I came up in San Jose. I have burned all my technology bridges - as have all of my friends who were still hanging on to the West Coast IT scene.
We've all been replaced by brown women from East Asia.
But the brown guys from East Asia are starting to replace the white liberal guys from San Jose who got that ball rolling. So... Karma, I guess.
Wed Dec 09 2020 21:59:44 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ UncensoredYeah - guys like you are why I have a career in IT. I actually picked
Well you'll be disappointed to hear that I am not a hiring manager anymore.
I left management to become a senior engineer and eventually an architect.
It's a great gig. Lots of brainy stuff and very little grunt work.
I am winning bigly right now. But if it ever comes to an end for whatever reason, the same person who originally hired me nearly 20 years ago would be eager to hire me again. (He's reading this but I'll leave names out so no one starts pestering him for a job.)
The certification treadmill ( in most any field, not just IT ) is an obscene scam.
I'm so glad i can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and will get to flip the bird to the industry as i exit, stage left, and never have to care again. It cant come soon enough, after 35 years of doing this crap, i'm over it.
"make your hobby your job and you will never work a day" they said. They lied. It ruins your hobby and makes your life miserable.
It was pretty good to me, and I still love my hobby. I got far in part because I'd work 16 hours straight, come home, and unwind by spending a few hours tinkering with my systems at home.
I mean, I kinda *like* that Citadel is such a bitch to set up. I like trying to bring Macs back from the dead (but I hate them when they die again)... It gives me weeks of diversion - it is like a crossword puzzle or game of chess or jigsaw puzzle, I guess...
It helps keep my mind stimulated.
Thu Dec 10 2020 20:43:57 EST from Nurb432 @ UncensoredThe certification treadmill ( in most any field, not just IT ) is an obscene scam.
I'm so glad i can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and will get to flip the bird to the industry as i exit, stage left, and never have to care again. It cant come soon enough, after 35 years of doing this crap, i'm over it.
"make your hobby your job and you will never work a day" they said. They lied. It ruins your hobby and makes your life miserable.
The certification treadmill ( in most any field, not just IT ) is
an obscene scam.
I'm not getting on the treadmill. I had the opportunity to pick up this cert and I ran with it.
IT certs were just a channel enablement thing until the mid 1990s when the usual suspects bastardized it into a revenue stream. Now it's worthless.
Unfortunately, certs are still relevant in my line of work ( at least as far as management is concerned, not 'reality' ). And without them it greatly hinders your career, or can torpedo it totally.
I'm just glad its about over for me.
I've never been turned down for a promotion for not having this or that cert, because my work speaks for itself.
Maybe if I was coming in cold at a big company it would make a difference.
I can't imagine ever wanting to have that kind of job. One of the reasons I stood out as a candidate when I was interviewing for my current job is because the hiring manager was familiar with my work on Citadel. And also because I use the vi editor. emacs users need not apply.
When i left EDS back in the late 80s ( was a COBOL developer/project manager ) i ended up doing field service work for a good chunk of the 90s. It was pretty common practice back then to have your senior tech get all the vendor certs so the shop would get paid for warranty work. ( technically you cant work on a machine unless you have taken the tests, or you void the warranty ). Even tho i was assigned to a major client and remained onsite as a 'teamlead' type, I still racked up 100's of 'service' certs back then. Left there after the people i was working for started making some stupid business moves, and the client i was at got cut loose from corporate, making staying with them unattractive ( they were gone 2 years later )... Then after a stint of being the 'resident network expert' for a financial company. ( lots of travel.. 2000+ car miles a week... i was over it ). The network certs i had ( novell, cisco, etc ), pretty much were required to even get the interview.
When A+ came around back in the 90s, it was directly stated "if you dont get this, you no longer are employed here" ( or anywhere else in the area ) Didn't matter how many years you had, or how good you were, it was just a 'job requirement" of being a tech. i dont have a clue if that is still important or not, i stopped caring around 2000 when i decided to get a job as a 'working' CTO. There we had various ISO certs we had to have as a business, or we couldn't ship product, but i didnt have to worry about any 'personal' certs. ( iso certs in the automotive world is another scam, once you are 'in the club' you can only deal with other members in the club or you lose your standing.. its insane )
I got out of management couple of years later, and back into development/project management/itsm/bla bla and once again the damned "if you dont have certs, you dont qualify" came into my world again. Not as bad due to who i work for now but its still there. As i have helped with some interviewing, i have seen many people denied entry due to lack of certs, regardless of their true qualifications. Here lately i have seen a push internally for certs to legacy employees.. not 'required' but 'highly suggested' ( i guess if the winds change and we lay people off, that will factor into who stays and who goes as on paper you are 'more valuable'. ). Some of our other BUs do have to have certs and stuff.. ( not all IT related, we support a plethora of other business units ). There are a few cases were we have no choice, due to state and federal regulations.. but its not a lot.
