One beautiful morning (almost)...i went to the office and someone pop-up out of nowhere saying, "Hey! this walkie talkie not working..could you please trouble shoot the problem..i think it ain't receiving anything." Few minutes later.."Hey, CCTV not working", "Yo! telephone got problem", "My camrecorder not functioning", "Microphone not working", "I lost my data", "E-mail not working", "Internet down", "My spreadsheet got virus", "Can't download music into my phone", "My PDA phone got problem", "Move this computer to here and this table to there", "Got problem with electric sockets", "My network account lost", "How can i hide this data?", "How to hack this file?", "Help me fix this home PC", "New user coming in", "I want internet in my phone", "I want super photo quality printing (Old canon BJC printer)", "I got new notebook, pls install this and that", "Movie player can't run", "Can you help me type this document and that document", "Can you fake this graphics and that picture", "I want to format this computer because MS words corrupted"....and so on. From our main HQ office to the outskirt of town help and assistance always in need. There are times i have to run up and down from the building, do phone calls, appoinment/meetings for support to client, make records, do server administrative task, internet, e-mail system, network account, design this and that, do clerical jobs including somebodys work, this and that. Sometimes people treat IT people like me as mobile computer encyclopedia or the IT Swiss Army Knife moving around helping people out.
Sometime when i see my job description it says i should do this and that, not beyond my designated jobs put for some people anything related to consumer electronics or almost have computeristic feature will automatically assigned to IT people to settle the problem.
Lets me give you a scenario, a mechanic and a car. So you know how both items related right? A mechanic fix a car. Right!. Mechanic don't drive you to the airport like a taxi driver, mechanic doesn't help you to drive the car around like a driving teacher, mechanic doesn't help you to clean the car, mechanic doesn't do beautiful paintjobs and design some accessories. Right. So car mechanic do job specifically on car maintenance. Right!
How bout IT people? There's a technician, server administrator, database specialist, programmer, helpdesk, LINUX/WINDOWS support, network engineer and etc. But somehow nowadays especially where electronic and computer consumerism become rampant people view this IT jobs as one. It means "That guy is computer guy (regardless what specialised he/shes in) so they knows how to do it". Yup! the popular belief adopted in any commerce society in a company. Thinking a computer related job can fix any broken computer stuff even its outside the job scope. As for my case my job is support but one feet on the administrative job and another feet on technical support which until now no ones know what job or even job title should have assigned to me. The salary? well.... ..i have my ways to cover holes in my pocket sort to say. Working in IT area especially where you're located at low level job is not as relaxing as other cheap job in the market. IT job labour sells like hot cakes, demands are high and cheap but this job always been heavily manipulated and max used by people because the computing technology and the electronic devices that relates to it is vastly in huge amount owned and widely use all around the world and its the key that accelerate our business world. No computer technology business means go dead and your profit will be robbed by other advance run business company. And yet IT area always remain at the support and services level for company that run business that is not related to computing products. So IT dept doesn't make much profit..it sucks money for manitenance and technology purchasing purposes, employer usually tends to reduce the cost on this department and pushes it labour capacity and skills regardless the impact the IT employee gets...low wage. That's why IT personnel won't last long in the IT dept because as the push their work scope more they will gain more skills and then leave the company for high opportunity prior to their gained experience and this infact also something got to do with unsatisfactory salary. My colleague mention, he will go where the field is greener" In this so called "third world" country the effect on fresh IT graduate is devastating, 70% unemployed (2002) even in previous year they been promised by govenment education institution that IT industry will boom provide wide job opportunity for them. Facts is wrong, company just need less employee but highly skills to run IT Dept because these group don't make much profit except for the support task. This culture infact will go on for another 5 years (2010) if the economy doesn't improve. No matter how much ones study in information technology the so called skilled IT worker will landed at cheap low level work force allocated under support worker. Unless he or she is business minded and get away from the work heirachy into profit making level...open up an IT company like MICROSOFT, SUN MICROSYSTEM, CITRIX, ORACLE, GOOGLE, YAHOO and etc.
Even unfortunate befall into this IT worker but they are one of the most cunning and lucky people to gain mass amount experinced and skills based on changing pace of technology. These people able to penetrate any market and jobs available to them as they progress thoughout their work experience. From one year standard low level support group they can become almost anything they can be as long its related to computers: Graphics designer, online businessman, web portal entrepreneur, lecturer, mechanical engineer, system analyst, photographer, novelist, magazine publisher, nutritionist, consultants and etc. How can that be possible?... now here's the trait, IT people dealing with information, information worth money and knowledge, use that knowledge and you can gain another job perspective. IT control information and how it flow...you can also say what evey information flows around the net and around the world they holds and can anytime took control of information need for any organisation on the net...stock market, educational system, investment information, stocks control, entity information, commerce statistic, global news, propaganda, military strategic resources, health archive, world history archive, currency rate changes, product price and also some confidential records....if the can filter out the usefull information and block it from gain by other party you can see the worl economy plunge by this culpurit. The once look down people are the people who is holding your the worlds life string.
The most respected discipline feature of an IT personnel is "ETHICAL". Without this anyone one in IT Dept can blurt out information they just discovered leaking all the stuff which is confidential to certain associated group. This people also located ontop of the food chain when it comes to private confidential information encapsulation. In fact these people have to jump into private information regardless the impact or how confidential the information it has to hide from the public because if anything happen to the information, lost, damage, corrupt or gone the IT people are the ones who have to put their hand dirty, dig out and recover those stuff for them if the employer or client requested to do so. You should be thankful if these guys save your files/data else he/she would smile some cash which also means threats in other ways.
Level of ethical ones has can be measure how much experience does a person learn when handling secretive/private information which worth alot for a company or the benefited association. First well have to see how much education background ones gain from learning from the past institution.
1.GENERAL IT Certificate holder, absolutely made for technical support specialised in non-secretive and non-private data handling. They need more than 3 year to realised the responsiblity to handle confidential data. Their easy to go experince based on their current education knowledge and skills worth only below administrative level. Should there be any need to delegate, probation and monitoring is needed.
2.DIPLOMA in IT certificate holder may have probably most doubtful ethical work value. Because they knew having such low certification means less responsibility and less professionalism enthusiast. Mostly reflected on how much they've been paid and nature of work skills they learn from college or university. At Diploma level student learn some basic computing, business structure, communication skills and popular computing program like SQL, FORTRAN, JAVA J2ME, C++, Visual basics, hardware handling and stuff commonly needed for intermediate company/organization. There not much concentration on how to handle data/information in computing because studies are much related on how to use them not how to keep them save. Not much moral or dicipline teaching at diploma level based on my past experinces.
3.DEGREE in IT certificate holder have high value of work ethical and discipline in handling confidential data, how to use it in proper manner and how to safely filter out the bad and the good data. This has been taught and higher level because at DEGREE level, students learn to be responsible and knew they will be assign as single administrative work reponsible to decide how the data would be organised in the company. DEGREE holder have high demands for administrative work and decision making in the company because it their nature to be entrusted with such work in the future.
4. MASTER/PHD...not much to say...all i know these people is in R&D and engineering purposes. But highly ethical...yup!
So are you still looking down on IT people?
Now Bill Gates from MICROSOFT is the most concrete evidence of successful IT people. Now everyone in the "WORLD" bows to WINDOWS. Without it your life goes kabunk!
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