Computer Industry Recruitment Failures 10. Outro
…and in the end
So, what can we draw from this? Granted I have few resources for anything but talk?
First, we assume these spokespersons are correct. Yes, there is a problem with recruitment in the computer world. We discard as evidence the lack of outrageous pay for computing work—the argument displays a weird grasp of economics. You could prove me wrong there, but I suspect not. And we have more evidence in the lack of applicants to posts, and the natural integrity of professionals. We also have minor but related supporting evidence; it is a breach of professional etiquette to make such statements—so the industry must have been driven by great necessity to make them.
This likelihood of the need being present is re‐enforced by the fact the computing industry is a mobile and potentially free market. Thus problems are likely to be present nationwide.
You don’t have to believe my observations, I have limited facts, but I’m guessing that education in computing in England is likely commercially driven, and now the quality is being crushed by use of standards. Two generations of secondary school leavers seem to have been trained in how to buy an iPad, but not how to work in an office. True or not, universities are receiving unskilled input. I’m guessing the University training may make up ground, and the output is good, but that the output may now be insufficient.
As for this background, Bertolt Brecht wrote a play ‘The Life Of Galileo’. In the story, he shows how science is intelligible to people, but is stolen for the ends of minority classes. He then shows how the theft of science is linked, at least in the context of the play, to maintaining power, as the science presents ideas too threatening to some parties. A far more likely description.
If nobody has done it already, computing is waiting for a European Marxist (note, not Communist, Stalinist, or whatever junk ideas you have) critique. That, or some honest‐to‐goodness right‐wing anti‐trust conservative traditionalists to get on the case. But England has none of those.
In other words, computer firms may have some case to make if they are seeking graduates. Though I do not know if this is at the bottom of what is being said.
We do know the industry itself is probably not the right agency to make up a gap. Their attempts have been so foolish, deluded, and self‐serving that they have demonstrated they are unfit for the job.
Here on out, nobody should be inclined to be charitable. The industry makes press statements about their problems. Yet, if their source is barren, they persist in using bluebottle recruitment methods. These may be the method of the day, but lie on a line tentered between ineffective and prejudice. And the firms themselves are plainly not answering their own problems. Added to which, a strong suspicion that the romantic and financial power of computing commerce is here overriding shortages in other key areas such as biology.
They said it themselves. They have a problem with recruitment. That has nothing to do with the availability of suitable candidates. The land may be a little barren. But what would you think of a farmer who took a chainsaw to his orchard, never sowed seeds, then tried to grow pineapples in Denmark? When he complained in the pub that the village should help him out?