Would you have chosen another trade in hindsight?

[ruston]

I was talking to a chap who did 2391 last year, it seems to have been made very difficult to fail these days, and is a computer based exam, when I did it it was a three hour written exam.

I do sometimes wonder if the reduction in technical content of training, is kind of a reflection of the type of people who are likely to be taking them,  the folk who would have have eventually made it to technician grade, now no longer enter the trade, instead going to university to study a probably pointless course, all because the labour government of the late 90s wanted to fiddle the unemployment figures! The irony is, that with all the technologies coming in these days, we need those types in the trade, I do wondeer what it'll be like in 30 years when a lot have retired....

It was closed book too. The practical was three hours too if I remember correctly , with two scrutineers.

 

[Zeespark]

This question has different implications for Me, I am pre test autistic, so things may have been different for Me and I am in the early stages of a recovery from a stroke.

Andy Guinness

 

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

all true.. jobs in the IT field seem very secure and lucrative in this day and age, so maybe that

Not sure I'd agree with that...

Years ago IT staff had to do far more and were far more valuable to a company..

as computers were purchased blank..    (just a case full of hardware), 

you had to format drives, load operating systems & software or mount volumes to designate devices as servers or workstations or stand-alone PC's

If you wanted to connect to a LAN, physical switches on network cards were required to configure all sorts of interrupt settings etc..

And associated software settings to ensure everything all worked without locking up or freezing.  

You would have to write your own batch files to get the machine to start-up looking like something is running rather than just a blank screen & command-line prompt..

You needed to be on-site doing the work physically in front of the machines..

If something went wrong the IT bods were very very important...

Where as nowadays you buy a pre-configured device out of the box..

Plug & Play connections identify 99% of the stuff..

Updates are automatic..

Support can be done remotely...

(Everything is designed so that unskilled idiots should be able to use 75%+ of stuff without needing to even think about asking for help)..

Plus every man and his brother offer web-design services..

And if one device fails...

Work can be continued on another device by logging back onto either a private or public cloud-based storage system...

Unless you are the people actually writing and distributing the operating systems or software systems that people use..

then 99% of the time you are a small cog that can easily be replaced or disposed of without much impact on a business..

It all boils down to the fact that computer memory used to be very very very expensive...

And processors were very slow...

So you had to be very clever and valuable to be able to use it economically..

Whereas now....

Memory is so cheap and abundant...

and processors are much faster...

so that you don't need to be very skilled or technically competent to get stuff working..

And bucket loads of off-the-shelf packages can do the bulk of what specialist IT staff used to do!

Guinness

 

[Evans Electric]

I should have been accountant.

I'm good with numbers and as far as I see they seem to do extremely little for very good money

And be bored out of your scull  ?? 

 

[Evans Electric]

all jobs that involve 'handling' money pay well. My son has got a job in banking on the IT side, starting salary £35k as a graduate, likely to rise to around £100k . 

Theres  been a saying round these parts for years .........."   There 'aint no money in metal bashing "      .   Meaning general engineering  etc  

 

[binky]

and they wonder why they can't recruit talent into engineering

 

[Evans Electric]

The whole area was  "Bashing metal "  since the industrial revolution now there,s sod all left .     

 

[rapparee]

Theres  been a saying round these parts for years .........."   There 'aint no money in metal bashing "      .   Meaning general engineering  etc  

We were actually surprised at how poorly paid the boys from Birmingham were. 

We had a gang working on our presses, we were getting charged £600 per day for one man.

They were on £27,000 a year.

 

[Evans Electric]

Sounds about right to me  ...just more exploitation of the working man .      Would they have been from  Taylor & Challen  ....possibly ?