Bad workmanship

[Brigadier]

No offense intended, but as you point out you are unqualified, doesn't make a bad person or indeed bad decorator, indeed for all I know you could be absolutely top drawer. You are however you look at it unqualified, it's the same as saying (in terms of qualifications) "I've been doing domestic electrics for 30 years, but I'm not qualified" That's an example BTW I don't do domestic electrical work. FWIW I work in IT, and yep you guessed it... I am unqualified.

... and that anyone thinks that really matters is a shoite state of affairs, imho.
Part of my role is to maintain our firm's certifications, and what a load of crap that is.
Online submission of (effectively) bits of paper, that presumably some office admin. reads through. No real world checks. But, as certification is a pre - requisite of many tenders, a necessary (if pointless) evil. It's a money - making game, that you have to play. No assurance of quality, safety, or anything much else.

 

[EddieM]

... and that anyone thinks that really matters is a shoite state of affairs, imho.
Part of my role is to maintain our firm's certifications, and what a load of crap that is.
Online submission of (effectively) bits of paper, that presumably some office admin. reads through. No real world checks. But, as certification is a pre - requisite of many tenders, a necessary (if pointless) evil. It's a money - making game, that you have to play. No assurance of quality, safety, or anything much else.

I don't really disagree, after all I'm unqualified and have my fingers on trading systems that trade over half a billion dollars a day, yet I am unqualified, though what qualifications you'd need I'm not sure. Common sense maybe?

 

[John D v2.0]

to be honest the fact that IT professionals are unqualified on the whole is a huge problem

compare with medical study where ethics and helping patients are drummed in from day one, and look at tech where anyone who spent a few years coding in their underpants can wield the tools to influence the world. "but it must be ok, it's just a computer program to disrupt the market". Look at all the racist, sexist etc "machine learning/AI" solutions, look at all the gig economy apps, now you realise that an unqualified IT professional can do a lot more damage than an unqualified decorator. Yes, tech has done a lot of good, but the people who actually weird the code are the ones with the final veto on ethics.

 

[IT Minion]

...you realise that an unqualified IT professional can do a lot more damage than an unqualified decorator...

Unethical issues aside, its amazing how many bodges you find in IT systems. To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

On topic my company has a lot of apprentices who join us straight out of school who we train up and get their degrees as they go. Very smart kids for the most part, very hard working and they don't end up in £30k of debt.

I do interviews for experienced hires and it's depressing how many don't really understand the basics when you dig in.

 

[JP_]

b) it was running off the upstairs lighting circuit! How on earth so called professionals can do these things is beyond me but it keeps happening, is there no honesty and professionalism left in the construction trades?

might some of these issues be DIY bodges, rather than professionals that have come in and bodged it?

 

[EddieM]

IT is too broad to be qualified in all of it, you can do a computer science degree without ever writing any software.

In my day, many, many years ago, computer science was a subsidiary subject you took with your main degree, it wasn't in itself degree worthy at university, polys yes, uni's no.

 

[EddieM]

I remember working with a recent IT grad who didnt know what hexadecimal (hex) was. Amusing and a little worrying at the same time.

 

[IT Minion]

I'd guess that IT is probably closer in scale to 'Construction'. Within it you get a large number of trades that are very different and then sub specialities within them. In the same way that a gas fitter normally isn't also a qualified electrician and there's (probably) a big difference between a domestic electrician and someone who just does industrial stuff.

For example some people are experts in networking, others user experience design, others training adoption and business change and some actually write code. Within those people who write code there's tens of major languages, most of which have different rules and syntax, some of which don't even share the same conceptual framework. (Procedural Vs Imperative). Then there's the pace of change, if you're good you only get long enough writing code to work out how to do it right before you're too expensive to actually write it. Then two years later you're so out of date you can't write it if you wanted...

 

[John D v2.0]

Interesting thread! Just have some comments below

IT is too broad to be qualified in all of it

exactly the same as health care, everyone has their own specialism and qualification. And also construction as mentioned by @IT Minion.

I remember working with a recent IT grad who didnt know what hexadecimal (hex) was. Amusing and a little worrying at the same time.

And I met a sonographer that struggled to do a blood sample after 2 attempts and asked a phlebotomist to help. But those are just technical things at a certain level, but I'd rather new grads knew all about ethics than all about hex and binary (or taking blood samples). You can find someone to explain hex when you need it, but by the time you realise you need ethics, it's too late.

 

[EddieM]

Interesting thread! Just have some comments below

exactly the same as health care, everyone has their own specialism and qualification. And also construction as mentioned by @IT Minion.
I'd rather new grads knew all about ethics than all about hex and binary .

Ethics doesn't factor in most IT, we don't produce software for the GP, well not unless your pretty well off. We just provide financial and technical information, and a shed load of it. But I get your point 're social media applications / media and the like.

Anyway, I prefer our grads to know what their doing, in fairness that is a big ask, because they may well be dumped into a tech stack they have no idea about.

 

[John D v2.0]

Ethics doesn't factor in most IT

yes ethics is always someone else's problem! especially in the financial industry.