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Plumber, Electrician... Digitician?
Alien54 writes "This article from the Sunday Boston Globe describes the rise of a new type of tradesman called, for lack of a better term, a digitician, a label describing the burgeoning army of overqualified, unemployed, or free-spirited computer technicians being deployed to front porches around the country."
Will people now start referring to "digitician's butt"?
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Around this time a century ago, cars (or horseless carriages) were still rather unusual devices which few understood. They were unreliable, and people were still getting used to the idea of owning them. Eventually, their sprung up an occupation around maintaining these devices, and now we have many trained mechanics. That's what computer repair people are becoming.
No longer an engineer, no respect for my accomplishments, now a demeaning title to contend with.
I don't know how many times I've done this for free. Imagine all the interesting stories you'd have, too. Certainly a lot more fun than corporate IT.
It's better than "That computer guy down the hall"...
Finally, microwave and VCR clocks across the country won't be flashing 12:00!
Fuck you all you fucking slashbots, fuck the gnaa, fuck trollkore, fuck linux, fuck bsd, fuck apple, fuck windows, fuck slashdot, fuck osnews, fuck microsoft, fuck ibm, fuck intel, fuck sun, fuck amd, fuck sgi, fuck sco, fuck kde, fuck gnome, fuck xfce, fuck java, fuck c++, fuck kuro5hin, fuck X11, fuck Y, fuck me, fuck you, fuck everything. Fuck riaa, fuck mpaa, fuck fuck and worst of all fuck the fucking moderator who is going to fucking moderate this fucking post fucking -1, fucking troll!
P.S, fuck my sig!
Does this label apply to the 12 year old kids who know more about "teh intarweb" than their parents? I suppose that trend is dying down, but it was funny while it lasted =).
Esoteric reference.
The Judge family paid nearly $300 to fix an $800 computer.
Holy crap. Does that seem ridiculous to me solely because I know computers? Perhaps it's not that different from the mechanic that wanted to charge me $100 to replace a stripped wheel stud (which I later did myself for the cost of the $3 stud and an hour).
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Bah! Linkify your sig! They look like interesting links but I can't be bothered to copy and paste. Come, on, this is the web generation! If you can't click it, you're dead!
[FUCK BETA]
I've been picking up some nice spare change just doing this on weekends. Now that I actually have a name for it, that ought to add 25% or so, even though I'm closer to the 30$ an hour end of the spectrum.
Who is John Cabal?
I read this article in the Globe when I was home for my immensly short one week spring break the first week of March. It was in the business section on i think either a tuesday or a wednesday. Either the Globe is reprinting articles or the submitter is mistaken on when this was printed.
I've always believed that Linux/FOSS distributions would be a fantastic model for this sort of thin horizontal distributed economy. You have thousands, if not millions of Linux savvy people out there who can make money on those around them who just want their computer to work for a specific purpose.
This beats the hell out of the centralized monopoly model. Who better to support your computer than someone who understands it intimately? If they cannot fix it, they can go to the author and ask them to fix it - an unlikely happenstance for the average user, but not so much for a "digitician".
Finally, a job that WON'T be outsources to India!! *crosses fingers*
We don't even have doctors who make housecalls anymore, but now we have technicials making housecalls? Or maybe it's just a different form of a doctor... not for humans, but for the machines. Next thing you know machines will be buying groceries and talking to eachother... oh, I guess they already do that.
Then again, it sucked when we didn't need buggy whips any more either.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Sounds just like beautician. Just what I've wanted all my life.
Lies about crimes
I wouldn't say that it's ridiculous.
People don't understand computers. To many, either AOL works, or it doesn't. And, these people don't want to understand computers.
Just like all people are capable of changing their own oil (or in your case, a wheel stud), it doesn't mean it's something that they want to learn how to do.
However, just like with vehicles, there is always going to be price gougers (and those who do shoddy fixes to more extensive problems). In the realm of computers, with so few people understanding the depths of their operating systems, price gouging is even easier, as how man people really know what, "Kernel32.dll has performed an illegal operation (Insert long string of hex here)," means, or even how to find a solution.
With vehicles, at least most individuals have a basic understanding (IE, they know that when a mechanic tell them the timing belt needs to be replaced but he's pointing to the rear differential that something is up.)
Finally. It's about time that people started to realize that electronics are complicated things and that it takes competent people to fix them. People don't do their own wiring or own plumbing, (well, most people) and they shouldn't. I think that the reason that electronics haven't passed into the realm of "let the professionals handle it" is because with electrical wiring, you can get shocked and die and with plumbing you can get covered with sewage or scalding water. Personally, I am glad that this I-can-do-it-myself mindset is starting to fade. Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much.
Help I'm a rock.
Stale links does not a good website make.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
...a label describing the burgeoning army of overqualified, unemployed, or free-spirited computer technicians...
Uhm, how about "welfare and unemployment recipients?"
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
Sounds to me like a digitician should be a person who does digitation, does typing qualify?
Before you reply that everyone is uber-stupid, you are wrong.
Linux will give computer repair folks as much work as ever. Maybe the viruses and security issues won't be as bad (although we don't know that! Linux is less than 5% of the consumer desktops on the market...) but all the other stuff (customization, hardware installs, even dog hair removal) will be with us as long as PCs exist in their current form. You try having your mom recompile a kernel.
In fact, it's the Linux spirit that created these jobs in the first place- the hardware can be fixed and configured by the end user, or whoever he chooses for that job. The Microsoft computer appliance of the future will do all it can to be a tamper-sealed box that has to be shipped away to bumfuck for three weeks to be repaired- it's more profitable.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Consider this: training, amount of time, and tools. Think of how ugly it is to uninstall a nasty worm virus; think of the effort it takes to salvage files from a flaky/dying hard drive, plus rebuilding the machine. Think of the cost of all the diagnostic software/tools you might have, even if its just some Norton Utilities, a MS Technet subscription, and an AV program.
If a lawyer or a plumber or an exterminator can charge $50-100/hour, a computer technician should be allowed to do the same.
Technician skills are expensive. My company now maintains images of your hard drive. If you have a problem that can't be resolved within 30 minutes of trouble shooting, they take your laptop away, re-image a new laptop, and give it to you the next morning. Its not worth the recovery effort. Bad ofr people with desktop support skills (used to be LAN admins who did that stuff). Now a force of >100 LAN admins across the Greater Toronto Area is less than 20 individuals.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I don't know what it's like in the US, but here in the UK, the cost of new PCs is making PC "repairs" uneconomic if the repairer wants to charge rates similar to those of plumbers and the like (to put some numbers on that, a typical rate for a plumber is 60GBP per hour, and a new PC costs from 300GBP, with monitor and preloaded copy of whatever the latest flavour of Windows is; how much work do you reckon can do in under 5 hours?)
Of course, this does discount the stupid and the penny-wise-pound-foolish, whom are probably the best cash cows out there for any business.
--
"Yeah, the whole computer needs an overhaul. Your modem is shot, and really, you might be able to get another 1,000 megs out of it, it's not too safe to be ridin' around on the internet like that. And while I was in there I noticed your processor is kind of old, we might want to go ahead and update that for ya. And with that comes driver updates and refits. Should have it by Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest. Here's the estimate."
"500 dollars!?"
"Yes. Legally, I can't even let you take it home because of the modem."
"What's this at the bottom? Rust proofing? Collision insurance?"
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
If they had chosen to replace rather than repair, they would be out more then just $800 dollars for the new computer. Since the Judge family needs outside assistance to fix a computer, they would most likely needs outside help to reinstall all their original applications, transfer all their important files to the new machine (without also copying the viruses), etc. $300 to repair -vs- ($800 + $300) to replace? I think they made the right choice.
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the trick is to keep the cost under half the cost of a new machine. In most cases, this will be a couple of hours of work, depending on your rates.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Only a sissy technophobe would call these people "digiticians". They're already well known as "morlocks".Don't forget to floss!
--
make install -not war
I did this at school in the dorm while I lived on campus. The school paid student techs didn't have much of a clue and their answer was normally to reformat. So I started fixing things for friends, cleaning viruses, solving network problems and cleaning the crap out of mice. They were normally most impressed that they had a "new mouse again." Most of the time payment was a couple of beers or a hot pocket.
The digitician industry is not nearly as glamorous as the porn industry depicts it to be.
"Old man yells at systemd"
When I used to work as a Computer Support at an office, I used run around all day doing this. Sure, I didn't make house calls, but that in itself doesn't make this a new profession. I was just called the "IT Support Guy", not a "Digiticain".
I really hated my job when I was doing IT support. I met these lusers who wanted do weird things with their computers, and then exepected me to support them. Often, I had to stay in the office till 8:00pm.
Thank god now I have a job as a full time developer. I would never want go back to the days of being a "digitician", even if I got paid US$100/her.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
capitalism rulze!
I've seen a number of investigative reports where they take in a computer with only one thing wrong (say, unplug the HD cable), and the repair people come back with charges for multiple unrelated things.
It's encouraging to see unemployeed techs finally taking advantage of all that time they spent fixing friends computers for free. I know I'm usually the first one several of my friends and family call when their computer starts acting weird, and all they want to do is send email.
