The knowledge economy myth

thebman

Yet more evidence if any was needed that this is a FF buzzword and that they don't take the economy seriously and want property bubbles and desperately hope that will we see export led growth when other countries recover and hoping that they don't have to do anything. Seems clear to me that there is no plan for the economy or any kind of recovery and the closest thing to one is to try to get a green bubble going building clean technologies and then deal with the economy when we have windmills everywhere (exaggeration).

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ireland-bottom-of-class-for-technology-1917596.html

RELAND is close to the bottom of the world league when it comes to technology in the classroom.

One in three Irish 15 year olds hasn't used a computer in school, twice the average in the rest of the developed world, according to a 2006 survey.

Another study in the same year put Ireland 19th out of 25 European countries on the use of technology in the classroom.

And nothing has changed since then.

The 2007 National Development Plan envisaged a €252m investment in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in schools in the period to 2013.

The proposed investment was the subject of no less than 17 statements from former education minister Mary Hanafin.

A strategy group was set up to advise on spending priorities, and it reported that an "expansive and strategic investment in ICT in education is an investment in all our futures, and must now become a reality for Ireland".

But darkening economic clouds cast a shadow over the plan. Soon after his appointment in May 2008, Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe was forced to admit that "decisions on the timing and amount of expenditure in this area this year must be made in the overall context of the current budgetary situation".


Disadvantaged

While there has been limited sponsorship from industry and some ICT support for disadvantaged schools from government agencies, most others have relied on parent donations, cake sales, raffles, golf classics and supermarket tokens for even the most basic ICT equipment.

The delay in rolling out a national scheme is worrying educationalists, who say Irish pupils are being left behind in the digital revolution.

A recent report on ICT in schools warned that years of under-investment meant that Ireland has been "leapfrogged" by other countries, and at a time of fierce global competition for hi-tech jobs.

Last week, Mr O'Keeffe finally signalled that money for computers in schools may be on the way at the end of this year -- but only at the expense of the school building program

Being into gaming, I frequent gaming forums and see kids from other countries talking about their programming classes in America and other countries.

Seems sad that Ireland doesn't give a crap about its children and isn't planning for the future in anyway.

csm

knowledge != programming





but you're right in that there has been chronic underinvestment in education, which is criminal if we want to create this knowledge economy. I don't think a lack of computers in schools is particularly worrying though. I'd be more concerned about infrastructure & class sizes

SLUSK

Why bother with programming, when this kind of stuff can be done by code monkeys in India for the fraction of the cost here?

cavedave

The evidence on the usefullness of computers* is fairly ambigious. There is a good article on it here.

But the question of Ireland being a knowledge economy is a good one. You would expect an economy based on knowledge to have book shops of a resonable standard. We don't.

You would expect some public intellectuals that could argue based on this knowledge to try affect policy. With the exception of economics we don't have any. If our economy is to be based on physicists, chemists, computer scientists, biochemists and such you would expect people to be able to recognise one of them.

Britain has many famous scientists (Dawkins, Greenfield Winston etc) who will go on telly and talk about why a partucular policy is good/bad for scientific research. There are also people like Singh and Goldacre who though not famous as scientists still put a knowledge based argument across. In Ireland who do we have to promote the knowledge economy?

*for education

dvpower

cavedave wrote: »

The evidence on the usefullness of computers is fairly ambigious. There is a good article on it here.

Good username:rolleyes:

The evidence on the usefullness of computers is fairly ambigious. There is a good article on it here.

Diarmuid

dvpower wrote: »

Good username:rolleyes:

Ever hear the phrase, "play the ball, not the man"?

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Noreen1

I agree that the "Knowledge economy" is a myth perpetrated by FF.

I would like to add that foreign languages are not promoted sufficiently, either. Graduates fluent in a number of Languages is a basic requirement for multinational trade - yet we do not seem to give it anywhere near the priority it requires.

