I have spent 16 years working in the computer industry in one year or another and while I agree that college education can be a good thing, typically in the tech support end of things i’ve personally found that the people have attended classes and done just enough to pass the classes yet do not have enough practical knowledge from the classes to actually know how to do the job.
A prime example of this is I got a temporary job at a Company in knoxville back in 1999 making $9.00 an hour and couldn’t go permanent because they hired 2 people directly out of the local university that had associates degrees in computer sciences who walked in, sat down on either side of me and began asking things like “where’s the hard drive in these things” “what does the memory look like and where is it”. Now at that time i had only been working in computers for about 6 years and this was day one stuff here they were asking me. I was so flabergasted by the fact that these people were asking me these questions that I asked them the following: “you both went to {local un-named college} for two years now right” [response] “yes” [me agian] “and what did you do in those classes that you don’t already know the things you are asking me about” [response] ” well we played games mostly, Occasionally we would actually work on computer stuff but for the most part just played games” [me again] “and they give you a degree for that?” [no response]. so every since then I have no confidence and am not at all impressed with people that tell me that they have a college degree, Because I have found this to be a common thing with the people that have completed those courses.
I gained all my knowlege the old school way, by trial and error and I messed up my share of operating system loads and lost more than my share of data before I learned how to do things the proper way. The thing is I learned from all that and never again after that had to ask any one such a question as “where is the hard drive” or “what does memory look like”.
Working for one of the worlds largest computer companies as a Senior Technical Support Technician I also got to speak with quite a few technicians and “IT or Network administrators” that claimed to know their stuff and had supposedly done all the proper troubleshooting before calling me.
The thing that was a resounding commonality is that a lot of them may have done some of the troubleshooting but neglected to do the simple first year type troubleshooting that any shade tree tech would have known to do, yet these people had degrees and in some cases were fully Microsoft certified yet they were on my phone having missed some of the most simple steps.
This has been a hot topic with other industry professionals that I have dealt with in my tenure as a support technician. It’s like the certification means nothing actually, neither does the schooling. all it means is that those people know how to take and pass tests on the subject of computers. But when it comes time to actually have to practice or use the knowlege they are sadly lacking, yet the requirement of the certifications and college training is still a requirement for so many positions being offered these days. I even put off getting even the industry standard certification until I had to have it to keep my job because I didn’t want to be someone that was thought to have just taken a test and gotten a piece of paper that says I know what I am doing. I was counting on my 16 years of experience to speak more for my abilities than any piece of paper ever could. It’s just sad to me that the actual hands on experience isn’t enough for people any more and they go for that false sense of security that they get with someone that has one of those expensive pieces of paper.
That’s just my opinion, what’s yours?
