Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
It would not. Use your example as a guide. Like I keep saying, no amount of bench knowledge would have changed anything in the situation. They'd still be just as clueless, still not know what they need, still make the same decisions. Bench knowledge would not help.
Ahh I see we still have a disconnect here in our thinking of bench and IT. I am thinking of it from a little higher level than you are. Your definition of bench includes people with no knowledge of how the overall system works while I was including that.
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A major bench job that I managed on behalf of Dell in the ~1990s was doing motherboard replacements for laptops. Laptops were failing because of bad capacitors and they needed to be replaced proactively at large clients. So my teams would travel on sight with boxes of parts. We would go desk to desk, open up the laptop and inspect the capacitors. If they were the bad ones, we'd remove the motherboards and swap them out - which took a lot of physical expertise, but no technical knowledge of the laptops. We didn't have to know what they ran, how they were used, if they had a business need, who the user was and so forth. We had to identify electronic part numbers and replace certain ones.
That was bench work. Zero business knowledge, decision making or interaction. We were pure tech. But even being well paid, relatively senior bench workers, we never used the laptops when they worked beyond powering them on and running a diagnostic routine. If it passed, we were golden. That the OS worked, what it was or whatever was of no concern. Our involvement started with the physical tech and ended there.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
They are so wildly different, it's hard to believe anyone working in either does that. There really is extremely little overlap. In the enterprise space, they are not just totally separate disciplines, but have legal ramifications and in the financial space have full separation of duty concerns. IT isn't allowed into data centers, bench isn't allowed access to IT systems. They are extremely discrete.
They certainly do which is where my own biases come from. They come from management themselves who believe this. However, this has all been small businesses where an IT person does anything connected with the systems
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Ahh I see we still have a disconnect here in our thinking of bench and IT. I am thinking of it from a little higher level than you are. Your definition of bench includes people with no knowledge of how the overall system works while I was including that.
It's not that bench people would never know the full stack - it's that their job would never include it. Any random person might take an interest and know more than their job definition says. For example, in my previous post, an IT person might know all about the capacitor issue. It's common for IT people to find bench interesting, to some extent. But it's still bench, just something they want to know more about.
But bench work would never have a reason to know more about the logical needs of the system. It doesn't help their job in any way.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Bench doesn't buy tech, bench works on tech in a business. They work on tech purchased by IT. If you stick to the definitions that I gave, it really does keep this clear. Bench doesn't make business decisions. If you feel that bench is doing that, check again, it's always IT making the decision (or no one making a decision and it is all just random... which is pretty reckless.)
Alright for the sake of not going down a rabbit hole we will never emerge from I guess i can use your definition:)
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
They are so wildly different, it's hard to believe anyone working in either does that. There really is extremely little overlap. In the enterprise space, they are not just totally separate disciplines, but have legal ramifications and in the financial space have full separation of duty concerns. IT isn't allowed into data centers, bench isn't allowed access to IT systems. They are extremely discrete.
They certainly do which is where my own biases come from. They come from management themselves who believe this. However, this has all been small businesses where an IT person does anything connected with the systems
Managers that are not IT or bench experts would often be the source of bad info. And the SMB is just a mess not just of IT doing everything including plugging in microwaves and fixing toasters, but all IT disciplines are merged into one as well with people unsure even what a system admin is.
That's actually a great example. Think about the SMB where managers can't figure out the different between an admin and an engineer, a systems or network person and so forth. If they don't even know what IT titles are or what they mean, how would they ever figure out what is or isn't IT?
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
What they don't do is make decisions about the technology infrastructure. They work with it physically, but not logically. It's a very clear separation.
Ok so you are saying that IT is a purely logical role( or mostly) and that bench is physical?
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Bench doesn't buy tech, bench works on tech in a business. They work on tech purchased by IT. If you stick to the definitions that I gave, it really does keep this clear. Bench doesn't make business decisions. If you feel that bench is doing that, check again, it's always IT making the decision (or no one making a decision and it is all just random... which is pretty reckless.)