Noreen

Cannibal Ox

The knowledge economy might seem like a myth to some people because it comes from sociological/philosophical/economic theories of post-industrial societies and the information revolution. Because they're theories it's difficult to make any genuine sense of them without a solid example (which is sadly lacking from the discussions). It mightn’t help that the politicians don’t actually know what the **** it is anyway, but that’s not the point. The point is Ireland needs to turn in to a knowledge society.

The gist of the idea (s), as far as I can make out, is sound. You need to shift from manual labour to mental labour. The service industry, and the science sector (industry), need to be the focus of economic (and education) policy. Ireland can't compete with other countries on the basis of its manufacturing might, so it needs to focus on the knowledge of its workforce. It’s competitive advantage.

It doesn't mean that everybody has a PhD, can programme computers, or recite the theory of relativity like we used to recite the rosary. It means we need to use our heads instead of our arms to make money. How? Stop focusing on aspects of farming and manufacturing as one of the driving forces behind the economy, and shift the focus and effort on to service and knowledge/information producing industries.

But, try selling that as a politician. I'm sorry, traditional base of the party, but you're going to have to stop raising and selling cattle. It's no longer useful to the economy. And neither are you. I'm sorry Mr. and Ms. Barely Above Minimum Wage, but we're going to be shutting down factories all over the country and leaving you and your skills back in the 20th century because you're a drain on the economy. You'd bleed votes by the second.

Do any of the politicians know any of the theories around knowledge societies? I doubt it, but I'm sure their advisors, or who ever is pushing it, does. And it is something that needs to happen because Ireland can't compete economically the way it has tried to since its independence. It needs to change its focus, the opportunity is there, but it needs a *lot* of political will and a *lot* of money. Neither of which are in plentiful of supply at the moment.

Permabear

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murphaph

SLUSK wrote: »

Why bother with programming, when this kind of stuff can be done by code monkeys in India for the fraction of the cost here?

Someone needs to be sufficiently skilled in writing code to write the specifications (or higher level code) for said code monkeys though.

In any case, I'd say most programming isn't concerned with grand projects that can be sliced up into modules and off-shored to India for coding. A lot of firms need programmers on site.

leninbenjamin

SLUSK wrote: »

Why bother with programming, when this kind of stuff can be done by code monkeys in India for the fraction of the cost here?

developing a programme is 10% design, 20% development and 70% maintenance (the stats are wrong but it's something along those lines). You can outsource the dev if you want, but you need competent people to maintain a large system in house.

SLUSK

leninbenjamin wrote: »

developing a programme is 10% design, 20% development and 70% maintenance (the stats are wrong but it's something along those lines). You can outsource the dev if you want, but you need competent people to maintain a large system in house.

I thought you wouldn't have to deal with all this crap when everyone starts using "cloud computing".

Amhran Nua

The entire concept of a knowledge economy is flawed, imho. It depends on third world countries respecting your IP, so the "brains" in the west provide the schematics for the "backs" in the east. Its flawed on another level as well, which is that people in third world countries are quite capable of understanding and building on work done here, and therefore replacing the brains with their own brains, on top of controlling the industrial production capabilities. The largest economies on earth are massive exporters for a reason, and thats where we need to focus our energies.

leninbenjamin

SLUSK wrote: »

I thought you wouldn't have to deal with all this crap when everyone starts using "cloud computing".

'cloud computing' is nothing new. It's just being pushed a lot more at SMEs and home-users now. Many large corporations have had their own in-house equivalent of 'cloud computing' for years.

Amhran Nua wrote: »

The entire concept of a knowledge economy is flawed, imho. It depends on third world countries respecting your IP, so the "brains" in the west provide the schematics for the "backs" in the east. Its flawed on another level as well, which is that people in third world countries are quite capable of understanding and building on work done here, and therefore replacing the brains with their own brains, on top of controlling the industrial production capabilities. The largest economies on earth are massive exporters for a reason, and thats where we need to focus our energies.

you're placing too much importance on the IP. The product is never just the IP itself, it's also the services and after-market care of the seller towards an implementation of said IP.

