Also, Cisco and Michael Lynn and Black Hat, Internet misuse, Sprint, HP, Wi-Fi, ‘Net crashing
The feature “IT staff shortage looming” struck a major chord with many readers. Here’s what some had to say:
China syndrome
I’m sick of hearing this worker shortage crap. It’s business and industry’s own fault. Working in IT sucks — by which I mean there’s no respect from the business side for the IT side. IT workers have been de-valued. IT used to be a career, but now it’s just a job, like working at Burger King or McDonald’s. Companies have stopped investing in training for their workers — they want someone else to do it. Don’t worry, someone will, and its name is China.
Geoffrey Rarick
Database/network administrator
Thoracic & Cardiovascular Institute
Lansing, Mich.
IT paradox
It’s not surprising that IT enrollments have dropped. No one wants to spend years in an expensive, difficult major at a university only to find that career opportunities rise and fall like a roller coaster. My degrees are in electrical engineering and for as long as I can remember there have been people predicting an engineering shortage. But I suspect what they were predicting was a shortage of cheap engineers, not engineers per se. According to the IEEE, unemployment among electrical engineers in this country during the past recession reached historically unprecedented levels.
Today’s college students aren’t stupid. They can see which professions are valued by society and provide long, stable careers with opportunities for growth. They can also see which ones will throw them into a labor pool that grows and shrinks with every perturbation of the economy. It seems paradoxical that with IT becoming more and more a part of everything we do, unemployment and outsourcing has driven people away from the field.
Robert Spooner
Registered professional engineer/associate research engineer
Applied Research Laboratory
Pennsylvania State University
State College, Pa.
Loyalty lacking
It is ironic that some of the same companies now crying about the declines in computer science enrollments and the people leaving the field are the same companies that shipped U.S. jobs to other companies. If these companies are so concerned about people leaving the field and discouraging people from pursuing IT, they need to start fostering some loyalty among their current employees and make IT a rewarding career choice.
For the past four years every payday has been a time of high anxiety — my employer has been laying people off fairly regularly and announced approximately a year ago that up to 20,000 more people would be laid off. This has absolutely trashed morale, and how many current employees are going to be touting IT as the career of choice? Would you want your children to work in this sort of environment? Some of my coworkers trained their replacements immediately before being laid off. My recommendation for college-bound youth is to look to health care as a solid place to be an IT staff person. People will always need medical care and it is hard to send all the related jobs overseas because of the hands-on nature of that business.
The HR and IT managers need to look long and hard at the way they treat the IT staff that they have now. We are the barometer that is looked at by college-bound youth when they select a career. Asking someone to do the work of two or more people for the same salary with lots of extra hours and then hanging layoffs over their heads does not make for a worker-friendly venue.
Mark Janowski
Countryside, Ill.
Be a mentor
The looming labor shortage is an issue for which the industry must prepare now. While true job needs are always difficult to predict, when you combine retirees with the shrinking pipeline of computer science and engineering majors at the post-secondary level, even if job growth in hardware and software engineering and related fields over the next few years was nonexistent, there may be a shortage of qualified workers in the U.S.
In addition to my role at Cisco, I also chair the North Carolina Technology Association and just completed a two-year term as chair of the Governor’s Business Council on Education in North Carolina. The Business Roundtable, a business leadership group in the U.S., just published an action plan laying out a strategy to double the number of science, technology, engineering and math majors by 2010. The industry needs to support this effort with resources and time.
How can individual readers engage to assist this effort? Mentoring is one way. A great mentor could make the difference in unlocking a middle schooler’s or high schooler’s interest in a technology career.
Joseph Freddoso
Director, RTP Site Operations
Cisco
Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Military background
The article left out one source where IT professionals came from in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s — the military services. Until the consolidation of operations in the Defense Infomation System Agency in the ‘90s, all services had large operational activities supported by both officers and enlisted personnel in the communications and computer career fields. Having spent more than 32 years with the Air Force as an enlisted troop and then a Department of Defense civilian at one of the development and operational organizations, I saw the development of many skilled IT professionals. We had approximately 250 officers and 1,200 to 1,500 enlisted personnel, of which about 50% were IT skilled. Almost all got their college degree or advanced degrees as an adjunct to their service time. The workforce turned over every three to four years, so many moved to the civilian marketplace at the end of their tour.
