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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."
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.
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?
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.
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.
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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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-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.
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.
... 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.
"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."
"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.
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
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
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.
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.
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