RE: RE: present day admin skills

[Robert Graham <robert_david_graham () yahoo com>]

R. DuFresne writes:
> [... people are incompetent ...]

I disagree.

It is easy to pick on the weak.

Because of the explosive growth in the Information Technology industry, most
people have had their IT jobs for only a few years. This means the majority of
IT employees are "inexperienced".

When I went to college, even "Computer Science" degrees were new. Universities
only now begin to offer "Management Information Sciences" degrees. This means
the majority of IT employees are "underqualified" (where "qualification" means
some sort of diploma in the field).

The number of IT job openings exceeds the number of computer geeks. Most IT
professionals pursue other interests when they go home at 5pm. The most
important factor in acquiring higher skills is interest. The phrase "I don't
have time..." really means "I'm not willing to sacrifice other things...".
Having a balanced life is normal - therefore, most IT professionals are
"unskilled" relative to abnormal, obsessed geeks.

You might ask: "...then why are they in the technology industry if they are not
interested in computers?" IT professionals ARE interested in computers, just
not obsessed. Most people have many interests in life. They will pursue
whichever interest generates the most money - which is Information Technology
at the moment. [1]

The IT field is huge, people have to work in lots of different areas. People
solve problems quickly in their area of expertise, and therefore spend most of
their time in areas that aren't their expertise. Let's say that you know both
PERL and VisualBasic, but are expert in only one of those languages. If I give
you a problem and tell you to write two equal solutions in both PERL and VB,
you are going to spend most of your time working with the language you are NOT
an expert in. If you statistically sample all IT professionals at their desks
right now, you'll find them working in areas they are not expert in because
they have quickly solved the other ones. Therefore, when casually working with
IT professionals, they definitely seem "inexpert" at their jobs. [2]

THE PRIMARY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SKILLS DO NOT RELATE TO TECHNOLOGY. First of
all, there is basic communications skills, teamwork, and not playing mindless
geek dominance games of "my OS is bigger than your OS". Geeks make poor
employees (I'm a good example -- I would never hire myself). [3] More
importantly, though, IT is just a means to an end. Most people in IT have
specific tasks to do, and simply choose IT as the most efficient way of doing
them. An incredible number of people "drift" into IT - they've been working on
the same sets of problems over the past 20 years, but since they've been using
computers to solve the problems for them over the past 5, they have officially
become IT professionals. Example: an accountant who no longer does anything but
programming and db maintenance. It comes as a shock to many geeks that the goal
of IT isn't IT, but business.

It is easy for the top 10% most educated professionals to look down on the
bottom 50%, in any field. No, a nurse cannot save a patient's life by doing an
emergency heart transplant, but it doesn't mean he/she is totally unqualified.
Nurses do all the real work of interacting with patients, changing bedpans, and
keeping track of the paperwork - they often command more respect than the
arrogant doctors. Health-care is more about "care" than it is "health". To
repeat the last paragraph above, IT is about solving business problems, using
whatever knowledge and expertise you have available; it isn't about spending
most of your time worshipping at the CRT altar.

Getting the job done is more important than how you do it. As an employer, I
need to get certain tasks done within certain budget constraints (all problems
are easy if you can throw enough money at them). This frequently means avoiding
high-priced gurus and hiring low-priced people of lesser skills. Indeed, one of
the best IT people who worked for me wasn't tops on skills, but knew all the
right high-priced consultants to bring in to solve bits and pieces of the
problem - solving the problem much cheaper overall.

Most IT professionals feel insecure about their skill levels. For example,
every sysadmin I know has a book on C, C++, or assembler because they feel they
should know this Dark Magic that their software is written in. Likewise, most
programmers have books on administrating Unix/Windows systems. It is easy to
spot what field people are working in - look at the books on their shelf, the
ones that appear new are the fields they are NOT working in. Insecurity is
fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, HATE LEADS TO THE DARK SIDE.
Bullies bully because they are insecure; IT organizations have evolved little
beyond grade school playgrounds. Occasionally, a pack of wolves will gang up
and turn on a weak or injured member. This is similar to the trash talk around
the water cooler laughing at the boneheaded mistakes of least skillful
employee.

By the way, I should mention that I, too, enjoy laughing at stupidity and
cluelessness as much as the next person. People think I'm arrogant. However, I
respect other people more than I let on (I guess this e-mail is some sort of
atonement).

I enjoy these:
http://www.despair.com/demotivators/cluelessness.html
http://www.despair.com/mis24x30prin.html
http://www.despair.com/in24x30prin.html

But I should be paying attention to these:
http://www.despair.com/elitism.html
http://www.despair.com/arrogance.html
http://www.despair.com/pretension.html

(I'm a poor writer - this e-mail should just contain these links to
Despair.com, but I feel obliged to expound upon them).

Robert Graham


Footnotes:

[1] This paragraph reiterates the one immediately preceding it. I repeat the
point because I'm an obsessed geek, so while I understand this point
intellectually, I still have a hard time grasping it emotionally. I'm told that
some people actually have "hobbies" that aren't related to computers; this does
not make sense to me.

[2] ...especially if you a high-priced consultant, you'll be hired by people
who know less about the field they are hiring you to solve.

[3] For those looking for an IT professional in the Portland, Oregon area: my
sister is being "synergized" from eTrade (they are closing the Portland office
and she doesn't want to move). She is not a geek (at least, relative to her big
brother), but she is abnormally good in the non-technical skills areas. You
would be lucky to find somebody as good her at getting your IT problems solved.
Send me an e-mail if you are interested.



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail!
http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/
_______________________________________________
firewall-wizards mailing list
firewall-wizards () nfr com
http://list.nfr.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards