Re: American Work Ethic

Thursday, July 10, 2003

I read Todd Trepke's article on the foreign work ethic in IT. I think we could all learn something from the foreigners. I myself took away something from his piece; learn from a winner not a whiner.

I do take exception to the comment on fifty-hour weeks without overtime (unless salaried). I worked in retail and I worked hard. But I had to have time to go to school and do other self-sufficient things to get a better job. Most of the IT training originated from myself.

Another related factor is that we have an Edsel of a school system. This is not just for high and elementary schools. Too many tech schools are a joke; they are nothing but federal funding rackets. I sat in one IT class and all the instructor did was read out of a book. I see the same faces there years on end. Of course, out of frustration, I attend classes at my tech "college" only sporadically.

I will tell you this much; many of them are the trailer trash whose major exposure to information technology is downloading movies illegally or watching "Tech TV" (doesn't have a damn thing to do with corporate IT, by the way).

In short, give the worker some credit even if he has too much to learn.

Ken
Macon, GA