How is the training of the highest paid IT-specialists - those who need to understand a very expensive iron

It is believed that the most for the development of IT in Russia made the pirates. If it were not for them, not everyone could afford to scratch the office, photoshop and put some IDE, which costs quite a lot of money. But thanks to the widest distribution of even rare software, half of the problem — access to solutions — was removed. In the United States, for example, just getting an installation about 10 years ago was not very easy and fast.

In the case of expensive “banking” hardware, kernel solutions for operators, insurance and research institutes is a nuance. Most often, such a piece of iron in Russia is still only one, since no one can afford it anymore (and the maximum for the whole country should be no more than 10 pieces), and it is rather difficult to learn how to work with it. This is the first problem.

The second is that vendor courses are, of course, focused on their hardware and software and, roughly speaking, do not look like “how we set up the proper storage for the bank”, but “why do you need to buy our equipment”. The third difficulty is that if you want to compare 5 pieces of iron, you will have to complete 5 courses, the first half of each of which will be the same.
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And finally, all this fades away in comparison with the fact that with a really serious career growth, management must be learned, and this is often very nontrivial. Come under the cat, tell you how we solve these different issues.

The problem of expensive iron

So, in Russia there is only one piece of iron (and even if you're lucky). Most likely, you do not need to study yet, you need to take a closer look. To do this, we take a piece of hardware from a partner vendor, put it in a more or less similar to the real infrastructure (the vendor doesn’t do it without an integrator), call those who are interested and carry out test drives. This story is described here . In short, the point is that 15 people come from different companies, poke fingers with a piece of iron, scoff at her, take out blocks to live, look at failures and laugh softly. The experience begins later, when everyone is relaxing and sharing their practice of using the past generation. Over a cup of tea after a test drive, real knowledge comes, which otherwise simply cannot be obtained. In the same place, colleagues who have already stepped on a rake often insure their colleagues against wrong decisions. Alas, all this is very informal, and the experience will not work out - every advice from an IT specialist to an IT specialist can turn into a PR scandal for a vendor and, for example, a bank. Therefore - test drives.

When it is necessary to learn, in addition to access to the gland, there is still a lot of theory to go through. This leads us to the next block of difficulties.

The problem of vendor courses

A vendor teaches his hardware and software with only one purpose - to sell it more.

The second difficulty is that when you really want to compare 5-6 different solutions, you have to go through the same number of courses. Already on the third you will climb on the wall: for example, the same count-center solutions move from theory to, in fact, solutions only in the second half.

Since we often and a lot train our engineers, the solution of these two difficulties was asked of itself. We take the experience of integration across the country of different decisions, the guru in the sweater, who did all this with his working hands - and let out to live people to share experience. Theory once, then - practice. Turns out that:

For one course - immediately review the market and possible solutions.
Specific weaknesses and strengths of vendors and products.
The theory once, then - the solution of practical problems.
Everything can be felt.
Those who have supported and integrated this across the country for many years are telling.

For example, in our hit parade of such courses there is a choice of storage systems from different manufacturers (everything is constantly changing in test drives as a technical race in technology for data centers of banks), building call centers based on different vendors (more important than specific practices there is nothing - on paper everyone is beautiful, but as soon as you start to divide the conversation segments for analytics, problems will begin) and backup technologies (there’s a whole zoo of systems there, and also Disaster Recovery).

"Beginner" courses

Naturally, there are people who come to IT from other areas. For example, very often, security guards need to understand what works and how. Or it is very interesting for financiers to understand what a software-defined data center is. Or, more often, it is interesting for one IT professional to understand how some other field works. This is often the case in the same telecoms, when work goes on at the intersection of areas and more and is expected new technology.

Therefore, there are a lot of literary courses. Our students and interns attend them (for example, an IT school based on the technical support department ). Interestingly, either students or adults are very serious men with glitter in their eyes (they still remember how they started in stretched sweaters), who do not hesitate to know that they don’t know something. Their job is to find out and make a decision. They may ask very trivial questions, but everyone feels a desire to sort out conscientiously, so as not to leave any incomprehensible questions. Because then, sometimes, they go to their main admin and say: there are 500 million more, but let's do it this way and that, this is strategically correct.

From the latest fun courses of this kind, from “ Basic Networking” for students to “ Linux jumpstart for Solaris professionals”.

The usual structure of a full-fledged large course (for example, by the same telephony) is as follows: 1) theory; 2) review of solutions; 3) installation and configuration details; 4) non-trivial configuration; 5) troubleshooting. A whole delegation from the company comes to segments 1 and 2, then only profile IT specialists remain at 3-4, and support engineers and, at times, the main admin at 5.

Courses that vendor will never read

There is one more field of study - something that a vendor will never tell. Our Russian hit is to ensure the correct handling of personal data, for example. There are details and life hacking at the level “but it’s better not to install this server and documentation, it’s better to put locks on each door - they are better than a firewall” (those who came across, understand this situation perfectly well). Plus other features of the practice, in particular, from the experience of checks and observations.

Another example is the compliance of the information security standard to the ISO / IEC 27001: 2013 standard with the practice of implementation in Russia - all the rakes that have been touched.

Management

Oh, this is a magic word, from which many developers are twitching. Nevertheless, one cannot get away with it: with age and experience comes an understanding of the need to understand IT and department management, and even (oh my God!) Marketing, because they consume something more than other computational capabilities in a number of spheres. And all of this is no less important than knowing what a virtual IT infrastructure is and what a regular data center differs from SDDC (software defined). Or the same problems of risk prediction - although they are growing in our country from power cuts and the corresponding infrastructure of data centers, they still require financial knowledge and an understanding of information security. Naturally, we learn. And also in the teachers, those who have already stuffed cones, and for a long time.

Our hit is the IT Investment Assessment course . It will help in our financial realities to make the best decision: what and how much to take, or not to take and wait, or maybe even sell and take another - better - to rent.

Why it is not necessary to take free licenses, if they stayed with the neighbors (the real history of state institutions), why it is advisable for your western partner with its business processes to develop software on your knee, but be sure to pack it into its standards and documentation. Or, on the contrary, in this difficult time, you need to take and invest in your business processes in order to reduce business costs today, and tomorrow to occupy a new niche in your market. After all, any crisis and tension is the time for modernization and change.

It should be noted that both the companies themselves and their key employees are vitally interested in obtaining objective practical knowledge on such courses. A symbiosis is formed: companies need informed decisions (the error is tens, hundreds, and even thousands of times more expensive than the cost of the course), and people need professional growth.