Richard Chycoski wrote:
> For example, in most places you can become a licensed electrician
s/can/can't/ ???
> without going through a multi-year apprenticeship program - even if you
> can pass all of the tests.
[ ... deletia ... ]
> Lawyers take a bar exam, and if they pass, they get to practice. This
> means that qualified individuals (or at least those who can answer the
> questions on the test) can enter the field at any time.
I can't speak for other states, but my wife has recently gone through this
process here in Texas.
In Texas, the big thing is they check to make sure that you have already
paid all your taxes, and they'll reject you even if you have a standing
arrangement with the IRS. There is other stuff they check, like were you a
member of the Bar Association where you lived (in Belgium, the Bar
Association is only open to lawyers who work at firms, not inside counsel),
but the tax thing is considered to be a character issue. You obviously
can't be a good lawyer if you have questionable character -- regardless of
your skill.
In fact, they don't really do anything at all to check for skill, talent, or
knowledge.
For people who are coming back from overseas, where they lived in a country
that averaged your income over several years, and didn't even send out an
assessment of how much you owed in taxes until about a year-and-a-half after
the year in which you earned them, and where an employer was responsible for
paying you as an ex-pat and covering all your additional taxes, this can get
amazingly complex. We're going to continue to be paying Belgian taxes until
at least 2010 or 2011, even though we left in 2005. And because she was an
ex-pat, the money paid by the company to cover her additional taxes is
considered a taxable benefit here in the US. And the IRS is much more than
happy to go back and re-assess more taxes for years and years ago, if they
discover that you get more income that relates to previous years.
And what do you do if you're a lawyer who was not allowed to join the local
Bar Association in the area where you lived, or where the IRS keeps screwing
you royally and re-assessing back taxes for years where you had already paid
all your taxes that were due? You hire another lawyer who specializes in
this area, and after you play the proper games and make the proper bows in
the correct manner and timing, and you pay the proper "fees", and then they
finally give up and sigh because they haven't been able to nail you with
anything, and they let you through.
At no time do they ever actually check to see if you're actually a good
lawyer. And a whole host of really bad lawyers are perfectly free to run
around the state and do all sorts of things no lawyer should ever do,
because they are now "one of the good-ole boys". And ${DEITY} help you if
you wanted to try to get a lawyer disbarred for malfeasance, conflict of
interest, or any other type of crime.
> Now - does either of these models make sense for sysadmins yet?
No. If we're going to be forced to go down this road, then I would want a
model that actually does look at useful things like talent, skill,
knowledge, and judgement.
I don't want the Catholic Church model, where they try to sweep issues under
the rug for hundreds of years, like priests raping children, being
discovered, then being quietly moved to a different parish where they can do
it all over again.
I don't want the AMA model, where they basically do the same thing, although
maybe not quite to the same degree (or do they?).
I don't want the Texas Bar Association model.
--
Brad Knowles
<[email protected]> If you like Jazz/R&B guitar, check out
LinkedIn Profile: my friend bigsbytracks on YouTube at
<http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu> http://preview.tinyurl.com/bigsbytracks
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