I wish I had the time to write articles for your site too, because god knows I'm bitter as hell. So often now I watch those home carpentry shows and think... gee what a great way to make a living. No tech support involved. I often sit outside hiding from users thinking to myself how great it would be just to drive a forklift in our warehouse. They just hand out a computer generated pick list, give it to the guy and tell him go fetch. Man now that's the job. As opposed to being the sorry son of a bitch who has to get all stressed out when those neato pick lists don't get generated, or when your mission critical windows NT box *cough* *cough* crashes for the tenth time in a week like it does every week and the 70 year old ladies who 5 years ago when we installed the system fought tooth and nail to keep they're non Y2k compliant piece of shit now go ape shit when the thing they hated so much goes down... Yeah no fuckin hugs for guys like us that's for damn sure.

From John DeVita, Network Designer from California

I realize the purpose of your site is to be informative cutting edge and humorous. I feel hesitant about submitting rants. Nobody likes a gripe page. If it is pessimistic, bitter and devoid of a Dilbertian optimism then its not fun to read, unfortunately that is the nature of some of most rants. 

Let me Introduce myself I am a Network Architect for a series of privately held financial companies as such I am responsible for making sure all of are networks follow the same scheme and end to end connectivity between all companies globally. I dictate a lot of policy regarding local network implementations as such I am constantly traveling and interacting with various somewhat redundant IS Depts.

During my day I am constantly interacting with Network Admins, engineers, technicians, MIS directors and programmers. Unfortunately I am finding the new breed of admin's and technicians wholly inadequate. If you think a paper MCSE is a problem, half the guys I run across don't even have the intelligence, to pass it. 

Lately what I am finding more and more of out of somewhat competent Admins is a total lack of even the fundamentals of TCP/IP. They know networking by plugging stuff into hubs and switches and changing domain settings inside of windows. I know of Admins who think hubs operate like switches. I know of technicians who can't even build a god damn server, have never touched hardware raid or scsi. 

Their jobs don't require years and years of experience, They don't require certifications, It requires knowledge, analytical skills, logic and a willingness to solve the !@#$ing problem. And my god what I am finding is that these guys couldn't trouble shoot their way out of a wet paper sack. Listen the thing that needs to get thru these peoples head's, is that you can have a promising IT career if you are frickin bright. If you scored average through out high school, if math and science weren't your subjects then stay the hell out of IT.

If your still unemployed from the dot com meltdown of 2001, maybe you should be.

Send Flames to JohnDeVita @ Hotmail.com