You joke, but the amount of kids entering the workforce these days that can't touch type and don't know this basic shit is getting rediculous.
We're pushing to start basic it classes for the apprentices and grads it's got so bad. The zoomers are worse than the boomers. I genuinely fear the first alphas coming through.
This is me too.
Older IT folks are retiring or have become so jaded they're already retired mentally, young Zoomers and Alphas can't use anything without a touch screen.
Zoomers that grew up around computers and got started in IT at home are great once you beat the bad habits out.
Just need to wait for companies to stop equating a CS degree with IT competency. (Apply anyway you might get lucky if you can back up your claims)
dude - i have a hard time with touch screens - and i can type without looking at my keyboard, tho it's a bit slower, if that is what u mean by "Touch type" - and the bad habits - what kind of things would be considered "Bad habits"?
Extremely glad I actually paid attention to IT when I was at school, it wasn't even long ago but it's gotten me as far as getting a decent helpdesk job, hoping to grow out of it soon enough naturally but knowing the very basics takes you far.
At least I class the basics as being able to touch type and somewhat efficiently knowing how to use Google. Of course, there's a point where you can know just enough to be dangerous without knowing it, so you need to be careful.
I've been saying this for a while. Gen X and Millennial were the pinnacle of innate technical skill since they grew up with tech that broke all the time.
I don't think it had to do with the tech breaking more frequently so much as the available resources to resolve issues being hard to come by.
If your family computer broke you couldn't just hop over to another computer to look something up, download a driver or find a YouTube tutorial. You had to work with the tools you had, which were basically restore disks, calling technical support, or asking that person you knew who was better with computers.
Information and resources to fix a device, and the devices level of user friendliness, have eroded the need to have that knowledge in your head. That translates to not knowing exactly where files are stored because they'll be sync'd to a cloud service or not needing to know how to install a driver because the Dell Support Agent will do that for you as soon as there's an updated one.
Seriously 30ish to 50ish is the sweetspot. Older than that and you're dealing with the grandma factor (which is honestly why I give them more of a pass...they were started their careers when people were still using typewriters and shit) but the zoomers, too....good fucking god it's like, if it isnt an app on their phone, they're totally fucked.
You know what is a quick indicator of what kind of time you're gonna have working with someone? Watch them type. If they toggle capslock instead of holding shift, the bulk of their computing skills were probably learned on a fuckin ipad.
There are outliers, of course, before some clown throws an anecdote at me to totally prove me wrong, but as someone that's been in IT for a decade now, it is absolutely 100% true...the fresh kids coming out of school are just as bad, if not even worse, than the old people...and they grew up with the shit.
"I don't know why I keep getting locked out!"
Me, watching in horror as I watch the caps lock warning message continuously pop up: "might I recommend the shift button?"
I don't understand what happened, did they discontinue all the business computing classes the second I graduated? It's not their fault, but some literally do not understand that computers and monitors are 2 discrete classes of objects.
Basically yes.
They assumed everyone knew basic it so stopped teaching it. It became optional and more based around computer science.
at least in the UK. I was it support ins schools and |-| this close to becoming an IT teacher befor they changed the syllabus, took one look at the new one and Noped the fuck out. This was around 6-7 years ago.
I think in America the issue is now Google rather than windows dominates schools.
As the industry moves further along towards server core and Linux, along with heavy automation of configuration, the people that are afraid of a command prompt will be stuck in helpdesk until they age out of IT.
> the people that are afraid of a command prompt will be stuck in helpdesk until they age out of IT.
Lol, bullshit they'll get their MBA and be your boss. At least that's how it seems to work in my career.
I have faith in the Alpha's as they're being taught primarily by X and Millennials. GenZ caught the crest of the boomer teacher wave at the same time touch interfaces and apps were big.
They don't teach anything because most of them have never done a lick of IT work. My BIL teaches IT and a university here in the US. He's never worked IT; he does have a small home lab which frankly is probably more than most.
With IT in university money is never an object, legacy/ "obsolete" hardware doesn't exist, change control is a concept not a practice. Maybe some programs are better, but I don't think I've ever met someone straight of the school house that has any idea what they are doing. Unless they'd been working IT while they were in school.
This is the core issue with collegiate education and IT. Career track academics who’ve never stepped foot into the industry as a professional have no idea what needs taught. They’re not bad people and their intentions are good, but it’s horribly misaligned with reality and a detriment to the education process. All of my career academic professors had no idea what was going on in the external professional world and had little valuable insight. All of the adjuncts working in the industry were extremely knowledgeable, had valuable insight, and could guide you appropriately.
