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."

Comments

Mechanics for the 21st century

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[realdpk]

We don't respect mechanics because we, and our friends, have been lied to by mechanics so many times. Either about what needs to be repaired, what they broke while they were repairing something else, etc.

If computer techs started pulling the same shit that mechanics have been pulling, taking severe advantage of their greater knowledge of the subject, computer techs are going to be just as disrespected.

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[Dr Tall]

But if you can throw a football, oh wow, put you on a pedestal. That's what education gets you...

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[lurker412]

You seem to be assuming that this is not happening already. I wonder if that is true. I would assume that like mechanics, computer techs will give misleading or wrong advice some of the time either out of ignorance or avarice.

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[Awptimus Prime]

And for various reasons, we as a society don't really respect mechanics, as a profession. I wonder if some day those who fix computers will be held in a similar regard.

I was an on-site repair guy for a couple of local computer companies until about 9 years ago. Even then, most of the customers were untrusting and paranoid when dealing with such a service.

It wasn't unusual for someone to raise hell and demand a free copy of Windows 3.11 when the copy of DR DOS I hooked them up with a couple of years prior ceased to work in a new enviroment.

I figured it was a lot like customers not understanding my father, a former auto mechanic of 20+ years, when he would tell them the fuel pump died and it was their carburator they had replaced last time they were in the shop.

The thing I liked least about doing house calls, and the reason I stopped doing them, was the overly irate people taking their frustrations out on the guy who's trying to help them get their systems up at the least cost and greatest speed. Eventually, it seemed like 1/3 of all the clients I dealt with were angry, abusive people that other businesses had already refused to work with.

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[meta-monkey]

Case in point. My best friend is a very bright guy at things historical, political and...litoral? No that's lakes...whatever the word is that means "things dealing with literature." Essentially, a geek who's not good at math. College educated with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Journalism.

He owns a landscaping company and a power equipment (professional mowers, edgers, etc) dealership. A low-brow kind of field, right? Absolutely...which is why he cleans up. His competition in the landscaping industry is mostly rednecks with limited intelligence and poor personal hygiene. Whom do you think the college educated property manager for an apartment complex is going to hire to maintain their property? My friend the clean-cut collegian or the dirty hillbilly with the stained t-shirt and bloodshot doper eyes? Hmmm... Essentially, he's a big fish in a small pond, runs three landscaping crews and pulls in upwards of $200,000 per year.

Myself, I've got a Master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and I'm a wedding and portrait photographer. Since photography has gone digital, my skills with all things electronic are extremely valuable. The guys who have been shooting film for 20 years barely know how to work their digital cameras, maintain their computers, set up a website, and figure out enough photoshop to retouch a photo or use a sepia-toned plug-in. I make more as a photographer than I ever would as an engineer, I'm my own boss, and work from home.

Don't think that just because you're a techie, you have to work in the computer industry. It's one thing to build tools...it's something else to use them.

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[sydb]

Wrong, wrong, wrong! While I agree that physical co-ordination is something some people are good at, and some people are bad at, I cannot go along with your crazed idea that education is something that happens to someone given enough time.

Schools, colleges, training courses etc. don't educate anyone. They provide an opportunity for people to learn. Some people will learn just enough to get by. Others will learn everything presented to them and more off their own bat. Yet others (me) will say "fuck this" and learn everything they need to know themselves whilst also earning some money. And some won't be able to keep up and will drop out and get a McJob.

Education is no guarantee of learning, but learning is a guarantee of education.

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[pLnCrZy]

That's not necessarily true.

Education and skill do not always converge 1:1. I know plenty of people who have Ph.D.s in Computer Science, who don't have the common sense to check the power cord when their PC won't turn on. It's sad, yes, but true.

What people fail to realize is that in many situations, education alone is not enough to diagnose and/or fix a computer problem. It takes a level of ingenuity and creative thinking sometimes. Simply educating someone on how to swap out a power supply does not prepare them for an unexpected BSOD that they have to manually track down. Cognitive function comes heavily into play, and it's at this point when the truly talented rise above the masses of people who simply title themselves "computer technicians."

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[alienmole]

I find this such a pathetic comment on education and business.

Look at all the people in school. When they graduate they should be able to cure diseases or invent spaceships. Look at all these people thinking they can just bank on their respectability and take over jobs doable by dumbasses.

One problem is that curing diseases and inventing spaceships requires huge organizations to fund the activity, and someone with the paper qualifications to cure diseases and invent spaceships can't necessarily just walk into a position that actually allows them to do that. So the choices are often between doing something boring and menial working as an employee for someone else, or something boring and menial working for yourself. With the former, you don't control your destiny - there's no guarantee you'll ever get to work on what you really are good at, you can be laid off, etc.