Now if somebody was really smart, they'd find a way to get partnered with the local Best Buy and could probably turn it into a full time job. You'd be amazed at how much people are willing to pay if you can bring some sanity to their assorted home electronics. My mom loves the 3 page FAQ I made for her that goes step by step how to do everything with the home theatre system my Dad has. She used to not watch any DVDs just because she was scared to touch anything.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
I have a friend who went around charging 50 dollars to take the MS.Blaster worm off people's computers. This amateur computer repair field has great potential, as computers penetrate further and further into most bussinesses. Time is money, and paying some kid 50 bucks to fix a computer is often cheaper in the long run then spending 2 days doing it yourself. I plan to do the very same thing with a local company over the summer break from school.
I want to be a Digitician when I grow up.
SAILING MISHAP
Much like I'd pay a mechanic at the stealership for a 30 dollar oil change? heak! I could do my own oil but I do it for 2 reasons:
1. I'm currenetly under warranty. Yes, I can buy my own oil, save the receipts, yaddda yadda OR I can have the stealer monkey do it for me, it gets documented in the dealer's computer, and volia! my warrany work will hopefully be done, when it needs to be done (hopefully)
2. I live in an apartment complex where its hard to store stuff, so its much easier to take it out and do it.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Just like *most* plumbers or electricians, shouldn't there be license granted by the state or other civic government for in-home techs? I say ABSOLUTELY!
Consider the case where a so-called digitician shows up at grandma's house, does essentially nothing, and gets paid, then grandma, or her linux-loading, do-gooder grandson, should be able to file a grievence to have their license revoked.
Overall, there should be some type of code enforcement.(pun!=intended).
No, Vern. They just let him in.
It also depends on what "repair" is.
"Repair" might mean that the computer won't boot up at all, and this person has their doctoral dissertation nearly complete on it. Of course, they haven't made any backups... It would easily be worth $800 to recover that data and get the computer up and running again.
For me, when it comes to working on people's computers, I basically tell them it will cost them $50/hour. But also that I have an "hourly" cost for certain jobs. From start to finish, installing windows and all their software may take more than 5 or 6 hours. But a lot of that is just waiting. So, for that job, I'll tell them it will be about 2 to 2 1/2 hours of billed time.
'till the vast unwashed mashes discovered the profitable business of reinstalling Windows 98 in badly broken home machines.
It used to be quite profitable, mind you - for a 14-yr-old who has no real expenses...
-They don't apply Windows patches, and their machine gets owned.
-They don't install anti-virus/security software, and if their computer comes with it, they let it expire when the "free trial" period is up, and their machine gets owned.
-They blindly double-click on everything that finds its way into their e-mail inbox, and their machine gets owned.
The general public's level of computer literacy has remained constant despite all attempts to educate them, even in the aftermath of all the highly-publicized worms and viruses in the last few years. It's a losing battle trying to change that. The only thing that can be done is to make software as secure as possible and have it update itself. When you rely on the intelligence of the users to keep their machines secure, you're setting yourself up for failure.
local networks, local installs/fix of local PCs - but the broadband providers and Microsoft will use legal means to prevent it from happening.
I wonder if there are any tools that could make tasks like this easier, such as a LiveCD Linux distro that included antivirus and spyware tools for cleaning up windows partitions? That would solve problems such as unidentified worms that disable antivirus software.
The computer is nothing special -- just another thing. You have plumbers and electicians, etc. Computer service is really just another semi-skilled trade that anyone could do if they wanted to invest a little time to learn, but they prefer to use their time in other pursuits.
I often pick up painting jobs for a few extra bucks (and because I like doing some manual labor from time to time). I don't think it's any different than doing basic computer service.
Isn't a goal of the computer field to have pooters so easy to use that anyone can do it? If I was feeling grumpy I would happily argue that most trades which the typical geek might describe as "lowly" or "pathetic" are actually more challenging than 90% of computer related tasks performed by conceited pricks in the IT field. And the most conceited of the bunch never touch the 10% of work which required any degree of intelligence, but they are simply insecure fems who think that somehow working on a computer makes them better than others.
Except unlike the other *ticians people find it acceptable to pay digiticians in cookies and soda.
He probably doesn't have the space to add all that html to a sig file. Remember you only get 120 characters. DUMBASS!
If someone could guarantee me to have my PIII laptop working with the USB-Quattro I bought specifically for it. With Jack/Alsa/FluidSynth/Muse I'd give em 80 (Bear in mind, there's nearly 2$ to the pound now).
Similarly if someone could get my 1394 port working in Mandrake instead of just dyne:bolix I'd pay em. It's a time over money thing. I don't have the time to learn how everything works anymore. Working sucks.
The author of the article brings up a good point, that many home/home-office computers have important personal and financial data on it. Although I'm sure that all of these digiticians (horrible word) have pretty good troubleshooting skills, what happens when they forget to make a backup? They can't replace the data, that was the sole copy. They can try and sell the owner a backup system, but that makes it look like the data was lost to sell another unit. Do these companies carry any sort of malpractice insurance, or do they just operate on a "we break it, you buy it" principle?
... the term is "hacker". A guy who makes computers do what they ought to do, whatever the circumstances.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Being a computer consultant now, and a mechanic for several years while I was in high school, I certainly can appreciate some similarities between the two professions. While $100 for a stud may be unreasonable in some cases, in others it's well justified. When the gave you an estimate they did so with knowldge of how other whel studs have went. Many times it will involve using an oxygen/acetylene torch. So now you have a great deal of time involved, pulling the car in, hoisting the car, getting the torches, etc. Plus, shops have a great deal of overhead to cover (insurance for starters). Also, what is generally ignored is the amount of responsibility placed on auto technicians, the are held responsible for the saftey of not only those occupying the vehicles the work on, but every thing they may wreck into if something fails on the car (that's why strict records are kept, especially those relating to state saftey inspections).
Best Buy usually has their own internal/infernal repair shop, and what isn't handled locally is shipped to some central location. Plus they don't do house calls.
As in the case of most repair shops, they won't won't fix software beyond the obvious.
Most repair shops won't recommend other shops or techicians. It cuts into their business. And many on the sales floor will hand out business cards on the sly to make a few extra bucks.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Consider this: training, amount of time, and tools.
Unfortunately, one is not obligated necessarily to consider 'training' or 'experience' in the real world. If their number far exceeds demand, it doesn't matter how much training they have as compared to workers in general. It doesn't matter what their 'rightful' wage is according to whatever you judge their level of expertise to be. They must compete on the open market, or their desperate competitors will simply outbid them.
The price is all. ;) - and pay maybe $20/hour. If he screws up, he won't charge you.
Pay a professional service that will charge you a fortune and withstand a multimillion lawsuit if they screw up (probably they won't) or hire a cheap guy to remove pr0n wallpaper and dialers from startup, defragment the harddrive and wipe the screen with a damp cloth (because the contrast is off and adjusting it doesn't work
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I mean, can you imagine getting a house call on some Linux box???
What they don't tell you is that it was $50 to fix the computer, and $250 not to tell Ms. Judge about all the porno.
for those that haven't thought it through, this is an educational example
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
That is already occurring in some areas that are overpopulated with 'techies'... everyone fighting over a smaller piece of the pie.
When we do our job well, the users hardly ever see us anyway.. ' what do those guys do other then hide in the computer room '. Only us project managers get any real 'face time' with the users...
Another problem is that as prices drop ( unlike the automotive industry ) hardware becomes disposable, thus reducing the amount of 'support' the world will need.. Decreasing the respect: ' we can just get a new one, anyone can do that '
And don't forget those late night mail order course commercials, THAT doesn't help our respect level either...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm a troll.
There's this tale (many adapations exist I'm sure):
* There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.
Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge.
He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is".
The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.
$cat
I work at Student ITS for our school, and we do free tech support for students. We don't get paid nearly enough for the heroic resurrections of 10 year old computers we perform daily. :)
But people are always amazed when they have a hardware problem, and we tell them that they might as well get some $300 Dell that's light years ahead of their circa 1997 "Valueware" PC than try and swap out Mobo, HD, and power supply.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
Not complaining, it's just a weird trend. This happening to anyone else?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
... oompa loompa.
I posted a week or two back but got rejected.
But the gist was that a boy scout leader took his PC into a local computer repair shop. The shop somehow found kiddie porn on the machine and reported it to police.
I'm not into child porn but I'm also uncomfortable with what the notion that the repair shop had to go snooping to find the child porn.
If a gangster left a dead body in the back seat of a car when they left it at the dealership for an oil change and the mechanic found it and reported it to the police, fine. If the customer leaves stuff on the computer desktop, that's open game too.
But customers should have the security of knowing that the repair guy isn't going to snoop through their data.
I'd always figured that by now, pretty much everyone has a friend or a friend of a friend that can fix a computer. But, even for people who don't, there are way too many people that can fix computers to make a living doing this sort of thing. The most i've seen anyone be able to do is get a little extra money on the side.
It's not like plumbing/electrical where you need a licence to do it. Anyone willing to claim that they know what they're doing can go ahead and do it, whether or not they actually do know what they're doing.
"Holy crap. Does that seem ridiculous to me solely because I know computers?"
