The more I try to tidy this the more it's become a disorganised rant. It's taken several hours to write this as I kept getting frustrated and marching off and made a cup of tea.
I was just thinking about this on Friday while frustratingly fighting through undocumented changed bus routes and schedules trying to get to my call out. My perspective, though, is the atrocious horrors of *recruiters*, and the inability as an *applicant* to get decent *employment*. I was remembering a discussion on this here a couple of years ago, and by coincidence came to look for it and found this thread.
barnacle wrote:
We might consider the rather strange concept of industries that want to hire skilled workers but which aren't ready to train them... instead, they expect workers who are already trained and experienced
So many jobs I see advertised are described as entry level, but require experience. HTF do you have experience when you are looking for entry level. BY DEFINITION You. Have. No. Experience.
And it's not just "experience" they demand, but *commercial* experience. So, the oft given advice of persuing your own projects and contributing in shared code development - sorry, no, if you were not actually in an actual contract and actually being *paid* to do it - **** off, it's irrelevent.
And commercial experience *of* *the* *job* *you're* *applying* *for*. I DON'T HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE OF YOUR JOB. IF I HAD EXPERIENCE OF YOUR JOB I'D BE ALREADY DOING IT!!!!!!
But it also works against you. If asked "what have you been doing since your last paid employment", the answer "I've been putting my feet up and getting some rest, nothing has piqued my interest lately" also elicits "**** off". But I can't *create* creativity. I'll have the urge to do something when I have the urge to do something. A couple of days ago I started putting together some "chunky" graphics character-cell plotting code... because that's when the thought occured to me. I didn't do any work on it six months ago because the idea hadn't occured to me.
I'm now seeing job vacancies with requirements for "a PhD ... an upper second or first..." and not only that, but "from a Russell group university" (these are those that consider themselves the top 24 universities in the UK). In my experience, most Russell Group don't do engineering, they are *academic* institutions.
And these were for *office* *admin* jobs on *minimum* *wage*. Quite *literally*, resetting passwords and changing toner cartridges for £22,000pa.
I don't even know what search terms to use any more when searching job websites, as everything I look for is mis-classified by people who have absolutely no idea what they are listing.
A "Desktop Engineer" is.... somebody who answers the phone and logs user IT problems.
An "IT Engineer" is.... somebody who replaces spent toner cartidges.
An "Infrastructure Engineer" is.... somebody who drags cables through walls and ceilings and plugs them into routers.
A "telecommunications infrastructure engineer" is.... sombody who clips telephone cables to skirting boards.
None of these are engineers. Some of them are technicians, some of them are fitters, most of them are office admin.
And if you do get past the recruiters and to an interview, the moronic questions they ask you.
How many people have you managed?Sorry, I'm applying for a programming job, not a management job.
How have you prioritised your work?In no way at all. *I* don't propritise my work, the person assigning me my work priorities my work. I've never had a job *managing* things, I've always *DONE* things according to the assigned schedule.
When have you gone above and beyond?Never. I do what the job calls for.
Describe when you've done xxx, yyy....*I* Can't remember! I've had about 2500 hours of employment so far in my life, I CAN'T REMEMBER TRIVIAL STUFF LIKE THAT. I can barely remember what I did *LAST* ******* *WEEK*. As soon as I get off a site, it's forgotten.
What would you do to fix problem X on a printer?I'd phone IT and ask for a replacement.
No, *you're* supposed to be the person fixing itNo, *I'm* a *programmer*, I *USE* the printer, not fix it.
And when I've delivered some equipment, questions on how to use *their* equipment.
How do I do a foreign currency transation with the purchase amount?I don't know, but I could write you a tightly optimised non-table CRC-32 generator for any CPU you asked for.
I get steered into IT Support roles or - basically - furniture removal. It's a computer, that's "IT", you're "IT", this is your job.
I've spent 30 years trying to get somebody to actually pay me to use my skills, instead I have to scrape along doing stuff I'm barely competant at. I've been programming for 40 years, yet the only paid work I get is, fundamentally, furniture removal. I was writing computer networking code with an understanding of the basic core issue of the "missing message" problem when Fujitsu's idiots were still breastfeeding, yet my current job is preparing sites for taking the new kit out of boxes and putting them on Post Office counters. ****ing furniture removal. But, according to recruitment agencies, "it's a computer, so it's IT. You're IT, so this is your job."
I know people so frustrated with their skills being just thrown away, that they just don't even bother any more. I know one really skilled ARM programmer who washes pots. Another friend does office management. This isn't dropping out due to burn-out, this is can't-get-in-in-the-first-place. "Your last job was delivering telephone directories, why should we consider you for a programming job?" Well, being alive costs money, and I quite enjoy being alive. What do you expect me to do, just sit here stubbornly STARVING until somebody deigns to employ me in a programming job? I dispair at the huge WASTE of human potential. Just being *actively* thrown away.
GARTHWILSON wrote:
My mom, who never worked in the real world, taught me that you're supposed to be super obedient to the employer, do exactly as you're told, be very dependable and predictable, etc.
Not exactly this theme, but the only place to refer to it. When I was growing up and at school there was... not an expectation, not quite drilled into us... but somehow a... "known"... about the world that if you were good at something an employer would recognise that you were good at something and pay you to do it. It was like nobody told you air existed, it just.... was.
It took me until embarrasingly long into my 20s to realise that society had *lied* to me. If you are good at something, *NOBODY* wants to employ you. You have to *FIGHT* to *FORCE* people to pay you to work. People will do everything possible to avoid paying you to work, and if somebody they have being tricked into paying you to work will do everything they can to get rid of you.
GARTHWILSON wrote:
You posted that in the last thread, it was useful to edit my CV. A lot more useful that the Employment Advisors at the Job Centre, mine who outright admitted to me in my first meeting "I know absolutely nothing about computer stuff".
GARTHWILSON wrote:
Related however is that what engineering schools, or maybe universities in general (although there are plenty of specific exceptions), are turning out. I've mentioned before that there was an editorial about this in one of the industry magazines years ago. It said the industry is telling academia, "You're not giving us the kind of engineers we need. We need ones who can do this, this, and this..." and academia responds, "Look, you know your field, and we know education. Leave the education to us, 'kay?", so the problem persists. It was a constant frustration for me in the years when I was hiring technicians and engineers.
This gets me onto another rant, which I've probably written on here before.
For about six years or so before university I'd been programming computers and building hardware to interface with them and writing control software. I did three summers doing work experience designing and building computerised medical monitoring equipment and writing the control software and documentation. I - and all my contemporaries - called this "computing". So, naturally when looking for university courses I applied for "computing" courses, guided by parents, teachers, guidence councillors, work-experience mentors, magazines, books, TV, *EVERYBODY* calling it "computing".
When I got to university I spent three years thinking "when are we going to do some, y'know, *actual* computing?" I spent ages thinking that of course I was a naive undergraduate and of course I was missing something, it would all become clear soon. But everything we were doing was what I'd have called maybe "typing" or "how to use a calculator". I didn't do any what I'd call *actual* computing until third year, when I wrote a PDP11 assembler, 6809 printer buffer driver and keyboard interface, and some digital electronics. Stuff I'd done near eight years before by that point.
Now, I wanted to spend the evening building some higher functions on the chunky graphics primitives I'd written yesterday, but I need to go to bed now so I can get up tomorrow to go and count power sockets and document POS serial numbers.
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), I suspect it’s not too different in other locales.