It would be interesting to know how many IT workers that plan to retire in the next few years have had some military IT schooling and/or experience. With the DOD downsizing its IT personnel career programs, that source is drying up, too. I know many DOD agencies are facing the same problem as the commercial marketplace — where to find qualified IT staff.
Duck [[stet]] Mara
Director
CACI
Montgomery, Ala.
How to hire
Regardless of the decrease in the number of IT, IS, MIS and CS graduates, the biggest problem is that virtually nobody knows how to hire people anymore. Nobody seems to remember that in the hiring process, the first quality you should look for is whether the candidate can get the job done. Over the years, other factors have become far too important in the process, such as degrees, prior experience, past employers and so on.
The fallout is that since nobody knows how to hire anymore, everyone says there aren’t any good candidates. If someone can do the job, you hire them, with or without the BSCS, MSCS, or whatever other pedigree you want. If you need someone to work on a mainframe, and you find someone who can do the job, but hasn’t spent a lot of time on the particular mainframe you want, big deal. If they can do the job, you hire them. However, most of the people who can do the job, are qualified to do the job, who want the job, and who might actually add value to your company, are dismissed in the resume screening process. Until people can learn how to hire again, nothing is ever going to solve the problem.
Right now, everyone is looking overseas, because they say there is an inadequate supply of talented people here. While there may, and probably are, many qualified people worldwide, there are just as many here, only the people doing the hiring don’t know how to find them anymore. They are perfectly happy to say, “I can’t find anyone” and go from there.
Maybe, rather than giving all the media coverage to people who don’t know how to hire properly, it would be worthwhile to get some media coverage on how business is going in the toilet because nobody can recognize and cultivate talent anymore. Most of the people that started this industry 30 to 50 years ago couldn’t get hired today if their lives depended on it. General current hiring philosophy dictates that if you don’t have an advanced degree in a related subject, plus 10 years experience in something that has only been around for five, you’re worthless. Talk about the beginning of the end on the horizon.
Dave Sroelov
President
A & S Computer Services
Wake Forest, N.C.
Two generations in IT
Regarding “IT staff shortage looming”: In 1969, I was just getting out of high school. My business teacher encouraged me into a new and exciting career – computers – and I have never regretted it.
I don’t have a college degree, but I do have a computer programming diploma, a certificate from EDS’s Network Communication Program and American Institute’s Data Communication Level II Certificate. I’ve been in this industry for 35 years now (21 years in computer operations and 14 years in network hardware) and have seen technologies evolve greatly in both computers and networks. Currently I install and maintain network hardware equipment.
Now my daughter is following in my footsteps. She is a computer operator at an IT company. She has just completed her training in global information technology at a vocational school for the Cisco Certification Network Administrator (CCNA) program and is in the process of studying to take the CCNA exam in the near future.
Over the years as she was going up, I would take her to my job and show her what I did. Even now, we still talk about this industry and what she has to do to become a CCNA professional. Your article states that we should encourage young people to go into this field, and this is what I have done both indirectly (I say indirectly because I did not know she’d like this field) and directly with my daughter.
Lately, my daughter has been frustrated in trying to get a new job (entry level) in the networking field and she at one point wanted to leave IT all together. But after reading your article today, it has re-lit my hope that opportunities in the IT field still exist and that it just takes time and patience to get there.
James L. Jones
Telecommunication Technician III
MCI
Auburn Hills, Mich.
Protect whistleblowers
Regarding “Cisco, ISS, Michael Lynn and Black Hat sign legal accord”: It seems to me that Cisco’s and ISS’s threats violate Lynn’s civil rights, and they may be liable to criminal prosecution under the RICO act.
Anyone who divulges product defects deserves respect and the protection of the law. The same logic would have suppressed exposure of asbestos and cigarette risks.
Rich Janow
South Orange, N.J.
Lines have blurred
Regarding “Internet misuse costs businesses $178 billion annually”: We always see articles such as this about how much time employees waste. There is such a blur between personal time and work time. I think it would be interesting to see how much time we spend doing work-related activities when not on the job or on the clock. Cell phone calls, checking work e-mail, researching that project on the Internet at home, etc.
Then it would be really interesting to see how much work U.S. businesses have “outsourced” to their customers and how much personal time we spend doing things that employees used to do, such as pumping gas, ringing up our groceries, depositing funds in the bank, etc.
