CIO OPINION
Slow change
For example , a Grade 9 pupil who wants to become a developer still has three years of school left . Going the degree route adds another three or four years to the process . Then to become an intern and become jobready is at least another year . Conservatively , that means we are looking at a turnaround time of seven to eight years to build South Africa ’ s software developer pool .
A paradigm shift is therefore needed in the training environment . This requires the ability to train a lot of people quickly and practically – with the right experience – in a short amount of time . It is about helping the youth of the country get into a career with a good salary early on , as opposed to the lengthy process they must go through now .
Specialist skills
As the world moves towards specialisation , the way training is done has become too generic , especially at universities and technical colleges . There , the focus is on teaching software development along with aspects like marketing , human resources , finances , and so on . In reality , these are irrelevant and add no value to the career of a software developer .
If anything , the need today is around creating specialists and not generalists . To get value from software development , we need to move beyond teaching old programming languages because the curriculum has not changed in years , to something more relevant to the demands of the digital world . A fraction of people in university attain their degrees and even fewer end up getting jobs . They simply do not have the practical skills and experience that many organisations are looking for . Often , you end up with a bunch of twentysomethings walking around with degrees trying to fit into an organisation .
At a typical tertiary institute , a learner will do the user interface , logic and coding , reporting , and database connections themselves . But this is not how life as a developer works . You must work in a team with each member focused on various aspects . This is why graduates need at least a year as an intern to be taught how to actually code as part of a team .
Investing in your own career
This requires aspirant software developers to figure out what they want once they leave school . We must get away from education for its own sake to thinking about what education can do for the individual . People must chart their own careers and understand the skills they need to get a job .
People must chart their own careers and understand the skills they need to get a job .
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