toiletduck

csm wrote: »

knowledge != programming

Quite true, however programming does exercise a persons problem solving skills and force them to really analyse a problem in a way, that outside of Applied Maths, doesn't seem to be evident in any secondary school courses/subjects.

book smarts

When Ireland becomes poor enough kids will start teaching themselves the way Indian kids do. Thanks to the Internet lots of info is out here. I'm sick of people blaming "education" or the "government". Smart people largely teach themselves, even in college. Maybe if kids weren't so fcking lazy these days. Also parents have a lot to answer for.

dvpower

leninbenjamin wrote: »

'cloud computing' is nothing new. It's just being pushed a lot more at SMEs and home-users now. Many large corporations have had their own in-house equivalent of 'cloud computing' for years.

Servers?

Amhran Nua

leninbenjamin wrote: »

you're placing too much importance on the IP. The product is never just the IP itself, it's also the services and after-market care of the seller towards an implementation of said IP.

That only applies in certain business types, and as Dell has demonstrated, you can outsource that quite ably. The entire concept of a knowledge economy rests utterly on respect for IP. Which countries like China don't have.

hobochris

Amhran Nua wrote: »

That only applies in certain business types, and as Dell has demonstrated, you can outsource that quite ably. The entire concept of a knowledge economy rests utterly on respect for IP. Which countries like China don't have.

What Dell demonstrated is that they can get people to to work on a factory floor assembling computers from ready built parts(Which is in essence like putting together Lego blocks, no Computer science degree required!) cheaper in Poland.

AlekSmart

We are indeed trying to peddle the world the myth that Ireland is a "knowledge economy," but it just isn't.

A big +1 on that book smarts.

If any potential employer of products of our Knowledge Economy wants to get a sneak preview then all they need do is present themselves to the Belfield Flyover any Wednesday or Thursday evenin.

At some point in the recent past the quest for knowledge became subsumed into the quest for "The Craic".
This notion of "The Craic" allows for all manner of anti-social,aggressive,incapable nonsense to be excused especially when its inflicted on the greater public by a gang of "Lads" (Non Gender Specific).

We collectively need to wise up PDQ before the more civilized Europeans decide to ditch us as a lost cause and move on to supporting book smart`s "Indians".

I have lost count of the number of times in the last month I have watched small groups of European visitors being exposed to imbicilic savage carry-on by quite obviously disturbed yahoo`s all excited at the prospect of more cheap-gargle in some City Centre dive.

I note yesterdays suggestion by IBEC for a compulsory Gap-Year between 2nd and 3rd Level during which the Yoof could do "some sort" of course to prepare them for University life....really does say a lot about our entire education system that it should come to this ???

hobochris

AlekSmart wrote: »

I note yesterdays suggestion by IBEC for a compulsory Gap-Year between 2nd and 3rd Level during which the Yoof could do "some sort" of course to prepare them for University life....really does say a lot about our entire education system that it should come to this ???

1 year mandatory military service maybe? as they do in Italy.. Instill discipline into those that require it.

leninbenjamin

dvpower wrote: »

Servers?

spot on

Amhran Nua wrote: »

That only applies in certain business types, and as Dell has demonstrated, you can outsource that quite ably. The entire concept of a knowledge economy rests utterly on respect for IP. Which countries like China don't have.

what are you talking about? Dell are manufacturers and nothing to do with the 'knowledge economy'.

cavedave

Amhran Nua

The entire concept of a knowledge economy rests utterly on respect for IP. Which countries like China don't have.

Not necessarily. there are many good descriptions of why intellectual property slows down innovation. Here is a book on that. Sex Science and profits also coherantly argues against IP, except for pharmaceuticals.

Probably not the place for a full on IP argument. But put it this way Cannabis producers have no IP. they have no government funding. the stuff has still gotten much stronger and innovated in other ways over the last few decades.

Amhran Nua

hobochris wrote: »

What Dell demonstrated is that they can get people to to work on a factory floor assembling computers from ready built parts(Which is in essence like putting together Lego blocks, no Computer science degree required!) cheaper in Poland.

leninbenjamin wrote: »

what are you talking about? Dell are manufacturers and nothing to do with the 'knowledge economy'.

