin ensures that the server works properly and reports no errors. <- IT Task
- DCT confirms that the drive lights look correct now. <- Bench Task
- DCT ensures that the drive is physically destroyed and returned to vendor under warranty. <- Bench Task
- System Admin reports to the business that drives are repairs and danger is back to normal. <- IT task
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Back to the original question. Based on previous posts, we can surmise that University needs to separate IT from Bench and develop degrees that provide both students a correct path to their chosen career. If Bench, more tech. If IT, more classes towards business, psychology, math, and economics, then tech (in that order).
To paraphrase Sam, getting everyone on board with correct terminology should be the first place to start (I believe this is the largest issue). We know how hard that will be as individuals inside and outside the IT Field still cannot understand the difference between a Hacker and Cracker (That issues has been ongoing since the 60's).
How to go about getting University on board with change with individuals not on the board of University, good luck with that.
Side-note - I went to a tech school and the best class I had was my critical thinking class (psychology) that taught me how to think. I believe that was crucial to my IT/Bench worker career.
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Coming from two IT degrees. The most valuable classes were, sociology, business management, and project management.
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I graduated in 2015 with a BS in Computer Sciences...and ill throw my 2 cents out there on how/what we were taught and how I would change it.
What we learned (from a non-programming standpoint):
"Database Systems", "Computer Organization, Architecture, and Communications", "Distributed Computing", "Advanced Networking"
These were the classes I took that had nothing to do with actual development. From my standpoint, they provided a solid foundation into how everything worked and communicated with one another at a high-ish level. The exception to this was the networking class, which for us, was a complete joke. Had the grading scale been a traditional one, everyone would've failed. They tried to cram everything possible into a single class, teach as fast as possible, and then expected us to take something away from it. I passed with an 82%, however on a traditional scale i had a 41%. This wasn't terribly uncommon for us in a couple of classes at school. Back to speaking generally, what really hindered us the most i would say is a lack of hands on experience. There were no physical scenarios we had to work through, nothing was based on how things worked in the real world, I actually didn't have a single class that used a Linux environment (or Windows for that matter actually). Everything that was taught to us was simply from a textbook for the most part and that was that. Segue into how I'd personally change it...structured more around how things work in the real world. This is due to the fact that coming out of school (granted, im a software engineer) no one wanted to hire me because what was actually being used was never taught to us. I submitted my feedback to previous professors before, but from an IT standpoint i never saw a rack of servers, or even a single physical server, or a VM. Never got into how any of that worked. Even from a development standpoint, everything we learned OOP wise revolved around Java, but not even using the latest frameworks. Thankfully I landed a job in an ASP.NET shop that was willing to teach me, but from my perspective their coursework was so far behind in school that it did more harm than good. Call it a solid foundation if you will, but when your foundation is based on technologies no longer being used it does nothing to help you prepare for the real world.That being said, i dont think most universities will be at a point where they can teach us the most up to date stuff all the time. They still need more hands on experience for sure, as exposure to most of this stuff, even at a high level, is better than nothing imo.