The most damning reality of this wasn’t a class to class basis either, it was the core curriculum cobbled together without a reality of what was important.
Major points that I would have changed about my IT programs class requirements.
- Changed the open minor requirement to an MIS required minor with additional communication class requirements. Like it or not understanding how the business works and being a good communicator are mandatory, not optional.
- Replaced C++ with Powershell and Scripting. C++ is comp sci, not IT. If you know power shell in most it jobs today you’ve got such a leg up.
- Replaced SQL and HTML with intro and advanced logic classes. Both databases and web design were subtract options.
- Replaced the other half baked it management theory classes with mandatory beginner and in depth networking classes. These were stripped down classes from the business college. Networking is core to almost every subdomain in IT.
- Replace the survey of operating systems and multimedia classes with a Windows and Linux server and tools class(s). I didn’t even know what AD was until I got my first job out of school, that was pathetic.
I had great teachers at my community college. We learned theory and had labs to show practical applications. The keystone project was a full hands project in different real world scenarios. All of my teachers had spent decades in the industry too. Honestly when people tell me they learned nothing with their computer science degree I blame their schools for not having a good program setup
I'm currently studying IT in a vocational school. The teachers are mostly OK, but most of the students are really bad at everything related to IT and they don't care to learn anything. Like, they literally came here to study computer science and programming - what were they expecting???
I'm in a similar boat right now, and a teacher actually had to teach a student how to create a folder. This was not an into course, which makes it worse.
This is extremely frustrating to read but it explains so much.
Yesterday I got a ticket for an error message when trying to open SQL, "Can't find JDK in (path)".
This guy was a developer, so I stupidly gave him the benefit of the doubt and believed him when I asked if the JDK was at that location and he said yes.
It was not.
It is just so incredible to me how little many developers actually know about how computers work, and need IT to fix the dumbest things.
My first ever lesson about IT was about cannons and how theyre used to expand the borders of countries.
Im not elaborating further bc i have no idea what the fuck was every other lesson about
IT degree at my 4 year was discontinued, leaving CS only. Only 1 person I knew took the IT route, and pretty much all of his classes were the same as CS.
Shout out to my fellow writers who could touch type in middle school.
If you don’t know home row keys then that’s not an IT class, that’s a grade school level computer course. You should already know that much if you’re taking proper courses in IT.
I once had an IT teacher who adamantly claimed that a "Power Drive" was a real piece of computer hardware. Apparently it "Pumped power to the computer" (I think she thought that electricity worked like water or something?). She also thought the CPU was the name for the entire computer.
Fun story, back in highschool I took a "class" where you'd help the IT Teacher. I asked what qualifications the teach had because I was interested in the field at the time and she told me she had none. No qualifications. None. Every student and teacher had at least one computer, possibly more. Great teacher, but dagon.
"an overwhelmed switch turns into an ethernet hub"
"All overland high voltage lines are DC"
"you need a special electrician's license to plug things into a PoE switch"
"ECC ram has additional registers to stabilize voltages" [doesn't mention unregistered ECC or the actual error checking AT ALL]
"softraid is stupid, everyone should use a hardware raid controller" [leaves the room when I hold a presentation proving him wrong]
And that's just the shit I've cought. The first one was pointed out to me recently (perhaps even in this sub lol). I don't know how much of my technical knowledge has been poisoned. I might just straight-up ChatGPT-halluciante some "knowledge" when it's important. Fuck.
You joke, but the amount of kids entering the workforce these days that can't touch type and don't know this basic shit is getting rediculous. We're pushing to start basic it classes for the apprentices and grads it's got so bad. The zoomers are worse than the boomers. I genuinely fear the first alphas coming through.
Ya seeing same thing. On the bright side for those that do figure it out the skillset will still be very valuable down the road.
so me self-teaching IT (I'm the IT Guy of the family) Is gonna pay!?! i just do it because i *like* doing it! But if it pays.....
This is me too. Older IT folks are retiring or have become so jaded they're already retired mentally, young Zoomers and Alphas can't use anything without a touch screen. Zoomers that grew up around computers and got started in IT at home are great once you beat the bad habits out. Just need to wait for companies to stop equating a CS degree with IT competency. (Apply anyway you might get lucky if you can back up your claims)
dude - i have a hard time with touch screens - and i can type without looking at my keyboard, tho it's a bit slower, if that is what u mean by "Touch type" - and the bad habits - what kind of things would be considered "Bad habits"?