Sorry just to clarify I was referring to their post production services, the infamous Indian call centre.

cavedave wrote: »

Not necessarily. there are many good descriptions of why intellectual property slows down innovation. Here is a book on that.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I am saying that basing an entire economy on respect for IP is not a good idea.

MysticalRain

Someone on Boards put it very well in a previous thread... the government's promotion of the "Knowledge Economy" is just a way to make us feel better about losing our manufacturing jobs. It takes some brass balls for our politicians to talk about a knowledge economy given the state of our education system and our third world broadband infrastructure.

#15

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I think there is a place for Irish in the school system.
Language study is never useless.
However, the emphasis put on Irish is too large IMO.

I am required, as a primary teacher, to spend more time teaching Irish than Maths.

For primary teachers who are unlucky enough to work in religious schools (where religious instruction, rather than education, is required) they must spend more time giving religious instruction than teaching science.

If that is not an argument for doing away with religious instruction in schools, I don't know what is.

I can't link anything here, but I can tell you that I am quoting from the Irish primary curriculum.

The second language in a school (which is usually Irish) is typically allocated 3 hours and 30 mins per week, as opposed to 3 hours for Mathematics.

SESE is given 3 hours - 1 hour each going to History, Geography and Science.

In schools with a religious ethos (ie most of them), instruction is generally 2 hours and 30 mins per week.

It is infuriating, it really is. And thats before considering the lack of computers and technology in classrooms.

Knowledge economy my ass!

jmayo

thebman wrote: »

Yet more evidence if any was needed that this is a FF buzzword and that they don't take the economy seriously and want property bubbles and desperately hope that will we see export led growth when other countries recover and hoping that they don't have to do anything. Seems clear to me that there is no plan for the economy or any kind of recovery and the closest thing to one is to try to get a green bubble going building clean technologies and then deal with the economy when we have windmills everywhere (exaggeration).

Being into gaming, I frequent gaming forums and see kids from other countries talking about their programming classes in America and other countries.

Seems sad that Ireland doesn't give a crap about its children and isn't planning for the future in anyway.

It is has been one of my bug bears for a long time, actually from way back circa 1999/200 when every Tom, Dick and Mary was being converted to IT related skills and the then government were running off telling everyone how educated we were and how we were so far ahead.
It was bullsh**, and if you wanted to get good smart people, and even more importantly hard workers who had an interest and cared, you had to import them, because even at that stage loads of our supposed smart ones were actually the product of a half ars** conversion course somewhere.
Would you give any credence at the moment to someone with an IT qualification from Fás ?

Smart economy was a buzz word the likes of coughlan heard at some ff think in, and together with "finality" and "going forward" are the only ones she remembers. :rolleyes:

As for that sanctimonious eejit ryan and his high speed broadband for all myth. It is a bloody mobile network broadband he is offering.

And don't get us started on the claptrap we will become windmill manufacturing supremos. The countries that will do that are the ones with a good manufacturing industrial history and base.

Oh and this last point also applies to the new cuckoos on the block, amhrain nua, who appear to have adopted the cast off green party policies. :rolleyes:

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

#15

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I think it should be possible to study both Irish and a foreign language, even at primary level.
Our school is part of a pilot project on foreign languages. The older classes learn French every week and they love it. Only a few schools around the country are involved though.


One boy in my class is 8 years old and he can speak 7 languages, its amazing!

The early years are the best time for learning languages, we should be throwing our kids into langauges at an early age. They love learning new words, the great thing about teaching language to young children is that they don't see it as a chore. Compare that with teenagers starting a language in secondary......!

So, basically you are saying that Irish gets three and a half hours per week, while religion gets two and a half hours per week, for a combined total of six hours. In other words, the equivalent of a complete school day each week is spent on these two subjects alone.

Where is An Bord Snip when you need them?!