I think it seems ridiculous to you because it's assumed that one scenario would mean it'd be cheaper to buy a new pc than to fix this one. To be honest, I'm not sure why that benchmark came into being. The truth of the matter is that you need somebody's time, and that's going to cost. On the flip side, you lose $800 if the machine doesn't work. Well gee.
" (which I later did myself for the cost of the $3 stud and an hour). "
Well now we're wandering into a different topic now. You can always find cheaper elsewhere. You don't have a shop to maintain nor a line of customers ready to hand you money to fix their problems. So yeah, an hour of your time is going to be under $100 I imagine. On the flip side, though, it's fortunate you already had the tools you needed to get it done. Now I really don't know anything about a 'stripped wheel stud', but if it was the type of thing where you had to buy a new tool, then your rate wouldn't have been so cheap.
I understand what you mean, but I don't find it all that ridiculous. If you can't do something yourself then you're going to have to pay for one's expertise.
"Derp de derp."
"Dave is very good at that," she said, and "that makes a difference."
There are still plenty of people who don't weant to take the computer apart and take it down to a shop, where the guy says "looks fine to me, lady"
Now if to many techs get into the field, then you have to go on reputation.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I don't think its anymore rediculous then paying 30 dollars for a copy of a book. Paying high fees for a doctor or lawyers visit. Buying something that was manufactured in china were they pay workers 1 dollar a day and mark up 5000% to a US costomer.
I find that there is a great demmand for this sort of thing. I have been "dabbling" in this by fixing some of my dads co-workers friends computers for them.
/uninstalling useless applications, etc...
They pay me $20 / hour for doing basic maintenance on their pc downloading and running spybot, adaware, norton, defrag, learing their startup programs from crap,
It almost feels bad taking their money, but when you think about it, it would cost them alot more if they were to take the computer in for servicing and then they would be out of action for at least a week.
A friend of mine decided to put out a bunch of flyers around spring break (which happens to be in Feb. for me), and he was just raking in the dough from people getting him to fix their computers. He even got the odd senior who wanted him to teach them how to use their new computers.
I think that this is a great way for teens to make some quick dough. As long as your a few bucks cheaper and faster than the next best alternative, you will make a killing.
Before you reply that everyone is uber-stupid, you are wrong.
Maybe everyone isn't stupid about computers, but having worked at two company help desks, I see that there is a growing trend to admit, "I don't know anything about computers" before I even find out what their problem is. In my experience I estimate that about 65% of the people that call me will say something to that effect without being prompted or just when asked a simple informative question (like how much space is left on your hard drive).
I think that many adults now have just given up on attempting to become computer literate. They seem to find it easier just to admit their inadequacy right up front and save themselves a lot of embarrassment. I find it very sad to see the number of people who have no faith in their ability and no determination to learn. Rather than having me explain some potential ways to prevent this or indicators to look for, it saves them time by keeping their level of abstraction high. I do think that this behavior will decline a little with the "kids" growing up with PCs. However, like someone else said, they will still keep a distance much like most people do with cars.
Some common PC-phobe give-away statements: "me and computers don't get along well," "computers hate me," "I dunno anything 'bout these things," "I replaced my brain with Cream of Wheat(R), here's a big pile of money to fix my computer with."
I started making housecalls back in 1995, standard company policy. Setup, repair, customer service / operation instruction ... why is this news now?
My peace of mind does not depend on
I prefer the term digerati.
I've been doing this for years to just about every house that has a pc on my block, my families computers, friends computers...
only 2 people actually pay me for my time (and i dont require them to)
I've actually thought about doing it as a side job or something because its so time consuming and so many clueless people out there need a lot of help.
I cleaned over 800 instances of spyware/trojans etc off my neighbors pc. Google was even highjacked on his pc.
Actually someone has teamed up with Best Buy. Or at least in my area they have. In Minnesota there is a tech group called "The Geek Squad" They got popular by fixing some celebs PC's at local rock concerts. Then Best Buy partnered with them and they are now in all the northern Best Buy Stores. You can read about it here http://twincities.bizjournals.com/twincities/stori es/2002/10/21/daily34.html
I had the unfortunate experience of graduating from college in 2001, when the bubble had burst and the economy was beginning to tank... just three months before 9/11. I thought I was going to get a job as a networking engineer or system admin, as that's what I was doing all though college in work-study programs.... Haha. How wrong I was!
In the subsequent three years, I've been teaching myself how to maintain a consulting business. This 'digitician' position merely gives a silly title to an age-old occupation: that of the consultant. Closely related to the position of 'consultant', is that of the 'general consultant', the 'contractor', and the 'general contractor'.
Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much.
Ah... a couple of questions. Have you ever owned your own company? Have you ever incorporated yourself? Have you ever worked as a consultant? Have you ever worked as a contractor?
$125/hr is a typical fee for a consultant or contractor. It gets really crazy when they charge $300/hr or $500/hr. You can definately find people who will charge $5,000 per day to run corporate training workshops ($625/day).
There is a tendency for people to de-value themselves and not consider how much they are worth. It also leads to economic depression and recession when communities thing that all of their jobs are being outsourced and that their efforts, skills, and knowledge aren't not valuable. Remember, value is completely dependent upon the purchaser's perception... A glass of water in the desert could easily be sold for $1,000 / glass, if the buyer was dehydrated. Similarly, computer geeks need to know how to create percieved value of their skills.
Just because you're a 133t h4ck0r, can program in C/C++, you admin your own Cisco router, built a linux/apache/mysql/php/nuke database-enabled content-management web-server, and everything in your house is wireless doesn't mean that anybody necessarily cares. There is not a clear perception of the value of those skills.
Making sure that there is a backup of the wife's or husband's personal files in the case of an accident, when there's never been a backup made at all? Value: $300.
Preventing a divorce because the spouse doesn't find the evidence of an affair? Value: $2,000
Preventing the kids from getting involved in cybersex chatrooms before the age of 13: Value: $2000
The point is... don't undervalue yourself or the rest of the community. You hurt other computer geeks when you say that $125/hr is a bit much. Value is in the perception of the buyer.
Also, consider inflation. I guarantee you that in the next ten years, doctors and lawyers will be billing $500 per hour, and I hope that the average computer geek will be able to charge $250/hr for consulting rates by then.
"Paying $300 to fix an $800 PC" would be a bad investment. However:
* spending $300 to recover $1000 of drop-dead important data has no relation to the value of the PC its on.
* spending $300 to get a group of digital animators back online and working is worth it when you are otherwise paying them to sit around.
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
For the same reason, I take my motorcycle to a mechanic to fix rather than do it myself, because my time is worth more than paying him to do it for me. Same with growing the wheat I eat, the cotton for the clothes I wear and the trees that my bed was made from. It's called an economy.
Broad brush simpleton columnists like to coin words, but not only is ditita..whatever a STUPID word that conveys no meaning, but it is not useful or necessary. We already have words: technician, assistant, specialist.
The problem with equating a 'trade' such as plumbing and electrical work with tech management is that it's far easier to teach anyone how to wire or plumb than to teach troubleshooting. It's much closer to being a mechanic. Plumbers often do things according to a plan. Only when the shit is two feet deep and rising is plumbing similar to crisis management in IT.
Yeah, without a doubt. And we pay them more than a car mechanic simply because humans are that much more complicated and it takes more years of school to learn how to fix them. Therefore a computer technician should be paid somewhere in between the two.
Calling it a "digitician" reduces it from a white-collar profession to a blue-collar one.
There's nothing wrong with blue-colar work, and indeed it's definately very skilled and specialized -- but it's "hands-on" skill. Computer work isn't the same.
I am a professional on-site service agent, or just, a computer professional. I am not a digitician, and I will never allow myself to be called one.
Not ridiculous at all. I do this digitician thing for a living and have often been paid many times the value of the computer itself for installing, fixing, tuning, tweaking, networking, etc. My clients need their computers for their work, and it's worth it for them to spend $1000 to get a $500 computer fixed up, set up with the software they need and exactly how they want it, so that they can go ahead and use the computer to as an essential part of their businesses - which earn them hundreds of thousands. Or even to earn $50,000 - it's still worth it. The point is they need the machine, they need it to work properly, they need honest explanations, they need tutoring, they need handholding, they need pep talks, they need sympathetic kvetching. Not crazy at all. From my point of view, it can be a very exhausting job, lots of time spent deep-thinking and gift-of-gabbing at the same time, it can really wipe you out by the end of the day. And folks, I'm only charging $70 per hour - Canadian! If you ask me that's not bad for the combination of mechanic, therapist and business consultant that I am. Anyway, my clients prove my worth as a consultant by continuing to call me - and often calling me in to do the job right after they've succumbed to the temptation to let their "whiz kid nephew" or some $15/hour charlatan at their machines.
A knock on my office door. Opening it reveals a user holding their personal laptop as if it were a dead pigeon. In an embarrassed voice they say, "Would you mind? I think it has a virus?" I smile broadly, hand them my rate sheet and say, "I now make house calls." Sweet.
Unfortunately, one is not obligated necessarily to consider 'training' or 'experience' in the real world. If their number far exceeds demand, it doesn't matter how much training they have as compared to workers in general. It doesn't matter what their 'rightful' wage is according to whatever you judge their level of expertise to be.
Well, in Canada, under the ridiculous pay-equity legislation, that is exactly what happens if a female-dominated job (like secretaries) is paid less than a male-dominated job (like truck driver) in the same company if their work is judged to be "of equal value". Bureaucrats & lawyers will establish they think you should be paying (based on required training, experience, responsibility, etc.) for a given class of employees. Supply & demand are not factors that the bureaucrats can take into account. If the bureaucrats think your secretaries & truck drivers should be paid the same and they aren't, your business can be successfully sued for damages.
$100 to replace a stripped wheel stud (which I later did myself for the cost of the $3 stud and [AN HOUR]).
Well... What if you had a dayjob making $100 per hour. Would you consider that money saved or money wasted?
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
How does one protect themselves as a digitician?
/. that "techsupport for friends and family" can get ugly especially when a friend/family member blames you for everything that goes wrong with their computer when alls you did for them was change their monitor resolution.
We all know from previous posts on
If you are doing this on a house-call basis, how do you let your customers know what you will and what you won't fix/be responsible for, etc?
LLC? Have your customer(s) sign a waiver?
I think that if I was to do this type of work on a full-time basis I would incorporate myself or obtain a LLC (limited license corporation) so that a litigious customer would not be able to come after all I own.
Just a thought...
Except that no one pays me. Friends, friend's parents, parent's friends/work associates, etc. I go and spend 3 hours telling them how to hook up their digital camcorder to their PC (or explaining why they cant even though "its digital"). Installing Ad-aware and cleaning up their PC, telling them not to click on "Yes" on anything that comes up, and other crap. I havent been paid for any of that in the past year, and I've prolly done about 30 hrs of work.... damn why do I have to be so nice.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
In order for a electrician/plumber/carpenter to work on your house they must be licensed and bonded. But a guy to fix your computer? Nothing... he could very easily sell you 64MBram for $200... install mcafee for $150... and run WindowsUpdate...
Um.... its also mentioned in TFA.
"None of us are as dumb as all of us." - meeting mantra
Sounds like some kind of new fangled anime card game. "Solarismander, GO!"
Yeah, but there won't be any mention of "digitician school dropouts" in any musicals any time soon..
Oh, that Frenchy..
no, the hardware was worth $800 a computer is more than just hardware. I not am talking about fixing all the software so it works (even if that is part of it), but about not losing family pictures, movies, mp3s, valuable documents etc. Most people consider data worth more than the hardware and in many cases (eps with companies) the data is worth A LOT more than the hardware. One firm now of spent thousands try to recover data from a worm infected machine.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
.... would be a better term. The number of people who think they are a 'technician' because they've successfully built a PC clone using only their bare hands and a phillips screwdriver is huge.
Granted, it is an 'empowering' experience, but in the old-school a Technician knows how to solder, hand code little diagnostic tests in Assembly language, troubleshoot the problem down to a component on the circuit board, and more.
If you've never handled a wirewrap gun, and you have no idea of the relative advantages of a totem-pole versus an open-collector output, you're not a technician, you're a dilentante from the coffeehouse who ordered a 'PC Tool Set' off ThinkGeek and copped an attitude.
---
I seem to recall a debate about 20 years ago where a group of renegade electronics 'engineers' wanted a new title because they felt 'engineer' was too 'mechanical' and, well, electricians had their own title after all.
Following an exciting month or two of correspondence in the trade press, the best they came up with was 'Electroneer'!
OK - hands up all those with 'Electroneer' on their job description or business card!? Hmm, thought not. L3K
Engineer, Electroneer, Digitician
AT&ROFLMAO
I used to be one of the techs at my university responsible for connecting everyone to the campus network and supporting their connections. Of course I'd help fix some of their other problems on the side just out of kindness. One thing that I noticed is that my clientele (people who needed help setting up networking) was overwhelmingly female. It would probably be like that in the real world as well this could be just the ticket for the average geek who otherwise would never see the inside of a female's domicile. All else equal, it beats the hell out of a cubicle.
If you want to go into digitetics (as a digitician?) in a big way, I recommend checking with your insurance person.
Errors and omissions insurance is fairly inexpensive. It won't protect you against every pitfall and/or pratfall, but it is a good "malpractice insurance" in case somebody gets surly and decides to sue you.
Regards,
Anne
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
Most repair shops won't recommend other shops or techicians.
That all depends. Now, I don't know about repair shops in particular, as I don't work in one, but in other businesses, referrals are common. I'm a photographer, and I mainly do weddings, some portraits, and occaisonally light commercial work. I can only shoot one wedding a week. When somebody calls for a wedding on a day I'm booked, I send them to one of the several good photographers in town with whom I'm friends. They do likewise. Last week I got a call to do a modeling portfolio. Fashion photography isn't my strong suit, so I sent them to another studio I know who specializes in it.
I have a friend who's a landscape contractor. Sometimes, he gets calls for jobs that are too small for his company, so he sends them to a competitor of his who does more small jobs. Sometimes he gets calls for jobs that are too big for his company. So he sends them to a company bigger than his that handles those types of accounts.
Repair shops don't often do house calls. If they get a call from somebody who can't or won't bring their system in, or needs a network installed, or something that has to be done on site, they may very well refer you. Referrals and personal networking are a vital part of every business, because nobody can do all the work all the time.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I might consider it excessive because I know how to fix my own shit. However, what if I didn't know hot to fix my shit, didn't have time (or inclination) to learn, but did have a lot of disposable income?
$300 sounds pretty damn cheap.
To use the oft-stated car analogy:
I know how to change the oil in my car. Doing so would cost about $10-12 in materials (filter, oil), but it would also require going to Autozone/Walmart/wherever and picking out the oil, the filter, standing in a line, waiting to get checked out, coming home, finding time to actually do the oil change, then changing the oil, and then *responsibly* disposing of the waste oil (it's against the law to just dump it in the sewers). So, in the end, I may have saved $10 on the raw material cost, but I had to spend about 2-3 hours in related time to get it done. My time bills for $20/hour according to my last paycheck stub. The cost of an oil change is about $20. You do the math there. And lets not forget the cost of the TOOLS involved (special filter wrench, socket set), stuff I do not have handy.
I don't charge an exhorbitant amount for my services to fix some friends PC's (if I charge at all, but then again, I don't fix all my friend's PC's as a matter of principle). One of my friends, however, insists on buying me "all-you-can-eat" sushi buffet (about $30 all said and done), so I don't mind it at all.
YMMV.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Several years ago (1995), my best friend and I started up a "computer consulting" company. Basically we did the so-called "digitician" thing, as well as doing full IT support for a number of smaller businesses as well. We were very successful with it, and had a number of good clients. We charged $35 per hour, for on-site work. We almost never would bring a machine back to our shop for fixing, it was almost always done on-site. Our customers really loved it, as we were both the cheapest in town, and the only ones who would not require that they bring their computers to us.
We were very much the pioneers of this type of service in my home town (300,000 people), and now everyone is doing it, albeit at twice or three times the cost.
I'm currently thinking about doing it again (I quit about 5 years ago - too much stress), on a smaller scale. I enjoy fixing stuff, but not on a full-time basis.
I've done a few small jobs so far - still at $35 per hour - but am not sure how much time I really want to spend on it. The money's ok, but I just mostly do it because I enjoy it.
Seems almost a crime to charge money for something I love to do (and I already do this 8 hours a day at my day job!)
Just my thoughts on this, having gone through it all when it wasn't common.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
They're friends and family. We do it for free. Does your Mum charge you for sunday lunch? Does your tall uncle send you an invoice when he helps paint your ceiling? Chances are your family helped you out at school or college when you learned this stuff.
We should be proud to help people out when we can. I would not be 'encouraged' at all to see people taking advantage of their friends. Just think about this Free Software stuff we value beyond price! Not every minute of your waking day has to be billable, and it can be worth more than money.
There is a difference here between technicians working on vehicles, or say, industrial air conditioning: the price of a computer is small enough that the technical support bill could easily top the cost of the hardware. Alternatively, though, it could be said that air conditioner or vehicle does not contain information within that is of value. Could we say that the retrieval of personal or valuable information makes the PC of far greater value than the sum of its components?
Just you, and you must be very young or a troll, because your math is naive.
How much is your time worth? If the PC cost $250.00, is $50.00 too much?
Your stud thing; if you would have broken it, it would have cost ALOT to heliarc the stud remover out, fix other damage, or buy a new rotor; where did you save your costs then?
If you "know computers" and do it for a living, I am sure you know how much training, a mortgage is, college education for you and your kids, eating, retirement, etc. That all works out well above $100.00 an hour, especially when you add the temporal factors.
If you would have lost their tax forms or important information, and they sued you, where would you be? (even if you didn't, who could say?)
Plumbing is *easy*, so is *electrical*, but they get top dollar and a living wage because of the risk; if you do it for a favor OK, but don't be silly about it all. If you ask for nothing, that is what others will give you, and that is what you will be valued.
