Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students
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In the automative field (which I know a little because I studied automotive engineering and manufacturing at university for a time) we have similar separations.
Someone working as an auto tech (bench) knows what parts to order from the dealer, which third party parts can work instead, what tools to use to replace parts, how to trace wires or test seals, how to safely put a car on a rack, how to change a tire, etc.
Someone working in automotive engineering (IT) might not know any of that stuff, but has to know aluminum tensile strength designations, how iron fails under stress, the cost of raw materials and aerodynamics.
The one designs the mess that the other gets to work on later, they are certainly related in that one designs and the other works on cars. But their job roles are extremely different at the end of the day with different classes, degrees, even schools. Different employers, titles, career options and so forth.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Anyway my point to this is if they knew bench work that would also mean they understood how the technology worked on a basic level.
This is where we keep disconnecting. Knowing bench does NOT mean knowing how the technology works. How it works is IT. The problem with the people in your example is that they don't know IT. Bench has nothing to do with the situation. This is a basic IT failing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
In the enterprise space, you have facilities people who put computers on desks and plug them in. Because even that stuff is not bench. In the same way that the bench shops doing maintenance are not IT. It's all clearly separate.
In small shops, IT does lots of other jobs because they lack the staff to do it and someone has to do it and since IT waits on it, IT does the work, it just makes sense. But that's in no way the same as it being an IT job.
Far removed example: you use the company restroom and it is running low on toilet paper. So you restock the toilet paper since you are there and notice that it is low. That doesn't make stocking toilet paper an IT function, even though IT did it.LOL ok good example. I understand what your saying here and it does make sense. I was just saying that many other people, supposedly IT management for many years say that bench work and above is IT. It was what I was told by management before I got to current job.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
I understand knowing how to grease a cpu is not helpful specifically but a well rounded bench person would not make these same mistakes.
A well rounded middle schooler wouldn't make these mistakes. That doesn't make that bench, it just makes it basic computer knowledge.
A well rounded sixteen year old knows that more torque means more acceleration until the tires tear off. The issue is people making decisions without knowing the basics. Bench does not mean basics.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
The issue is a lack of IT knowledge and a lack of IT processes to look it up when needed. The issue you mention is an IT one, I'm unclear how you are connecting it to bench. Why would a bench tech have any of that knowledge or know how to apply it?
Even when they look it up they do not fully understand because they have never been hands on with the tech. A good bench tech would know how the tech works and who best it applies to.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
LOL ok good example. I understand what your saying here and it does make sense. I was just saying that many other people, supposedly IT management for many years say that bench work and above is IT.
I'm going to guess, that this is the problem in your mind that is making it hard to follow my logic. Look at what you stated, maybe unintentionally, you said "bench and above." I've tried to be clear, but I know it is hard to explain, that bench is NEVER about being below IT, that's a total misconception. Just as an automotive tech is not "below" an automotive engineer. In fact, the highest paid role is the auto tech working for a top racing team - they easily earn double a top automotive engineer's salary.
Bench isn't a level, it's a different career. One that runs parallel to IT, not below it. It's not what you do until you get to IT, it's just a different job. If we think of bench as being "basic" or "below" in relation to IT, then of course we would perceive those skills as needed. But both IT and bench have the same "level" at their beginning points. And they share the most basic "how things work" knowledge with any power user. But they diverge once they become fields.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Even when they look it up they do not fully understand because they have never been hands on with the tech. A good bench tech would know how the tech works and who best it applies to.
I think I was a decent bench tech and I can guarantee that bench doesn't teach you that. Because bench never sees systems running, they really don't know how things relate to each other. They see what works and fails, but not work works well or poorly. Bench rarely would be exposed to enough of the full stack to have any useful insight there.
But any competent IT person definitely would. Being hands on doesn't make any difference unless maybe you are an extremely current, extremely technical white box desktop designer for video gaming or something. It would be insanely niche within the bench space to get any exposure to useful knowledge. And it would be exclusively bench that wasn't in a business and, just as IT often does bench work because it is handy to do so, outside of business bench often does the IT work for the same "flipped" reasoning.
Bench would not have any insight, not realistically, into something like how CPU cache interacts with certain applications. They might know what the CPU cache is and does, but knowing how it affects the end users makes it IT experience that would matter.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
It would not. Use your example as a guide. Like I keep saying, no amount of bench knowledge would have changed anything in the situation. They'd still be just as clueless, still not know what they need, still make the same decisions. Bench knowledge would not help.
Ahh I see we still have a disconnect here in our thinking of bench and IT. I am thinking of it from a little higher level than you are. Your definition of bench includes people with no knowledge of how the overall system works while I was including that.
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A major bench job that I managed on behalf of Dell in the ~1990s was doing motherboard replacements for laptops. Laptops were failing because of bad capacitors and they needed to be replaced proactively at large clients. So my teams would travel on sight with boxes of parts. We would go desk to desk, open up the laptop and inspect the capacitors. If they were the bad ones, we'd remove the motherboards and swap them out - which took a lot of physical expertise, but no technical knowledge of the laptops. We didn't have to know what they ran, how they were used, if they had a business need, who the user was and so forth. We had to identify electronic part numbers and replace certain ones.
That was bench work. Zero business knowledge, decision making or interaction. We were pure tech. But even being well paid, relatively senior bench workers, we never used the laptops when they worked beyond powering them on and running a diagnostic routine. If it passed, we were golden. That the OS worked, what it was or whatever was of no concern. Our involvement started with the physical tech and ended there.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
They are so wildly different, it's hard to believe anyone working in either does that. There really is extremely little overlap. In the enterprise space, they are not just totally separate disciplines, but have legal ramifications and in the financial space have full separation of duty concerns. IT isn't allowed into data centers, bench isn't allowed access to IT systems. They are extremely discrete.
