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Promoting STEM careers – a conversation with author Carrie Goetz
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Technology companies around the world face a skills shortage, so how should the way IT careers are promoted to school pupils and college students change?
Carrie Goetz has enjoyed her career in tech and understands the range of opportunities the industry offers, as well the problems that tech employers face in recruiting all ages of education leavers.
Nowadays Carrie is the Principal/CTO, at StrategITcom, Carrie is also an Amazon best-selling author of
- Jumpstart Your Career in Data Centers Featuring Careers for Women, Trades, and Vets in Tech and Data Centers.
- Polly Packet's Precious Payload - All Smiles to the Data Center (Jumpstart Your Career in Data Centers)
- Educator's Reference for Data Center Education: A Companion to "Jumpstart Your Career in Data
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Carrie and host Michael Millward a volunteer STEM ambassador discuss how technology is taught at every stage of education might need to change to create more interest in tech careers.
Their conversation covers how
- Coding might not be the best place to start.
- The wide range of careers needed to make a data centre work
- Diversity of people working in tech
- On-line security
- Once posted it is there forever Together in Electric Dreams.
- The challenges of preparing people for technology careers when the industry is constantly changing.
Discover more about Carrie Goetz and Michael at Abeceder.co.uk
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Transcript
Introduction to Zencastr
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production process so easy.
Focus of The Independent Minds Podcast
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasida and people who think outside the box. about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Middleward, Managing Director of Abbasida.
Carrie Goetz's Advocacy for Tech Careers
00:00:38
Speaker
In this episode of The Independent Minds, I'm meeting Carrie Goetz, who is an advocate for improving the way in which technical careers are promoted in schools, colleges and universities.
00:00:50
Speaker
Carrie is the CTO at strategiccom.com. Carrie is actively shaping the technical direction of companies and public bodies through her consulting and advocation of technical solutions.
Michael's Travel Insights and Podcast Objectives
00:01:06
Speaker
Carrie is based in Dunedin in Florida in the United States. I have visited Florida and had a great time. If I get the opportunity to return, I will use my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club to access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:01:28
Speaker
In the spirit of sharing, I have added ah a link with a built-in discount to the description so that you can become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club as well and travel at trade prices.
Carrie's Unplanned IT Career Path
00:01:41
Speaker
Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to, and probably good enough to share with your friends, family and work colleagues as well.
00:01:58
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Hello, Carrie. Hi there.
00:02:08
Speaker
Thanks for having me. It's a great pleasure. this is an area of the IT technical industry that I am involved in a little bit as well because I am a STEM ambassador. and Our role is to promote STEM careers into schools, colleges and universities and try and make it easier for people to understand about all the various different options. So meeting you is is really very advantageous for me. but How did you get involved in your technical career? Where did it all start?
Perks of an IT Career
00:02:42
Speaker
I'm just like everybody else. I totally fell into technology. I started out in architecture and ended up being somewhere very different through teaching. And then I started coding and then I took on networking when nobody knew what networking was. And then that sort of morphed into over 45 years in um in technology. So for me, it wasn't an intended destination, but it was definitely an amazing destination.
00:03:10
Speaker
You're happy with the way the mystery tour ended up? Oh, without a doubt. Absolutely, without a doubt. I've seen the world on somebody else's dime. i have met amazing people all over this planet. I have extended family all over the globe.
00:03:23
Speaker
None of that would have been possible without this job and this career.
Tech Industry Misconceptions and Recruitment Challenges
00:03:27
Speaker
Yes, a bit like that with me and my HR career in technology companies. It was before you know where you are, you're talking to people all over the world and then somebody is flying you to those places and you're doing much more than you ever expected. But yeah, I know it's it's a great industry to get into.
00:03:46
Speaker
It is. And it's a massive learning opportunity to, you know, not everybody does things the same way around the planet. No, it's kind of nice to be able to, ah you know, to dive in and so and see what the differences are. You can always learn something from different cultures and different technologies and bring it back. That is true. Very true. And it's one of the things that, although the technology is supposed to be the same, people use it in so many different ways. And it's only when you see how someone else is using the technology that you start to explore and discover the true potential of the technology.
Exploring Non-Coding Roles in Tech
00:04:20
Speaker
Yep.
00:04:20
Speaker
We're advocates for the technology industry and have both enjoyed great careers in different aspects of the technology world. And we know that we're becoming increasingly technical in terms of the way in which we all live.
