IT Decisions has published a number of stories where CIOs have talked about the need for IT graduates to be able to use the English language. It’s not that it is essential for writing software, but in large companies where people from several countries need to work together, English becomes the default corporate communication tool.
And people from all walks of life see English as a tool that can help them progress. A waiter in my local padaria greets me in English and tries using phrases he learned in his English classes. When I wrote about a local bar on my personal blog, a waiter wrote a comment in English asking me to return!
As I was walking down the street a few days ago, this newspaper page flew past in the wind.
It’s advertising an IT college where they offer English training as a key part of the curriculum and suggesting that foreigners are getting all the good IT jobs because they can speak English.
This seems to be overstating the case. Or is it? Has English now become such a vital skill that even IT colleges are teaching in English so that IT professionals become more proficient working in the language?
Photo by Erik Andresen licensed under Creative Commons
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Hello there,
I’m Brazilian and studied English by my self, I’m not perfect but I can communicate without any problem. But here in Brazil this subject is getting too much attention. A Global IT company here hire people that speak English but do not have any IT qualification for the job, but they prefer apply internal training for IT than English lessons, weird huh? English became essential to get a job on IT area, because a lot of Foreign companies are hiring outsourcing services in Brazil. (Cheaper) The same happens to India and China and they are cheaper than us. Btw, nice subject raise
Alexandre, thanks for your comment. You said that “a global IT company” in Brazil is hiring English speakers with no IT qualifications – have you seen it happening? And do you mean Brazilians who can speak English or people coming from other countries to work here?
Not sure if Alexandre did see it, but I have seen. There are positions where it is needed to have daily contact with US customers and the technical level requirement is low, then, preferably, a person who speaks english is hired and trained in their daily activities. I’ve hired some like this to my team. In a thousands-employees company, I only saw one or two foreingers working here and, although they had english language skill, I think they were hired mostly because of their technical skills.
English as official market language, undoubtedly, is a clear-cut fact. IT is only part of this global process, and certainly we as TI professional must domain this idiom as native language.
PS: don’t discard Mandarim is a medium-term market language either
Thanks Caio. Do you think that Brazilian employers (as opposed to multinationals) are encouraging/supporting their staff to get English training?
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The same scenario on the company I was before, knowing english as a second language is more important than IT skills. The company preffer to train its IT staff into technologies, while not giving any support to language learning. So far, I have not seen any foreign employee apply to positions in here. But I do not see any barrier , as almost 95% of company speaks english as a second language.
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