That’s part of the problem with not having any sort of standardized governing body from the start. The cost of entry to IT is effectively the cost of either a home PC setup and an Internet connection, a couple books, the cost to sit for an A+ exam, etc. In other words, the cost is practically nil. Hence we have every high school/college kid or every burger flipper with a home PC and broadband (or dial-up in the beginning) thinking they’re qualified to be a computer/network technician.

Then comes the dot-com era. Techies are suddenly glamorous and anybody can make $75k/year out of high school, or if you graduate college/university you can walk into six figures straight away! Dilute that to include anybody with an MCSE, A+ et al. and you’ve got this massive influx of students into any educational facility or diploma mill that’s accepting tuition cheques and we have this enormous surplus of “graduates” who now believe themselves qualified.

In a way that killed us. HR departments and hiring managers never really, truly knew what to look for in terms of certifications. Experience was up in the air because so much technology was so new who could put a time frame on it, and how well did you learn it in the time you had with it? Remember back in ’97 all those ads requiring a minimum of 5 years experience with Microsoft Windows 95?

The prescribed method to gain full journeyman status in any skilled trade is there for good reason. First you have to prove yourself educated and intelligent enough to gain entry which narrows the field right off the blocks. Next you have to gain your hours of apprenticeship working in the field with actual, experienced professionals. Yes, you have to earn your stripes doing B.S. work which will include coffee and lunch runs, sweeping floors and all the other crap jobs that come along. But hey, some day you’ll have your own apprentice to do the same exact thing. Everybody went through it, new people are no exception. During the course of your apprenticeship you have to attend mandatory school sessions teaching gradually more and more advanced materials which you can now relate to your actual on-the-job experience so what your experienced bosses are telling you starts to make sense.

After your 4-5 years and your x000 hours of service (with increasing pay every year, mind you) you’re now a full-fledged plumber, electrician, mechanic, glazier, mason, etc. Now, if this were the case with computer/IT professionals – don’t you think there’d be much fewer of us/them out there, namely the unqualified sort? The few who remained would logically command a much higher pay scale and who knows, maybe this (digital) world would even be a better place for it.

As a side note, have you ever experienced a house with improper plumbing/venting? Ever experienced sewer gas creeping into the building, killing all the residents? Ever had a toilet back up so severely there is literally 8 inches of deep raw sewage covering the floor? Ever taken a shower and been scalded to the point of permanent disfigurement?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. Thank the skilled journeyman in that trade.

They were very resistant to the idea of implementing security on their individual computers.

Same goes for backing up their files on a file server and not just on their local hard drive. Usually the way you have to explain it to them is in a language they can understand.

I had the privilege of being brought in to give a lecture to some employees at a company I was visiting about securing their PCs. While I was giving the lecture, two other IT people were sent to find ten computers that were not locked by their screensaver. They found many more, but of those ten, they changed the desktop background and moved any two significant shortcuts from the desktop to My Documents. Everyone was allowed a 30 minute break for lunch and then had to return to the lecture during which time IT folks made themselves unavailable on purpose. After everyone returned, I asked for the ten people who had their desktop backgrounds changed to raise their hands and tell everyone the first few things that ran though their heads. “Oh crap, I’m in trouble”, “I wonder what else is missing”, and “who the heck did this?” were typical answers. This part of the lecture helped everyone, not just the ones affected, realize that security is important and lack of security can affect anyone at any time.

When you help people put in perspective what they have to lose, they tend to start understanding. They typically don’t care if their machine is compromised by a mass-mailing worm or is used in a DDoS attack. They do start to understand if it means they might have to redo a week (or more) worth of work.