Here's the result of a jobspec work asked me for a while back. I didn't give the print guys the final copy so the typo's aren't mine yet.. the wording... well, see what you think ;o)
We got two really good members of staff added to tech dept as a result too! http://surefyre.com/surefyreold/surefyre_images/nomcse.png (No the position isn't open still)
I've since come across people all over the place that have seen/heard of this ad LOL! Is weird reading the ad again, the jobspec is so much more demanding now.
G
Guy Eastwood wrote:
Here's the result of a jobspec work asked me for a while back.
I've since come across people all over the place that have seen/heard of this ad LOL!
I like the "MCSE need not apply". I used to think the MCSE was top dog in the late 1990's. Since doing my degree I have realised how pointless software proficiency certifications are from a learning perspective, a book or README is equally as useful.
I must confess that I do not like the prospect of trying to convince an employer I know what I am talking about after I graduate. Jobs are so much harder to come by now the dot com bubble has burst. I used to have a half dozen agencies ringing me per week in the late 1990's offering me support jobs, the funny thing was that I did not even know how TCPIP worked and I still got a £25k per year support job. That was a lot of cash to a 20 year old with no outgoings or a degree.
Law firms have more cash than they know what to do with, which explains my past employment luck!.
On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 01:01:21AM +0000, David Simon Cooper wrote:
Guy Eastwood wrote:
Here's the result of a jobspec work asked me for a while back.
I've since come across people all over the place that have seen/heard of this ad LOL!
I like the "MCSE need not apply". I used to think the MCSE was top dog in the late 1990's. Since doing my degree I have realised how pointless software proficiency certifications are from a learning perspective, a book or README is equally as useful.
To me it sounds a bit stupid saying "MCSE need not apply" given that I know a few technical people who are some of the best I've ever met who also had MCSEs, especially given that some of these people had to get the MCSE as part of their jobs "spec" when working as contractors (and I must say I'd probably be mercenary and get an MCSE if I was offered ~100k a year).
To play devils advocate a bit, some of the biggest idiots I have had the mis-fortune to work with have had degrees (many of them in computer science) who have been more of a liability than anything else, so would it be sensible for me to put on any job adverts i was to write "Applicants with degrees need not apply"?
Adam
Adam Bower wrote:
On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 01:01:21AM +0000, David Simon Cooper wrote:
To me it sounds a bit stupid saying "MCSE need not apply" given that I know a few technical people who are some of the best I've ever met who also had MCSEs, especially given that some of these people had to get the MCSE as part of their jobs "spec" when working as contractors (and I must say I'd probably be mercenary and get an MCSE if I was offered ~100k a year).
If you wanted to apply for the job in question and you was an excellent technical person then you would supply urls and sample code and keep the MCSE "Under the hood" until a later date. I think the advert is more saying that just an MCSE is no good but relevent experience is also required. I too would get an MCSE if the job required it and they paid, I would not shout about it though.
I worked in the commercial IT industry in London for six years for five different firms netting over £100k in the period, these included an NHS organisation, a restaurant company and three law firms. I knew what I was doing most of the time but did not understand the fundamentals of the work I was doing, which is why I went to Uni. I needed some structured teaching which covered core computing funadmentals.
To play devils advocate a bit, some of the biggest idiots I have had the mis-fortune to work with have had degrees (many of them in computer science) who have been more of a liability than anything else,
A degree is not the golden ticket to a great job and many students that think that won't get very far. A degree has helped me because I already had experience before I went to uni so I used the teaching to fill in all the gaps (including TCPIP, although Linux taught me that). Some things you learn at uni could take months to learn in a commercial job and vice versa.
I have never worked with anyone who had a computing related degree, which is why I valued a degree so highly as the people I worked with were never any good, although some of these had MCSE and CNE. The most critical area which requires graduates in my experience is IT management. Every single IT manager I worked for was an absolute idiot. I can safely say that if I ever run my own business I will not employ a single manager that does not have a related degree, a degree is vital at management level.
so would it be sensible for me to put on any job adverts i was to write "Applicants with degrees need not apply"?
