Geek School
2008-08-12 19:14![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asher553So far, my CompTIA A+ course is going great! The class is at just the right level and pace for me, and I'm learning lots of interesting stuff about hardware, memory, Windows OS, and so on.
Almost the first thing the instructor said was, "You can't be an asshole anymore, like you could 10 years ago" in the industry. I laughed quietly because I'd just posted a response to a comment here, saying that my hesitation in joining the computer culture had been the perception that computer geeks were sometimes short in the social skills department.
The main topic of gossip was this guy -
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/22/BAGF11T91U.DTL
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/sf-city-charged.html
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4350711.ece
A couple of the students expressed sympathy for Terry Childs, which I have a hard time figuring out. Needless to say, the instructor was less impressed.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to finishing the class. The certification test will require shelling out a few more bills and I'm a little short these days, but that'll give me time to review and prepare for the exam.
Going back to the instructor's comment, the context was that IT professionals these days are expected to have some customer service skills, and can no longer take for granted their indispensability as a guarantee of job security as was the case ten years ago. In other words, you shouldn't think that just because you've got the company by the short and curlies, they can't replace you. (That was the Terry Childs tie-in.) The newer CompTIA exams place less stress on memorization of things like IRQ codes, and more emphasis on customer service skills.
That's probably a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the maturation of the computer industry - it's no longer the exclusive province of a handful of individuals, and the market can afford to raise the standards on things like communication and customer service.
Class runs through the end of the week. I'll post more this weekend.
Almost the first thing the instructor said was, "You can't be an asshole anymore, like you could 10 years ago" in the industry. I laughed quietly because I'd just posted a response to a comment here, saying that my hesitation in joining the computer culture had been the perception that computer geeks were sometimes short in the social skills department.
The main topic of gossip was this guy -
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/22/BAGF11T91U.DTL
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/sf-city-charged.html
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4350711.ece
A couple of the students expressed sympathy for Terry Childs, which I have a hard time figuring out. Needless to say, the instructor was less impressed.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to finishing the class. The certification test will require shelling out a few more bills and I'm a little short these days, but that'll give me time to review and prepare for the exam.
Going back to the instructor's comment, the context was that IT professionals these days are expected to have some customer service skills, and can no longer take for granted their indispensability as a guarantee of job security as was the case ten years ago. In other words, you shouldn't think that just because you've got the company by the short and curlies, they can't replace you. (That was the Terry Childs tie-in.) The newer CompTIA exams place less stress on memorization of things like IRQ codes, and more emphasis on customer service skills.
That's probably a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the maturation of the computer industry - it's no longer the exclusive province of a handful of individuals, and the market can afford to raise the standards on things like communication and customer service.
Class runs through the end of the week. I'll post more this weekend.
