Dear Henry:
If you have been following the answers, including your own, there does not
seem to be any pattern or truth to emerge out of my question. "Where is the
demand for trained people, given the urgency of the problem and the funds
projected to be spent?" Rather than the answers providing a conclusive
answer, the none answer that emerges from conflicting answers - is an answer
within itself. I would sum it up as - "we just don't know". I recently
received a copy of a Canadian Government Report that equates Y2K with the
1st and 2nd World Wars and the Great Depression as one of the defining
events of the century. This is definitely in the big leagues as problems
go.
And yet in reviewing those events mentally, one has to ask, are we in 1936
or 1939 and what is the equivalency of 1915, 1933 and 1942, that we are yet
to experience? The future is always murky. There are a billion plans going
on, from building a new house, to reforming Social Security to picking next
years vacation date. The fact that there has been a linearity for the last
50 years in which the appearance of predictability was our operating norm.
Perhaps we are at the edge of the whirlpool, about to start that great
centrigal movement that goes faster and faster and as we near the vortex, we
will be shot out into a future so different from all our current logics and
assurances that the differences are unthinkable.
When I think this way, I must ask; is Y2K the triggering event, the march
into Poland, or is the final piece of the puzzle, like the attack on Pearl
Harbour that completed the chessboard of World War 2. Our leaders ooze
complancey, don't worry, be happy, the final ballroom dance on the Titantic
is all glitter - when we appear the strongest, are we the most vulnerable?
Well, so much for doom and gloom reflections.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
Subject: Re: [GKD] Training Y2K Specialists
>Hi Thomas and all
>
>Your apparent dilemma arises, in my humble opinion, out of a couple of
>things:
>
>- India has over the last 10 or so years, it may even be longer, set
>itself up as a major exporter of code. During this time they have
>built up a large core of very good programming skill who not only can
>read programs specs but can also read write and test code.
>
>- Other countries, SA, the USA, etc have a shortage of skills.
>Systems are not always properly documented having been written over
>a long period of time.
>
>While many countries have large populations we have not, as a national
>priority,
>ensured that there is a large skills pool in the way that India, and
>I think, Brazill have. In many cases free enterprise as ensured that
>some kind of balance has existed between supply and demand.
>
>Because its cheaper to import trained staff than to train them,
>the USA has actively sort to recruit skiled staff from outside its
>borders, as highlighted by its playing around with green card
>quotas last year.
>
>Interestingly enough though I had some correspondence with someone
>from west Africa, I forget the state, who said they had many people
>with computer skills but few jobs. Why are they not relocated? I
>suspect because of language and background differences which make
>them less usefull in a foreign country.
>
>
>- Your analagy with the appliance repair business is a good one because
>it serves to highlight the fact that untrained, in your case a year
>if I read you correctly, technicians will take longer to ffind and
>fix a problem.
>
>We dont have time now to give people even a three month crash course
>and let them learn on the job.
>
>It is also true that a technician with documentation will be much
>quicker and more certain, than one without.
>Much of this code is old and the documentation dodgy in the extreme.
>
>Hope this adds more to the debate.
>
>Henry
>
>
>
>"The old Chinese curse appears to be upon us,
> we live in interesting times!"
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