They certainly do which is where my own biases come from. They come from management themselves who believe this. However, this has all been small businesses where an IT person does anything connected with the systems
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Ahh I see we still have a disconnect here in our thinking of bench and IT. I am thinking of it from a little higher level than you are. Your definition of bench includes people with no knowledge of how the overall system works while I was including that.
It's not that bench people would never know the full stack - it's that their job would never include it. Any random person might take an interest and know more than their job definition says. For example, in my previous post, an IT person might know all about the capacitor issue. It's common for IT people to find bench interesting, to some extent. But it's still bench, just something they want to know more about.
But bench work would never have a reason to know more about the logical needs of the system. It doesn't help their job in any way.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Bench doesn't buy tech, bench works on tech in a business. They work on tech purchased by IT. If you stick to the definitions that I gave, it really does keep this clear. Bench doesn't make business decisions. If you feel that bench is doing that, check again, it's always IT making the decision (or no one making a decision and it is all just random... which is pretty reckless.)
Alright for the sake of not going down a rabbit hole we will never emerge from I guess i can use your definition:)
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
They are so wildly different, it's hard to believe anyone working in either does that. There really is extremely little overlap. In the enterprise space, they are not just totally separate disciplines, but have legal ramifications and in the financial space have full separation of duty concerns. IT isn't allowed into data centers, bench isn't allowed access to IT systems. They are extremely discrete.
They certainly do which is where my own biases come from. They come from management themselves who believe this. However, this has all been small businesses where an IT person does anything connected with the systems
Managers that are not IT or bench experts would often be the source of bad info. And the SMB is just a mess not just of IT doing everything including plugging in microwaves and fixing toasters, but all IT disciplines are merged into one as well with people unsure even what a system admin is.
That's actually a great example. Think about the SMB where managers can't figure out the different between an admin and an engineer, a systems or network person and so forth. If they don't even know what IT titles are or what they mean, how would they ever figure out what is or isn't IT?
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
What they don't do is make decisions about the technology infrastructure. They work with it physically, but not logically. It's a very clear separation.
Ok so you are saying that IT is a purely logical role( or mostly) and that bench is physical?
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Bench doesn't buy tech, bench works on tech in a business. They work on tech purchased by IT. If you stick to the definitions that I gave, it really does keep this clear. Bench doesn't make business decisions. If you feel that bench is doing that, check again, it's always IT making the decision (or no one making a decision and it is all just random... which is pretty reckless.)
Alright for the sake of not going down a rabbit hole we will never emerge from I guess i can use your definition:)
Well it's kind of important for a critical reason - if I say that Bench is X and IT is Y, and then that bench does XX and IT does YY and we then trying to figure out who does Z, if we don't share the original definition then we have a big disconnect.
I think a lot of the confusion here is not that you feel bench knowledge is useful, but that you feel that my reference to bench is something that I'm saying is IT. So I say "Bench means X and X means..." but you are hearing me say "Bench means Y and X means..." so the results from the same statement come to different places.
Once you accept that when I say bench I mean X then I think by extension you automatically see that the people I call bench and their knowledge would do nothing to help IT decision making. But if you feel it is something totally different, then it might.
It's easy to argue that bench and IT aren't that clearly defined, and that's fine. That's just discussing how words are used. But once they are defined as I've defined them, I think there is little grey area as to how bench and IT as I define them work and interact.
Does that make more sense?
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
What they don't do is make decisions about the technology infrastructure. They work with it physically, but not logically. It's a very clear separation.
Ok so you are saying that IT is a purely logical role( or mostly) and that bench is physical?
Correct, which is nearly all a result of one delivering business solutions and one delivering technology. Neither is absolutely 100%, but really close in practice.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
This is where we keep disconnecting. Knowing bench does NOT mean knowing how the technology works. How it works is IT. The problem with the people in your example is that they don't know IT. Bench has nothing to do with the situation. This is a basic IT failing.
I can understand that then. I assumed they would know how it works better than they do with the money they make.
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What I mean by the above statement is that I don't, in my mind, define bench by being physical, I define it from the other end of deliverables. And I don't define IT as being logical, I define their deliverables. But at the end of the day, to deliver a business solution you must be in the logical space.
Or another way to look at it...
Bench delivers the physical components to IT; and IT uses what bench provides to build logical solutions to the business.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
This is where we keep disconnecting. Knowing bench does NOT mean knowing how the technology works. How it works is IT. The problem with the people in your example is that they don't know IT. Bench has nothing to do with the situation. This is a basic IT failing.
I can understand that then. I assumed they would know how it works better than they do with the money they make.
One would hope, but in reality making a lot of money rarely results from technical knowledge. Schmoozing does way, way more for getting salaries up.
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One of the things that I find surprising, but I know deep down why it happens, is that a lot of people who call themselves IT get offended when they find out that I define them as bench. But this implies that they see bench as too lowly for them or that they are too good to be seen as bench techs. Which is odd because they are happy with the work and the pay, but feel the need to be labeled something that they are not. This implies that a lot of bench people feel ashamed of the work that they do, which they should not as it is a necessary and valuable career. Why "not being IT" is seen as a mark of shame makes little sense to me. Do lawyers skulk because they practice law instead of doing IT? Seems unlikely.
