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The creeping IT apocalypse

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Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#141

Post by KineticLensman »

Wohlf wrote: post #35
munin wrote: post #5

This kind of change has also impacted me. It shows up when I'm trying to give students advice about starting their careers, and I realize that the first jobs I had (system administrator, SOC worker) have been replaced by robots. Especially in the SOC, I was a "Tier 1" analyst that would do monitoring (watching a bank of green lights waiting for one to turn red) and first level triage and analysis. This has been repla…

Maybe we'll see a more apprenticeship type approach, where junior personnel are instead assigned to and trained by seniors. This would probably be a net good, but who knows how things will shake out.

In the UK we have the 5% club [0], whose aim is to "to make at least 5% of its employees apprentices within a 5-year period". It does take commitment from the company, and it's perhaps not a surprise that its more common in companies that already invest in graduate recruitment. 280 companies have signed up so far.

(Disclaimer: I work for a company that has been in the 5% club since 2013)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_5%25_Club

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#142

Post by netsharc »

porpoisely wrote: post #92
klodolph wrote: post #15

This has been happening since the 1970s. Or earlier. I don’t really think of it as an apocalypse. IT skills have never had a long shelf life. Any time you are a technology expert at your company, in IT, the technology landscape will shift under you. This is the Red Queen Hypothesis in action. People who ran mainframes in the 1980s became trusted experts and then most of the jobs evaporated. Same thing happened to peo…

Another worry is recession and the popping of the tech bubble. Sooner or later the bubble has to popped and that's going to cause a lot of pain throughout the tech industry. Should be interesting to see how the industry rebounds and in what form. Will VR be the new "hot thing" like smartphones were after the 2008 recession.

But smartphones are useful because now you have a computer in your pocket (but just like a PC, it's mostly being used for social media), if I look around my train in the morning many people are staring into their phones. I doubt VR will ever reach that. But AR might, so having a heads-up-display that will, for example, show you the next step of a recipe, or which screw to undo next while fixing your car.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#143

Post by Rooster61 »

klodolph wrote: post #131
thisisit wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trick is to write your resume so it gets past HR's filter Any tips on how to do that?

Let's say the job listing says "3+ years experience with JavaScript," among other requirements. You only used JavaScript for 6 months, so you roll JavaScript up as part of your web development skills. You say, "5 years writing web apps, using Java, .NET, C#, and JavaScript." This is true, the hiring manager understands that you have not necessarily spent all 5 years writing JavaScript, and it gets past HR's filter. T…

It's often easy to spot when there is a recruiter/manager disconnect. When the language is overly gregarious/buddy-buddy, or uses the stereotypical bad job offer language ("rockstar ninja programmer", "we have ping-pong tables and free snacks!", etc...), you know the requirements can be taken with a grain of salt.

Definitely brush up on the things listed, though. Walking into an interview without at least a cursory recognition of what a listed language/framework does sucks, as it wastes your time and the interviewers'.

Also, be wary of bad recruiters. If they drink their own kool-aid and actually enforce the arbitrary x # of years in foo language blurb, you might be screwed (as well as the manager that put out the request for a hire in the first place).

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#144

Post by hourislate »

whorleater wrote: post #39
munin wrote: post #5

This kind of change has also impacted me. It shows up when I'm trying to give students advice about starting their careers, and I realize that the first jobs I had (system administrator, SOC worker) have been replaced by robots. Especially in the SOC, I was a "Tier 1" analyst that would do monitoring (watching a bank of green lights waiting for one to turn red) and first level triage and analysis. This has been repla…

How many solid universities still have IT programs? At UIUC as of 2016, the IT program was nonexistent.

I have not found one yet.

My son currently is enrolled in CS and his first 2 years of school are filled with humanities, history and a few more irrelevant courses all to keep some profs employed. His next two years will be filled with more useless courses and by the time it's all over will have cost 50k + (he lives at home and goes to a State School).

I feel like he could have taken a 6 week Java/Python/whatever and got more out of it. Add a CCNA/CCNP for the Networking knowledge, Linux Cert,Security Cert from SANS, and some self study and he would know more than a 4 year degree and be bettered prepared for the working world.

Universities in the US are all about making money, supporting football and athletics, tenure for the profs, and finally accreditation for 50k+?.

Meanwhile, 10's of 1000's of H1B's are needed because our kids know nothing and are being taught shit.

