really? ever seen how places like even Microsoft or Apple's like during their early day? Oh btw. that advertising firm that I had mentioned? That's a MNC as well

edit: same goes for those auditors too

This post has been edited by fyire: Nov 2 2006, 12:41 PM

Well personally I think you are mixing the 2 problems together. Companies having problem seeking experienced staff is a different problem than fresh grads not able to get a break or chance.

Companies having problem seeking experienced professionals has nothing to do with freshies. Note the term experienced. Not all companies will hire juniors/freshies all the time. It depends on the position being filled, if they want to hire an experienced person, they look for experienced person, if they want to hire a junior with no experience they hire fresh grads. The problem is hiring competent experience professional to fit the appropriate role, this is a different problem than hiring fresh grads. If the position you need filled requires a number skills that you can only get through work experience, it makes no sense to hire fresh grads. This is not unique to IT, this is a very common business practice in any field. The problem here is getting competent IT professionals.

Some companies will hire freshies for a number of reasons, to fill roles requiring minimal experience. The problem of freshies not getting jobs is just a simple supply demand problem, there's just too many IT graduates vs. available openings. If a fresh grad is complaining about company A not giving them a chance to fill the senior developer role (or whatever experienced position) than thats just be dumb. Most Businesses have limited resources, they cannot afford to hire a fresh grad and slowly train them up to the required experience level while the position critical to their business is left unfilled. Its simple as that. There will always be a need for seniors and juniors. Seniors are to fill roles that require support for critical business functionality that cannot be held off while they train someone to fit the role.

No. Have you? Even if they work crazy hours, how is their overtime and benefits? Just because they work crazy hours like we do doesnt mean we should. Perhaps they are getting the proper compensation. We cannot really compare their early days to our current situation without more details.

As for their current practices, do you know about all the development methodologies coming out, like Agile based methodologies such as scrum, etc? You know why all these was developed? Because their industry also realize there is abig problem in their whole process when projects keep failing. But unlike us, they recognize the problem and find ways to fix it. When a methodology fails, they look at it and try to improve it and come out with better methodologies. Sure its not perfect, but its a long way from what we practice here. Look at Malaysia, how many companies acknowledge their failure and learn from it. When projects fails, mass resignation occurs, and the company just does a mass recruitment, the cycle keeps repeating. How many development houses even bother to look at some of the existing methodologies and try to fit it in their process? So many local companies dont even bother about putting in the right process, they think its a waterfall process, but more like rojak, take requirement and hack at it with as much resource as many hours as you have and deliver. When there are customer change request, hack at it some more, not enuff resource? hire sumore and keep hacking at it. They are working hard but not working smart.

That's true.. reminds of my previous company in KL. Mindless cycles of Project Managers .. just remains in ever non-stop cycles of madness and mistakes. The company went out of business 3 years after I left.

Hence, I guess that's why we don't see many (or any) homebrew IT shops in Malaysia that is reknown at all. We don't have good industry leaders to keep IT staff in corporate Malaysia to be truly productive and successful.

This post has been edited by netfan: Nov 2 2006, 01:33 PM

College should provide more practical things rather than concepts.

heh, maybe Apple and M$ are bad examples for me to use here. My point is, do not expect all MNCs or foreign companies to be equal. The problems faced here in Malaysia is not unique to Malaysia only.

I've been involved in projects with some of those big name MNCs, and still they suffer from the same problems. Their staff needing to undergo long hours without proper compensation, complete lack of planning, u name it all.

I dont think spoon-feeding students is the way to make em independent in real career world. Thats why universities introduce industrial/practical-training to expose student to the real world.
Nevertheless it seems this kind of programme have yet to fully be informative to students as some of the company didnt expose them to real career world but prepare em for training (training here means everyday day they have specific schedule in reading/learning/visiting). I'm lucky back in my days during practical training, a was assigned as a normal employee, and do what other ppl in my department do.

This post has been edited by e-jump: Nov 2 2006, 02:54 PM

Umm MNCs located overseas or MNCs located in Malaysia? To me a lot MNCs in Malaysia face the same problem as local Malaysian companies if it is being run by locals, it doesnt really matter if its MNC or foreign company, as long as the management is being run by locals then its a Malaysian-style company and suffer the same problems.

