IT needs more brains, so why is it so bad at getting them?::Open-book exams aren’t nearly open enough
Speaking from years of experience in IT (nearly thirty of them), I can give my own unscientific opinion: because people put too much faith in certifications, and refuse to do any on-the-job training. You can have five of the six skills listed in a job ad, but if you don’t have that all-important sixth one, your application will get round-filed. It doesn’t matter if it would be a simple matter to train a tech on that one thing. Businesses want phoenixes for chicken scratch.
Certifications are a boondoggle, and have been for years. The tests have been rigged in such a way that candidates need to take them again and again to pass, and they get charged a fee for each attempt. The test itself is a revenue source for companies. The “prestige” those certifications bring for the companies that front them is based on their difficulty, not on their relevance or fairness.
I once attended a Microsoft certification “boot camp.” We all worked our asses off, studied the material, and most of us passed at least one test. Nobody passed all three exams except for one person. I had noticed that person using test prep software with a logo that didn’t match the stuff we’d been given. It looked like an orange DNA helix.
After the last test, a bunch of us milled around outside the building, and I asked the guy who passed how he made it through. He ran for his truck so fast that there was practically a dust cloud behind him. That’s when I decided to look up that logo on Google.
He’d been using a “brain dump” service. For those unaware of what a “brain dump” is, it’s when a third-party company sends a bunch of people to intentionally fail the exams over and over. During each attempt, those people memorize the test questions. Then the company has their plants aggregate all the possible questions in an exam pool and the correct answers to them. In effect, it’s a copy of the whole test.
Brain dumps are extremely common in IT. When I worked at VMware, many of our own employees used them to pass certification exams that were mandatory for continued employment. Those people had been doing their jobs for years. They just needed a bogus piece of virtual paper to prove it to our executive leadership. It was all about appearances.
Why is tech struggling for qualified workers?
Because it refuses to acknowledge them.
thelastknowngod@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Honestly just changing the interview process would be enough to get more people into the business.
Literally yesterday I did a code challenge to track the distance, speed, maintenance schedules, and predict collisions of forklifts in a warehouse. The job I was applying for was a pretty average SRE roll… System design, IaC, CI/CD pipelines, PromQL, etc… How is the code challenge representative of the job in any way?
I feel like I need to learn leetcode algorithm patterns just for the interviews… I never need them for the actual jobs I get hired for.
cybersandwich@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve always wondered if the solution to the hiring fiasco in IT is to have official licenses similar to the way engineers and lawyers have formal credentials.
Most companies do dumb shit like this because is hard to know if you are actually qualified or if you are blowing smoke. Everyone has had that one guy on the team who barely has a clue how to even set up his ide let alone code.
The problem with this would be the same as it is with all licenses and certs. The tests don’t match real world practice. The other option is adopting the trades approach and combine that with licensing. Apprentice, journeyman etc.
Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 1 year ago
We have certifications and I will admit to really liking the linkedin ones for endorsements
But that is still the same problem. It just means someone can study for a test. It doesn’t really tell you anything about their actual abilities when they are under pressure or don’t have a textbook in front of them.
I do like coding exams/questions and use them quite a bit. But I’ve definitely been burned by having the wrong people administering them. Some people (self included) will use them as a way to have a conversation. If your answer is “I would look up if there is a function in the STL and, failing that, a non-GPL open source solution but I can still give it a go” then I want to have your children. But there are definitely people who will instantly fail someone because they can’t write Bucket Sort off the top of their head without any need to run the compiler/a few test cases to debug it.
Which is why this mostly is the same issue facing diversity in STEM and the like. You need people who actually understand how to interview people involved. Not just the engineers who had an opening in their calendar.
Golther@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Like certifications?
Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think the trades approach is the way to go. It makes sense as far as training goes imo. And jesus christ anything needs to be done at this point.
huginn@feddit.it 1 year ago
Leetcode style interviews are good for showing off that you’re a smart and flexible employee who can solve novel problems.
The issue is that most companies don’t have any novel problems and they just need quiet competence… But want the best/smartest w/e
dustyData@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m just happy that the “rockstar developer” era died.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Pre-COVID I needed a low - mid level help desk person.
My screening questions were:
What are the steps for troubleshooting not being able to print.
Excluding out of paper or out of toner / ink which are states clearly displayed to the user, What is the most likely cause for not being able to print.
If a user puts a ticket in that they’re getting BSoD but they missed what the message was. How do you find out what that message was.
I wasn’t even looking for right answers I was just looking for some signal that they had seen the problems before or had a reasonable thought process of how to proceed.
I had around 150 applicants, six of them said anything at all that would make me think they had seen a printer or blue screen of death situation before.