Strictly speaking a Profession has also a moral obligation to society and not just training and education, this is codified in some kind of oath or formal code of ethics or both (Doctors, Lawyers, and Engineers). And there should be some ramification to breaking that oath as well (I.e. being removed from the profession). Of course this implies some kind of control, either guild or union or other.
Wikipedia actually has a nice rundown of what a Profession is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession To quote: > > Major milestones which may mark an occupation being identified as a > profession include > > 1. an occupation becomes a full-time occupation (Yep) > 2. the establishment of a training school > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_institution> (Nope, unless > you count vender certs) > 3. the establishment of a university > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University> school (Kinda ... ) > 4. the establishment of a local association > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_association> (LOPSA-NJ, etc.) > 5. the establishment of a national association (LOPSA/USENIX) > 6. the introduction of codes of professional ethics > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_ethics> (Loosely defined, > no formal control) > 7. the establishment of state licensing > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensure> laws (Code becomes Law here, > the enforcement of the code by civic means) > > With the establishment of a training program (and a clear value proposition to employers and legislators), we can then standardize the code of ethics (as required by the valued training program), finally we can control those members of the organization (through legal and fiscal means) to champion the idea of a profession and push laws that require a level of professionalism to practice. We can look to the Information Assurance / Computer Security field as an example of what career has leap frogged us poor Systems Bricklayers into a full blown profession. They have already established an occupation, training schools, university level degrees (M.S. in I.A. anyone?), established local associations, established national associations, and introduced codes of ethics, the Federal Government has already established laws concerning employment within the US DoD (DoD 8570.1-M) for Information Assurance Professionals (indeed ALL system and network jobs require at least two certifications now within the DoD). System Administration as a Profession (as described in the formal sense of Profession as described above) has taken a seat of mistrust in my mind over the last few years; the ability for a young woman or man to go from flipping burgers to desktop support tech to enterprise engineer, without accruing college debt (indeed, actually earning money instead), is the /primary/ economic strength of our career field, I believe a large factor in our growth, and something which we should never forget in our march to Professionalization. The struggle we all face in determining this path of education is that none of us have ever taken the same road to understanding, and we all find ourselves at some point in our career paraphrasing Louie Armstrong: "Man, if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know". Any education or certification program we undertake must focus on fundamentals; systems analysis, signals analysis, business analysis, statistical analysis, practical teamwork & project management, and even a little information theory. To stretch the Jazz metaphor a little further, these are the harmonic scales which we must practice everyday to remain competent no matter what instrument we play. This education must be accessible, verifiable, and fundamentally stable (in comparison with changing technology). We must not be another vendor based education track, or be focused on teaching someone how to use the command line. We /must/ be focused on creating men and women who understand systems and signals holistically and intuitively. This is a hard problem worth solving. On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 9:28 AM, Aleksey Tsalolikhin <[email protected] > wrote: > On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 4:51 PM, David Lang <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> This being said, other than the nebulous "no longer being looked down on" >> criteria, what do you think needs to happen (and what could any >> organization of practitioners do to achieve these goals, ignoring for the >> sake of discussion the small size and budget of LOPSA)? > > > IMHO, it comes down to training/education. > > Profession: a paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged > training and a formal qualification. > ( > https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=what%27s+a+profession > ) > > A profession arises when any trade or occupation transforms itself through > *"the > development of formal qualifications based upon education, apprenticeship, > and examinations, the emergence of regulatory bodies with powers to admit > and discipline members, and some degree of monopoly > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly> rights."*[7] > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession#cite_note-7> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession#Formation > > Education is the key to professionalization. > > JESA submissions are due August 15th: > https://www.usenix.org/jesa/call-for-articles > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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/ > > -- Joseph A Kern [email protected]
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