Toolkit

Story: 2010: The year of the techie

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Even if we were to start churning out techies, it doesn't always mean you get a good techie in the end. As an industry run by totally disconnected morons that could hookup their own dvd players, the approach is taken as if it's solely a matter of a college education and voila!, a techie is created.

It isn't. The physical side of the techie industry is closer to a skilled trade without the same attention to skills development that, an example, a plumbers apprentice would have to endure.

Lots of folks wander out of the two year degrees, 6 month degrees, four year degrees and are not neccessarily skilled.

Personnally I don't hire anyone under the five to seven year mark because they don't have the mindset to be a practicing techie. In juniors there are some technical skills, a certification or two and lots of energy. Unfortunately no soft skills and lack of depth of understanding different environments hurt junior techies. Some things off the top of my head from my experience; the inability to tell a client "no", keeping track of time so they get paid, preparing site reports, charging for their time, stop telling the client to F#%k off and curb the language on site. Most of the times, the only role models they come with is the bastard operator from hell or a dilbert character.

With a intermediate or a senior, I don't have to train them, the knuckles have already been rapped. They understand what it is to be an IT contractor, how to conduct themselves and how to deliver something. Time and experience bring the necessary skills to be successful when doing contract work or for that matter any IT work.

It's weird that somehow people wouldn't trust an 3 year apprentice plumber to fix a building system's water works. However when it comes down to massive enterprise databases, mail systems, payroll and the systems that run the water works. Having a tech degree/cert and little or no experience is all you need.

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