@kaigou, OTJ training used to be the most respected among the old skool aerospace contractors that my dad worked for. Practical, hands-on, knows how the details on the equipment work, well up on the super sekrit gear those folks do't share with other folks, for example. Very big on who you worked for, who would vouch for you. Also very unstable business, subcontractors were always scrambling, always hiring and firing and the folks who did the work were in constant flow from one place to another. Not quite the same as working for, say, Westinghouse, or Proctor and Gamble, or one of the really stable large financials. Problem with working for various large companies was that there was the expectation of working for one company for a long time, and you get the stinkeye for being fired or for being ambitious and disloyal. There's always that tension between self-educated vs. "has an official piece of paper to prove it," or an official endorsement, or a good reference. These days, it's hard to prove what OTJ *means* if you've been dealing with really crumby supervisors and managers who won't give you any kind of reference--or, if they're already infamous in the biz, whose references would be really suspect anyway. (That movie The Devil Loves Prada is coming to my mind again..."Oh, you lasted a whole week with her? My goodness!") These days it's much less easy for programmers to just say, hey, I learned PERL in a weekend, let's do this-- and yes, I know someone who did that about twenty years ago-- because now many parts of industry and programming work are a lot less wild west (aka, rare knacks + skills in high demand) than it used to be. Some of the difference is that those folks didn't worry about imposter syndrome. Nobody else knew any better anyway, they're gonna have to wait on somebody who can muddle their way to a solution on this anyway, why not give it a fling? The folks signing the contracts in admin had no way to know who's any good out there at the bleeding edge, they have to rely on somebody who hasn't been able to fix it so far, to tell them who sounds like they're any good or who's a flimflam artist. I think some of the big orgs out here have been contracting an awful lot of work with very official, very large scale bulls-@@ artists on the corporate scale, and getting left with the bill for stuff that doesn't work, and they want their own employees to just siddown and shuddup and not admit this fact to anybody. (Oooh, scandal--that gets expensive too.) This creates a hostile environment for anybody with a tendency to point out the Emperor has no clothes, or to try to fix some of the mess. If the bean counters are saying, "we don't have time for goofs, we can hire somebody else next week better than you," and they can, using official pieces of paper to prove things, that's a whole different scene. OTJ experience can get presented in a more impressive way to those folks, but it does take a bit of attitude-adjustment. When I read: "...too tech to be welcome in the areas that would otherwise be glad to have another woman..." There's a certain disconnect/alien there which has to be overcome. But you do speak design, so what I see is presenting the idea, "here's somebody who can translate for you, who can fight for what you need because they do understand where you're coming from." The outer gate-guardian, if that makes sense?
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Date: 4 Nov 2012 11:30 pm (UTC)Not quite the same as working for, say, Westinghouse, or Proctor and Gamble, or one of the really stable large financials. Problem with working for various large companies was that there was the expectation of working for one company for a long time, and you get the stinkeye for being fired or for being ambitious and disloyal.
There's always that tension between self-educated vs. "has an official piece of paper to prove it," or an official endorsement, or a good reference.
These days, it's hard to prove what OTJ *means* if you've been dealing with really crumby supervisors and managers who won't give you any kind of reference--or, if they're already infamous in the biz, whose references would be really suspect anyway. (That movie The Devil Loves Prada is coming to my mind again..."Oh, you lasted a whole week with her? My goodness!")
These days it's much less easy for programmers to just say, hey, I learned PERL in a weekend, let's do this-- and yes, I know someone who did that about twenty years ago-- because now many parts of industry and programming work are a lot less wild west (aka, rare knacks + skills in high demand) than it used to be.
Some of the difference is that those folks didn't worry about imposter syndrome. Nobody else knew any better anyway, they're gonna have to wait on somebody who can muddle their way to a solution on this anyway, why not give it a fling?
The folks signing the contracts in admin had no way to know who's any good out there at the bleeding edge, they have to rely on somebody who hasn't been able to fix it so far, to tell them who sounds like they're any good or who's a flimflam artist.
I think some of the big orgs out here have been contracting an awful lot of work with very official, very large scale bulls-@@ artists on the corporate scale, and getting left with the bill for stuff that doesn't work, and they want their own employees to just siddown and shuddup and not admit this fact to anybody. (Oooh, scandal--that gets expensive too.) This creates a hostile environment for anybody with a tendency to point out the Emperor has no clothes, or to try to fix some of the mess.
If the bean counters are saying, "we don't have time for goofs, we can hire somebody else next week better than you," and they can, using official pieces of paper to prove things, that's a whole different scene. OTJ experience can get presented in a more impressive way to those folks, but it does take a bit of attitude-adjustment.
When I read:
"...too tech to be welcome in the areas that would otherwise be glad to have another woman..."
There's a certain disconnect/alien there which has to be overcome.
But you do speak design, so what I see is presenting the idea, "here's somebody who can translate for you, who can fight for what you need because they do understand where you're coming from." The outer gate-guardian, if that makes sense?