00:04:36
Speaker
So why is there such a crisis in recruitment in the technology industries, the scientific industries? Why is there such a crisis?
00:04:46
Speaker
Well, I think it's a few fold. First off, I think that there is a misconception and and a lot of that is the way that technology is presented to kids. But if you look at most kids in elementary school, their first exposure to technology outside of being a consumer looking at their parents phone is a coding class.
00:05:05
Speaker
And coding is a very specific skill set. Some people love it. Some people hate it. I personally used to write code. I'm not a fan anymore. I've you know moved on. Somebody else can write the code now. But but the point is is that you know coding is a very small portion of technology. And if somebody starts with coding and hates it, then they sort of write off all of the technical world, even though We have everything from construction to the cloud and kind of all things in between.
Broadening Tech Education Beyond Coding
00:05:34
Speaker
And I think we have to be careful how we frame technology and make sure that we have much better exposure than, hey, here's how you write a piece of code, because not everybody loves that kind of work.
00:05:46
Speaker
To be honest with you, not everyone has the patience to write the code. That too. Yeah. Not everyone is detail orientated enough to write the code and has the patience and attention to detail to try and find, successfully find that one little piece of code that is stopping everything from working.
00:06:09
Speaker
it is It is a process for sure. Yes. And of course, there are all sorts of systems now that are making it easier to code. But I suppose if we had a teacher in the room, they would say that the coding class is to try and explain to people how the computer, the technology works.
00:06:29
Speaker
And having an appreciation of that and realizing that it's not for you is a is a valuable lesson in its own right. But...
00:06:41
Speaker
The actual experiencing of a coding class and understanding what happens in the technology industry can be two quite different things, I think, as well. though can't they There's a ah mismatch between having to understand the computer and then the career's advice.
00:06:59
Speaker
But that's kind of like saying, you know, you said earlier that you've been to Florida and if you had a bad time in Florida, it'd be like saying, I hate all of the United States, right? and Because it is such a small piece. And, you know, it's one thing to understand how it works. I don't necessarily have to understand how my TV works to go to streaming and find a show, right? I don't know that you necessarily need that level of granularity. I think what we need is more exposure. We need people to be exposed to the fact that, you know, networking, you write no lines of code. Storage, you write no lines of code. Working with servers, you may or may not write lines of code. You may actually get to build the server itself. And so when when you take it in the frame of what this whole industry is, it's way more than that. You know, maybe... Maybe your highlight is working in an HVAC career and then you start working in controls and you become a master at environmentals in an environment. You are a very highly sought after person in a technology career, but not writing code.
00:08:02
Speaker
So I guess that's kind of what I mean when I say that. Coding is a piece of it, but I think we got kind of hung up on we were going to need so many coders. And now, of course, you know, AI, we have low code and no
Tech Infrastructure and Ecological Impact
00:08:13
Speaker
code. So some of those jobs are going to go away, too. But I i think we have to do a better job of discussing the depth and breadth of everything in the industry instead of just saying coding really represents STEM because it doesn't. It's such a tiny piece.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, I can see what you mean in terms of the wide range of roles that are available within the industry. And it it really is everything. Whatever job you want to do, it's available in the industry. And for every stage of the development and production of some sort of technical product or service, there is a role which will be suitable for someone. And we we do tend to focus on the parts that seem to say technology. But you mentioned all sorts of things there in terms of like environment and networking and all those sorts things. and I'm thinking like...
00:09:09
Speaker
I'm sure I don't know all of them inside out. But I do know from my experience of being an ah HR ah professional that was looking after technical people, that once you start getting involved in the technology, you do start to at the same time need to find people to look after the technology as well.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's not going to run itself, that's for sure. It's not going to update itself. It's not going upgrade itself. It's not going to do any of those things by itself. I mean, there's some things that we can certainly sort out and have technology do in our favor. And I and i think we can massage those things. You know, environmental is a good example. Some of the ways that we handle how we compute are good examples.
00:09:55
Speaker
Cyber security. I mean, there's a lot that wraps around that that is not necessarily a coding career, but especially with the trades, you know, here in the US, we have seven and a half million open jobs in the trades, and we can use all of those in the mission critical data center industry pretty much. all the way down to diesel mechanics. You know, we have to have somebody that fixes the heavy equipment that clears the sites for us to build a data
Carrie's Books for Tech Awareness
00:10:18
Speaker
center.