Two areas that need major change and disruption, Education and Healthcare, everything else can wait.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#145

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

bitL wrote: post #25
munin wrote: post #5

This kind of change has also impacted me. It shows up when I'm trying to give students advice about starting their careers, and I realize that the first jobs I had (system administrator, SOC worker) have been replaced by robots. Especially in the SOC, I was a "Tier 1" analyst that would do monitoring (watching a bank of green lights waiting for one to turn red) and first level triage and analysis. This has been repla…

I am worried about the latter aspect as well - in order to keep automation going, very advanced developers would have to be involved; if the whole "easy job" ecosystem disappears, there won't be any reasonable way to keep developers progressing, with best in a competition filling up the spots at "cognitive automators".

A significant number of companies who can benefit from automation likely won't need to continue to automate indefinitely. I work in software development/automation and in my industry it's more about finding and configuring a framework that enables business users to configure software systems than about automating everything possible.

Even relatively rote software development that involves embedding business logic into a software system is likely safe as long as the cost of continuing to develop that software is close to the cost of switching to some other framework. It's when the cost of development is much greater than the cost to try another framework out, or when a company wants to expand something and doing so on the development side would be cost prohibitive, that someone's job could be on the line.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#146

Post by org3432 »

dleslie wrote: post #122
munin wrote: post #5

This kind of change has also impacted me. It shows up when I'm trying to give students advice about starting their careers, and I realize that the first jobs I had (system administrator, SOC worker) have been replaced by robots. Especially in the SOC, I was a "Tier 1" analyst that would do monitoring (watching a bank of green lights waiting for one to turn red) and first level triage and analysis. This has been repla…

What you're describing is _training_; and the act of training employees has long since gone out of vogue in western markets.

I've worked in IT type jobs for over two decades, in some sense training would help, but to be frank the code and systems IT folks have built are of such low quality that it's better for everyone if they're handed over to more competent teams that can cost effectively maintain them long term.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#147

Post by JaimeThompson »

kypro wrote: post #90
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #32

I think for most mid level guys the threat isn't AI doing their job. I think its the influx of people who will undoubtedly join the "coding" workforce once automation takes away many trivial jobs like driving trucks, cabs, or flipping hamburgers at McDonalds. All these people will be told to retrain themselves and go into the tech sector, and we'll get a huge influx of cheap tech people.

I don't know if you know any working class people, but a lot of them simply don't have the intellectual capacity for tech work - which is often why they flip burgers.

It appears you don't know any working call people either.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#148

Post by joeax »

porpoisely wrote: post #92
klodolph wrote: post #15

This has been happening since the 1970s. Or earlier. I don’t really think of it as an apocalypse. IT skills have never had a long shelf life. Any time you are a technology expert at your company, in IT, the technology landscape will shift under you. This is the Red Queen Hypothesis in action. People who ran mainframes in the 1980s became trusted experts and then most of the jobs evaporated. Same thing happened to peo…

Another worry is recession and the popping of the tech bubble. Sooner or later the bubble has to popped and that's going to cause a lot of pain throughout the tech industry. Should be interesting to see how the industry rebounds and in what form. Will VR be the new "hot thing" like smartphones were after the 2008 recession.

I'm no pollyanna but I doubt we'll ever see another tech bubble collapse in the likes of the post-2000 one ever again, unless society itself collapses. And believe me, 2002-03 were the most painful years of my working life.

Sure we'll see slowdowns and some dramatic shifts in skill sets. We just need to stay ahead of the curve.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#149

Post by eldavido »

geggam wrote: post #56
munin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two points: first, even if "solid" universities are right to run away from this (and IMO they don't run away from it, they just move the IT program into the business school where you don't see it any more) there are still many other universities pumping out students into a dead career field, which should be concerning. Second, this is not just about IT programs. Computer science programs are impacted to. From the OP:…

Interviewing college graduates is depressing. No way the current education system will create people competent enough to keep this going

Don't generalize. Are you interviewing graduates from the top 10-15 programs or lesser-tier?

I think this is a big error people make. Some colleges are great. Others are horrible. It's very hard to say, "College is a waste" or "college is great".

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#150

Post by anoonmoose »

hourislate wrote: post #144
whorleater wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many solid universities still have IT programs? At UIUC as of 2016, the IT program was nonexistent.

I have not found one yet. My son currently is enrolled in CS and his first 2 years of school are filled with humanities, history and a few more irrelevant courses all to keep some profs employed. His next two years will be filled with more useless courses and by the time it's all over will have cost 50k + (he lives at home and goes to a State School). I feel like he could have taken a 6 week Java/Python/whatever and…

I went to a state school. Their curriculum is easily and readily available online. It's nothing like what you describe. On top of that, you could have seen that and known it was the case before you sent him there. I'd really like to see the curriculum for the school you describe, I have a hard time believing it could be quite that different.

http://www.cse.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Selectio...

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