As I said, foreign companies run into same problems, but in general they do try to look at failures and learn from it. That is why we see so many processes and methodologies cropping up, it is a result of people who identified the problems and trying to fix it. Sure the processes or methodologies may not be perfect, but it sure as hell beat the chaotic way of doing things blindly. Unlike here, when things go wrong, there will be casualties. There is no effort to stop and take a look at the whole process and fix it. Its either a technical problem, in which case as I pointed out mass exodus of technical employees and a big rehiring or in very rare cases a management mistake and a company restructure. Our mentality is always look for the blame and fix it by removing the blame. Not look at all the factors and change to adapt to it.

This post has been edited by darun: Nov 2 2006, 02:30 PM

Both actually, although you do have a point on the situation in Malaysia, where I do find that it can be worse.

Yes, I do know that foreign companies tend to look at failures and learn from it. I never denied that. However, what I'm trying to say is do not expect all foreign companies to be such as that. One thing to keep into perspective here is, do not forget that Dilbert originated from the US.

lol, true the pointy haired boss stereotype did come from there. No doubt they still have sweat-shop style companies, just our ratio is a hell lot more compared to them and it doesnt seem to be getting better at all.

"Only drones and worker ants stay late..... Staying late because other people are staying late is called "presenteism"....." - Richard Templer, the author of "The rule of work". How very true the fact he has mentioned in his book. But sometime, I believe it just couldn't be help.... For System/network admin, they have to work after work hour to troubleshoot or perform maitenance.

These jobs tends to be handled differently. Operations Engineers works in shifts, to monitor the system. Should a problem occurs which they are not able to resolve, a call will then be placed over to those system or network engineers on 2nd level support, who tend to be on call, also based on shifts.

Thus, depending on the required SLA, there may be no such thing as not staying late, as the problem will need to be resolved immediately.

Yup, for software development, it could be either mean the amount of work is more than the available resource can handle or the resource is trying to earn undeserved karma points. Neither is good for the company.

Yo talking about SAP where can we get those skills in SAP? where to learn?

IT jobs is sux..that is true but izzit only IT jobs. How about others? I think most of the jobs is sux

I must comment that definition of 'success' is very different from person to person, some would think that owning the biggest oil palm estate in Malaysia is success, while some might feel that he is the luckiest guy in the world by having a happy and caring family.

Also, another very important point is, work smart to be success, not work hard. (while 'work smart' has a different meaning according to people too, some ass might think selling fragrance oil and conning people money is smart, some might just decided to work out a proper schedule to the entire department to eliminate OT)

Am I mixing the problems, or they are the problems from the same source? Its very true that each job has a different requirement, while some might just specifically need freshie, some just cant affort to hire some jokers to play around! Business world is like the real nature, you either eating or got eaten.

These were the topic of a conference, sth like colaboration of acedemia and industry sth sth like that. So theres a few university rep and industry rep talking on the stage on this topic. In the end, there seem like no conclusion, the guy who said that industrial training undergrads are just like cheap labour kept silence after being countered by all of the uni reps(they are all dato, dr, etc). The educational people are not facing the problem directly, meanwhile continue cheating students to take part in their courses making false promise that they can be system analyst, network engineer, programmer, etc.

While industrial people, some are willing and kind enough to take in freshies, but, as darun said, supply surplus demand, they can only absorb a handful of freshies.

This post has been edited by rexis: Nov 2 2006, 05:31 PM

In my opinion, IT should be a compulsory subject in the primary schools and secondary schools. IT subjects should be combined with other courses.

Or,

The colleges or the universities should introduce the students to any other weird courses.

There's too many IT students.

Lets be a bit more specific, there's too many IT students who do not really have a clue about what should they do or the initiative to do.

Waaaay too many.

some tuition centers offer SAP. One module Rm20k.
It's much cheaper to learn by working. Not many company offers the opportunity though.

I agree on that, there are too many IT graduates who think that whatever they learned in university can bring them very far as well as brag about it. I've seen too many who have bragged about all of their skills but in the real working environment, they crumble. Why? The whole culture of IT is too wide and vague that some of it may not be industry specific but more on a general.