On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 04:36:29PM -0800, [email protected] wrote: > I would be _really_ surprised if there were no entry-level jobs for > mechanics that did not require certification, a 4-year training before you > can start work is rather extreme, even in law you can work before you pass > the bar, and you can prepare your own legal documents with no > certification at all.
Most regulated trades in America have pretty trivial governmental licensing requirements; as far as I can tell, I could become a real estate agent by cramming for a few days and taking the test. If I wanted to be a broker I'd have to work for several years as an agent /or/ get a degree (In anything.) You can become a licensed electrician in California, again by taking a written test (that looks multiple choice- I estimate that if I tried, I could cram for a week and pass the test.) paying a small fee and getting some insurance. In both cases, I can do a lot of work while being supervised by a licensed person without having a license myself. Either way? the government isn't really reducing the supply very much, at least in my area. I mean, I'm unusually good at multiple-choice tests; but even if it's 10x harder for the average person, it's still not a huge deal. In both cases, there are non-governmental organizations that certify to a higher standard. a Realtor(tm) belongs to a professional organization that has requirements over and above the government regulations. Becoming a union electrician requires being an apprentice for some time. Now, I suspect both of those organizations engage in the unethical side of this, too, creating laws that benefit their members and harm the general public, and I don't know the truth of the claims, but the electrician's unions are often accused of sabotaging electrical work done by non-union electricians, but but both of these organizations provide useful accreditation over and above the extremely minimal requirements that the government imposes, in part because customers demand it. I think the interesting part of the problem would be "how can we provide that credible certification (that non-technical customers require) without becoming the sort of organization that tries to interfere with work done by people not part of our organization, or that tries to get laws passed that benefit us at the expense of society as a whole?" I mean, I think that many unions started from a very adversarial place; and as far as I can tell, as SysAdmins, there isn't that adversarial feeling, so I think that even if we tried to build an adversarial organization, we would fail; our own peers would tear us down. But, I think there is still plenty of room for someone to make a credible "This person knows the basics" certification; and I think that kind of certification is useful to some (especially smaller) employers that are hiring outside of their existing areas of expertise. I mean, there are already plenty of competing certification providers. It's possible, too, that we should focus on the training side of things, rather than on the certification side of things. Even though we aren't starting from an adversarial stance, if we certify SysAdmins, there will always be that conflict of interest (we are an organization of SysAdmins; Certifications are for the benefit of non-technical employers that hire SysAdmins.) I mean, one positive thing we could do is to coordinate with employers and with new and experienced SysAdmins to help organize mentoring and apprenticeship/internship programs. I mean, right now, as far as I can tell, most internship programs are based largely on nepotism and they require that the intern be a college student; this usually means that the company overlooks the people that need the training the most, and that the company loses the intern at the end of the summer. I think an internship program targeting young people that aren't in school would do a lot of good for the kids, and maybe for the companies, too. -- Luke S. Crawford http://prgmr.com/xen/ - Hosting for the technically adept http://nostarch.com/xen.htm - We don't assume you are stupid. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
