Down the sinkhole...

posted onFebruary 14, 2001

by hitbsecnews

Okay, before I even get started with this, I know what I have to say in here is probrably going to piss quite a fair number of poeple off, but I'm
going to say it anyway. What's this going to be about you ask? Well pretty much on how the Malaysian IT industry (and the tertiary education system) is
going down the crapper and there really isn't very much anyone is willing to do about it. Or should I say it appears that there isn't anyone who actually
cares to do something about it. As of the past couple of months, the government has pretty much found that all the really GOOD computer people have been
snapped up by overseas companies and they (the Malaysian employees) don't seem to want to come back. Thus, the goverment set out to come up with a sort of
a scheme to try and woo the talent back to the home soil so to speak. Well so far, it hasn't worked... and here's my take on why.

/* start-rant */

The Education System.

It all starts out with the Malaysian higher education system. All right, I'm not really at liberty to comment on the entire education
system in Malaysia, so I'll just comment on what I've found about IT education at the tertiary level. I'll start of with a little story of a time when I
had a conversation with this new journalist girl at a press conference. I started off with the usual small talk of how long she's been in the industry and
such, and before long, the conversation turned to education - thus I asked her where she graduated from and in what field. Low and behold, she was a product
of one of the local universities, and graduated a degree holder in Computer Science. Needless to say I was suitably impressed, considering the number of
people I know who are CS grads and who are pretty 31337 if I may use the term. Anyway, I proceeded to ask her about her programming knowledge (just to get a
rough idea of what they're teaching at this local uni for a CS degree) and she said C and Visual Basic. Now don't get me wrong, C is a lovely language, and
one that I myself enjoy using from time to time, I can't say the same for Visual Basic as I've never had a chance to use it. The worst part about this
whole story is that this girl CAN'T CODE! I mean she can write a basic "hello world" program but that's about it. According to her, the uni
only teaches stuff up until iterations (for loops) and conditionals (if else) - nothing more, no arrays, no pointers, nothing! And this is supposedly a
COMPUTER SCIENCE degree! What the heck is going on here. If you're thinking that this is a one off isolated case, then you're sadly mistaken.

I'm a student at the "highly acclaimed" Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology - supposedly an IS0 9002
audited company that promises state of the art facilities and also claims to produce graduates that are "better than the rest". I was speaking to a Mr. DY
(he wants to remain anonymous for fear of reprimand), a first year student at the Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology, who had this to say
about the institute and the situation with local universities: "Local universities are a sad excuse for educational institutions. They're
teaching stuff that most people would already know... e.g. one would expect a person going to a college like APIIT to know at least C... instead we have
people who don't use the computer for anything other than to surf porn..." When I signed up with APIIT, I actually believed that this place was the closest
thing one could get to going to MIT without leaving Malaysia - okay, maybe that's pushing it too far, but I did believe that this place would be a challenge
and I would actually LEARN something. Well I've been there for almost 12 months, and I've learnt absolutely nothing. I've ended up giving lectures more
often than I've been attending them, and I've even given a technical briefing on information security and hacking to the students (at the request of the
institute no less). To make matters worse, the majority of my class mates actually find what we're learning DIFFICULT! What have we covered in the last 12
months... let's see... Business Organizations, Computer Information Systems, C Programming (yes we did arrays and pointers - THANK GOD!), Data
Communications, and a few other boring subject I can't remember right now.

The hardest part I would say about the course so far, is not falling
asleep. Sure, there are interesting projects assigned, but they're given on a group basis (3 or more people) which is all fine and well... but when 2 out of
3 of your team mates know absolutely next to nothing about what's required to get the project done, you can't help but feel you're getting the short end of
the stick - cause you know at the end of the day, you're going to be left with the task of putting everything together, and making some sense of the utter
crap they've come up with. Add to this the fact that in our second semester they taught us COBOL... Now I'm all for teaching us the basics and making us
appreciate the "classic" appeal of COBOL, but lets face it - In today's world, its ASP and PHP all the way. I think Julian Matthews summed up the overall
view of our education system best in his article "Photocopying net-cynicism in a wired
world": "Our education system can only be described as an archaic system imposed by a dinosaur called "Governmentaurus" to keep the status quo and
churn out cogs in the wheel of a lumbering machine going to nowhere".

