Re: In industry it is not a career path.
The general problem is that most companies have a "I don't do technology" culture in it's senior management team, which is then aped by the junior managers. These are the UK companies that are going to the wall currently.
Companies also do not want to invest in developing in house IT skills (baring in mind a trainnee programmer is basically a liability for the first 6 months, and needs a senior dev mentor's time, reducing his/her productivity)
But the companies that tackle this, and cultivate in house talent are the ones that are not just going to survive, their going to thrive.
Outsourcing/off-shoring is fine for stuff that does not relate to product differentiation or competative advantage (if you outsource this, don't be surprised when your competitors at the same OS outfit offer the same goods and services!), but innovation should be inhouse.
The other problem with recruiting and retaining good coders and analysts is whilst anybody can be taught BA, PM, DBA and programming skills, the good ones have minds that can "go sideways" when looking at, and solving operational problems, the bit of paper from the school/Uni doesn't show this ability
Biting the hand that feeds IT
