It's a bit odd, I'm so excitable when it comes to computer
networking and everything related to bits and bobs, but these
days I've been finding it more and more difficult to stay
excited about everything.
At work, I'm constantly surrounded by people who are used to
doing IT with the approach of "if it doesn't work, send in
a ticket with the manufacturer, then lay back and relax",
rather than the "if you haven't meticulously researched every
aspect of what could possibly be going wrong yet, you're not
yet in the phase where you can justify asking for help from
anyone" that I learned in university and that made me the
"engineer" (didn't finish uni, don't have the official title)
I am today.
I don't mean to brag here, but I really hate the industry of
"easy IT". I've had multiple solutions for problems get
rejected since they'd involve "black screen white letters"
and basically just me and one colleague are comfortable using
terminals while the rest are restricted to colorful web
interfaces, making any solution that requires editing config
files directly a bus factor of only 2 people in the company,
and hiring more people who know what they're doing is far too
expensive. Hell, even paying me what I'm worth is too much for
them.
I should probably be working somewhere else, it's not like
linux proficiency isn't sought after in today's job market,
but what I really want to address is bigger than that.
It's that something that's so big and full of opportunities
as IT and everything that constitutes what it is today
is being dumbed down over the generations of increasing
importance of IT-ifying everything in our lives, such that
there's this massive industry now of "smart" technology
that's supposed to make things easier for people but only
serves to abstractify that which shouldn't be abstracted.
If you're not willing to learn HTML, you shouldn't have a
website. If you're not willing to learn networking, you
shouldn't be in cybersecurity. If you're not curious about IT
and what makes it magical, you shouldn't be here.
Am I being an elitist gatekeeper? Yes. But so are you, since
I'm not planning on publishing this on anything but my
phlog so any disagreement is a pot calling the kettle black.
