Re: Amazon diagnosis

[Jason Baugher <jason () thebaughers com>]

On 5/2/2011 4:11 PM, George Herbert wrote:
> On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Jeroen van Aart<jeroen () mompl net>  wrote:
> > Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:
> > > On Mon, 02 May 2011 12:27:34 PDT, Jeroen van Aart said:
> > >
> > > > It surprised me because I, perhaps naively, assumed IT workers in general
> > > > have a rather broad knowledge
> > > Sorry to break it to you.
> > That's ok, the past tense in my story testifies to the fact I was already
> > aware of it. But thanks. ;-)
>
> There was a significant decline in knowledge as the .com era peaked in
> the 90s; less CS background required as an entry barrier, the
> employment pool grew fast enough that community knowledge
> organizations (Usenix, etc) didn't effectively diffuse into the new
> community, etc.
>
> The number of people who "get" computer architecture, ops, clusters,
> networking, systems architecture and engineering, etc...  Not good.
>
> Sigh.
Unfortunately we see this when we interview candidates. Even those who 
have certifications generally only know how to do specific things within 
a narrow field. They don't have the base understanding of how things 
work, such as TCP/IP, so when they need to do something a little outside 
of the normal, they flounder.

Jason