Exactly. A combined 6 hours is spent on Irish and religion in catholic schools.
I cannot comment on religious requirements in other schools.

Maths and science comes to 4 hours per week.

Religious instruction does not fall under curriculum guidelines, but Irish, Maths and Science do.

If I do not allocate more time to Irish than Maths or Science, I would be getting a rather poor report from my inspector/s.




Edit: I found a link to the Introduction to the Primary Curriculum. The time allocation is dealt with on page 79 of the PDF (it is actually page 70 of the book).

http://www.ncca.ie/uploadedfiles/Curriculum/Intro_Eng.pdf


If anyone is interested in the primary curriculum of each subject, just go the ncca website. They are not PDF, the text is actually on the site itself.

Peanut

Amhran Nua wrote: »

...
I'm not disagreeing with you, I am saying that basing an entire economy on respect for IP is not a good idea.

I don't think the IP aspect is that important when talking about developing a tech. sector. In the software industry at least, the focus has moved away from selling packaged products, to providing a service which may be delivered over the web for example.

In terms of other countries copying ideas and services - that's a risk in any sector, but we have a huge advantage in Ireland due to native english speakers and a reasonably good infrastructure.

I'm living in Istanbul at the moment, and the two most popular training courses advertised on the street here are for IT and English.

The trouble I see in Ireland is that there is little hunger from people to advance themselves. There seems to be an attitude that the Government will take care of it, and sure if they don't we can bitch about them a bit more.
Whereas in other countries, these guys are going out and doing something about their situation, instead of hanging around waiting for someone else to fix it.

Perhaps that's one argument for a smaller, less intrusive Government.
We have got used to the idea of deferring responsibilty of running the country to our elected representatives - now when they can't deliver the goods, we don't know where to turn to.

As mentioned in previous posts, the drink culture and compulsory Irish in secondary don't exactly help much either.

asdasd

Why bother with programming, when this kind of stuff can be done by code monkeys in India for the fraction of the cost here?

Hmm, the term code monkeys has become more popular recently, partly because code writing has moved to India. That doesnt make it any less easy, or something that monkeys can actually do.

Even the most trivial project has, probably, more intellectual problem solving than say being a barrister ( which is a matter of rote learning, mostly).

I agree, however, that there is a problem with the idea that the Knowledge Economy will save "us" - us being the general West. Why would it? Indians can do that as well, and innovate too. Eventually they will. This is unfortunate as it makes the salaries of engineers fall to a level where the smartest will go elsewhere - probably, as in England, - to banking where they will feck up the world economy once again.

That said all successful companies in IT will have people with engineering, or computer science degrees making the decisions, and coming up with the ideas. Like google, yahoo, Apple etc. The problem with IT is that too many muppets with no understanding of any thing besides marketing, or bizness, are in charge and not only can you not trust these people to make the right decisions day to day, you can generally not trust them to hire anybody good.

That said there is nothing the government can do.

Cannibal Ox

Amhran Nua wrote:

third world

Developing states. It's slightly bizarre that someone who is trying to hawk a political party doesn't know that

Amhran Nua wrote:

It depends on third world countries respecting your IP, so the "brains" in the west provide the schematics for the "backs" in the east.

Developing states are already shackled in to "respecting" the West's IP through the TRIPs agreement. And a fine agreement it is, denying millions of people access to cheap, generic medicine and condemning them to death because, shucks, we just gotta protect our IP. If any developing state seriously infringes the TRIPs agreement, they tend to be dragged before the WTO and told to shape up.

If you're worried that China or India will take all our IPs, I gotta wonder if it's occurred to you that China or India may well soon have IPs that they want protected, and it may well be in their interest to ensure that agreements like TRIPs are respected by other countries? IP law will get stricter and stricter because the world is changing from a unipolar world to a multi, and while old agreements might have been enough for the US's purposes, China, India, and the EU will start pushing even harder to protect the ideas that they develop.

Amhran Nua wrote:

The largest economies on earth are massive exporters for a reason, and thats where we need to focus our energies.

