With Troop Drawdown, IT Looks To Hire More Vets 212
Lucas123 writes "The military's a great place to learn how to kill people and break things, but many also consider it one of the best training grounds for high-tech skills. 'If you're working on a ship or a plane or tank, you've got responsibility for large, complex, extremely expensive equipment run by highly sophisticated IT platforms and software,' said Mike Brown, senior director of talent acquisition at Siemens. But, just how well do military tech skills translate to private-sector IT? Computerworld spoke to veterans to find out just what they learned during their tours of duty and how hard it was to transition to the civilian workforce."
Re:Personally I have no problem with this (Score:1, Insightful)
Why would they? This is based on skill and experience, not the color of someone's skin. Nice try though...
Re:That seems somewhat smart (Score:4, Insightful)
Low wages probably won't discourage ex-military, they are rather used to it.
Re:Personally I have no problem with this (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you please explain exactly how this would be discriminatory?
Depends on the high-tech skill set (Score:5, Insightful)
During the tech bubble burst of 2002, I went from being a full time Perl programmer to working part-time at a super market in the meat section. One of my coworkers was a tech lead in the Army working on avionics in attack helicopters. When the attack copter wings were cut, he left with them, only to discover his high-tech skills in attack helicopter avionics were completely useless in the private sector. Clearly advanced technology, clearly without a direct compliment in the civilian world.
I eventually found another Perl/PHP job, but as far as I know hes still at the super market. So I think it really depends on what you're high tech skills are, as to how successfully you can make the transition.
Re:Speaking from personal experience... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying that everyone who learns IT skills in the military is awesome, but the ones I've met have been.
In the end you need to carefully examine all job candidates, even ex-military. My experience (I am a vet) is that there are a few saints, a few monsters, and a vast middle of decent but flawed people, just like the general populace.
Re:Personally I have no problem with this (Score:5, Insightful)
When you hire someone you always look at their past job history to determine if the person is going to work well in your organization.
This is a standard practice, you would be a moron not to do that.
Yes, I will more likely higher someone with military background vs someone with a fast food background.
I guess you would be technically correct, discrimination happens, but it is not illegal unless the discrimination is based on something the individual cannot change, such as their skin color or place of birth.
Remember, you can always join up, serve your country for a few years and when you get out you too can enjoy the perks of being ex-military if it is that big of a deal for you.
Re:That seems somewhat smart (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:may you live in interesting times, beeotches! (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah...they're just the 2000's version of the hippies/yippies from the 60's. Loud, boisterous...but not really adept at accomplishing anything, nor even having a real concrete, unified goal or message to promote.
The OWS today's shouts of "Kill the Corporations" and "Life is Unfair" are basically the analogous to the "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out" of that day. Fun to say and march to....but in the end, fairly useless and pointless.
Re:That seems somewhat smart (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That seems somewhat smart (Score:4, Insightful)
High stress? Are you serious?
IT 'stress' is a walk in the park in gentle spring sunshine after a couple of years in the military - and that's *without* spending any time in a combat zone.
Dumbest post ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be smarter to reward the troops with decent employment, instead of hiring them into mind-numbing dead end jobs? Besides, I'm slightly worried about hiring people who are completely comfortable with guns in the workplace into high-stress positions.
When you are talking about vets or people in the service, people who have actually had to perform professionally and methodically while other people are actually trying to fucking kill you with bullets or IEDs, don't call the nuances of cubicle politics and IT services "high-stress positions." As someone who has done tier II/III IT support getting angry calls at 3AM, yeah, it's stressing... like any other job with a lot responsibilities.
But to call it "high-stressing" specially when referring to military vets (of any country), wondering whether they can keep their cool in the face of your typical office monkey business, that's a little self-masturbatory, e-tarded and disturbing no matter how you cut it.