The real issue; if the PC waqs only worth $800 new, and the cost was over half (or a calculated number using risk, deprication, etc.), the recommendation would be to throw it away and buy new, using their backups to recover; otherwise the three hundred is cheap compared to $800.00 or lost personal docs. Cars, repairs, the market all work that way.
And, if $300.00 is too much for several hours of "work", travel, research, training, then they don't value the PC, and that is WHY PC techs will never have any respect; they have to respect themselves and their skills first, else noone else will.
- an ex-PC Tech
... haven't they. You're not missing a Streamline stapler by any chance...
I was hoping the plumber could run Cat5 and add some lighting while he was pulling up the floor to fix the bathtub. Or maybe add PVC plumbing tubes between the rooms for on-demand rewiring. Now that you mention it, my sink has been dripping, I could use another outlet, and I would like to use my laptop while going to the bathroom.
Wait. That sounded wrong. But the rest of the idea, a highly skilled, well paid complulectrician, would be welcome in my house.
The ______ Agenda
Really? I wish I had known that the other day before I did a fresh install on my new hard drive.
I've been into computers since I was 8. I bought my first car when I was 18. I used to be one of those people that took it somewhere anytime something went wrong. Then when I was 19, I met someone who worked on vehicles for a living. He showed me that I was being taken to the cleaners when I pay Midas $400 for new brakes. When I was 24, I bought my second vehicle. Maybe 6 months later, the front passenger side rotor was shot. I went to Monroe for an estimate, $692 for two new rotors, braks pads, shoes, calipers, pistons, and lines. I talked to my friend, he showed me that my calipers, lines, and the pistons for the rear brakes were fine. So I bought new rotors and pads, did the repair myself for ~$60.
4 years later, I've gone through a fair number of pads and shoes since, but the calipers are still fine and the lines are good.
I've known "computer professionals" who operate on the same kind of principle. They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying. Some of them are quite successful because of this, but others fail miserably.
You can't hold those people that you depend upon to make your living in contempt. You can't treat people like their morons. (even if some of them really are)
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Don't forget: getting your clothes ruined, your arms soaked in oil, scratches and cuts.
I do most of my own work. But some things are tedious, messy, awful jobs like changing my oil. I won't do it anymore.
Some jobs aren't desirable. I think that is true for computers also.
But a large shop with a dozen techs is a different thing, in that you usually have someone who can pick up the slack, and you need as much business as possible to make sure you are making ends meet.
Generally, the rule is that you never give away business, and you sell them on your service. And more shops are doing house calls, just to compete.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'm a wedding [...] photographer [...] and work from home.
Impressive! =)
Pro sports are really just forms of entertainment, so the same processes are at work there as in cinema, rock music, opera, whatever. People only want to pay to see the very best. In a given performance category, there will be a few highly-paid superstars that everyone lines up to see (star athletes, big movie stars, world-class opera singers), a larger pool of well-paid highly-competent support personnel (ordinary players on major-league teams, actors who play minor characters or star in no-name films, regular singers in big opera companies), many lower-caliber people struggling to get by and hoping for their big break, and those who get cut out (such as college football players who don't attract the interest of a pro team).
What makes the economics of this possible is the huge "multiplication factor" possible with entertainment. A top opera diva can make $10K for a single performance, but if 2,000 people pay to see it, that's $5 per person. Many people would consider it worth the extra $5 for the added pleasure of seeing a top-notch performance rather than merely a better-than-average one. So that diva represents a huge boost in "productivity" (ability to sell tickets) for the opera company.
This kind of economics is not so apparent in most engineering fields, except in a few cases where the knowledge is highly specialized and known by only a few people.
LLC = Limited Liability Company
The Judge family paid nearly $300 to fix an $800 computer.
I just paid $430 to have a plumber replace two toilets. $180 for the two new toilets, $200 labor cost(!) and $50 to dispose of the old toilets.
Somehow I wasn't shocked.
What if you had a dayjob making $100 per hour. Would you consider that money saved or money wasted?
Depends: how much free time do I have? Do I like working on cars? Would I rather do the work myself and send $100 to my index fund? If I make $100/hr (or even $10/hr), these are the kinds of questions that determine when I can retire.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Well said 'man ls'.
Thanks
It's all a matter of what the "Digitian" does for his/her customers that determines what can be charged in any given situation.
A person can buy a relatively inexpensive computer, and hire a top programmer to write a program for them on that computer. A top programmer/architect might expect to pull in a couple hundred thousand dollars for such an serious application. Is that at all unreasonable? The point is, that how much the computer/vehicle costs is completely irrelevent, the service provided is what's being considered.
A digitian comes into a home, having trouble. The digital services in that home are thrashing and all hell is breaking loose from any of a thousand possible failures. The digitian, isolates the trouble, fixes it, then suggests several stratedgies to prevent said trouble in the future (adds antivirus software, a firewall, or simply set's up automated backups for future data protection.) Then if the digitian is smart and an excellent service provider, suggests new products and services that will delight the customer, all at a reasonable price.
Have you spent an hour or more recently, trapped in telephone limbo, in the desparate attempt of getting anything resembling service your computer dealer? Your phone company? Your ISP? The company that makes or sells your wireless network hardware? How do you think a person who's been hell surfing feels when a smiling, calm, friendly face appears, one that has the knowing glow of a digital guru. It's gotta be like having Colonel Sanders showing up at the Donner party. Sure it's a little expensive, but compared to the misery of having it fester, or worse doing it yourself (for the tragically unclued), renting a digitian has to be the next best thing to sliced bread... Your toilet may only cost a hundred dollars, how much would you pay to have it fixed when unholy filth is running out of it all over your bathroom? In a disaster, a few hundred dollars for a digitian isn't just fair, it's a godsend.
Genda
Ha!
You're not giving away business. You're trading business. I refer clients to other photographers, and other photographers refer clients to me. Everybody wins.
The same thing works for small business repair shops. There is definately such a thing as "more work than you can handle." If you don't agree, then you've never run a business. One of the worst things you can do is to take on more work than you can handle, because then you run yourself and your employees ragged trying to get it done, and generally you fail. Now you're exhausted, your employees are tired and angry or they quit, and your customers are pissed off and telling everybody who will listen about what lousy service you have. So what do you do when somebody calls with a job that's either too big or too small or the wrong speciality for your repair shop? Do you:
a) do it anyway and screw it up or make no money because it takes too long (not your speciality)
b) Send them away, gaining you nothing
c) trade that customer to another small business for good relations and favors in the future
If you answered c), you win!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
"I am not a Nerd. I am a "digitician" :)"
That would be the guy who helps bury Nerds.
This is probably an unpopular thing to say, but this article seems to needlessly glorify the jobs that "digiticians" do. To be sure, they have a set of skills that is still obscure in this country. However, I don't think its a particularly difficult skillset. Sure, they have experience, but its nothing that you couldn't teach a reasonably intelligent person in a few hours. To compare them to doctors is ridiculous. Car mechanics or plumbers would be more apt. However, one of the largest barriers to being a do-it-yourself car mechanic or plumber is not the knowledge but the equipment required. "Digiticians", however, do not have this capital investment. Thus, why should their easy, anyone-can-do it job be glorified? Everyone feels that plumbers are overpaid, I feel the same way about computer tech support.
My 2 cents.
That's right. I'm desperate and I do tech support for $20-30 an hour, not $50-100.
Call me.
And more and more people on Craigslist here in San Francisco are charging less than $50/hour than were just a few months ago.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Judging from the typical 'the end-luser sucks!' attitude around here, I can't see many /.ers being very successful in the door-to-door PC support field. What a shame. There's probably a lot of money to be made and the 21 year old geeks with bad tudes isn't going to see much of it.
> some $15/hour charlatan
HEY! I resemble that remark! (except for the facial hair - oh, wait, that was another post...)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I like your sig. Do you know Mel Gibson? Or his father?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
That's why I'm thinking of building SOHO telecom equipment with things like Asterisk. Look at how much the big boys charge, and what you get. Now imagine catering to the SOHO, and the prosumer market, or even apartment complexes.
Since computers are so cheap. I mean a car is a major investment. Hence, it is not unreasonable that you might spend $1000 or more to fix it. If $300 of that $1000 is made up or unnecessary, that's not s huge part. However computers are quite cheap. People just won't spend a whole lot getting something fixed that they can replace cheaply. You aren't going to spend $500 on computer repair, you'll just buy a new one, espically given how much better new computers are than old ones.
So it's harder to hide charges you don't need. They have to be much smaller, and are therefore less worth trying to do. Ripping someone off for $10 doesn't get you much.
Most of what happens is probably just recommending buying things that aren't needed, or are more than someone needs. However, while that's bad advice, it's not a straight out ripoff. If a computer guy recommends, and you buy a 3ghz processor where a 1ghz would have done fine, you did spend money you didn't need to, but you got a better processor out of it. You may not use it's full potential, but you still have it and your needs may grow in to it.
So you paid 23-203 bucks, in effect (depending on your charge-out rate). Now, add in probability of a screw up or an accident - say cutting your hand, and the fact you had to buy some tools etc etc.
That sounds a bit negative - and I've left out the positives. I rarely take my car in to a workshop, I'd rather fix it myself.