Because they have massive populations. Do you think Ireland, with a population of 4 million, can compete with the US, India, Germany, Brazil, or China in manufacturing? Really? Really?

The sad fact is that the only competitive advantage this country possibly has is in its citizens heads. It doesn't have any advantage when it comes to manufacturing, so pursuing that as the main drive of our economy is tantamount to suicide.

asdasd

Do you think Ireland, with a population of 4 million, can compete with the US, India, Germany, Brazil, or China in manufacturing? Really? Really?

Probably he means per-capita.

The sad fact is that the only competitive advantage this country possibly has is in its citizens heads. It doesn't have any advantage when it comes to manufacturing, so pursuing that as the main drive of our economy is tantamount to suicide.

Our citizens heads, eh? F*cekd then :-)

thebman

asdasd wrote: »

Hmm, the term code monkeys has become more popular recently, partly because code writing has moved to India. That doesnt make it any less easy, or something that monkeys can actually do.

Even the most trivial project has, probably, more intellectual problem solving than say being a barrister ( which is a matter of rote learning, mostly).

I agree, however, that there is a problem with the idea that the Knowledge Economy will save "us" - us being the general West. Why would it? Indians can do that as well, and innovate too. Eventually they will. This is unfortunate as it makes the salaries of engineers fall to a level where the smartest will go elsewhere - probably, as in England, - to banking where they will feck up the world economy once again.

That said all successful companies in IT will have people with engineering, or computer science degrees making the decisions, and coming up with the ideas. Like google, yahoo, Apple etc. The problem with IT is that too many muppets with no understanding of any thing besides marketing, or bizness, are in charge and not only can you not trust these people to make the right decisions day to day, you can generally not trust them to hire anybody good.

That said there is nothing the government can do.

Well I think you can of course say developing countries can do these things but realistically you can separate yourself as high cost with proper branding.

Other western companies are going to be more comfortable dealing with western companies and this obviously comes with a premium but one many will pay.

And as for manufacturing just look at the likes of Apple that are charging a couple of hundred dollars more than they should be able to with proper branding.

The reality is there is a market for high cost services.

Sponge Bob

Peanut wrote: »

I don't think the IP aspect is that important when talking about developing a tech. sector. In the software industry at least, the focus has moved away from selling packaged products, to providing a service which may be delivered over the web for example.

How ????

lmimmfn

i started programming when i was 11, so it doesnt have to come from school, i will admit though in this day and age its a disgrace that theyre arent any computer subjects at primary or secondary schools.

thebman

lmimmfn wrote: »

i started programming when i was 11, so it doesnt have to come from school, i will admit though in this day and age its a disgrace that theyre arent any computer subjects at primary or secondary schools.

True me too but if it was on offer in schools, it would wake people up to it that don't realise they are interested in the field.

It would also help people decide on CAO forms if they want to go into computer courses.

In my computer course in first year, half the class dropped out in the first month because they were shown a hello world C++ program and they all said I didn't know it was going to be this kind of thing, I haven't a clue.

Most of them had never heard of the command prompt in windows let alone ever used DOS which people my age with an interest would have done so it was a massive gap for those people.

The one reason programming is a great thing for Ireland is that as long as you have a communications infrastructure (which you have jobs maintaining), location isn't a major issue and our location can be an advantage as seen with Ms new data centre that utilises the consistency of climate in Ireland for cooling.

csm

To be fair, if they didn't have the wherewithal to research their chosen subject even just a little bit, it's a good thing they left without degrees. Those people didn't need computers in their schools, they needed classes in initiative and a healthy dose of cop on. Unfortunately that's something that most people don't get until they've grown up a little.

thebman

csm wrote: »

To be fair, if they didn't have the wherewithal to research their chosen subject even just a little bit, it's a good thing they left without degrees. Those people didn't need computers in their schools, they needed classes in initiative and a healthy dose of cop on. Unfortunately that's something that most people don't get until they've grown up a little.