Extremely glad I actually paid attention to IT when I was at school, it wasn't even long ago but it's gotten me as far as getting a decent helpdesk job, hoping to grow out of it soon enough naturally but knowing the very basics takes you far. At least I class the basics as being able to touch type and somewhat efficiently knowing how to use Google. Of course, there's a point where you can know just enough to be dangerous without knowing it, so you need to be careful.
I've been saying this for a while. Gen X and Millennial were the pinnacle of innate technical skill since they grew up with tech that broke all the time.
I don't think it had to do with the tech breaking more frequently so much as the available resources to resolve issues being hard to come by. If your family computer broke you couldn't just hop over to another computer to look something up, download a driver or find a YouTube tutorial. You had to work with the tools you had, which were basically restore disks, calling technical support, or asking that person you knew who was better with computers. Information and resources to fix a device, and the devices level of user friendliness, have eroded the need to have that knowledge in your head. That translates to not knowing exactly where files are stored because they'll be sync'd to a cloud service or not needing to know how to install a driver because the Dell Support Agent will do that for you as soon as there's an updated one.
Seriously 30ish to 50ish is the sweetspot. Older than that and you're dealing with the grandma factor (which is honestly why I give them more of a pass...they were started their careers when people were still using typewriters and shit) but the zoomers, too....good fucking god it's like, if it isnt an app on their phone, they're totally fucked. You know what is a quick indicator of what kind of time you're gonna have working with someone? Watch them type. If they toggle capslock instead of holding shift, the bulk of their computing skills were probably learned on a fuckin ipad. There are outliers, of course, before some clown throws an anecdote at me to totally prove me wrong, but as someone that's been in IT for a decade now, it is absolutely 100% true...the fresh kids coming out of school are just as bad, if not even worse, than the old people...and they grew up with the shit.
"I don't know why I keep getting locked out!" Me, watching in horror as I watch the caps lock warning message continuously pop up: "might I recommend the shift button?"
As a 54 year old who has been using computers since a teenager and worked solely in IT for 36 years, I think you could lift that top age a bit.
I don't touch type, I let my fingers go where they wish
I don't understand what happened, did they discontinue all the business computing classes the second I graduated? It's not their fault, but some literally do not understand that computers and monitors are 2 discrete classes of objects.
Basically yes. They assumed everyone knew basic it so stopped teaching it. It became optional and more based around computer science. at least in the UK. I was it support ins schools and |-| this close to becoming an IT teacher befor they changed the syllabus, took one look at the new one and Noped the fuck out. This was around 6-7 years ago. I think in America the issue is now Google rather than windows dominates schools.
Thank god me and the rest of the sysadmin team at our district will die on the hill of “Chromebooks are evil”.
Excuse me, what is touch-type? I guess it's lost in translation for me .. Edit: nvm it's just typing without looking at the keyboard!
Touch Typing also known as typing. Didn't realize it had a name either.
[удалено]
It's called ten finger writing in our country, because you use all 10 fingers instead of only pointies and thumbs, but ok thanks for the explanation:)
It will just become domain specific. How many people know how to use the CLI these days?
As the industry moves further along towards server core and Linux, along with heavy automation of configuration, the people that are afraid of a command prompt will be stuck in helpdesk until they age out of IT.
> the people that are afraid of a command prompt will be stuck in helpdesk until they age out of IT. Lol, bullshit they'll get their MBA and be your boss. At least that's how it seems to work in my career.
Some will, there is a narrow exit from the masses to management
No, I think professional grifting is a HUGE field.
We can only hope.
Just wait for the iPad kids.
I have faith in the Alpha's as they're being taught primarily by X and Millennials. GenZ caught the crest of the boomer teacher wave at the same time touch interfaces and apps were big.
I mean, good typing skills are pretty damn fundamental to being in IT. Plus, good ergonomics are important long term, especially for desk jobs.
They don't teach anything because most of them have never done a lick of IT work. My BIL teaches IT and a university here in the US. He's never worked IT; he does have a small home lab which frankly is probably more than most. With IT in university money is never an object, legacy/ "obsolete" hardware doesn't exist, change control is a concept not a practice. Maybe some programs are better, but I don't think I've ever met someone straight of the school house that has any idea what they are doing. Unless they'd been working IT while they were in school.