Posting not logged in so that no one mods me down, but I would like to say I did indeed click your link. And you are not offtopic. If ever spam could be ontopic, it would be now.
Often, clients KNOW this, and still are willing to pay. My dad is a car guy. Been screwing with engines since he was like 8, did lots of customizing of cars in high school, even works as a sales guy for car repair books. However, he pays someone to change his oil. Not like he doesn't know how to do it, he taught me how to change mine. He just doesn't care to spend the time, it's worth the money to him to have someone else do it.
There is also something to be said for having a professional that will do something right do it. I got a new thermostat and, like a retard, forgot to mark and label the wires. Well, from reading the documentation I was fairly certian I knew which one went where, but not 100%. I decided to just call a guy, and get it wired right. It was worth it, too, since it turned out they'd used non-standard colours in my place and I would have wired it wrong.
Restraunts are probably the most general form of paying someone else to do something you could do yourself. It's not hard to learn how to cook, and with a deceant cookbook and time you can make even exotic dishes. It's a pain though. I mean let's say I want to make a date some nice Italian food. To properly make a good pasta, with fresh cooked noodles and sauce and all plus side dishes like you'd get in a deceant restaruant is like a 4-5 hour job. Forget it, I'll just drop $50 and take her to a restraunt. Nothing I couldn't do myself, just something that I don't feel is worth my time.
In my experence when a microwave dies 90% of the time its because the fuse blew. When this happens most people will just toss it out and buy a new one, but I've seen a few cases where they used the wrong kind of fuse -- microwaves need ceramic fuses.
So next time you see a newish looking one on the curb grab it then go by ratshack and pick up a replacement fuse, or just wrap the old one in tin foil.
The alternative would be for the computer owner to spend the time learning how to do the repair. In the end, it may be cheaper for them to pay somebody $300 and know that it works. If the job is an easy one, the gamble pays off, otherwise, it might end up costing them more to replace the whole computer they just accidentally ruined.
So now we know what Mario's next occupation is!
"What, $25,000 to replace the roof of that country house on a lot that only cost $1,000?!"
They're not just restoring the physical machine to working order, they're preserving the data, which has been built up over hundreds of hours of use.
A physical computer's just space for your data and programs to live and work in.
Aren't we supposed to feel liberated by the ever deflating cost of computers and computer operations? The Internet is supposed to make us so much more productive.
There are so many problems that need to be solved. People are starting to feel liberated with technology. Look at the Internet, digital cameras, e-mail.
We need to encourage the use of technology not take advantage of people. Computer people who need work would find a lot more if people generally feel comfortable with computers doing more.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
So long as Windows doesn't have the security to prevent it[1], that $300 is a recurring expense. Sure a new computer would solve the virus/spyware issues, but either way you will have the same problem back again in 3 months. So your choice: pay the tech $300 every 3 months to fix the problem, or buy a new machine for $800, plus figure out how to migrate your data to the new machine (perhaps hire the tech to do it, perhaps $100?).
[1]Linux and Macs would suffer the same problem if they had the market share of windows. It is now known how much though, either appears more secure on the surface. It might be less because of that, but we can't know.
I spend time with a specialized "service provider"--a spiritual director, actually. She believes that one professional's time should be worth the same as another's, out of respect for each person's varying training and gifts. She doesn't charge more just so that she can be the "expert", but she doesn't charge less and give the impression that what she's doing is less important than what I do the rest of the day.
So her fee for services per hour is whatever it is that I'm making at the time. That makes it very equitable and respectful for people of varying means.
Just another way of thinking about what we should be charging for our professional time...
I do my own wiring, and my own plumbing.
:)
Why shouldn't I ? few electricians or plumbers have more than a highschool education. I can read the National Electric Code just as well as anyone else with basic literary skills, and unlike most electricians, my engineering time in college has given me some background in physics, EE, and power engineering so that i even have a little context to figure out where the rules come from.
The "electrical" part of electrician work for around the house type jobs is totally trivial. I mean, its all color coded. The "work" is figuring out how to route wires, pulling them, wiiring terminals, patching holes, etc etc etc. The actual "electrician" work of enabling a new wire run with a breaker back at the service entrance now takes me less than 2 minutes of total time. Can you do basic multiplication ? You can plan new circuits!
I've also upgraded and expanded the gas piping network in both of my houses. You cant begin to imagine how much that costs for what is essentially measuring pipes and screwing them together with pipe wrenches (you can buy an awful lot of pipewrenches for 1hr of pipe labour)
I also happen to have more upper body strength than most plumbers i've met, so its not like they're tightening pipes with more torque than i am
It's always nice though when the pro's come and look over your house, and compliment your work. And I smile all the way to the bank.
Specialization is for insects.
Remember - you CAN do it yourself. I'm a software person by employment, but consider the following things i've done in the last year:
- replaced clutch on car
- replaced brake pads/rotors
- replaced radiator
- replaced/repaired exhaust manifold
- replaced idle control valve
- replaced height-adjusting suspension components
- repaired $1300 ECU (cold solder joints)
- added new gas pipes for 2 dryers (2 different houses)
- added new pipes to support tankless water heater (which i also installed)
- tiled 2 bathrooms and a kitchen
- stud-wall kitchen remodel (all electrical, flooring, walls, cabinet installs, plumbing, lighting, appliances, moving an hvac register)
- jetted bathtub install
My wife and I did every remodelling job in our last house ourselves. We called a structural engineer to help analyze one situation with a crooked house jack, and hired one general contractor to do the bathtub drain (i was still afraid of the crawlspace at that point)
We made a killing selling that house because we did the work in our spare time, price shopping the cost of materials. While we lived there we had a beautiful house to live in and use, and when we sold it our improvements paid off handsomely. Not to mention the incredible sense of accomplishment you get from doing things yourself. You what quality of work was done, you learn more about what to do next time, and you dont have that sucking feeling of getting ripped off that you get every time you write a check for a "pro" to do a shitty job.
In my basement right now is my first peice of wooden furniture. We couldnt' find a nice set of wood shelves of the appropriate height, so i figured i'd build some. We'll see how my finish carpentry skills progress.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
"shouldn't there be license granted by the state or other civic government for in-home techs? I say ABSOLUTELY!"
Think 'licensed mechanic'...You've never been ripped off at the garage right?....riiiiight?
All licenses do is give $$ to middle-men(govt) and raise prices. Let the market do the work and let the prices stay low...or do you want to pay MORE taxes for some reason?!?!
http://www.bcs.org.uk/
I'm sure there's something similar in the US.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
There is a flat rate book that mechanics use, it wil give you a good est. of what the charge will/should be.
Passionately Indifferent
Some people can come up with $300.00 on the spot and would have a hard time getting $800.00 together in a month. If they need the work they have on the computer, it's a good deal, even if it means waiting a bit longer to purchase a new one.
Half the population is earning less than $32,000 a year. a ot of them are earning less than $20,000. Their computer might be just as important to them as one is to someone who earns more, and it can be quite a hardship to purchase a new one if you've found yourself on the lower half of the employment lottery.
Read, L
I started my own "digitician" business (in the boston area no less), and I went through your original thought too. After a lot of thinking "Im charging too much" or "This is something I would do for free" I realized that my 13~ years (from age of 5) of making computers work, is worth twice what I charge, easily.
I make people not have to deal with the same issues that plague other "normal" people. No more email viruses, no more crashing, no more spyware, porn pop ups, etc. I don't often get repeat customers, I get referrals. People who have been using computers for years (mostly Doctors, Lawyers, other professional high income people) tell me after I've been to their house and "fixed" their computers how nice it is to not have to deal with all the shit they did before.
I have come to understand that these people who are not at all stupid, in fact are mostly exceptionally bright, do not want to deal with the crap aol/ms/etc let happen. No one is there to tell them what software to use that lets them do what they want easily. No one is there to explain to them how to deal with spam, or that they can have easily setup encrypted emails. No one is there to make their computer work, or know how to deal with dell tech support so that they can get an RMA.
That $300 is worth a lot more than an $800 computer. That $300 can be freedom to use a expensive tool to do what you want, not what bonzi buddy wants. That $300 dollars lets someone who makes 50-500 dollars a day be able to get more work done on their computer more easily without distractions or thinking they screwed up.
I've gotten a few jobs that pay anywhere from 100-700 dollars. And each of those jobs netted me another job by word of mouth. Imagine paying 1500 dollars to dell and because of massive software flaws and expected understanding of years of how computers work and are used ends up being nigh useless because of hackers who install irc file servers to abuse your bandwidth, or make your computer reset every 3 minutes.
At first I thought It was my duty to help anyone with their computers that I knew. Then I found out what paying my own bills was like, and how this is how the real world works. Knowledge based jobs beat the hell out of labour based.
I don't just fix computers, I retrain people into not being afraid of them. I teach them that anything they want to do should be easy, and show them how. I make their lives easier in a small way, it gives them more free time rather than spending hours not getting what they want to do done. And between highschool, rent, food, college applications, and my own life. I tend to think I am well worth what I charge.
Sleep is for the weak.
