Received confirmation of an interview for a government job today, pretty excited.
Have to focus on work and keep grinding or I'll be distracted.

@scottalanmiller said:

That's a tough one. Including people not involved it IT as it is normally defined (business infrastructure services) opens the door to a ton of grey area. Allowing people in as students, hopefuls or whatever is one thing. Allowing classification of non-biz-inf roles into the official fold, though, is problematic. I say make a strict definition of IT and stick to it.

Easy follow up question then - what is the definition of an IT worker?

@MattSpeller said:

Reputation and skill based

The hardest part to quantify and deliver! My thought is to blend several different approaches I've seen.

Reputation

• Community based feedback (similar to linked in)
• Input from previous employers?? dangerous but oh so powerful. Difficult to see why a business would participate in this part without a tangible benefit. Perhaps posting feedback gives access to the feedback left by others? Needs improvement / refining.
• Video interviews of the person answering some stock questions.....???
• Needs more quantifiers (suggestions?)

Skills
Demonstrable proof you've done something

• Video tours of projects?
• Documentation you've created (excised / examples / excerpts?)

Completed coursework

• Must have a way to VERIFY completion
• Skill tree?
• Experience with products & proof?

@scottalanmiller said:

@MattSpeller said:

• Inclusive of all skill levels, Staples wage slave to CIO

I would say that defining a minimum level is important. I think that bench services (people doing hardware repair, selling products, etc.) are outside of the field. Assembling a computer is a factory job, not IT. HP line workers don't claim to be IT, people swapping out parts as their job description should not either. It should be technical jobs and higher only, IMHO.

Agreed, though I would push to include the poor sods who are curious about IT and just getting that first rung on the ladder. In this I would argue that including people like "geek squad" as "IT" gives someone a place to start and a much larger pool of potential users for this... whatever this is haha.

What would this look like if it were to be made into a thing? Just some ideas to follow that I want to expand upon, throw in your $0.02!

• Inclusive of all skill levels, Staples wage slave to CIO
• Reputation and skill based
• Provide a framework of titles and skill levels
• Isolated from outside influences (notably money, corporations and governments)
• International
• Relevant / useful to business and IT folks

@Minion-Queen said:

There would be a lot more cut-rate MSP's. How many does NTG get jobs from already because they have no clue what they are doing?

There will always be the good, the bad, and the ugly - that's part of why I find this so interesting; how do you sort them out?

@thanksaj said:

I think if IT dropped all the people who really aren't cut out to be in IT, we'd see a lot more MSPs and only the largest of companies would have in-house IT staffs. Jobs would be almost exclusively at MSPs.

That's a reasonable thought but I think it's years and much work away. I could see worse outcomes.

@Nic said:

I think IT needs to be licensed for safety reasons, given all the security breaches and releases of data that happen lately.

What does licensing look like to you? What are it's pro's and con's?

In summary of Scott's title post
International non-profit that provides a few key things

• Education standards
• Geographically and skill weighted salary estimates
• Lack of outside influence on education (vendor / government neutral)
• Codify titles (define and provide clarity on what titles mean)
• Work with educators to create more meaningful programming
• ???? add as you see fit, lets boil this down a bit

@scottalanmiller said:

Really?

You should see the applicants SMB gets, many are outright terrifying.

@IRJ said:

How many SMB bumpkins do we see on SW?

Less than I expected to tell the truth

@IRJ said:

SMB doesn't care about credentials if they see experience.

SMB cares (or should care) more than any other segment. They're the ones who can least afford to hire a bumpkin

@scottalanmiller said:

I think that the goal is to keep people from working at $16/hr.

Maybe we can phrase that as fair wages for the skill level involved, numbers just cloud things

@scottalanmiller said:

Wow, and to be "certified" by that group they charge up to $350 per year!! That's a racket. If anything, certification needs to be free or very low cost from an organization that we need. It shouldn't be about gouging workers like unions do or trying to make only the affluent really able to consider the field. IT has always been open to those who are smart and willing, that's part of what makes IT great. It isn't like medical where there is a massive cost involved and only those with existing wealth, an incredible willingness to take on crippling debt or those lucky enough to qualify for sponsorship of some sort qualify. It should be open to everyone that knows the material - we shouldn't care about their age or income when showing that they can do the work.

Agreed 100% - while this isn't a small undertaking it should never be funded by those you want to build it for. I was chewing on this (funding) lastnight and I think it can be done easily without a penny from those who it is designed for.

@Joyfano Lots of really vibrant ex-pat communities for you in North America

@scottalanmiller Anywhere in particular?

@Joyfano Well that works too I guess!

Morning!
We need another person 8 hours offset from us, then we'll have 24/7 ML coverage

@IRJ said:

This PC is for me. Its sort of going to be a living room type computer that will only get internet use. It will also be used as a media sharing center.

Yeah it's 100% up to that. $200 is a good deal for it, I don't mean to detract from that.

@scottalanmiller said:

Almost nothing that normal users do is CPU bound.

Moore's law is responsible.
Spinning rust has not been able to keep up with CPU's for years now, it's just in the last 12mths that SSD are now consumer commodity cheap and very easy to recommend.
$0.50/gb and dropping in CDN