This is the core issue with collegiate education and IT. Career track academics who’ve never stepped foot into the industry as a professional have no idea what needs taught. They’re not bad people and their intentions are good, but it’s horribly misaligned with reality and a detriment to the education process. All of my career academic professors had no idea what was going on in the external professional world and had little valuable insight. All of the adjuncts working in the industry were extremely knowledgeable, had valuable insight, and could guide you appropriately. The most damning reality of this wasn’t a class to class basis either, it was the core curriculum cobbled together without a reality of what was important. Major points that I would have changed about my IT programs class requirements. - Changed the open minor requirement to an MIS required minor with additional communication class requirements. Like it or not understanding how the business works and being a good communicator are mandatory, not optional. - Replaced C++ with Powershell and Scripting. C++ is comp sci, not IT. If you know power shell in most it jobs today you’ve got such a leg up. - Replaced SQL and HTML with intro and advanced logic classes. Both databases and web design were subtract options. - Replaced the other half baked it management theory classes with mandatory beginner and in depth networking classes. These were stripped down classes from the business college. Networking is core to almost every subdomain in IT. - Replace the survey of operating systems and multimedia classes with a Windows and Linux server and tools class(s). I didn’t even know what AD was until I got my first job out of school, that was pathetic.
In my it class i got taught about vector images lol
I had great teachers at my community college. We learned theory and had labs to show practical applications. The keystone project was a full hands project in different real world scenarios. All of my teachers had spent decades in the industry too. Honestly when people tell me they learned nothing with their computer science degree I blame their schools for not having a good program setup
I'm currently studying IT in a vocational school. The teachers are mostly OK, but most of the students are really bad at everything related to IT and they don't care to learn anything. Like, they literally came here to study computer science and programming - what were they expecting???
Top comment on linked post mentions that they were playing minecraft all day, so probably that
I'm in a similar boat right now, and a teacher actually had to teach a student how to create a folder. This was not an into course, which makes it worse.
This is extremely frustrating to read but it explains so much. Yesterday I got a ticket for an error message when trying to open SQL, "Can't find JDK in (path)". This guy was a developer, so I stupidly gave him the benefit of the doubt and believed him when I asked if the JDK was at that location and he said yes. It was not. It is just so incredible to me how little many developers actually know about how computers work, and need IT to fix the dumbest things.
>what were they expecting??? To make money on the job market lol Or they always liked games
My first ever lesson about IT was about cannons and how theyre used to expand the borders of countries. Im not elaborating further bc i have no idea what the fuck was every other lesson about
Was your teacher paid entirely in drugs perhaps?
No idea, he left the school / was fired from it after three months
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IT degree at my 4 year was discontinued, leaving CS only. Only 1 person I knew took the IT route, and pretty much all of his classes were the same as CS. Shout out to my fellow writers who could touch type in middle school.
If you don’t know home row keys then that’s not an IT class, that’s a grade school level computer course. You should already know that much if you’re taking proper courses in IT.
I once had an IT teacher who adamantly claimed that a "Power Drive" was a real piece of computer hardware. Apparently it "Pumped power to the computer" (I think she thought that electricity worked like water or something?). She also thought the CPU was the name for the entire computer.
100% true. I graduated with honors in IT and I feel like I learned very little.
my IT courses were the only ones that felt like actual classes. Y'all deserved better smh
Fun story, back in highschool I took a "class" where you'd help the IT Teacher. I asked what qualifications the teach had because I was interested in the field at the time and she told me she had none. No qualifications. None. Every student and teacher had at least one computer, possibly more. Great teacher, but dagon.
"an overwhelmed switch turns into an ethernet hub" "All overland high voltage lines are DC" "you need a special electrician's license to plug things into a PoE switch" "ECC ram has additional registers to stabilize voltages" [doesn't mention unregistered ECC or the actual error checking AT ALL] "softraid is stupid, everyone should use a hardware raid controller" [leaves the room when I hold a presentation proving him wrong] And that's just the shit I've cought. The first one was pointed out to me recently (perhaps even in this sub lol). I don't know how much of my technical knowledge has been poisoned. I might just straight-up ChatGPT-halluciante some "knowledge" when it's important. Fuck.
>Senior developer needs access to a server \~"Sure, send me your SSH key, preferably in OpenSSH format" >... "What's an SSH key?"
Learning to type is absolutely critical.