No, it doesn;t seem ridiculous to me. Whenever I get a tradesman around to fix the washing machine, put some power points in, etc etc, I always ask them how they make money doing what they do. $55 an hour is not much money when you have to maintain a van, pay for transit (time and wear and tear on van and fuel etc), maintain a toolset, stay current with industry trends etc etc etc. All these costs have to be amortised over all the clients; that's why the stripped wheel stud cost $100 to fix at the mechanic. Labour costs money. Workshops cost money.
There is a guy (in Halifax I think) who calls himself "The Sound Doctor" who makes a living from going around and setting up home theaters etc. A previous poster joked that with new ranks of Digiticians, VCR clocks around the world found finally not be flashing 12:00. But this Sound Doctor guy REALLY does that kind of thing. His business is getting TVs, VCRs, DVDs and home audio working right (for $60/hour or flat fees for some services I think). Another poster commented that if a digitician got a contract with Best Buy they would be set. Well, according to this Sound Doctor guy, he used to work for a big box store before branching out on his own. He gets some business from those stores, but increasingly the retailers are seeing customer service as another stream of revenue and doing it in house.
Some stores will offer to set up your new surround sound system for you .. for a small extra fee. (or included in the price if they are trying to be competative).
I'm not sure that this IS a growth business. I wonder if it isn't just a little niche market run by word of mouth. In the same way that high end audio stores will set up your equipment for you, and come back to tweak it (for a price) I can't imagine why Best Buy, Future shop et. al. wouldn't expand into this area. My dad always takes his Volvo into the dealer where he bought it for servicing. When my brother had a problem with his laptop he took it into Future Shop to see if they could do anything for him. I think a lot of people are like that and more inclined to call, and trust (even if that trust is unwarranted) the kinds of places where they bought the original equipment than a one-man operation like "Dr. Dave".
But, if I am wrong and this is a viable business, i think it would make sense to offer a comprehensive service - servicing computers, home networks and home audio / media equipment.
-Craig
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
Let's look at that again:
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
And that's where the insight is. This is probably the most important point of the whole discussion so far. Sure, the client may be able to fix their own problem, but that would require figuring out how to do it, which may result in many many hours of downtime. Downtime is lost dollars. Get the $150/hr tech in to solve the problem before too much money is lost.
I do the tech support for my friends and co-workers and it is complete hell. The money I make is paltry and I don't ask for more as they are mostly friends...plus I like the simple pleasure of helping people out. But the frustration involved, whether it be a new virus or just the recipient's knack for getting infected with every worm/trojan/malware possible over and over again, is immense and I am at my limit. $50/hr is VERY reasonable.
The barter system is often a good choice for remuneration for services, especially involving technical skills. Anyone read Bruce Sterling? In his short story "Bicycle Repairman", Lyle offers to fix a woman's bike, not for a dollar amount, but in exchange for buying him some tools he would like to have. Or maybe the person you're helping has some other technical skills that you lack, and can do something for you.
Prestidigitician: A person who turns an inert box into a working computer.
The real bottom line is that if you are competant, not a dickhead, and serve the customers you can make some money.
The other thing to remember is a saying a got from a consultant/coworker a few years back.
"The difference between working for a company and working for yourself is that you are trading the illusion of freedom for for the illusion of security"
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Two years ago I was in halls at university. I got padi 400GBP to fix computers in my hall for a year. Was quite good, got to meet loads of ppl and got paid for something I would have ended up doing for free anyway.
I'd say that there isn't a lot of difference in difficulties between teahing computer tech and trademan's tech to someone. Both skills require fairly similar aptitudes, and it's really quite remarkable how quickly my "tradesman" friends seem able to pick up on the inner workings of a computer, especially when I compare them to some friends in the legal and medical professions. Computers and the trades are both logical systems: for a given architecture there is a set of possible solutions that will function within the constraints of the architecture. A tech in any of those fields approaches a problem in much the same way: ascertain the architecture used (what type of computer, what type of building construction), collect data to discern the solution set originally used to perform the faulty function (how is the computer SUPPOSED to be networked or how was the house supposed to be plumbed to remove waste from the bathroom), and then using logic and reasonable expectations of performance, zero in on the failure. The main difference between a plumber and a computer tech is the language and the tools used. I've found it remakrably easy to teach a lot of my friends in the building trades how to perform most of the routine maintenance of their computers, and they seem to readily grasp the importance of maintenance on their computer's operating systems.
My dad runs Geek Housecalls. Cool, he just got a load of free publicity...
A very smelly man came to set up my in-laws' satellite dish system. He was competent, but he literally smelled up any room he sat in for more than 30 seconds. He was overweight and he had a sheen of sweat on his skin. He had an amazingly pungent body odor, as if he had not washed in weeks. They had to open the doors for an hour after he left.
Just because you know high tech, doesn't mean you know how to operate the common shower.
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
If you don't get the "digiticians = morlocks" joke, I urge you to read The Time Machine! It was a scathing social commentary at the time, and society has come full circle, with a real Eloi / Morlock separation...
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Didn't really intend to spam, but, well .. I did. sorry bout that, so I accept the modding and jabs.
Point was, I got into coding because I love it - and have sort of become a catch-all. Its pretty much been a survival mechanism for the current economy - not blaming anyone or anything, just a fact. In my mental train of thought, *I* understood the point I was trying to make, guess I wasn't so explicit in my delivery.
I've been rebuilding the site to try and re-align my business with my original idea: To help people get their work done, and write code. If that requires me to become a digital plumber, so be it
meh
A friend of mine works for a webhosting company. His services get billed to clients for anywhere from $50 to $250 an hour. He tells me that regularly people on $70 / year hosting plans will have him perform several hours of labor.
Seems like Software Engineers/Programmers are being treated more like construction workers than professionals. The last few years reminds me of what I saw my older male relatives who were electricians after WW2 going through... relegated to a class to be taken advantage of and worked until they dropped for as little money as the employers could get away with paying... there was always someone else who was happy to work for less money.
So, are we all becoming just another type of construction worker?
That story is actually true, and is about an electrical generator (I think). It was a sidenote in one of my textbooks in college.
Ah! Here it is: This is a true story about Charles P. Steinmetz, an EE who worked at General Electric.
Life is too short to proofread.
Forgetting all of that, a friend recently paid $100 dollars for someone to tune his piano... (that was for one hour of work) .NET security hole"?
There are three things to consider in price:
1. How much "yuckiness" is in the job? i.e. you will gladly pay a plumber to crawl under your house with the spiders and and mud to fix a pipe that you could have fixed yourself. Many people don't want to hunt through the whole hard drive to remove that virus
2. The amount and severity of errors people have had in that area doing things themselves - like when you have replaced a sink and the adapter to the water pipe wasn't tight enough so it failed as the pressure in the pipes increased and you had to replace seven pieces of drywall in your basement and the computer the water leaked into -- the equivalent is installing a new browser and loosing your income tax information.
3. How scary it is to deal with the professional - and this is where we lose. The stereotyped (and sometimes real) response that a person is a looser for not knowing how to do computer maintenence, or run a program, etc... No one is going to pay for computer help if they are afraid that the person coming to their house will say that they are stupid idiots. When the plumber came to my house after I forgot to raise the flange when replacing the toilet after installing wood flooring he didn't say "you idiot - always raise the flange!". He just said "remember - always raise the flange if the flooring type is changed". And if you don't know what a flange is - then you have a small clue what the average person out there thinks when you say "have you applied the latest Microsoft security vulnerability patches for the
Here's a better link.
What's strange about this particular story, is the snopes.com article on it.
A number of reputable sources, who have obviously researched Steinmetz, seem to confirm this story as true, yet snopes does not. Perhaps snopes is wrong for once?
Life is too short to proofread.
But often it is difficult to say that the problem is definitely one thing or another until you get a chance to start digging in and troubleshooting.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Actually, once you've done plumbing and electrical work, you realize any moron could do those as well. I wonder if rocket scientists have easy jobs, since it seems there is no job that seems difficult once you learn how to do it. Except computer housecall work. How the hell do you get rid of the MSN auto search "feature" in Internet Explorer?
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Computers, cars, and humans all have some value associated with them. If humans had infinite value, then there wouldn't be a question of whether tests were "worth" running, doctors'd run every test just to be sure. And when people die from incompetence, there are lawsuits with rewards based on some calculus of the value of a human.
In the US, as I understand it, humans all have different values based on willingness to pay. In Canada, all humans have the same value, calculated by unseen technocrats.
This is all I've been doing since 1997.
:)
I havn't done any advertising for the last 3 years.
I'm still booked a week in advance.
I get paid to ride around on a motorbike and play with computers.
Sad isn't it
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product _id=2293919&cat=106562&type=19&dept=3944&path=0%3A 3944%3A3951%3A41937%3A86796%3A106562
judge family: dad reads cnn, mom shops, son browses porn and moves mp3s. ummm.. 800 dollars?! are you barking mad?
Do you know of a digitition sitting in front :-)
of digutor and making billions, selling sw and
blocking access to sw written by others ?
Name him and win!! He likes blackmarkets
my child looks uncannily like my digitician!
You jest, but sometimes that message is helpful.