Unfortunately there will always be 16 year olds that don't do their homework

Kalashnikov_Kid

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Sorry, that is just not true. One could argue that if you have good logical and numerical abilities, you actually have a distinct advantage in the points system over the humanities - i.e. if you are capable of an A1 in Maths, you have skills that can easily be transferable to get an A1 in Applied Maths, Physics and Chemistry - 400 points in the bag.

You cannot apply that logic to the humanities - all subjects marked on grounds of subjectivity, not on a right/wrong binary like the maths subjects. English, History, Geography, Art etc. are largely seperate entities and I for one would certainly not scoff at anyone getting A1's across the board in these.

If you have a natural strong mathematical ability, you should do very well across the board if you put the work in, while at the same time you may not be able to string two sentances together in a coherant manner - why should we reward this?

And don't some university courses give points bonuses for Honours results in Maths-based subjects?

shoegirl

SLUSK wrote: »

Why bother with programming, when this kind of stuff can be done by code monkeys in India for the fraction of the cost here?

True but there are lots of other areas in IT sorely lacking skills - operational management, documentation, informtion systems management, projects management.

That said a significant problem is that generally companies don't train programmers from the ground up anymore. They expect ready made, fully skilled, just-add-water instant employees fresh out of college.

To be honest, and I say this as somebody working in IT moving more and more towards the business side, especially operations management. One thing i see is huge skills deficits, lack of resources for training and upskilling, a lot of personal laziness and overestimation of skills (especially amongst unqualified IT workers), a lot of complacency. But one issue is a huge gap in business knowledge amongst IT workers and IT amongst businesspeople.

SLUSK

shoegirl wrote: »

True but there are lots of other areas in IT sorely lacking skills - operational management, documentation, informtion systems management, projects management.

That said a significant problem is that generally companies don't train programmers from the ground up anymore. They expect ready made, fully skilled, just-add-water instant employees fresh out of college.

To be honest, and I say this as somebody working in IT moving more and more towards the business side, especially operations management. One thing i see is huge skills deficits, lack of resources for training and upskilling, a lot of personal laziness and overestimation of skills (especially amongst unqualified IT workers), a lot of complacency. But one issue is a huge gap in business knowledge amongst IT workers and IT amongst businesspeople.

I don't think this really answered my question in full, why could not all these other areas be outsourced as well?

thebman

SLUSK wrote: »

I don't think this really answered my question in full, why could not all these other areas be outsourced as well?

Because it doesn't make sense in many cases as they won't have the knowledge for the software being developed such as in Ireland, Irish phrases or different things. We also have a good understanding of data protection laws in our own country and as recent credit card detail leaking in some outsourced centres will demonstrate when you pay peanuts, people will take it upon themselves to bump up their wages.

amacachi

The best way to sort out our education system is some kinda of streaming based on performance, but it'll never happen in this country. Outside of the luvvy schools we'll still have the 5% who are messers and 5% who should be in special needs holding the other 90% back.

In primary school (up to 2001) we had Acorn computers and it wasn't until 6th class we got online. Which was a dial-up connection divided among 30 computers. Cue secondary and it was 2003 before a usuable internet connection was available. Every student had a half-hours "computers" class a week which consisted of MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint repeated for 6 bloody years. Not even a little html ffs.

Myself and a couple of others were lucky in Primary school in that most teachers gave us extra work to keep us from getting bored, most teachers aren't as attentive alas, or can't be.

Peanut

Sponge Bob wrote: »

How ????

You can run an online business in Ireland, the great thing is that you don't need to keep your hardware there!

lmimmfn

thebman wrote: »

True me too but if it was on offer in schools, it would wake people up to it that don't realise they are interested in the field.

It would also help people decide on CAO forms if they want to go into computer courses.

In my computer course in first year, half the class dropped out in the first month because they were shown a hello world C++ program and they all said I didn't know it was going to be this kind of thing, I haven't a clue.

Most of them had never heard of the command prompt in windows let alone ever used DOS which people my age with an interest would have done so it was a massive gap for those people.

