There is much moaning about the "failure" of schools to produce IT professionals in sufficient quantity and quality for industry needs in North America.
In fact, schools have never been the source of these desired skills. I have been an IT professional for more than three decades. It has always been the case that the most valuable skills are acquired on the job.
I graduated with a BSc in Computer Science and started working for IBM in the eighties supporting mainframe operating systems. When I joined I was given a booklet claiming that IBM had never laid anyone off even during "the great depression" and that I was embarking on a lifetime career. The people I worked with certainly believed that and were totally committed to the wellbeing of the company and its clients. We were proud to work 'round the clock, if needed. We were a team.
The team looked like this: There were a few senior hands who mentored the rest, recommended training and rescued us when we got in over our heads. The bulk of the team consisted of smart, well trained, dedicated professionals. We could stretch ourselves and be creative in our diagnostic techniques and solutions because we knew we were working with a net. Then there were always newbies coming along; They got stuck with the tedious work that was, nonetheless, good training.
So the conveyor belt was always full. Ever more skilled workers were continuously moving into positions of greater responsibility. The system worked for everyone. Then, in the early nineties, management at our company and at our major clients decided that they wouldn't pay for a team or training or learning of any kind. The expensive senior staff were 'packaged out'. Then the juniors with their lower skills. Then the ones in the middle were 'outsourced' and only brought in on contract for specific, limited tasks.
After two decades of this those of us who were originally in that middle group have become senior in our skills and earning capacity. We pay for our own upgrades and work mostly as independant contractors. For two decades the money that companies should have put back into developing IT staff has instead been paid out in bonuses to greedy, foolish managers. Now they wonder why there is a shortage of technical skill needed for their business.
They stopped watering the garden then wonder why it turned into a desert.
I gnash my teeth in their general direction.
