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The creeping IT apocalypse

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Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#211

Post by softawre »

kamarg wrote: post #127
kypro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And a lot of them also just didn't have the opportunity to learn it but are easily smart enough to pick it up when their ability to make a living depends on it. Let's say 10% of these working class people just need a push to discover they're actually decent at coding/devops/admin/etc. 3,500,000 truck drivers means an additional 350,000 people competing for IT jobs. Now factor in all the other people employed in these…

Totally agree. People will do what they have to to not starve.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#212

Post by taude »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #181
0xffff2 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New college grads today aren't prepared to do anything more complex than watch the green lights. If we automate out all of the entry-level work, that means we have to train workers to a higher level before they enter the work force, which is clearly untenable with today's college tuition (at least in the US).

That's demonstrably false. Hell you can just look to startups created by new grads and dropouts to confirm your view point is inane. Today's college grads are better equipped to do a wider breath of work than any other time in history precisely because of the efficiency gains of automation.

Sure, there's outliers. But Not all college grads are capable of operating at that level. Which is why companies have a lot of regimented hiring practices and tests to filter out all those not making the cut.

I've been on the college recruiting circuit to help my company hire, and I'm often severely disappointed by a good portion of those I meet. There's occasionally the standout who really impresses me, but then I think they're never going to want to stick around at my place. With this thought, I'm sort of in agreement with the commenter who said that we need college to train people at a higher level since there's almost not time on the job to ease into it.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#213

Post by normal_man »

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…

> 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

Yeah god forbid he enrich his mind and develop lateral thinking skills, empathy, perspective and wisdom instead of focusing exclusively on how he can best serve capital.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#214

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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.

I suspect, if you aren't just being hyperbolic, you mean, “because he chose to a seek a degree from a liberal arts institution rather than an engineering one (which would have some, but less, general ed) or a vocational certificate program or career-focussed bootcamp.”

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#215

Post by zozbot123 »

normal_man wrote: post #213
hourislate wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Yeah god forbid he enrich his mind and develop lateral thinking skills, empathy, perspective and wisdom instead of focusing exclusively on how he can best serve capital.

Who says he shouldn't be doing these things? That's what secondary education is for, in most of the developed world. Apparently, college is the new high school - in a quite literal sense!

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#216

Post by normal_man »

zozbot123 wrote: post #215
normal_man wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Yeah god forbid he enrich his mind and develop lateral thinking skills, empathy, perspective and wisdom instead of focusing exclusively on how he can best serve capital.

Who says he shouldn't be doing these things? That's what secondary education is for , in most of the developed world. Apparently, college is the new high school - in a quite literal sense!

OP, the guy I'm replying to, seems to be saying that? That's why I replied to him?

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#217

Post by jimbokun »

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…

Agreed.

"I’ve spent my career in tech, almost a decade at this point, running about a step-and-a-half ahead of the automation reaper."

I mean, yes, that is the entire job description. If you are in IT, your responsibility is to learn the best technologies, and be continually re-evaluating what to keep of your organization's current and what to improve or replace.

That is why I wouldn't want to do anything else. I love learning new things and no profession offers more opportunities to learn new things than computer technology.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#218

Post by jimbokun »

Rooster61 wrote: post #101
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…

> The same thing happens to programming positions. I can't stress how important this is. Folks going to things like boot camps or other educational outlets that focus on one language will utterly kill their career if they aren't aware of how fast things move. If you don't learn the underlying abstractions and paradigms that take various forms in different languages, you will get left in the dust in a matter of a few…

The key skill is knowing how to continuously acquire new skills.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#219

Post by TheCoelacanth »

munin wrote: post #46
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.

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:…

Except that there are more developers than ever developing more software than ever. Instead of one business app with five backend developers and three ops people and a DBA you have five business apps each with two developers.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#220

Post by gaius »

catdog wrote: post #153
gaius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT skills have never had a long shelf life. But this isn’t true, outside of webdev. If your skill was “DB2” or “Oracle” or “Cisco” or “C++” you could have had a 30-40 year career in that, easily. There are plenty of others. Java has been around commercially since about 1995, there will definitely be plenty of Java jobs in 2025.

True, but on the other hand those technologies have evolved more or less drastically as well. E.g. the Java or C++ skills from 1995 won't get you that far today, both in terms of the language itself and the framework/library ecosystem.

Sure, but it’s a gradual, iterative process, and each new feature you learn builds on what you already know, there’s no sudden cliff of obsolescence. When Oracle 9i came out there was still plenty of work for Oracle 7 and 8i guys and they had time and an easy path to migrate on and a big community to help them. Same with Java. There will be guys retiring in 2035 who have done Java for their entire 40 year careers! Even today a C++98 guy could find work maintaining something while he or she got up to speed, many sites aren’t even fully on C++14 yet and won’t be for a few more years.

Whereas in webdev you’re basically starting from scratch every 2 years and competing with new entrants to the market because they literally have as much experience of the hot new framework as you do.

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