Probably not. A degree demonstrates a level of commitment, teamwork, research ability, technical writing, technical proficiency, planning and overall willingness to learn. Anyone can do a degree, you don't need to be special, you just need to have the commitment, that is the biggest quality it demonstrates rather than technical knowledge.
The common misconception is that a degree grade shows how good a person is technically, not so. The grade should be used as a starting point, technical tests and other "mining" techniques should then be used to work out if the person is blagging the interview or not.
I know awesome 20yr old students hitting a 1st grade and even more awesome students hitting a 2:1. I even know a student who is hitting a 1st who cannot program at all, I am not joking, some students spend years 1 and 2 plagirising(?) work and it does pay off as these students do not get caught, but they will get caught in a technical test for a job when somebody asks them to write a piece if code and they can't.
I am interested to see how the commercial IT industry has changed when I finish uni. Hopefully for the better. Although I won't be working for law firms again!.
On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 07:53:15AM +0000, Adam Bower wrote:
To me it sounds a bit stupid saying "MCSE need not apply" given that I know a few technical people who are some of the best I've ever met who also had MCSEs, especially given that some of these people had to get the MCSE as part of their jobs "spec" when working as contractors (and I must say I'd probably be mercenary and get an MCSE if I was offered ~100k a year).
To play devils advocate a bit, some of the biggest idiots I have had the mis-fortune to work with have had degrees (many of them in computer science) who have been more of a liability than anything else, so would it be sensible for me to put on any job adverts i was to write "Applicants with degrees need not apply"?
Hmm... I've suspected since long that one of the devil's recipes for making an invalid argument that people will nonetheless accept is to provide only a necessary condition where a sufficient one is required... ;-)
Best regards, Jan
Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk
[...] so would it be sensible for me to put on any job adverts i was to write "Applicants with degrees need not apply"?
If that's really how you feel, yes. You're the one who's hiring them and who'll have to work with them.
While I'm not sure that degrees say much positive besides the bare minimum, I suspect it covers a more varied crowd than those who've done MSCEs. If you think it's daft predicting negative things from MCSE, it seems even less reliable to do so from degrees...
On Tue, Nov 01, 2005 at 09:59:02PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk
those who've done MSCEs. If you think it's daft predicting negative things from MCSE, it seems even less reliable to do so from degrees...
Um, well yes. That was my point. Nevermind.
Adam
Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk
Um, well yes. That was my point. Nevermind.
Thank you for that lesson in how not to take agreement gracefully.
On Tue, Nov 01, 2005 at 09:59:02PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk
[...] so would it be sensible for me to put on any job adverts i was to write "Applicants with degrees need not apply"?
If that's really how you feel, yes. You're the one who's hiring them and who'll have to work with them.
With apologies for taking this thread further off topic, I have to contradict. As an employer, you cannot discriminate against applicants because "that's how you really feel".
The responsibility of an employer is to create and maintain a working environment that enables the employees to produce / deliver the product or service of the business. If that objective is furthered by hiring someone with a degree / MCSE / ugly face / ..., that's what you should do.
Despotism is not only bad for business (supposedly, anyway), it's also morally more than questionable.
Best regards, Jan
You want great job adverts, then may I present:
http://www.xcom2002.com/doh/index.php?s=05080516oth http://www.xcom2002.com/doh/index.php?s=05060210oth
Regards,
Martyn
On 31-Oct-05 Martyn Drake wrote:
You want great job adverts, then may I present:
http://www.xcom2002.com/doh/index.php?s=05080516oth http://www.xcom2002.com/doh/index.php?s=05060210oth
Regards,
Martyn--
I'm sure the second one of those must be the same sort of thing that people do at Manchester Uni as described at
http://www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/ars-actionrequestsystem/
Cheers, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 31-Oct-05 Time: 10:31:30 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
I'm pretty sure one or two subscribers to this list work at/in UEA... A friend of mine's daughter has just started there and has been obliged to put McAfee on her (XP Pro) laptop. The problem is, everytime she joins the UEA net, the machine slows to a crawl. Would anyone be so kind as to take a look at it for her please?