I’m not saying that these things are good or bad, but just that the lines between personal life and professional life are very fuzzy these days.
Jon Christensen
Consultant
Orem, Utah
It would be interesting to try and square this study with the recent gains in productivity that are often attributed to high tech. It raises some interesting questions. Does Web surfing replace offsite errands in cases (virtual errands)? Has the Web increased the productivity of non-work related tasks and lowered the time people are away from work?
Marc Schwager
Founder
1704 Marketing Consultants
Los Altos, Calif.
Forgotten commodities
Regarding “Sprint’s devotion to wireless raises questions”: I worked at Sprint for several years and your story is right on target. However, this strategy was executed because of how commoditized wireline services are these days. Enterprise customers no longer get excited about wireline services; they want to hear about the glitzier offerings and how they integrate with the wireline offerings. So my hat’s off to the executives at Sprint for keeping the customer’s focus off of the commodities and on the jewels.
Joe Pascual
Tampa, Fla.
Natural death
Regarding “Interex founder discusses group’s demise, end of HP World”: As a past writer for the trade pubs at Interex, I saw the declining relevance of this group many years ago. I just revisited the site to look through their press releases for more on this; nothing was posted. But more telling, there was one release this year; the next one was two years old. Interex died from lack of purpose and need, not because the vendor wanted to take tighter control of the user space. The users saw little need for this show since it primarily supported the declining HP 3000 base and the users’ group never successfully incorporated the technical systems or the Unix platforms HP sold. This story is truly one of narrow focus and an inability to embrace the future.
Rob Lee
Technology architect
Highland, Calif.
Thou shalt not steal
After reading the article “Mooching Wi-Fi”, I began to wonder if we could apply this type of thinking to other aspects of our lives. Can I borrow my neighbor’s car, simply because he left the keys in it? What about little Timmy’s bike that he left out on the front lawn during dinner? He isn’t using it, I will bring it back, and there is no sign saying, “Do not steal my bike.”
One of the biggest crimes in America today is the total loss of moral and ethical values. Why can’t we stick to the simple fact that if someone else paid for it, and they have not invited you to share it, you should stay out? I have WLAN in my home, and it is locked down as best I know how. I also have a neighbor close by who broadcasts his SID, uses all the defaults, and will hand out addresses left and right to anyone with an access card. I could cancel my service and use his, but I did not pay for it, and he did not invite me to share. I suspect his openness is due more to a lack of understanding in WLAN configuration that it is a desire for everyone in the neighborhood to have Internet access on his dime, but that is no reason for me to use his access.
This reminds me of the hackers’ defense years ago, before security banners really became necessary. The hackers claimed they did not know they were not supposed to access those computers because no one said no. Come on! They all knew what they were doing was wrong; they just wanted some easy way to get away with it, or avoid paying for their indiscretion. Sound familiar?
Scott Magerfleisch
Denver
‘Net crashers
Regarding Mark Gibbs’ Backspin column “Many could crash the ‘Net… but they lack motivation”: It would appear Gibbs’ definition of “crash the Internet” is “render every Cisco router that matters ineffective at the same time.” For this to happen, there would have to be a combination of exploitable vulnerabilities applicable to all Cisco routers, with the exploit(s) available to the motivated attacker(s). If I recall, Michael Lynn was addressing a vulnerability for which a patch was already available — his main complaint seems to be that it isn’t widely deployed enough. Yes, it is bad that the Internet is a Cisco monoculture — but how long do you think that would last if even a significant fraction of the ‘Net were offline for an hour or more?
Donald Welker
Warwick, R.I.
Not a hero
Regarding Mark Gibbs’ Backspin column “Stepping in front of the freight train”: What Michael Lynn demonstrated was that he could remotely access a Cisco router and gain the highest level of access, which gave him the ability to do anything from degrading performance or monitoring traffic to disabling the router completely.
The problem is that because much of the Internet relies on Cisco routers, this is pretty serious stuff. Cisco did fix this issue some months ago, but many companies have yet to upgrade their router firmware. Lynn said if the router owners “upgrade their firmware, they’ll probably be fine.”
His responsibility was to advise Cisco — to give Cisco time to evaluate and correct the problem, and if Cisco refused action, then and only then to broadcast the vulnerability. He chose glory as a hacker accomplice. Lynn should be barred from IT world.
Leslie Satenstein
President
Aviles Technologies
Montreal