Ok done rambling incoherently.. . i'm tired :) But you get the point of where i was coming from i think .. its been a drain on me forever :)
Funny, even back in college i would have never dreamed id have a story like that. All the different positions, companies, the toll it takes on you, of a 35 year career when you have been burnt out for perhaps 30 of those years.
Figured id get a job, work then retire. But no, between business decisions i had no part of, or just deciding i didnt like the position, change has been the only constant. At least until the last 19 years or so.. Same basic employer ( different departments as reorgs happen ) doing the same basic work.
I guess no one really knows the future...
I was fortunate. I lost a lot of money along the way - but I came out ahead in the end, and it allowed me to get out of the corporate IT rat race and focus more on doing things that I wanted to do. I suppose I left a lot of money on the table - but it wasn't an environment I enjoyed. I've basically been semi-retired since about 2014. I do a little side gig that allows me to buy all the technology I want... and I can still pay the bills and have a few luxury cars in the garage. I never got further than a MCP in Windows Workstation 4.0 and a handful of other silly little certs like Dell/EMC SAN and Checkpoint Firewall - and I never really used them professionally. But we came up in a different time for IT - where applied skill and proven ability were all that hiring managers had to go by - and we were established professionals by the time the Cert game really got rolling. When I managed the IT shop in Ohio - the network guy was a real paper tiger. His cube was plastered with certs, and he was constantly getting another one. He wasn't very good at what he did, for the most part. He was good at some things - but he had no interest or passion in things outside of his carefully calculated career path. He has done OK - but the guys I kind of mentored who had passion and desire and wanted to consume everything thrown at them - they're doing great professionally - better than he is. I think a lot of "Certs guys" get into the career for the wrong reasons.
Sat Dec 12 2020 16:16:45 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ UncensoredI don't know about that ... maybe I'm just exceptionally talented, maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe it's just because I handed my career path over to God a long time ago ... but I'm about 2/3 of the way through my working years, and lack of certifications has never been an obstacle to my upward mobility.
I've never been turned down for a promotion for not having this or that cert, because my work speaks for itself.
Maybe if I was coming in cold at a big company it would make a difference.
I can't imagine ever wanting to have that kind of job. One of the reasons I stood out as a candidate when I was interviewing for my current job is because the hiring manager was familiar with my work on Citadel. And also because I use the vi editor. emacs users need not apply.
IT certs were just a channel enablement thing until the mid 1990s when
the usual suspects bastardized it into a revenue stream. Now it's
worthless.
Oh, wait, you are talking about certifications. For an instant I thought you were talking about all of the college/University apparatus...
I'm all for it. My college degree was useless, even though I studied for an actual skill, and that was 27 years ago. My career was far more enabled by the stuff I learned in my spare time.
As for industry certifications, specifically in IT ... back in the early 1990's I went to classes from time to time. I worked for a VAR and some of our vendors would request that we get someone trained on their stuff. The classes were informative and the tests were easy, usually in open-book form or in a lab with fully working equipment. They wanted you to prove that you knew what you were doing, not that you could memorize the book. Not too long after that, Novell started being douchebags about their certification and then Microsoft turned it into a damn clown college diploma.
As someone whose brain is wired for cognition rather than memorization, I don't thrive in that. I haven't bothered pursuing certifications. The one I completed last week was opportunistic -- the class and exam were paid for by ${employer} and I sort of became the local SME in the mean time. I didn't even think I'd pass the exam but I managed to squeak by.
For much of my life, I would have agreed with this. I got very far with an 8th grade education - which is when I basically stopped going to school. Despite that by my early 20s I was in a technology job making significantly more than most of my peers who had graduated High School, and honestly, by my mid 20's I was making more than most of the teachers who had told me the only place I was going was prison. Without doing things that could have sent me to prison.
But what I got from college was more intangible than the actual things I gained knowledge about. It sharpened my critical thinking skills. It introduced me to broader concepts, and challenged my biases. It gave me better skills to complete complex projects. It gave a framework to my raw abilities that I don't think a trade school would have refined in the same way.
I think trade school is an awesome plan for some people - but I think what we really need is a return to college campuses creating critical thinkers, instead of college campuses being indoctrination camps for Moral Leftist Thought.
Mon Dec 14 2020 13:06:45 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ UncensoredThere is a growing school of thought which acknowledges that the traditional liberal arts degree is no longer useful. Many are now moving towards the idea that vocational training is much more desirable than a fluffy college diploma. Camille Paglia called for this a long time ago; she called it the "revalorization of the trades." More recently, Mike Rowe began some outreach programs to push the same idea and actually get kids into training for useful jobs.