Cheers, Laurie.
This is true and also some-what annoying. Windows users *have* to install McAfee anti-virus 8 before they can connect to the network. A friend of mine had to uninstall McAfee 10 - seems silly but I suppose it's a good thing in a way. I have McAfee on my Windows 2000 installation, I haven't noticed that it slows down. The only thing I would put it down to, would be scanning all the files on the disc for virii which would slow the machine down but you can't really stop it doing that.
I'd recommend;
Download "Spybot Search & Destroy" and scan the machine with that to see if it's other malicious software which is slowing the machine down.
-Simon
Quoting Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com:
I'm pretty sure one or two subscribers to this list work at/in UEA... A friend of mine's daughter has just started there and has been obliged to put McAfee on her (XP Pro) laptop. The problem is, everytime she joins the UEA net, the machine slows to a crawl. Would anyone be so kind as to take a look at it for her please?
Cheers, Laurie.
Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com
main@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!
Simon wrote:
This is true and also some-what annoying. Windows users *have* to install McAfee anti-virus 8 before they can connect to the network. A friend of mine had to uninstall McAfee 10 - seems silly but I suppose it's a good thing in a way. I have McAfee on my Windows 2000 installation, I haven't noticed that it slows down. The only thing I would put it down to, would be scanning all the files on the disc for virii which would slow the machine down but you can't really stop it doing that.
I wouldn't put McAfee on any computer. It's NOD32 for me all the way. It's light-weight, has passed more Virus Bulletin tests than any other scanner and is reasonably priced - particularly when it comes to multiple licenses. Do UEA really insist on McAfee? Incredible!
Mind you, back in those days I didn't have a laptop and only used the Linux boxes in SYS and the DEC Alphas in the CPC centre (they were *superb* - I liked using them even though I wasn't really supposed to).
Those were the days..
Regards,
Martyn
** Martyn Drake martyn@drake.org.uk [2005-10-31 17:09]:
This is true and also some-what annoying. Windows users *have* to install McAfee anti-virus 8 before they can connect to the network. A friend of mine had to uninstall McAfee 10 - seems silly but I suppose it's a good thing in a way. I have McAfee on my Windows 2000 installation, I haven't noticed that it slows down. The only thing I would put it down to, would be scanning all the files on the disc for virii which would slow the machine down but you can't really stop it doing that.
I wouldn't put McAfee on any computer. It's NOD32 for me all the way. It's light-weight, has passed more Virus Bulletin tests than any other scanner and is reasonably priced - particularly when it comes to multiple licenses. Do UEA really insist on McAfee? Incredible!
Back a few years McAfee was my preferred AV application. One of several reasons for this was being able to update the signature files from an FTP server or file share automatically which was great for supporting a network of installations. At the time Norton needed an expensive server application to do the same thing. In fact when IBM sold its AV technology to Symantec and the company I worked for (an ex IBM location) had to move across to Norton I had the opportunity to migrate with them for free (I had been using IBM AV for free until then). I decided to purchase a couple of copies of McAfee instead - which I guess shows the high regard I have for Norton (literally wouldn't us it if it was free). I can roughly date this by saying that the McFee package is for Windows 3.1, 95 and NT and OS/2 :) We had a nightmare of a time getting Norton working on the machines around site, and a significant proportion ended up with either IBM AV with out dated signature files on or no AV at all simply due to the fact that Norton killed the machines. Norton tech support have never been helpful either in my experience.
I've not used McAfee recently as when I did my last round of evaluations I could only install it from an ActiveX control from their website. Since my test machine was not network connected they ruled themselves out of the running at the first hurdle (and failed to respond to my emails). I'll have to take a look at NOD32. I've no experience of it, but I've seen it advertised a bit - although the ads haven't really given me the confidence in the product that would make me want to take a further look for some reason.
