On Sat, 22 Aug 2009, Jeff & Heather Malloch wrote:
> I think more and more the learning of "technical skills" is something that
> any business thinks should come cheap. And I have a tendency to agree. IT
> systems have become endemic to society and business. Everyone has *some*
> knowledge about computers or has the ability to easily learn about them.
That may be true as far as basic skills are concerned but I have to
disagree when it comes to advanced ('expert level') computing skills.
There shouldn't be any more expectation that advanced computer skills are
any more likely to be cheap than advanced medical or engineering skills.
Each one takes a person many years to master.
Recent research has suggested that it takes 10 years to master a
profession. Once the body of knowledge grows such that more than 10 years
is required, the profession splits to restore the balance. The figure of
10 years seems right to me both in terms of my personal experience and
looking at the wider world.
There are a lot of people with basic computer skills. There are very few
people with advanced computer skills (aka 'clue'). In my experience they
tend to be found in professional associations and user groups.
It's easy to forget that most people don't understand what we understand
about how computers and networks work.
I'll give you an example.
The other day I setup & tested multi-master/multi-slave replication under
OpenLDAP. It wasn't hard. I did it so I could move on to testing
something for a project I'm working on. The vast majority of the
population don't know what LDAP is, why they might want to use it, how
they would setup the infrastructure to install it, let alone actually
doing it. Even the majority of people working in technical positions
would be hard pressed to do what an experienced sysadmin can do.
Like a lot of people here I'm equally confortable working with a DB server
or an MTA or whatever. I can design a system/network/application or
whatever and make it work.
Very few people can 'make it work'.
As long as the ability to design systems and make them work is rare it
will be compensated well.
History tends to show that we will continue to build more and more complex
systems (as layers below become easier to work with) so there will only
ever be a small minority of people who really understand how the most
advanced systems work. This is true in every profession I think.
Having said that, I do agree that "adding business value" improves the
value of an employee to the employer. It doesn't follow that the
technicals skills themselves have (or will) become cheap.
Cheers,
Rob
--
I tried to change the world but they had a no-return policy
http://www.practicalsysadmin.com
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