I'm not suggesting that I have the kernel32.dll errors memorized; however, if you see it and it says kernel32 has had an error at 0x0000000000 it's a good bet you should look at replacing your ram, or run memtest for a good 12 hours.
My point is that you don't have to be a genius or have years of training to recognize some of these things, but it sure does look impressive to the minions =)
~Will
sig?
Ha, I keep getting told it's easy to replace the wheelstud on my car (the mechanic wont do it for me). However it requires me to pull apart the front hub to get at it then it will be back to get the whole setup realigned. They don't believe me when I tell them that there isn't a clear path to get the stud out without taking everything apart. I'm just shocked the the mechanic won't do it for me, even when I offer to pay him.
Think about it.
Glad somebody brought this up.
you have to be very careful, especially when dealing with personal PC's.
heres some things that I've picked up from working as a service technician and from customers that are in other service fields.
These are mostly to save your reputation and avoid legal hassles.
1) Have a set of guidelines on how you will do business and do not waiver. Make sure your customers know these.
2) Legal software. Do not run any software you do not have the license to on your business computers. The purchase of these can be expensed. If you get audited you won't have a problem.
3) Legal software. Do not install/reinstall any software the customer does not have the license to. You can determine for yourself what constitutes proof.
4) Privacy. Resist the temptation to view any data that you have access to without the permission of the client. There's many factors in this especially if you deal with Physicians or Lawyers.
5) Illegal Activity. Report it. I only experienced this once (another tech discovered it) but it left an impression on me. Some dumbass brought his PC in. Wanted a bigger HDD/data trasfer. Kiddy porn was found (see point 4). Police were called. FBI interviewed us all. Lawsuits threatened.
I'm sure there are others but all in all, your business provides bread for your table. You don't want to jeapordize it in anyway.
Who run Barter Town?
in case you didn't realize it, a lot of the opinions on snopes seem to be incorrect or maybe since it is their job to discredit myths they are automatically subjective in their thinking.
Wow, I did not know that what I was doing to get beer money through my university fixing all sorts of computers for my parents friends and others was a trendy profession....
Blimmy I may even drop out of my PhD and become a trendy digititian
Where is my mind?
Yes, I know I risk that rath of the Linux folk, and personally I use a Knoppix CD most of the time, but there is a way of building a live CD with a copy of WinXP on that runs *entirely* from the CD. Legally too, it would seem.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ has a application that builds a modified, bottable .ISO image to be burnt by your program of choice.
You can add various AV products, network connectivity stuff and Ad-Aware, plus tons of other stuff I can't be bothered to list.
(Apologies for any typos or a bad URL - preview doesn't seem to be working right now...
Still makes them far richer than you. I'd say they have a pretty well adjusted sense of how to make money; screw reality.
"Just where do you think I'd be without underage hookers?"
Another variation was on cooking
One time there's a millionaire's wife out with her friends for an evening at a restaurant. As they were finishing the last course, she asks the waiter "I simply must have the recipe for the dessert. I would be the envy of all my friends". The waiter goes back into the kitchen in order to ask the chef, and comes back out. "No" he says, "the recipe is one of the chef's best kept secrets". "But I insist" said the millionaires wife. Eventually the waiter brings back a recipe along with the bill:
1 dessert - $100
Recipe for dessert - $900
Total - $1000
It seems that your big problem here is NOT with the computer mechanics but with the printer manufactures. The companies building and selling printers these days are NOT selling printers they are selling INK. HP sells printers below cost because they will make the money up on ink. They build the printers to wear out quick not because they want you to buy a new printer but because they want to make sure that they can combat the 3rd party vendors that sell replacement cartridges and / or refill kits.
This is not only limited to ink jets anymore either. If you look around you can find you a HP color laser printer for under $500 bucks. I saw one in Office Depot and wasn't surprised to see the tiny tiny color toner cartridges.
Until people start refusing to purchase these devices the problem will remain. But, most people don't understand the cost of print concept and think wow, I can get a new printer for $25!
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Mod Please Troll +5
Dude, The pro sport athletes are usually the bottom of the intellectual barrel.
It isn't about the money, it is about the mindless masses getting their drugs...
Plumbers, Electricians, mechanics have to be certified by an organization. Usually the state that they operate in. These cost money and are non-trivial tests, though I think a computer cert beats the pants off them.
I recently read a story in the Baltimore Sun, about "Handymen" These people charge 50-70/hr, and take 2-3 hours on an average job. Most of them are uncertified, though they need to be (in this state). Handymen are attractive in that they will take the small jobs a 'legitimate' operation will not, because legit operations are required to create and submit a proposal and estimate, and give the home owner 3 days to cancel the contract before work can even start. Contractors are less though - $30-40hr. Still, when people need it done ASAP. They are willing to bypass the protections and paya premium.
Computer failures usually are urgent, (no one can wait 3 days) but for the $150 charge for just labor for 3 hours can [almost] cover the cost of a new computer. The only time it is cost effective is when the IP on the drive costs much more to replace (and that is surprisingly achieved).
So I don't see why we can't charge 50-70 minimum. It'd help if there was a state certification program though, where we could establish our skills in geographically uniform way. (MD digiticians are all on the same raking, thus easy comparisons- because you pull from local talent.)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Obviously this is a very old story. No engineer retires with 30 years of service. They get downsized when the company figures out an guy in India can do 80% of what they do for 30% of the price. It's that other 20% that kills the business.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
Kinda reminds me of my computer installing days where this one woman, who I did not get along with well, kept insisting that her "new hard drive" be placed on the floor. After hearing her request that for the 5th and final time, I opened up the case, removed the hard drive, placed it on the floor, then left.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I've got news for you, friend - Snopes is wrong a lot. They are far from the authoritative source that many make them out to be.
-BK
Chemical Blog
Or Real Life might follow myths, a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Knowing a legend/myth and finding yourself in a situation close to it might make you tempted to "guide" the events to follow it closer still.
Hell, even I could claim to be the guy in the story with a few modifications.
True story:
A few years ago, while still at school, we were assigned to do a small "power 4" game in C.
The guy I was working with was to do the keyboard input/console output and I was to do the AI.
During one of the classes he asked me to look at his code because he was having a bug that he wasn't able to solve in the last few days whereas while the screen with the grid for the game was displaying fine in multiplayer it wasn't displaying at all in single player (or vice-versa, whatever)*.
I tell him to wait until I finish what I am doing and I will then look at his code.
After a while, I go over to his station (where he was still sweating over the problem) and ask him to replicate the problem. By that point I already had a pretty good idea what was causing the problem and it (the idea) was reinforced by actually seeing the effect of the problem (gotta check, if somebody doesn't understand a problem he may leave out critical parts of the description because he didn't think they were part of the problem).
Just to be sure I compared the code for displaying in multiplayer and for displaying in single player**.
I then proceeded to add *two* characters to his program.***
Unbelieving that the problem taht plagued him so much might have such a simple solution he replies "If THAT works I'll cut my balls off".
Off course, after a quick recompile the program was fine****, while my friend wasn't believing his eyes.
What was the problem you say?
When he was displaying the grid he was doing it correctly but the buffer the printf function was using wasn't being emptied to the console in single player while it was in multiplayer; or, more accurately, it was only emptying immediately before asking for new keyboard input so that it appeared and disappeared so fast that it wasn't visible.
Simply adding an additional \n caused the buffer to be emptied to the console and therefore made the grid visible.
It's a true story but it fits almost perfectly to the mold (except that I was a student, not retired and not famous and he didn't ask me to break down his bill):
1 problem seemingly unsolvable by rather bright persons*****.
1 person that didn't work on the problem get asked to have a look at it.
1 trivial fix.
1 high price tag (luckily for my friend I still haven't collected on his debt).
And at the time it happened I didn't know about this story and I didn't even need to "adapt" it to better fit the mold.
I think it was in one of the Dune sequel that Frank Herbert talks about the problem of the "master log" where when a bunch of wooden logs are sent down a river and block it somebody has to find the master log which is that log that, if removed, the other logs will not interlock anymore and the flow will resume. This is a similar problem.
So is it a myth? No, it probably happens more frequently than the story seems to imply.
Are all the well-known versions of that story true? Maybe not, some have probably been modified by the knowledge of earlier, similar stories.
* If you know a bit about C you probably know how it will end by that point and you even might have a similar story qualifying you for the "genius engineer knowing ".
** which also makes this story a good example why having duplicated code doing (almost) the same thing is a bad idea as one might have a bud the other doesn't.
*** Can you guess which ones?
**** Wouldn't be much of a story if it didn't.
***** Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that the guy wasn't stupid, simply ignorant of this little bit of knowledge about C at that point in his education.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying.
Except that what Midas did for you wasn't misrepresentation or lying.
Some people simply don't mind paying a premium for certain services if they believe it'll be handled competently. Whether they could do it themselves more cheaply is often not relevant.
Heck, I have a good friend who HATES computers, but he needs them at his place of business. He happily pays me a premium to keep them running. He's a very smart guy, and I've tried to show him how to do some of the more simple and straightforward tasks, but he'd really rather just pay me and not think about it.
So which did I do? Misrepresent, or lie?
Cool. So you belong to the ever shrinking group of folks who still believe Linux is going to overtake the desktop huh?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.