I ended up with F-Secure which is doing me nicely at the moment, and I've just installed the latest version which has a nice integrated suite of AV, firewall and anti-spyware. That had the good taste to insist I removed the MS Antispyware product, which I was more than happy to do since I was seriously fed up with it wanting to remove VNC because it was spyware/malware!
Mind you, back in those days I didn't have a laptop and only used the Linux boxes in SYS and the DEC Alphas in the CPC centre (they were *superb* - I liked using them even though I wasn't really supposed to).
I had my very own CPC centre when I was doing my degree. I doubt it was much like yours though. It consisted of an Amstrad CPC6128 and a CPC464, both with twin floppy disks. The 464 had Protext on ROM cartridge and the 6128 had a ROMBO ROM box with Protext (WP), Prodata (database), Promerge (mailmerge), Prospell (spell check), Maxam (assembler) and BCPL (predecessor to C) on the installed ROMs. Still, it did me well and saved the hassle of booking computer time and having to stop at midnight (or whenever they closed). I could work around the clock (oh whoopie!).
Those were the days..
** end quote [Martyn Drake]
On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 23:31 +0000, Paul Tansom wrote:
Back a few years McAfee was my preferred AV application. One of several reasons for this was being able to update the signature files from an FTP server or file share automatically which was great for supporting a network of installations. At the time Norton needed an expensive server application to do the same thing. In fact when IBM sold its AV technology to Symantec and the company I worked for (an ex IBM location) had to move across to Norton I had the opportunity to migrate with them for free (I had been using IBM AV for free until then).
For managed installations and general niceness of the desktop client I like Trend.
The management stuff is essentially free as once you are buying more than 5 desktop licences it is cheaper to buy the officescan product for 5 users.
When we were using it in a games Development studio we found mcafee hogged a lot of system resources and seemed to cause random crashes. Moving to the trend client (that seems very lightweight in comparison) gave a noticeable speed boost to many of the machines without sacrificing anything in the detection ability department.
For personal machines I quite like AVG, it's interface is a little clunky but it gets the job done and I have seen it detect viruses on machines that have been given a clean bill of health by Norton etc... I also appreciate the fact that (with a little tinkering) it is possible to get AVG to run from a keydrive which is handy for machines that come in to the workshop.
Norton....Norton I consider worse than some of the viruses out there :o) Their registration/renewal process is the most confusing web experience I think I have ever seen. I actually get clients (intelligent ones) call me up to come round and complete the renewal process for them, there are just so many steps to it. As for their Internet security product that comes bundled with the most brain dead firewall ever created......
The message 4365F2C7.6010709@brownowl.com from Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com contains these words:
I'm pretty sure one or two subscribers to this list work at/in UEA... A friend of mine's daughter has just started there and has been obliged to put McAfee on her (XP Pro) laptop. The problem is, everytime she joins the UEA net, the machine slows to a crawl. Would anyone be so kind as to take a look at it for her please?
Obliged to? That's a cruel and unusual punishment, isn't it?
The best thing to do with McAfee is not to touch it with someone else's bargepole, but if contamination has occurred, to ditch it.
On Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:32:39 +0000 Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com wrote:
I'm pretty sure one or two subscribers to this list work at/in UEA... A friend of mine's daughter has just started there and has been obliged to put McAfee on her (XP Pro) laptop. The problem is, everytime she joins the UEA net, the machine slows to a crawl. Would anyone be so kind as to take a look at it for her please?
Just a guess, but has some silly indexing application, like findfast, for example, decided to index the set of files that have become newly available on the network with an "on access" virus scan enabled so it is trying to virus check every file on the servers?
Steve.
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Adam Bower -
Anthony Anson -
David Simon Cooper -
Guy Eastwood -
Jan T. Kim -
Laurie Brown -
Martyn Drake -
MJ Ray -
Paul Tansom -
Simon -
Steve Fosdick -
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Wayne Stallwood