Prince's Trust: Poor IT skills hurt youth job chances
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21747206
I agree with the article and I find the statistics that it has unearthed to be something of a concern. That's not what annoyed me. I read the comments and an Editor's pick, not just any comment in the list but one actually picked by a moderator to be a top comment said:
We desperately need more computer programming graduates in this country...This pissed me off so much because it is completely uninformed and it is in fact a fallacy. The problem this country has when it comes to the technology industry is not a lack of graduates. We have thousands of unemployed graduates in this country and a lot of them are Computer Science graduates, the vast majority of which have academic experience of programming. The problem is not a shortage of graduates it is a shortage of companies that are willing to employ graduates.
Most programming jobs in the UK ask for 2 years industry experience, some ask for 3, some ask for 5 and yes I have even seen some that ask for 10 years experience in an industrial setting. This is what is wrong with the technology industry in the UK and the Government is completely ignorant of this fact and is not doing anything to persuade or motivate employers to take on graduates without experience.
Now you can use the training argument, or the settlement argument that says a company would have to train a graduate or settle them into a new way of doing things - this argument is bullshit. Every company is different, Company A will not operate the same way as Company B, having years of industrial experience means nothing, all candidates once employed will have to adapt to their new surroundings and the argument that those who have done this before will be better able to cope is invalid. Simple Psychology can tell you that people learn and develop bad habits, if anything the more experience you have the more bad habits you will have. The longer you have worked in the industry the more adamant you will be of wanting to use "my way of doing it" as opposed to the company's way. A graduate is a blank slate they haven't developed any of these habits and they are still open to learning new ways of doing things, what you are asking for when you ask for years of experience in reality is a candidate that will be reluctant to do things differently.
There are countless government schemes that have been developed to help people into work that have all failed. There are even scheme now in the UK which are abysmal in they record but are still championed by the idiots who decide policy that affects industry they have never dared to enter. Sit the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith down in front of a computer and ask him to write a Hello World program in C++ and I guarantee you he will not have a clue how to do it and he is the one that is in charge of these policies. While we are at it I'd like you to read the Education section of Iain's Wikipedia article, Equally the current Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable equally as culpable in these matters would neither likely be able to complete the task.
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