Now I know some of you might be asking the question of why don't I just skip a year or two and get on with it? Well you can't... this is the
beauty of the Malaysian Education system - they don't consider work experience a criteria for placement in classes - they only go by the last
degree or exam you sat for and put you in whatever class they think you should be in. Kind of a stupid system if you ask me,
which might explain why students are going overseas for their higher education and totally not bothering with a local degree. Thus,
you'll find most often than not, these students go off and never return... The students that do graduate from the Malaysian unis know next to nothing, so companies won't hire them or prefer to look towards overseas graduates for their staffing needs, since they feel they'd at least
be getting people who know their stuff, and don't need to be sent for intensive training. Many companies won't admit openly to this however,
instead maintaining that they aren't prejudice towards anyone. However the underlying fact is that 90% of people have the same thought on their
minds... "Overseas equals better." You can debate that point till your blue in the face, but at the end of the day, all you need to do is take a look at
what's being taught in the local universities, and you'll soon end up agreeing with the majority.

The Companies

Okay - so why aren't the Malaysian students, who've completed their overseas degrees coming back to Malaysia to work? There are
several reasons... firstly, if they happen to marry a foreigner, its not particularly easy for their significant other to get a work visa in
Malaysia... Secondly, which is perhaps the saddest part, Malaysian companies suck! They pay peanuts for what many would consider a "skilled job" yet they
expect you to work extra long hours and put it ridiculous amounts of effort! How can you expect to get a really good system administrator and only pay
him 3K per month? In addition to paying him a meager salary, you expect this individual to work overtime, as well as maintain more than a fair share of
systems. Many a time workers are expected to perform duties that are BEYOND their job scope (e.g. a system administrator that does development work as
well). There's also the problem of not providing their employees with incentives (flexible working hours for instance) and you'll see why nobody in their
right mind would want to give up a good thing to come back to mediocre pay, and an overall crappy working condition. Another fact to add is that the
Malaysian IT Industry is BORING! I have yet to come across a company that is doing something really interesting - nobody is innovating - they're all
immitating what's already been done overseas. Many prefer to stick to the tried and true (okay its good business sense), but they're not even willing to
take risks and venture into new areas (e.g. wireless technology) where there's money to be made. Now this is not to say that EVERY SINGLE company in the US
or elsewhere are at the cutting edge of technology, far from it, but at least there are a few companies that are working with really nifty stuff, and they
are willing to take a chance and try out something new. In addition to this, I've heard from a fair number of people, that most companies strive to keep
their really good employees happy - almost to the point of doing whatever it takes... giving them a company car, fat pay cheques ... you get what I
mean. These companies VALUE their employees and realise that without these dedicated people, they're likely to lose their competitive edge. Most companies
in Malaysia take on the attitude of "YOU (the employee) need us more than we need you". Utter crap - which is why you'll find that the majority of
companies are packed with employees that are dissatisfied, thus they don't give their all towards achieving the goals of the company. Why bother if the
company couldn't give a shit about you or what you have to say? Then you have the problem of people like me - young (I'm 22), lots of work experience with
system administration, networking and network security, but hasn't got a degree yet. Most companies think if you've haven't got a degree - you don't know
jack... If you're young, and don't have a degree you don't know jack multiplied by 2! Don't these companies realise that yes, a degree is important, but its
about what the employee can do in a REAL WORLD situation that counts, not what's on that piece of paper. I know of students cramming a day before the exams
- just memorizing whats needed but not UNDERSTANDING the fundamental concepts of the subject. The end result - they get their degrees, but they don't REALLY
know what they're talking about. Plus, there are just certain things that can't be taught - like what to do when your companies webserver is broken into at
3am in the morning.

In short, it's a pretty sad state of affairs... The companies here need to wake up and realise that it's going to take a lot more than providing a
one-month bonus at the end of the year as an incentive to bring the really good guys back home. The Government on the other hand, should really start taking
a close look into the syllabus that these local universities are dishing out, cause from the look of things, its going from bad to worse. The thing I fear the
most, is that if companies and universities don't start changing the way they've been carrying on, we might just see the day when server farms are run by
complete morons, and companies are manned by technical engineers that don't know the difference between Sendmail and Apache. Then again, perhaps that day
has already arrived.

/* end rant */

Peace.
L33tdawg.