This is accurate. People are conflating plumbing, with the act of installing, and maintaining plumbing. It doesn’t help that the act of maintaining the plumbing (noun) is called plumbing (verb).

But people don’t want to have to hire a plumber to fix the plumbing when it is not doing what it is supposed to.

They want “AI” to do it. Except that such a thing would require advanced robotics more than “AI”. With advanced (and affordable) robotics, the plumber wouldn’t need to actually go to your house, they could just remotely control the plumber bot from the comfort of their home, or from a central office or something. The person that shows up with the bot can be little more than a minimum wage delivery driver. Deliver the bot, make sure it powers on, make sure nobody steals or destroys it, then pack it up and move on when it’s done. The highly paid plumbers never have to go anywhere, and can basically hop from one bot to the next. While they’re working on one job, a bot is already en route to their next job, and ready to go when they finish with the current job.

We’ve adapted art and communication to the Internet. We have not done the same for plumbing (the verb). So expecting something that you can’t even currently do with a computer, to now basically be done by AI, which is confined to the restrictions of a digital-only environment, is foolish at best.

Since we adapted communication and art to digital media already, it’s almost trivial to have that generated by “AI”.

We need to build a robot capable of the work before we can do anything more here.

You won’t get any argument from me.

The fact that IT support is basically the new digital version of a janitor or groundskeeper, doesn’t stop moron hiring managers from demanding a degree from their IT applicants.

All I’m saying is that they should stop doing it. It’s nonsense.

Wow. I don’t even know what to say to that.

CS grads don’t even get taught about the CLI?

That’s embarrassing.

I went to college and got a diploma, not a degree. That was because I knew where I wanted to be in the world. I was going to be a sysadmin/network admin/IT support. That was where I was going.

At the time, the available courses for system administrators that resulted in a degree didn’t fucking exist. A big fuck all for degree programs. So I got a diploma, and went on my merry way.

I looked at available degree programs last year and there’s still pretty much sweet fuck all for degree programs for IT support workers, with a few exceptions. A handful of colleges in my country now have some degree programs, and a couple have created one for system/network administrators. They’re massively rare, and the only course plans are for full time class loads. You want to take the degree course, but you have to work? Get fucked. You’re not getting anything.

I actually (foolishly) emailed some of the colleges asking if they would offer enough of the credits in remote learning courses that I could feasibly, eventually, get a degree. If someone could laugh over email, I’m pretty sure that they would have. Needless to say, the answer is a big fuck you.

Yet… I have well over a decade of real world experience and a lot of places are putting up job postings for sysadmin jobs asking for degrees plus years of experience.

So, essentially, they want me to go get a degree, probably in computer Science, which, by the way, isn’t really computer Science. There’s really no Science to it and the only relation to a computer is that you’re doing programming. CS majors cannot do my job. They would be so bad at it, that I would laugh, then cry, knowing I probably have to fix all the fuckups that were just made.

So, they want to hire someone who can’t do the work because they want and need a degree for a job that doesn’t have a degree that actually teaches you the correct skillset.

The entire fucking job market is completely fucked. Unless you do development, GFL wading through all the asinine postings to find one that is reasonable enough to recognize that CS majors are not the people you want working in system admin positions.

The worst part is that businesses can’t see what they’re doing wrong. C-levels, owners and managers, have no fucking clue what I do, nor how I do any of it. Unless it’s a company large enough to have a CIO that’s got a lick of fucking sense, the job posting is going to be utter horse shit for the crap that they’ll expect from you.

“Enjoys a fast paced environment” - you’re going to be over worked.

“Works well independently” - because you’re always going to be working alone, since they won’t hire anyone else to work the job.

"Requires knowledge of: Windows server, VMware, networking, Wan/LAN, VPN, desktop, printers… " You’re the only one working IT and you need to do it all.

“Enjoys a challenge” - nothing is under warranty, so every vendor will tell you to fuck off anytime you are in over your head and call in for support.

I’ve seen this shit so much over the past decade+ that’s it’s all shit. I don’t even fucking read job postings half the time, if it has a salary to it that looks good to me, I check if it’s “hybrid” (aka, in-office, but you can work from home, with managers approval that you’ll never get), in-office, or remote. If it’s anything other than remote, I’m probably moving on. If it passes those first two checks, I skim the requirements for “you should know” shit to determine if I’m working on a team, if they’re actually looking for an IT person, or is this posting, just a poorly worded website design or coding job… And if I don’t see anything too stupid on the list I just throw them my resume.

Look, I’ve done this job long enough that I know my shit, I know I know my shit, and I couldn’t give a fuck less if you call me or not. If you don’t see my potential, your loss. I don’t want to work for someone who is too blind to see that experience > everything, and that what I put on my resume isn’t who I am. I couldn’t possibly cram enough info into a CV to accurately convey the sheer amount of shit I’ve dealt with. Not even fucking close… And if you need someone with at least 5 years experience with ERP-xyz-Max 2010, and won’t even consider anyone who hasn’t used that software, well, you’re too dumb to be helped. Do you have any idea how much specialized software is out there? Give me a fucking break. My expertise isn’t in one specific software, though I have a lot of knowledge of some of the more common ones… My expertise is decoding the shit pile that the publisher calls “documentation” to actually support the program well enough to keep it running. I RTFM so you don’t have to.

There, I said it.

Back in my day, we called that pseudocode. It’s code-like, but not in any actual programming language that you could compile from.

It’s more of a set of ideas of how to accomplish something, than it is actually coding.

The fun part is, that pseudo code can be adapted to any actual programming language.

Idk why everyone is crazy about vibes all of a sudden… But sure.

I fucking hate this.

Most days I spend more time accounting for my work than I do actually working.