What IT Needs
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@thanksaj said:
... the only group I could see being able to do something like this would be a government.
That would be worse than vendors. The government is just the arm of vendors. They look to promote non-industry things. Any government certification program always turns to selling the industry out to a private certification group or monopoly or to promote the failing university system by making it a requirement.
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@technobabble said:
@thanksaj No wealthy people are needed to start a grass roots non-profit program.
Actually they are. Non-profits are the most expensive option and the least flexible and hardest to control.
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Some existing groups...
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@technobabble said:
@thanksaj said:
@technobabble said:
@thanksaj No wealthy people are needed to start a grass roots non-profit program.
And without money, how do you gain traction in the industry and push for standardization? Money is what makes things happen. People talk about movements and all that, but in the end, it all takes money in one form or another.
To start we have a minimum of 5 platforms available that some use weekly: Mangolassi, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and that other IT forum we don't talk about.
Then there are the tons of reputable IT website owners that are used by millions to get answers to computer questions. We invite them to the table as well.
LOL You do realize that all those people are in various peoples' pockets, right? ML is the only exception to that. It might be in the form of ads, or money spent on the site. Or, maybe it's in terms of the company gets a REALLY good deal from Dell or HP or whoever in exchange for good <insert perk here>. As far as all those websites that you love, most of those have strong biases too. Ask Trevor Pott sometime about some of the sites he writes for and how they request articles.
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There was another group called SAGE too, and they were horrible. They did all kinds of things to undermine the industry like making impossible and illogical definitions of jobs (they claimed that systems admins should be developers first and foremost and that the most senior developers would be junior to mid-line system admins and that the system admin would be paid half what a developer would, etc.) They were awful and certainly did not promote the field.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Some existing groups...
What seems to me to be the most efficient thing would be to unite all these existing organizations under one banner and move forward from there.
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I think a lot of them have different goals. Many of those are lobby groups, which is a good thing but not what IT really needs. IT needs to do a good job before lobbying for something it doesn't deserve because it is doing a bad job.
None of these work to set industry job terms, AFAIK, for example. And none work with universities to provide training of the universities themselves.
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Here is one that Trevor pointed me to, but looking at their goals and definition, I see them as attempting to undermine IT as a profession and take it from a performance-based profession like engineering to a government regulated "union" style like doctors.
http://www.cips.ca/DefiningITProfession
Honestly, I think that the term professional should be removed. Professional has way too many negative connotations. The most common professionals that people think of are doctors and lawyers which are completely different than IT and we don't want that type of association. Part of the goal here is to "fix" things at an industry level so that the government doesn't feel obligated to come in and ruin things.
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Wow, and to be "certified" by that group they charge up to $350 per year!! That's a racket. If anything, certification needs to be free or very low cost from an organization that we need. It shouldn't be about gouging workers like unions do or trying to make only the affluent really able to consider the field. IT has always been open to those who are smart and willing, that's part of what makes IT great. It isn't like medical where there is a massive cost involved and only those with existing wealth, an incredible willingness to take on crippling debt or those lucky enough to qualify for sponsorship of some sort qualify. It should be open to everyone that knows the material - we shouldn't care about their age or income when showing that they can do the work.
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You need licensing and bonding - even your plumber is licensed. Until we have that, wages in IT are going to be depressed. In SMB IT you probably make less than a plumber.
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@Nic said:
You need licensing and bonding - even your plumber is licensed. Until we have that, wages in IT are going to be depressed. In SMB IT you probably make less than a plumber.
Bonding only makes sense for plumbers if they are "consultants" in IT terms. Plumbers don't really exist in great quantity "in house." Those that are full time employees working solely on their own employer's plumbing would not be bonded. That's an MSP type thing. Sadly bonding is pretty much impossible for IT because the bonding agencies can't handle it.
Licensing is tough because you need a licensing agency but IT isn't like other licensed professions and you would not likely want to pay top dollars to the ones that are licensed. Licensing might be good for entry level but at the cost of the rest of the field.
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Yeah, you wouldn't need bonding for in-house IT. But I still think licensing is needed to keep people who don't know what they are doing out of the profession. Even your hair dresser is licensed.
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All of this seems like a real longshot for SMB. They just care about getting the cheapest guy in the door. Like Scott mentioned in another thread, there are plenty of people who will work System Admin jobs for $14 an hour. Its really hard to fix that when SMB can employ a System Admin for $12-16 an hour.
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@Nic said:
Even your hair dresser is licensed.
Yes, they are. But is there any field like IT that has licensing? Something that is business oriented and is creative, not structured?
Account, Legal and Medical are licensed for safety or legal reasons.
Hairdressers because it is a super low end field that is consumer facing.
I could see GeekSquad needing to be licensed because it is a consumer, non-business service. But I could see that as being a means of making Microsoft a legal requirement because it is the only thing that consumer people are allowed to support because that is what they are licensed for.
Because IT is so "product" oriented, it is very hard to license without making a single vendor or group of vendors a government mandate.
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@IRJ said:
All of this seems like a real longshot for SMB. They just care about getting the cheapest guy in the door. Like Scott mentioned in another thread, there are plenty of people who will work System Admin jobs for $14 an hour. Its really hard to fix that when SMB can employ a System Admin for $12-16 an hour.
I think that the goal is to keep people from working at $16/hr.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
All of this seems like a real longshot for SMB. They just care about getting the cheapest guy in the door. Like Scott mentioned in another thread, there are plenty of people who will work System Admin jobs for $14 an hour. Its really hard to fix that when SMB can employ a System Admin for $12-16 an hour.
I think that the goal is to keep people from working at $16/hr.
SMB doesn't care about credentials if they see experience.
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@IRJ said:
SMB doesn't care about credentials if they see experience.
It's the professionals that we have to change, not the companies. We need to remove the availability of workers at $16/hr, not make companies not try to hire them.
That's the real problem, why are SO MANY IT people willing to work at such a low wage when there are so many jobs available out there.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Wow, and to be "certified" by that group they charge up to $350 per year!! That's a racket. If anything, certification needs to be free or very low cost from an organization that we need. It shouldn't be about gouging workers like unions do or trying to make only the affluent really able to consider the field. IT has always been open to those who are smart and willing, that's part of what makes IT great. It isn't like medical where there is a massive cost involved and only those with existing wealth, an incredible willingness to take on crippling debt or those lucky enough to qualify for sponsorship of some sort qualify. It should be open to everyone that knows the material - we shouldn't care about their age or income when showing that they can do the work.
Agreed 100% - while this isn't a small undertaking it should never be funded by those you want to build it for. I was chewing on this (funding) lastnight and I think it can be done easily without a penny from those who it is designed for.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I think that the goal is to keep people from working at $16/hr.
Maybe we can phrase that as fair wages for the skill level involved, numbers just cloud things
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@IRJ said:
SMB doesn't care about credentials if they see experience.
SMB cares (or should care) more than any other segment. They're the ones who can least afford to hire a bumpkin
