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Silicon Valley is starting to realize that the huge talent pool of nontraditional candidates may be the answer to its pipeline problem.
The technology industry is now trying to figure out a way to attack its cultural and demographic homogeneity issues. One simple initiative is to begin to recruit talent from people outside of its preferred networks. One way is to extend their recruiting efforts to people who don't have four-year degrees.
IBM's head of talent organization, Sam Ladah, calls this sort of initiative a focus on "new-collar jobs." The idea, he says, is to look toward different applicant pools to find new talent. "We consider them based on their skills," he says, and don't take into account their educational background. This includes applicants who didn't get a four-year degree but have proven their technical knowledge in other ways. Some have technical certifications, and others have enrolled in other skills programs. "We've been very successful in hiring from [coding] bootcamps," says Ladah.
For IT roles, educational pedigree often doesn't make a huge difference. For instance, many gaming aficionados have built their own systems. With this technical grounding, they would likely have the aptitude to be a server technician or a network technician. These roles require specific technical knowledge, not necessarily an academic curriculum vitae. "We're looking for people who have a real passion for technology," says Ladah. He goes on to say that currently about 10% to 15% of IBM's new hires don't have traditional four-year degrees.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3069259/why-more-tech-companies-are-hiring-people-without-degrees
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Insightful) by meustrus on Monday April 10 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)
Actually, those are exactly the sort of issues you find in academic code all the time. It turns out that Computer Science programs do not value clean code nearly as much as low computational complexity and abstract math.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Monday April 10 2017, @10:50PM
Yes yes yes, a thousand times this. As someone who inherits software from researchers to "keep running in case someone wants to refer to it someday", OMG, you really can't imagine how bad some of this stuff is. Usually the genius of the software is the algorithm at the core of it -- but to get the data to that algorithm? Anything goes -- literally.
Docker has been a god-send to me, as they can all have their own sandbox to screw around it and I can say, ship me a container and I'll run it, but don't come crying to me when your un-sanitized form gets a visit from Little Bobby Tables.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.