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IT Support will replace factories in Middle America. These are jobs that are 1)Trained quickly 2) Geographically distributed 3) Cheap. IT Support needs to be on
by dexwiz 9y ago
IT Support will replace factories in Middle America. These are jobs that are 1)Trained quickly 2) Geographically distributed 3) Cheap. IT Support needs to be onsite for hardware, but any Software can be distributed in smaller cities or work from home. Maybe Google will have a real help line one day?
It is also a great path into technology for those who did get CS degrees from a top school.
Side note: In the video, all the Google VPs and Leads were sitting in bright offices. The IT staff sat in dark rooms with little or no windows. @2min mark, the IT staff look to be in a dungeon at night.
- rb808 9y agoEspecially as I think many dev jobs will disappear. More free, open source platforms that are powerful and free but just need some configuration, customization and support. Developing getting simpler to becoming just config anyway. We're already seeing this, you dont need to know anything about pointers any more, just hooking up libraries.
- pm90 9y agoAt the risk of sounding utterly foolish in the future, I would say that there will always be jobs for the creative developer. The one thing that has made Software Engineering stand out from other professions is just how SE is essential/Integrated in fields outside of its immediate application. What I mean is: devs are required in Oil and Gas, Academia, Education, Manufacturing etc. apart from the regular jobs in the Computer world (i.e. Software-only companies like MS, Google). IT support will ALWAYS be required though. Unless we build some kind of AI that can diagnose issues like humans do... after which they will all become obsolete. But I don't see that happening in the next 50 years.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y agoTechnically there are still jobs for horse carriage drivers, but that doesn't mean there's a bright future in that career.
- stctgion 9y agoThe languages move on but so do the expectations. Until we have star trek style computers there will always be more to it than just hooking up some libraries
- BjoernKW 9y agoIn a way we already have Star Trek-style computers today. Many of the commands heard in Next Generation era series can be represented as SQL SELECT commands. The voice recognition is an only slightly more sophisticated Siri / Ok Google / Alexa.
- rurp 9y agoThe fact that I can get a basic web app up in an hour rather than days does not mean that I only work an hour per week, it means that I can spend my time building much more complex applications.
- rb808 9y agoDepends on who's paying, if the client only needs a basic web app - we just need the support guy.
- rurp 9y agoThat frees up the developer to work on projects that would have been infeasible a couple decades ago. To put it another way, has the growth of high level languages like Python led to more jobs or fewer? I strongly suspect the answer is more.
- rb808 9y agoYes we now have more higher level Python developers, but fewer C/C++/Assembly level developers. If the trend continues there will be more configuration/customization roles in higher languages and fewer Python level devs too.
- fenwick67 9y agoI was amazed to find out last year that both my mom and dad both have a solid understanding of SQL queries - one is a nurse and the other is an insurance adjuster.
- copperx 9y agoHow/why did they learn that? On their own? Or do Hospital and Insurance enterprise systems allow them to run raw SQL on their DBs?
- bnjms 9y agoProbably they have access to a reporting system that allows safe SQL reports.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Or do Hospital and Insurance enterprise systems allow them to run raw SQL on their DBs? There's no good reason not to, since if your security and auditing systems are correctly implemented, limited-permission DB users doing direct SQL have the same security and accountability as someone using a specialized app.
- w8rbt 9y agoIT is not CS. Not even similar.
- xcryogenicx 9y agoAS in CS working in IT here, can confirm. My college classes were programming C++, physics, calculus, and hardware architectures. Barely anything to do with IT.
- datguacdoh 9y agoWe actually expect our support team (at least portions of them) to build internal apps that automate workflows for ops work or for users. It's not always as complex as a full soft eng role, but some of our IT staff do move on to those positions internally based on the work they do in IT. I think it really depends on the company you do IT for, and what they expect for the role. At Google, our IT staff are full time engineers. Disclosure: I worked on this program and went through Google's IT Residency Program.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> At Google, our IT staff are full time engineers. If this course is based on this view of the IT Support role (which I heartily approve of, but which is not the baseline norm in the industry) it really should be called the IT Support Engineering Professional Certificate or something similar, because otherwise it won't communicate it's real focus either to applicants or, perhaps more critically, hiring officers.
- user5994461 9y agoAre you talking about SRE? They're full time engineers with CS degrees, they have nothing to do with IT.
- datguacdoh 9y agoSRE are different, I'm talking about IT staff. The job title is corporate operations engineer.
- datguacdoh 9y agoDisclosure: I am one of the instructors for this course and went through Google's IT Residency Program. Tonyour side note, the help desks (we call them Techstops) are anything but a dungeon :) you can image search for "Google Techstop" and get a very representative view of what they tend to look like.
- bluthru 9y ago>IT Support will replace factories in Middle America. Hardware continues to be more reliable, more integrated, and cheaper. For most office jobs something like Chrome OS or iOS would be sufficient.