Alright for the sake of not going down a rabbit hole we will never emerge from I guess i can use your definition:)
Well it's kind of important for a critical reason - if I say that Bench is X and IT is Y, and then that bench does XX and IT does YY and we then trying to figure out who does Z, if we don't share the original definition then we have a big disconnect.
I think a lot of the confusion here is not that you feel bench knowledge is useful, but that you feel that my reference to bench is something that I'm saying is IT. So I say "Bench means X and X means..." but you are hearing me say "Bench means Y and X means..." so the results from the same statement come to different places.
Once you accept that when I say bench I mean X then I think by extension you automatically see that the people I call bench and their knowledge would do nothing to help IT decision making. But if you feel it is something totally different, then it might.
It's easy to argue that bench and IT aren't that clearly defined, and that's fine. That's just discussing how words are used. But once they are defined as I've defined them, I think there is little grey area as to how bench and IT as I define them work and interact.
Does that make more sense?
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
What they don't do is make decisions about the technology infrastructure. They work with it physically, but not logically. It's a very clear separation.
Ok so you are saying that IT is a purely logical role( or mostly) and that bench is physical?
Correct, which is nearly all a result of one delivering business solutions and one delivering technology. Neither is absolutely 100%, but really close in practice.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
This is where we keep disconnecting. Knowing bench does NOT mean knowing how the technology works. How it works is IT. The problem with the people in your example is that they don't know IT. Bench has nothing to do with the situation. This is a basic IT failing.
I can understand that then. I assumed they would know how it works better than they do with the money they make.
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What I mean by the above statement is that I don't, in my mind, define bench by being physical, I define it from the other end of deliverables. And I don't define IT as being logical, I define their deliverables. But at the end of the day, to deliver a business solution you must be in the logical space.
Or another way to look at it...
Bench delivers the physical components to IT; and IT uses what bench provides to build logical solutions to the business.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
This is where we keep disconnecting. Knowing bench does NOT mean knowing how the technology works. How it works is IT. The problem with the people in your example is that they don't know IT. Bench has nothing to do with the situation. This is a basic IT failing.
I can understand that then. I assumed they would know how it works better than they do with the money they make.
One would hope, but in reality making a lot of money rarely results from technical knowledge. Schmoozing does way, way more for getting salaries up.
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One of the things that I find surprising, but I know deep down why it happens, is that a lot of people who call themselves IT get offended when they find out that I define them as bench. But this implies that they see bench as too lowly for them or that they are too good to be seen as bench techs. Which is odd because they are happy with the work and the pay, but feel the need to be labeled something that they are not. This implies that a lot of bench people feel ashamed of the work that they do, which they should not as it is a necessary and valuable career. Why "not being IT" is seen as a mark of shame makes little sense to me. Do lawyers skulk because they practice law instead of doing IT? Seems unlikely.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
I think I was a decent bench tech and I can guarantee that bench doesn't teach you that. Because bench never sees systems running, they really don't know how things relate to each other. They see what works and fails, but not work works well or poorly. Bench rarely would be exposed to enough of the full stack to have any useful insight there.
Well they should lol, anytime I have a chance I run bench marks on hd to make sure it is performing correctly on our important machines. Then i keep the data , organized well of course, so i can compare with another user at a moments notice.
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Another example that I like to use is an analogy from The Bard's Tale (Electronics Arts, 1986.) IT is like the magician, Bench is like the conjurer.
If that doesn't instantly make sense, go play Bard's Tale and get back to me when you've defeat the boss of the fourth dungeon
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
I think I was a decent bench tech and I can guarantee that bench doesn't teach you that. Because bench never sees systems running, they really don't know how things relate to each other. They see what works and fails, but not work works well or poorly. Bench rarely would be exposed to enough of the full stack to have any useful insight there.
Well they should lol, anytime I have a chance I run bench marks on hd to make sure it is performing correctly on our important machines. Then i keep the data , organized well of course, so i can compare with another user at a moments notice.
This gets into the grey area of overlap. Typically bench would have no access to run a benchmark of that nature. But if they had access, doing so would be good to monitor for proactive physical drive failure.
In a bench role, bench would use this info to prepare for parts replacement.
