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I was reading with interest this study on IT skills shortages from an employer perspective in Cork.  While it is clearly out of date one thing I couldn't help noticing was a blithe assumption that everybody working in IT would have a 2-4 year IT-specific certificate, diploma or degree.  I find this curious as I spot an enormous mismatch between perceived/self-reported skills amongst IT workers in Cork, particularly bad amongst people holding industry certifications, many of whom seem to have either crammed their way through certifications in order to fulfil job requirements.  The reality, I often find, is workers who are only certified on paper, and don't really have much skill levels.

Yet there are some fantastic workers, definitively a minority, but most definitely some very high quality workers with strong technical knowledge and sound business skills, whom it is hard to extract on qualifications alone.  Yet an awful lot of these are frequently passed over repeatedly in favour of game-players who exploit the political structures and regional isolation of offshoots of larger multinationals taking advantage of what was perceived as Ireland's advantages a few years ago.  The trouble is, without a 3rd level qualification, right now a lot of these workers are being completely disregarded by a jobs market that despite popular mythology, places no value whatsoever on transferable skills, and regards them with as much suspicion as their low-skilled peers without specific qualifications.

The problem is, I think, the low-skill brigade ruined it for everybody.  Let me give you two examples.

I worked in a helpdesk of a French multinational for 3 years.  They employed initially mainly self-appointed "experts" who'd blatantly lied on their CVs, the kinda human-ape who suddenly realised from their little jobs in security companies and shops that there was money to be had in IT, and despite a complete and utter lack of qualifications, skills and quite often even basic social skills, managed to get a foot on the IT ladder due to chronic skills shortages in the entry level ranks of IBM, HP, Dell and Gateway in the mid to late 1990s.  I recall that of my own group in Dell in 2000, I was probably the only person who had no formal qualifications in IT, most entered with at least a basic certificate (and in fairness, I had a non-IT degree and 3 diplomas to my name, plus a level of practical IT skills that many people at the time were astounded by - for example I managed to get 100% in Gateway's entry level skills assessment).  After I got a job there I noticed that manybe about 10% of the workforce there were uncertified - about half of those had alternate skills in various other disciplines, but the remainder were, effectively, professional bullshitters of the type above, who played the system in order to compensate for their own lack of skills.

As I gradually climbed the IT ladder over the following 7 years I rapidly discovered that this tiny group became disproportionately represented in the higher ranks.  They took many forms - the non-IT but otherwise qualified seemed to do particularly well - a lot of them used high discipline levels and transferable business skills to get into good roles often in project management or leadership roles.  But there was a tiny few of obstinate idiots who somehow, via the classification of an A+ or lucky cram on a MCP, managed to hoodwink future employers into a 3rd level support role which they in no way deserved.  This company became rapidly infested with as many of 10 of these IT parasites, useless idiots who sat around and did at max 1 hour of work per days, scratching their arses and playing hard political games for the remainder of the time.

They were also well paid and so after about 1.5 years of revenue bleeding (these guys were costing the company about 1/4 million a year plus in salaries alone) the company engaged on a round of redundancies and particularly targetted this group.  It was so bad that most of them were outskilled by level 1 analysts on as little as 2/3 of their wages.

Irish law permits you to rehire for exactly the same job within 3 months of a lay off, so sure enough the company started to refill the roles from well established, good skilled level 1 analysts - but with a catch - they were now paid only 80% of the bullshitters salaries - the lesson?  How the bullshitters ruined things for the generally skilled.  Many of those who replaced these guys were now IT graduates - after the earlier mistakes, the company set from then on to only employing 2-4 year graduates, mainly IT, or graduates in other disciplines with IT experience.  But the horse had bolted, and the skilled and good workers were forced to pay the price of the bullshitters in salary cuts and poorer working conditions caused by heavy monitoring as to what they were doing.  The trust was blown.

I was interested to notice that many of the bullshitters I've known have gone through at least 1 year of unemployment after taking generous redundancy packages, flying them into an environment that now recognises their deceit.  And most of those were forced to take lower grade opportunities, back to desktop support for the bullshitters, where many remained for years before managing to deceive their way into a senior role once more.

A second example is another one.  Left school early 90s, in the days when unless you were utterly clueless, you hit college for at least a year or two.  Obviously this guy was too thick as he managed to get into security, basically the last resort job for the skill-less in Ireland - even those without any sort of school certificate could make their way into this career before security vetting came in to filter out those with criminal pasts!!

The pattern is usually the same.  They fancy themselves as "clever" and "intellectual" but have all the intellectual capacity of a baboon.  They generally are cute enough not to undertake any formal educational courses because they know full well that this will only expose their inability to pass even fairly basic courses, preferring instead an informal route which is still possible.  Soon they have years of "experience" much of which consists of playing games on a subterfuged network at work built up of leftover equipment and looking up Wikipedia and Google for other peoples technical solutions.  They often grab a bit of scripting experience, mastering the art by cutting and pasting other peoples scripts and copying out of books.  A common thing I see these guys do (and its almost ALWAYS guys for some reason) is to surreptitiously change project requirements to suit their (very limited) technical ability.  Which means all too often, you might (eventually) get a solution, but not the one you asked for.  And all too often, something that is either a fault which another group won't take responsibility for or can be rectified more simply.  But by the same they hmm and emmmm their way through meetings, you don't care, you just want them to shut up and move onto the next issue.

They generally survive short term cost cutting redundancies, but ultimately add to the lack of productivity that usually results in total closure.  And its happening - all over Ireland.  Once "state of the art" facilities opened with fanfares on RTE with massive tax breaks and IDA funding, are often very quietly closing down with barely a whisper.  And these guys are culprits.  All too often they hang on just long enough to bleed the company dry.  People who are worth 20k but paid 40k.  Its only a matter of time guys, only a matter of time.

So what do I think is the solution?  Easy.

A formal framework and set of testing criteria for skills assessments for above entry level appointments.
Let this be substituted ONLY by formal 2-4 year full time or equivalent part time certifications.
Industry standard certs need to be backed up by formal skills assessments set by bodies such as the ICA or industry bodies.
I think this needs to be applied to current employees as well a potential ones to stress test and pick out bullshitters.  Offer them upskilling or otherwise, but fact remains these guys lied on their cvs and need appropriate restitution.  This way we can rid the industry of those who've ruined it for everyone.