I agree whole heartily with Lizette on the state of education. But it has been that way for decades now. I can remember over 30+ years ago at my university taking a database class. I was a part-time tape-ape at the time, and knew that we used IMS as our database. So I asked the prof what type of database IMS was; his response was something like "IMS is IBM's production database, we don't care about what is in use in the real world. We are concerned about the theory behind various database designs." Right there I knew that computer science courses had nothing to do with the real world.
I hope that IBM's big new push into education pays off. From what I understand community colleges have been receiving it very well and with open arms; and big 4-year say "we are interested in future theory, not practical day-to-day operations". The other item I wanted to comment on was the pay-scale issue. CA tried the outsourcing to India, which failed for the MF applications big-time. Now, CA is doing new MF hiring in Prague AND in Plano (near Dallas) and Lisle (near Chicago). What CA has found (not sure why it took so many years) was that wage-inflation on the coasts made US wage's seem inflated over-all. But when you just looked at wages in the middle section; and subtracted all the "extra" costs of international hires (more communication problems; more directly management requirements; more time to go back-and-forth to get it done correctly) they were not that different. I remember back 15 years ago as a manager at CA, I was responsible for developers in both California and Texas. The wage difference was HUGE (more then 25%). The California people were good, but not any better then the Texas people; it was simply a huge wage-inflation because of the higher cost-of-living. Now, I am not complaining that the "fruits and nuts" got more (they needed it because of their cost-of-living); but if more companies looked at moving their data centers to middle of the country they would cut-down on the DP costs simply on wages. Anyway, my 2-cents Russell Witt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
