Re: [hangout] Re: pittance

> At 02:37 PM 4/12/2004, Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS wrote:
> 
> >Name 5 professions which is not licensed outside of IT.
> 
> What about drycleaners?
> 
> Whoops, just remembered the Seinfeld episode where the Drycleaners
Code of 
> Ethics was prominently mentioned.
> 
> Musicians? Artists? Mechanics? Excavators? Drycleaners was gonna be my 
> fifth but now not so sure anymore.
> 

Musicians/Artists is an interesting relationship, I would prefer
Entertainers/Artists, and was going to mention Athletes though now I am
thinking they fall into that first category.

> I'd be interested in the correlation between professional and trade 
> licensing and on the job abilities, in any field. Which is sort of why I 
> gave that link; for me at least the situation described in 
> http://www.linux.ie/pipermail/social/1999-October/000483.html rings true, 
> or at least credible.
> 
> 

I would be interested in the lack of correlation between having a
license and being licensed.  When was the last time you asked your
doctor to see his license?

The problem still boils down to implementation, the professions
mentioned that are licensed are *old* (meaning hundreds if not thousands
of years).  How long is a sys admin, programming, info sec, etc. license
good for?  5 years like many driving licenses? 3 years? 1 year? 6
months? forever?  How much continuing education is required to maintain
a license, seems like the more I learn about any one subject, say Perl
programming, the more I learn I know almost nothing, now extend that to
the whole category of programming, computers, Internet computing, etc.
Say I get a license in Perl, does that mean I can't work in HTML?  For
instance in a previous position I would have needed a license in Perl,
CGI, HTML, Apache, Linux, MySQL, SQL, DNS, SMTP, UNIX, Javascript (we
won't even talk about main frames, client/server, embedded, low level
languages, etc.), and I hardly consider myself an expert in any of them,
but my work was sufficient to get the job done.

Pie in the sky is fine, but this is a really big pie and a very tall sky....

http://danconia.org