The one reason programming is a great thing for Ireland is that as long as you have a communications infrastructure (which you have jobs maintaining), location isn't a major issue and our location can be an advantage as seen with Ms new data centre that utilises the consistency of climate in Ireland for cooling.

I agree 100% with all that you say, in my Bsc 50% had dropped out from first year to final year, and again youre right in that maybe 20% of those in my first year dropped out because they didnt have a clue what programming entailed.

The one + point i will give for Ireland is that if you have an idea of what you want to do its very easy to nourish that taste and to develop it into both a job and a passion. However from a government point of view, they've done 0 to invest in this area, whether in communications or in a training capacity.

One of the worlds most prominent software exporters my ass, broadband penetration and speed is in the stone age, theres no government incentive for teleworking even though its such a rural country and on top of that there are no incentives to train kids early in IT( to give direction or allow them to form an opinion on it ). You get a few hours a week in primary and secondary school for art, thats not worth a crap in comparison for the need of knowledge of how to use a computer in todays society, not only that poor folk wont have their PC or broadband putting them at an extreme disadvantage.

Diarmuid

Kalashnikov_Kid wrote: »

Sorry, that is just not true. One could argue that if you have good logical and numerical abilities, you actually have a distinct advantage in the points system over the humanities - i.e. if you are capable of an A1 in Maths, you have skills that can easily be transferable to get an A1 in Applied Maths, Physics and Chemistry - 400 points in the bag.

You cannot apply that logic to the humanities - all subjects marked on grounds of subjectivity, not on a right/wrong binary like the maths subjects. English, History, Geography, Art etc. are largely seperate entities and I for one would certainly not scoff at anyone getting A1's across the board in these.

But you conveniently did not compare Maths / Physics / Chemistry to English / Irish / French / German. People good at logical/numerical will do well at the first in the same manner that people good at languages will do well at the second.

ei.sdraob

Peanut wrote: »

You can run an online business in Ireland, the great thing is that you don't need to keep your hardware there!

Thats exactly what I/we are doing here now

I'm myself spending most time lately testing and programming (and I love my job!) software for own company servers, which are all in US and continent because as i mentioned before, bandwidth prices are 20x-40x as expensive here in Ireland [our servers use more gbit than goes thru Inex ] and electricity is also very expensive, hence its much cheaper to collocate abroad, only downside is the weak dollar against euro it works in your favor with costs but against you in income

I did IT/Soft Eng degree, and the numbers were terrible many years back, 90 started 4 years later 25 graduated, the maths threw alot of people of
Then finished research engineering masters, i have to say I am grateful for the near free education I received here in Ireland

alot of people like to moan, but the science and engineering courses are there but are being barely taken up by people, and most of all they are very interesting courses! and yes there are jobs available even in this day

heck theres a job advert right here on adverts.ie which i would have jumped at few years ago


offtopic: anyone see mcwilliams thingie last night? where he shown how China want to leapfrog the west in technology terms

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

shoegirl

thebman wrote: »

Because it doesn't make sense in many cases as they won't have the knowledge for the software being developed such as in Ireland, Irish phrases or different things. We also have a good understanding of data protection laws in our own country and as recent credit card detail leaking in some outsourced centres will demonstrate when you pay peanuts, people will take it upon themselves to bump up their wages.

Actually what is killing the offshore outsourcing market at the moment is increasing Islamic millitant terrorism in previous "safe" places like Pakistan, Indonesia and India itself, and Mexico starting to take Colombia's mantle as a dangerous drug-smuggling soaked place. Even Malaysia is losing its mantle as "civillised" due to increasing Islamic fundamentalism (they are currently debating their first public female caning for a Muslim woman caught drinking alcohol) and Thailand's continuous political instability and massive corruption is making is less attractive. Companies that have already sold their souls and replaced US and Euro employees with offshored ones are facing increasing scrutiny from clients as to exactly what happens when there is a large terrorist problem in the city (which is actually now happening once or twice a year in some regions previously considered "safe").

This is regardless, by the way, of what IT area you are dealing with.