Yeah...this kind of question might stir up more sides if it were posed to a
list that wasn't LOPSA....  Since, isn't one of the reasons we belong to LOPSA
is that we want this to happen.

Being the professional that I've been and try to still be...I would like to
see some kind of structure that says just who can work as a system
administrator.  Its scary working in edu, the people that get to play system
administrator...considering that here we work with systems and data more
sensitive than I had to deal with when I was working on the outside (first for
a defense contractor and second for commercial software company).  There's
HIPPA data in our DC, but the response is its noisy in the DC and the people
that need to know couldn't hear you.  Though we are building an isolated
cluster for PCI-DSS....sort of...there's only two SANs (prod and not, where
'not' includes the netbackup disk staging pools)....and no data classification
within, yet.  FERPA is this annoying thing that we know we're violating, but
nobody cares as long as nobody complains (and the one guy that does...they
keep asking when's he going to retire....they threw away his mainframe, but
being one of the few people with administrative tenure...they couldn't make
him leave with it).  There's other compliance issues, but since only PCI-DSS
is the one that's threatening to hurt at the moment, its the one with the most
attention.  Even though most of the entities that care, have outsourced (so
its largely a problem for the IT security and compliance group to deal with.)

The other day...a developer asked, "what's a good crash course in system
administration book?"  A few months ago, the director of his unit asked if we
would take him on as an SA intern.  He's available immediately and
indefinitely.... is he so highly regarded in his own department that he's
available to us this way?  Yes, we have openings...but its so hard to find
good people that'll work for what we'll pay.  Though they've complained that
its my fault that I accepted such a low pay when I started, that it hard to
find people like me that'll work for less than what I'm getting.  Well, he's
being reassigned to their application system administration group....only
because AA group would sound worse than ASA group....  though for some reason
they get full sudo on their boxes, though the current ones...know they have
it, but don't seem to know how to use it (even after we tell them how they
could do some of the things themselves with it.)  Though it worries me that
someday they'll have somebody that doesn't know enough to not try breaking
things.... 

Though I wonder if we'll get to the day where we won't need a license to drive
anymore, because the car will do everything on its own.... I want that. 

On 11/12/2011 1:21 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>> From: [email protected] [mailto:discuss-
>> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Joseph Kern
>>
>> Please note that I am not talking about certification. I am talking about
>> creating a License to Practice.
> If something like this comes about, it doesn't bother me, really.  The only 
> professions that don't require a license to practice are ones in which 
> nothing amazingly valuable is at stake, or it's just so new or so small that 
> nobody's been able to create such regulations yet.
>
> You have to be licensed (or certified) to practice law, give financial 
> advice, build a house, cut down a tree, practice medicine, drive a taxi.
>
> Obviously, flying 

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