00:10:18
Speaker
And so I think when you think of it with a broader mindset of what does it take to make sure that something shows up on your phone? And that's the part that people miss. It's just like with the power company. When you flip out a light switch, you expect the power to be there. You don't know how it gets there. You don't care how it gets there.
00:10:36
Speaker
You just care that it gets there. And I think technology is the same way. And carving out some of these additional ah jobs and skills and things that people can do, I think really sort of ignites a fire in the industry in that, wow, who thought that there's all these possibilities? There's, you know, in the in the first book that I wrote,
00:10:57
Speaker
We unearthed about 300 jobs without even batting an eye just to have, you know, all the some of the the job titles that are into the industry. And of course, those are growing and morphing. And there's even more. I mean, all the way down to community activists that work with the community to make sure that the data centers are good corporate citizens in the community in which they reside. There's just so much opportunity here that it's a shame for people to miss out on it, I think.
00:11:25
Speaker
Well, what is the name of the first book that you wrote? So the first book is Jumpstart Your Career in Data Centers. And the impetus behind that book was helping people understand the depth and breadth of the industry, but in a very easy to digest format. So the book is designed to be read in a weekend.
00:11:43
Speaker
It's got you know some of the technical jargon as a definition, but then it has very common sense ideas. language as far as how it fits together and how it works and part of the ecosystem. And I did it for a few reasons. you know when When I first wrote that book, the attrition rate for women in tech was 67%.
00:12:02
Speaker
And that's not that left a job, that's that left an entire industry. And I thought, you know that's really criminal because there's so many things in this industry that you could move to if you just pivot a little to the left, pivot to the little right, and And I think a lot of that is just not understanding the whole ecosystem. So I think we really do people a disservice when we hire them on to a company and say, OK, well, here's the one piece of this industry you're going to learn about.
00:12:28
Speaker
The rest you're kind of stuck with. Right. Or even on a job interview. How do you interview for a job if you don't know what a data center is? So it was really written to be pretty common sense and just adds so that layer of knowledge to folks that are looking.
00:12:43
Speaker
How many books have he written so far? So the Jumpstart is on its second edition now. It's been updated for to include some AI. There's an educator's reference that goes with that book that helps teachers figure out how to teach data centers. There's experiments, key takeaways, things that they can do in a classroom. And then there's Polly Packet's Precious Payload, which is the children's version of how the internet works that talks about a little girl sending a picture to her grandma and how it gets to the data center for her grandma to get it. So
00:13:16
Speaker
kind of, you know, trying to reach some of the younger audience and let them think about these careers when they're little, because most kids decide what they're going to be by the time they're seven or eight years old.
Gaps in Tech Education and Learning Methods
00:13:26
Speaker
Wow. I must confess, um I will confess that at seven or eight years old, i did not know what a human resources professional was. So I'm an accidental HR professional. Right? Yeah, well, sometimes we fall into other careers, certainly, but...
00:13:45
Speaker
At least, you know, put it in the in the line of sight, right? Yes. But i'm so I'm listening to what you're saying and connecting it with this thing where children in primary school, so younger than 11, are already doing coding classes in those schools.
00:14:03
Speaker
And what you're saying is that that's unnecessary. What we need to be doing instead is giving people, young people, an overview of the whole industry, not just one small part of it.
00:14:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's much better. You know, and and I do think that that there's other things we could be teaching, you know, like digital responsibility. How much power are you using when you send a snap?
00:14:30
Speaker
Now multiply that by all your friends and all the snaps that you send in a year. How much power is that? And then how many homes can we heat for that? I think those are the kind of things that really spark conversations in school to help kids understand not only is technology a great thing, but we have to use it responsibly. And we have a responsibility for how we consume that to make sure that we're good stewards of the environment and digital stewards of of what we post. i mean, look, look, if you go back, what, I'm old, so i can I can say this. But if you look back when social media first came out, there was a whole wave after about seven years of kids that realized, uh-oh, what I post matters because now it has an impact on my job, whether I get hired, what people see about me. This is my life persona that I'm putting out. Think about the AI agents now that pop up on every single phone call you have. What's that going to look like in eight years? Is there going to be some downfall from that? Is there going to be some backlash of all of our everything we've said being out there in AI somewhere and now discoverable? yeah I think all of those are great topics to work around, you know, not just how IT t works, but the ethics of IT and how to be better digital consumers. This is true. I'm reminded of a Giorgio Moroder and Phil Oakey song, which was a theme from a film, but it was called Together in Electric Dreams.
00:15:57
Speaker
And there's this idea that no matter what it is that you post, it will still be around long after you have gone. Somewhere in the world, it will be on a server, a consuming energy, consuming water to keep the server cool. And yet, it as once as soon as you've posted it, it is there and will be remain somewhere on some sort of server.
00:16:20
Speaker
What you're making me think about as well is the the clashes between different parts of people's lives. So we might be very interested in ecology and global warming and you know all the the changes in the weather, all sorts of things.
00:16:38
Speaker
But actually, if we use technology irresponsibly, then like you say, every time we send a photograph, every time we send an email, every time that we're using a data center in some way or another, as we're doing now, we are consuming the energy that it takes to run that data center. They are not...
00:16:59
Speaker
things that just happen. There's a huge infrastructure that goes into making the technology work and making the connectivity, the network, the internet work as well.
00:17:12
Speaker
Well, and you're not only are you sharing that information, but you're giving the companies whose services you you use an incredible amount of information about you. They're getting all the metadata, where you were, what time it was taken, who's in the picture,
00:17:26
Speaker
You can scrape faces. You can, you know, there's a lot of information that you're putting out there and making readily available. And, you know, sometimes that ages well, sometimes it doesn't. But but the point is, is that that digital footprint exists. And, i you know, I think that there's nothing wrong with, know, we're responsible about turning the lights off when we leave a room and closing the refrigerator door. There's nothing wrong. wrong with learning to be responsible with our digital personas too. Yes.
00:17:53
Speaker
yeah Making sure that we're we're adding value to what we would decide to post rather than just um exposing ourselves in everything that we're thinking, everything that we're doing. It isn't really necessary. But what I think you're describing is almost a change in the curriculum around how technology is taught and in general and how careers in the technology industries are positioned.
Diverse Learning Paths in Tech Careers
00:18:24
Speaker
Well, yeah, and and you know, for a big part of that, we don't have curriculum. If you go right now outside of maybe six colleges that I'm aware of and look for a course in data centers, you won't find one. You'll find coding, you'll find information technology. And the problem is, is that a lot of our college curriculum, is it's a slow moving machine. By the time all the approvals and stuff get done, a lot of technology, you know, that course now is defunct and and not really true because the technology has changed. And so when we think about how rapidly technology changes, i think the other thing that we have to realize is it really doesn't matter how you learn, it matters that you learn. And I think we have to embrace some of these alternate
00:19:09
Speaker
methods like apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, look at the trades. A lot of people that start out in this industry in a trade end up going on and getting a college degree if that's what they want, or they learn on the job and they learn through other methods. And then they still advance their careers and they advance how they're able to feed their families and things by learning about things in different ways, like through certifications and on-the-job training programs and those kind of things. And I think if we're really going to keep pace with where we need to be employee-wise in the tech industry, we're going to have to do a much better job of supporting alternate learning methods. College is a way to learn. It is not the only way to learn. And, you know, there's a lot of really brilliant technologists that dropped out of college or didn't go to college.
00:19:55
Speaker
And that I think speaks volumes for the fact that there is value in college for some people, but not necessarily for every person. And we all learn differently. And I think, you know, if if you look at,
00:20:08
Speaker
MOOCs are a great example, MOOC, Massive Open Online Courses. You can go get a full college degree at zero cost by taking those classes. Now, you don't get credit for it, but you also don't have to pay for it. So if you're just hungry and you want to learn, you can go get a lot of those same college classes and learn them at your own pace.
00:20:28
Speaker
Now, me personally, as a boss, if somebody came to me and said, hey, I took all of these classes on my own and, you know, this is the equivalent to that degree, I would love to hire that person. That shows initiative and drive and intent. And it also makes a lot of those courses available to people that otherwise wouldn't be able to go because university, at least, you know, in some places is very expensive. So, you know, i think all paths are going to lead to good outcomes. And if we really want to talk about diversity, diversity in thought is the biggest diversity we can have. And bringing together people that have learned in different ways that come at a situation with a different mindset is how we grow. There's no, if you know, you can't. say, here's a problem, this is how you fix it and expect anything to change. If you take a bunch of really inquisitive, bright minds and say, here's a problem, how would you solve it?
00:21:22
Speaker
They're all going to come at that problem differently. And when you put all that together, you're going to get a much better outcome because people think along different lines and what one person missed, another person is
Validating Online Learning and Community Education
00:21:33
Speaker
going to pick up. So I think we have to embrace all methods of learning to get people into this industry. And, you know, there's from training and doing on the job and apprenticeships. I think all of those are absolutely valid and necessary.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yes, I agree with you. i did some research a few years ago into what the technology industries needed in terms of people who were entering the industry.