In an IT role, IT would use this info to determine capacity planning needs or purchasing changes.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
They are so wildly different, it's hard to believe anyone working in either does that. There really is extremely little overlap. In the enterprise space, they are not just totally separate disciplines, but have legal ramifications and in the financial space have full separation of duty concerns. IT isn't allowed into data centers, bench isn't allowed access to IT systems. They are extremely discrete.
They certainly do which is where my own biases come from. They come from management themselves who believe this. However, this has all been small businesses where an IT person does anything connected with the systems
Managers that are not IT or bench experts would often be the source of bad info. And the SMB is just a mess not just of IT doing everything including plugging in microwaves and fixing toasters, but all IT disciplines are merged into one as well with people unsure even what a system admin is.
That's actually a great example. Think about the SMB where managers can't figure out the different between an admin and an engineer, a systems or network person and so forth. If they don't even know what IT titles are or what they mean, how would they ever figure out what is or isn't IT?
Your right that is a good example and I think way too many businesses have that issue.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Bench doesn't buy tech, bench works on tech in a business. They work on tech purchased by IT. If you stick to the definitions that I gave, it really does keep this clear. Bench doesn't make business decisions. If you feel that bench is doing that, check again, it's always IT making the decision (or no one making a decision and it is all just random... which is pretty reckless.)
Alright for the sake of not going down a rabbit hole we will never emerge from I guess i can use your definition:)
Well it's kind of important for a critical reason - if I say that Bench is X and IT is Y, and then that bench does XX and IT does YY and we then trying to figure out who does Z, if we don't share the original definition then we have a big disconnect.
I think a lot of the confusion here is not that you feel bench knowledge is useful, but that you feel that my reference to bench is something that I'm saying is IT. So I say "Bench means X and X means..." but you are hearing me say "Bench means Y and X means..." so the results from the same statement come to different places.
Once you accept that when I say bench I mean X then I think by extension you automatically see that the people I call bench and their knowledge would do nothing to help IT decision making. But if you feel it is something totally different, then it might.
It's easy to argue that bench and IT aren't that clearly defined, and that's fine. That's just discussing how words are used. But once they are defined as I've defined them, I think there is little grey area as to how bench and IT as I define them work and interact.
Does that make more sense?
Yes that does make more sense. For it to make sense I just have to forget previous definitions. What i was originally taught was that bench work was the lowest level of IT and the higher up you go the more of everything that you knew. Good management knew how to do absolutely everything adequately.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
This is where we keep disconnecting. Knowing bench does NOT mean knowing how the technology works. How it works is IT. The problem with the people in your example is that they don't know IT. Bench has nothing to do with the situation. This is a basic IT failing.
I can understand that then. I assumed they would know how it works better than they do with the money they make.
One would hope, but in reality making a lot of money rarely results from technical knowledge. Schmoozing does way, way more for getting salaries up.
Yeah you should see how some of the women here act when a woman vp comes in. Its almost a physical transformation and they all run to stand next to her.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Yes that does make more sense. For it to make sense I just have to forget previous definitions. What i was originally taught was that bench work was the lowest level of IT and the higher up you go the more of everything that you knew. Good management knew how to do absolutely everything adequately.
Right, and that's part of the reason that I work at this so much and speak at conferences and stuff about it. If you really break it down, it's pretty clear that bench jobs, knowledge and work isn't part of IT and can't be. But if you don't have the right definition to work with, you end up looking at bench as something with overlap and then you can't break it out. But with the "right" definition, pretty quickly it becomes clear that it's a different career path with essentially no IT relationship.
Likewise, I work to help the helpdesk and deskside support roles fight for their independence. They are IT, for sure, but are their own pillars or disciplines within IT rather than being "low lever" admins or whatever people think that they are. They have their own ladders, managers, departments, skills sets, certs, etc. You can be a six figure non-manager helpdesk tech and still have zero ability or interest in moving to network engineering.
Better definitions and career prospects in IT would go a long way to attracting better talent, assisting people in the field actually get where they want to go and produce overall far better results. Without these points being clarified and ironed out, how does IT hiring have any chance?
