Many problems of the industry are built around the heavy marketing done for the products and services. Why is this circuit board and cable so expensive? “Because they are all-new never-seen-before gizmos. We’ve never had anything like the virtualized, supersized, hotswappable, flip-clip, modular, scalable, gizmo 2.0 before!” Of course, the industry just repeats itself, and if you look at 1970s mainframes, you’ll see the same technology we use today.

This marketing spreads to everything in the computer industry. Hardware is never-seen-before techology, software is never-seen-before technology, and the skills to use the software are all never-seen-before. These thoughts even lead people to believe that tested methods for market prices for companies were never-seen-before, so tech companies sold for millions of dollars that were just worthless. And, so, back to the entry level worker. Because everything in the industry is never-seen-before, the work model is the same. While it may be true there hasn’t been an efficiency-technician position before, the skills that technical people have, in fact, all been seen before in electronics and circuits. Sadly, the hiring departments are run by people who get their information from the managers who get their information from the technical marketing people, and none of these people understand the technology well enough.

What results are want-ads for system administrators with 10 years of experience with Windows 2003 (only a slight exaggeration here). What technical workers need is a union, because there is no accreditation process and nothing stopping any bloke-on-the-street from saying they are experts in whatever technical-skill-of-the-day hiring departments are requiring. And I do.