Phasor Burn

This is so funny, sad, and yet completely TRUE on many levels.

I have both worked with and interviewed people who have next to zero ability to speak comprehensible English. The ones I have worked with quite often are told to go write their question in email or the trouble ticket system, as their written English always seems better than spoken. This isn’t just me being discriminatory; others at my places of $work have told these people the same thing.

Next up is the requirement to have a degree in Engineering or Computer Science AND the oh so hard to obtain skill of being “Fully computer literate”. This is more common than common sense would indicate. How people get through a degree or diploma program in a computer focused program and fail to come out the other end with basic computer driving license skills is laughably sad.

Finally, even basic troubleshooting by way of binary search method is beyond a not insignificant number of new Engineering/Computer degree holders, thus the additional required essential skill of “problem solving“. Is the problem in this half of the system or that half? OK, of the remaining, what could it be… this half or that half.

AKA You need to check BOTH ends of a cable to see if they are plugged in correctly, and then try a different cable or different computer/device on the cable to determine if it is the connection, cable, or device at fault.

These observations confirm my personal and second hand experience with people in technical roles of all levels. There are a few diamonds, a number of good enough, and then a great big sea of WTF how do they remember to breath?

I still wonder about transitioning to being a goat herder, except I think there may be similar problems in that field. Dumb goats falling off cliffs, wandering alone towards the wolf pack, neighbor herders who fall into well marked sinkholes, etc.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 9:39 am and is filed under General, Work, Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.