00:21:57
Speaker
And one of the things that came out of the research was that if someone needed to learn something, they didn't look for, oh, well, where is the course that I need to go on, they would look online through the various different networking groups for the person who had already done what they needed to do and then look at what that person was saying about it and make direct person-to-person contact with the person who knows what they needed to know. and learn from their experience. And the community, the technical community, was almost reinventing itself by this peer-to-peer learning, which was happening for free.
00:22:42
Speaker
To your point, honestly, the just the exposure to everything and and who you meet online, who you see online, are they really...
00:22:54
Speaker
that good. But there's a lot of us that have been in the industry for a long time that put out technical papers and documents and articles that are all absolutely great ways to to learn. I would just caution if you're learning from random people on the internet to make sure that they are who they say they are.
00:23:09
Speaker
Because, you know, even with AI, there's critical thinking is a huge portion of any of the way that you learn and any of the way that you work. If you can't if you can't think critically, you're setting yourself back. You have to be able to sort out the hype from the goodness. You have to be able to follow the money when a solution is recommended and see, well, is a solution recommended because it's the best solution or is a solution recommended because somebody is going to get a commission when they sell it. Right. And I think all of those are are pieces of that. And, you know, you you could go down some rabbit holes on the internet in a good way and also in a bad way.
00:23:47
Speaker
Yes, there is an element of the internet which is self-regulated or not regulated at all. And when I talk about communities, you're talking about communities where people are demonstrating their knowledge and their expertise. And like you say, have been publishing papers, explaining ideas in a way which other people can explore and understand rather than just someone who says, I know, without actually any evidence to back up their claims. So you know it's ah it's a debate all about how to understand and validate the information sources on the internet, which is anyone can post whatever they want to post. but That's probably a podcast by
Adaptability and International Tech Practices
00:24:31
Speaker
itself. It is.
00:24:33
Speaker
but but But to your point, I mean, this whole industry has been one of the longest ongoing apprenticeships because we don't have curriculum. We've all had to learn from each other. And we've had to learn from suppliers to figure out how things work. And we've had to really suss and sort things out for different environments and that kind of which to me is part of the fun. I love the the puzzleness of it, if for lack of a better term, but, you know, figuring out how things work. And honestly, it is one of the most giving industries that I've been around. And when I was a consultant, I was exposed to multiple industries just from the information technology side.
00:25:09
Speaker
but But I can tell you, this is the spirit, the kindness, the generosity of people in this industry are unmatched, in my opinion. I would agree with you and I think one of the important things to remember is that in some, what we might call trades or some skill sets, there is a specific way to do something.
Unlearning and Adapting to Tech Changes
00:25:29
Speaker
If you put A with B, you will get C and that is always going to be the case. yeah The way to make this product is like this. When it comes to technology,
00:25:40
Speaker
The pace of change in technology, the potential of technology is only, like I said at the beginning, realized when you actually communicate with people, regardless of where they are in the world, you see how they're using it. And that means that you can then, okay, you're doing it like this.
00:25:58
Speaker
We've been doing it like that. There's a middle ground, there's ah a ground that takes the the sharing of the of the experiences and moves everything to another level. It's the sharing of information from people with proven experience, proven expertise, which will move things further forward and perhaps One the key skills is for people who want a career in a STEM or technological um industry is developing the ability to learn and the ability to unlearn as well.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's I mean, that's a good point. Unlearning does matter because this industry does change technology changes how we implement technology changes. Even some of the buzzwords and acronyms repeat themselves and 10 years later means something completely different.
00:26:48
Speaker
but Isn't that the truth? Isn't that the truth? But, yep, we're straying into the into the land of the of, like you say, wholly new podcast episode subjects. So for today, it has been really interesting, Carrie, and I do thank you for your time. I'm hoping that we'll be able to encourage more people to explore technological careers.
00:27:14
Speaker
Thank you very much for today. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having it been my pleasure. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Carrie Goetz, the CTO, Stratagit.com.
00:27:33
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us by using the links in the description. If you have experienced technical challenges whilst listening to this episode of The Independent Minds, you want to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering.
00:27:53
Speaker
There is a link in the description which will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code. I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Carrie and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:28:16
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. And remember to share the link with your family, friends and work colleagues. The aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.