On 2011 Dec 12, at 23:32 , Robert Hajime Lanning wrote: > On 12/12/11 20:55, Mark McCullough wrote: >> I find that tech employees are neither particularly loved nor >> vilified. It's seen by the "random person on the street" I speak >> with as a respectable profession. Now, my normal way of >> explaining my job is "I keep the computers you use to pay your $x >> bill safe enough to use your credit card." That puts it in terms >> that they can understand, and the normal reaction from those who >> have actually gone so far as to ask what I do is far from >> disinterest. Yes, their eyes glaze over if I go into any more >> detail, but my eyes glaze over when I talk with an environmental >> engineer about what he does. > > It really isn't at our level that these perceived issues are at. > > Damion was talking about teens. Middle/High school the "cool" > kids were working on cars and/or doing sports. The "geeks" and > "outcasts" would be running D&D or messing with computers.
No, the cool kids are playing Minecraft or Halo Reach, or whatever the latest video game is that month. This is not thirty years ago. I've spoken with too many kids who were clearly in the at least "semi-popular" class who both participated in sports and showed all the classic signs of long term computer interest. > To get the diversity, you need the applicant pool to be diverse. > That does not start at college graduation. It needs to be cool > at the middle/high school levels. The tech people I work with aren't just those who were computer enthusiasts as kids. That used to be a pre-requisite, but it doesn't seem to be anymore. That said, my comment was aimed at the claim that sysadmin is seen at the level of villainy by others. I see that as a sysadmin stereotype of perception rather than what I actually see. > What to do about this, is left as an exercise for the reader... Offer online schools. Seriously. Hard to see computers as "uncool", when so many students do all their education online. Yes, this works for a significant number of students even at the middle school level as evidenced by my own child's middle school experiences for the past three school years. Doesn't work for everyone, but a lot more than I expected. When the state legislature has to talk about expanding the limits because the online charter school has such a long waiting list, it just may be popular with the parents, and that's very important. ---- "The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue." Edward R Murrow (1964) Mark McCullough [email protected] _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
