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IT Skills That the Modern Workplace Needs

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Learning about IT is lifelong and active, not passive. There are no shortcuts to IT excellence either, especially via the enticing 'Learn All About IT in 3 Days; $19.99 was $ 99.99' courses. I know, because I have been in the game for over half a century and I am still learning.

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​This website was devised to inform the information technology (IT) world that there is a chronic and growing shortage of IT people with the right skills to fulfil the computing needs of the modern workplace.  It also aims to dispel myths about the nature of IT and chastise those who seek to narrow its confines to only what they know. This habit is succinctly expressed thus:

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‘Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.'  Arthur Schopenhauer  

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Research and supporting articles, published at the end of 2021, repeated in 2022 and 2023, indicated that the UK IT skills shortage was at an all-time high, with about nearly 80% of IT vacancies difficult or impossible to fill. You can search for 'IT skills shortages ..' and get skill shortage numbers from other years but there are always shortages. Why is this, when there are hundreds of IT courses and thousands of degree-waving graduates out there and have been for decades?

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There are several reasons, the solution to which will escape those who do not understand the problem. The IT skills problem stems from these root causes:

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1. Many current training paths are founded on computer science (CS) or personal computer (PC) and Windows bases, neither of which fully address the needs of the modern workplace and the rapid evolution of computer technology and jobs. Yes, jobs which, like the Covid19 virus, mutate over time and have an estimated half-life of 2-5 years. 
   
   If you think that after your degree or apprenticeship: 'That is it, I'm set for life' you are deluding yourself since IT is a career and lifetime learning journey. IT does not like 'coasters' or 'stick in the muds' and has a tendency to leave them behind.
    

2. The people entering the computing workplace are mainly from schools and universities and as a result are CS trained and/or PC oriented. Other demographics are rarely exploited; that's a big mistake. Neither is there an IT course which addresses mainframe, enterprise or high performance  computing (HPC). Almost all school and university courses address computer science aspects, few of which addresses the modern, evolving workplace computing.
    

3. Other courses, of which there are hundreds, present a patchwork of IT topic coverage with little synergy between them and to grasp IT principles would require using extracts from very many courses. That's not feasible (or affordable) and it still wouldn't produce the IT all-rounder, capable of following the job mutation which permeates IT.
    

4. The UK (followed by the rest of mankind) has a large IT skills shortage, which has existed for decades, and it was at its worst recently, where 'recently' means whenever you read this sentence.
    

5. There is a trend today to solve the skills crisis by trying to develop specialist skills from scratch, that is, without any pre-requisites. This is not a good idea. That is like joining the UK SAS or US Navy Seals from an accountancy job.
    

6. The number of IT jobs that need various skills is so large that face to face teaching cannot cope. In addition, there are not enough teachers with pragmatic workplace IT skills to teach in that mode anyway. Online teaching and learning has a big part to play in solving this dilemma in the short and medium term.                                                                                                      

7. Job Mutation 2:  
   ‘ “Colleges and universities are struggling to maintain relevance in IT skills development, as the average half-life of a technology skill is just 2-5 years, according to IBM (*). This means that when a learner graduates with a four-year degree in information technology ends, a large part of the knowledge will be dated or obsolete. See Understanding the challenge of decreasing skills half-life .         

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Other Facts

1. 70% of all IT projects fail, in ways from ‘not quite what we needed’ to ’total disaster’. The UK public sector specialises in the latter mode of failure. In particular, failure rates for Modernization and Digital Transformation are also in the 70%+ bracket. There are other papers supporting these facts but with slight variations in the failure rate. Think about what these problems are due to. Could it be skills related to narrow syllabuses, poor understanding of IT methodologies and the CSFs (critical success factors) which separate success from failure. Yes.​​
                                                                          

2. IT has an affinity with the human body in that there are specific elements such a veins, arteries, nerves and other items which affect the whole body. This is the reason that any medical specialist must go through general medical school first, not by attending a specialist boot camp and learn say, cardiology from a standing start. Similarly, IT and its components in general form a synergistic whole. For example, if you solve a performance problem by installing a bigger CPU, it will have knock-on effects on storage I/O and the network in keeping up with the increased workload and speed of data generated by the CPU.
 

3. Simply going into depth of one aspect of IT without an understanding of the IT environment risks job obsolescence in the job mutation ecosphere (see next item) and an inability to converse with colleagues on wider aspects of any project. This is simply because any IT projects and skills impinge on several other IT areas, many of which have mutual dependencies. This is why any specialisation needs a broad underpinning, comprehensive knowledge of workplace IT.
 

4. IT, and in some cases methodology, change rapidly  so static course curricula (and associated hardcopy collateral) which do not keep pace with this rapid evolution lose their value year by year. After a year or two, they become history due to the pace of change in IT. This is not only true for pure technology but in methods, techniques and other areas.
 

5. There is an undercurrent in IT today which suggests that suitable IT training, interspersed with an apprenticeship or similar work placement, is possibly a better route than a 3- or 4-year degree, and less expensive. This view also generates the thought that although a degree will get the holder an interview, only the performance at the interview will get you the job. The degree is a piece of paper.​ 

                       

6. The latest fly in the ointment is the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) in IT (and in other areas). You will note the increasing number of articles on generative AI emerging which suggest the value of its use in coding, debugging, testing, cloud management and many aspects of systems and service management, including automation. Some also suggest it has great productivity benefits, sometimes a euphemism for taking jobs away. General IT knowledge can minimise the impact of this trend by easing the passage into other areas of IT.
 

To get a feel for what I am saying about workplace IT take a look at the lT Topic List . It is not expected that a general IT person will recognise all the terms in it but should recognise plenty and be able to write a few sentences on many of them.

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The discussion above is a summary of my Case for General IT from which the summary crystallised. This link is not an easy read since it is a series of supporting observations from very many sources but hammers home the message of 'general before special', plus the fact that current supposedly 'general' or 'fundamental' IT education does not fit the bill. Much of it is PC-oriented, some presenting the entrails of IT but none mentioning enterprise computing or HPC. This amounts to the denial of the fact that there is a world, hence a career, outside these narrow boundaries. 

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Current IT Fundamentals courses are narrow in their coverage and this critique  on 'IT FundamentaIs' courses I prepared shows how they stack up against each other and, by implication, and against the General IT  course.

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Denial of knowledge of this 'hidden' world exhibits career-limiting disingenuity.

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IT Apprenticeships

These are fast becoming a viable and cheaper alternative to a 3-year Computer Science course. They also shorter and far more applicable to what is needed in the modern workplace (see IT Topic List above). The only issue I see in this, at least in the UK, is that no apprenticeships offer or suggest a comprehensive general IT course which covers the whole IT ecosphere at an appropriate level.

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Take a look at the discussion in IT Apprenticeships and see what you think. You might also compare any Computer Science syllabus with the IT Topic list above.

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