I'm all for it. My college degree was useless, even though I studied for an actual skill, and that was 27 years ago. My career was far more enabled by the stuff I learned in my spare time.
As for industry certifications, specifically in IT ... back in the early 1990's I went to classes from time to time. I worked for a VAR and some of our vendors would request that we get someone trained on their stuff. The classes were informative and the tests were easy, usually in open-book form or in a lab with fully working equipment. They wanted you to prove that you knew what you were doing, not that you could memorize the book. Not too long after that, Novell started being douchebags about their certification and then Microsoft turned it into a damn clown college diploma.
As someone whose brain is wired for cognition rather than memorization, I don't thrive in that. I haven't bothered pursuing certifications. The one I completed last week was opportunistic -- the class and exam were paid for by ${employer} and I sort of became the local SME in the mean time. I didn't even think I'd pass the exam but I managed to squeak by.
In practical terms mine is too, BUT it got me my first interview, with EDS, and that would not have happened without ( no degree, we dont talk to you ), and that is what set me on my career path. ( other than some DUMB mistakes i never fully recovered from a few years later )
Mon Dec 14 2020 13:06:45 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored
My college degree was useless,
If you are smart, you would have found a different break, and probably the same career path, with some company more interested in practical ability and proven skills than paper degrees.
Mon Dec 14 2020 19:17:50 EST from Nurb432 @ UncensoredIn practical terms mine is too, BUT it got me my first interview, with EDS, and that would not have happened without ( no degree, we dont talk to you ), and that is what set me on my career path.
While i dont doubt id have landed somewhere else, i am sure it would not have resulted in the same life path. Often times, just a little change in what seems trivial at the time can make things turn out totally different. Could have been better, could have been worse, but i dont expect it would be the same..
Mon Dec 14 2020 21:56:14 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ UncensoredIf you are smart, you would have found a different break, and probably the same career path, with some company more interested in practical ability and proven skills than paper degrees.
I don't regret going to college. I did a lot of personal development there, I met my wife there, I had a lot of fun there. I did not, however, learn anything in the classroom that benefited my career development.
Where did I learn the useful skills? Screwing around with computers at home.
Standing behind a television camera at the local cable company studio. Playing an instrument in a band. Drinking coffee and bullshitting with someone with experience. These are the things that make us who we are.
Going to college is just another one of those things. Sitting the quad debating an issue from class with a student, working through the system to figure out the best course to completion, meeting instructors who inspire and excite you about a topic... figuring out what you are best at, and enjoy the most, and want to do for the rest of your life - all of these experiences are just another set of experiences that make you who you are.
I learned useful skill smoking dope on K Street with my head shaved. I learned useful things in Sacramento Community College. I learned useful things at MCI, Intel, and EMC...
I don't know that I can disqualify anything I've ever done as a "waste of time" *or* a "waste of money," least of all, my incomplete college education.
But maybe it comes down to outlook and perspective - if you dismiss an experience as useless and a waste - I suppose it probably is.
Tue Dec 15 2020 11:14:19 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored
Where did I learn the useful skills? Screwing around with computers at home.
Standing behind a television camera at the local cable company studio. Playing an instrument in a band. Drinking coffee and bullshitting with someone with experience. These are the things that make us who we are.
I donno, personal development ( maturity ) that many of us sort out during college helps all aspects of our life.
Perhaps the most important part of college, a buffer between high school and real life, a last chance for us to get our heads on straight.
Tue Dec 15 2020 11:14:19 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored
I don't regret going to college. I did a lot of personal development there, I met my wife there, I had a lot of fun there. I did not, however, learn anything in the classroom that benefited my career development.
Where did I learn the useful skills? Screwing around with computers at home.
Standing behind a television camera at the local cable company studio. Playing an instrument in a band. Drinking coffee and bullshitting with someone with experience. These are the things that make us who we are.
Interestingly, a lot of the people who had it together in high school and thought I was a loser who was going to end up in prison, showed back up on Facebook and told me privately,
"Once I got away from home at college I went totally off the rails, and it set me back," and they all seemed kind of humbled that I had achieved not just so much more than they expected of me, but so much more than they had achieved themselves.
So... I guess a LOT of it depends on the individual. College was a very positive thing for me - but I did it while well established as an adult. I guess it is possible that we do college too early. Maybe let people get calloused by some real world experience and do college because they *want* the goal, rather than they are expected to. That could be the problem. There are a lot of kids in college who really just don't know why they're there yet.
Wed Dec 16 2020 06:15:06 EST from Nurb432 @ UncensoredI donno, personal development ( maturity ) that many of us sort out during college helps all aspects of our life.
Perhaps the most important part of college, a buffer between high school and real life, a last chance for us to get our heads on straight.