That is just selfish and cowardly.

That's a bit narrow-minded. One flaw in your reasoning is the idea that these are jobs "doable by dumbasses". The only people who hire dumbasses to work for them, are other dumbasses. When I hire, say, a landscaping company, I want someone who I can communicate with, who understands my needs, who's reliable, etc. Dealing with the dumbasses is a waste of my time. There's room for a range of qualities of service, and someone providing a high-class version of a service, at a higher price, is not "taking over the jobs doable by dumbasses", he's doing something the dumbasses can't do.

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[madfgurtbn]

Umm, perhaps you mean literature?

Actually, I think the best word in this context would be "literary", not "literature".

"...things historical, political, and literary."

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[meta-monkey]

Sooooooo...do you cure diseases and invent spaceships? Heck, do most college grads cure diseases and invent spaceships? Sadly, no, most wind up working in a cube farm in a windowless office under blinking flourescent lights for 40 years. No thank you.

I think part of the issue here is "scope." For instance, you can get an M.D., and either go into research, developing new drugs and treatments, or you can go into practice, and care for individual patients. What gives you the greatest joy in your life? Working in a lab and never seeing a patient, but just maybe inventing a treatment that will save millions, or caring for the sick one person at a time, and making rewarding personal connections?

You only get one chance at life. I'd rather not spend the next forty years of mine toiling in somebody else's cube farm, never knowing if I'll have a job from one day to the next. I'd rather spend mine with my family, doing something I love, and creating something beautiful with real meaning to people I care about. Job security, self-employment, and extra money sure don't hurt, either. If that makes me selfish, so be it.

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[Cecil]

The way you stated it, that's some of the more ignorant stuff I've ever read. You may have left out some important things, like, they told you that they wanted to be able to print photographs, or they were happy to buy one once they saw there was something better. But since you didn't say that, I'll have assume that they were happy with their printer until you refused to set it up for them.

So what'd you sell them, an ink-jet? That'll only cost about 100 times more in terms of per-page printing costs... nevermind the cost of replacing a printer that WORKS. dot matrix printers are superb for printing out text. They are in fact often much faster than an inkjet in draft mode, plus they support the wonderful tractor feed paper which is again superb for text. If they only want to print out webpages and assignments, what's the problem? Head down to Kinkos if you want to do a resume. There's no need for most people to have a home publishing studio, it's stupid and a waste.

Speaking of a waste, why do you insist on throwing away stuff that isn't broken? That's what's really a waste. Unless it's broken, or you really need a new feature for something, what's the problem? It's not efficient enough? Do you replace your refridgerator every couple years because of the energy savings? No, I didn't think so. It costs less than a computer, and would save more money. Why not? Because it's not neccesary. To quote George Carlin, "Are people really busting their balls to save nine cents on a fucking phone call?" NO.

And finally:
REPLACING an Inkjet with a newer model for ink SAVINGS??? Are you on CRACK? I've seen the shit they're putting out for inkjets these days. I am pretty certain my old Canon BubbleJet could out-print any equivalently priced model on a single cartrige by at least a factor of two. It had refillable cartriges too. (as in they have a little hole on them for refills, not even a drill needed) even a full replacement cartrige, print heads and all, was far cheaper than the gouging they do today. In fact, my grandmother just sent her Lexmark back to the company (actually to the President's home address, because she's a mean old lady) because it would not let her refill the ink cartridge and the replacement cartrige cost more than the printer.

In summary: It's disgusting that you would tell people to spend more money because you're too lazy to fix the problem, especially with some self-righteous justification "oh they'll be better off anyway". It embodies all the worst traits of a contractor, and is the reason people distrust them.

I know you need to be paid for your time, but...

[bconway]

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).

Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..

[jeffkjo1]

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.)

Thank You!

[prichardson]

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.

Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..

[Ubergrendle]

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.

Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..

[Hans Lehmann]

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.

what did you expect

[t1m0r4n]

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.

Stuff Digitician...

[AlecC]

... the term is "hacker". A guy who makes computers do what they ought to do, whatever the circumstances.

Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..

[danieleran]

"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.

Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..

[Rinikusu]

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.

Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..

[Lord Kano]

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

Because pro sports == entertainment

[Prof. Pi]

But if you can throw a football, oh wow, put you on a pedestal. That's what education gets you...

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.

Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..

[mvdw]

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.