What is being a pro?
Some people define IT professions by their diploma, their best practices or tools.
Ask any dev/sysadmins/devops/managers or any IT professional; they will probably define themselves in their superior mastery in tools/knowledge.
Git, hadoop, C++, python, php, the cloud ....
Maybe to be nice the results or their work: software, apps, websites....
However, what strikes me as odd in this «profession» where anyone can enter this market is no one defines the profession's missions towards the end user's and even more the liability.
Imagine you are a mover, your mission is basically to move fast loads from point A to point B without breaking anything.
A cook? Making food for the best price, fast and without intoxicating customers.
A construction worker? Building what was asked fast without breaking what was expected ...
An engineer is expected to build for the cheapest price possible buildings that have a durability (without breaking).
A surgeon? Making someone's health improve fast without killing him.
You see the pattern a profession is a mission towards user which consequences can be dreadful if done wrong and for which there is a liability and for the least cost.
There are in some fields like telecommunications, SLA (Service Level Agreement) but nothing about failing to protect the confidentiality of the call.
It is no secret most ISP/telco collaborate with government and basically betray their users.
What makes IT so special?
Well, they are literally artists. Like artists since the value is based on creativity no company have an obligation of results. Read any licensing agreement or contract: there is no financial or legal liability possible.
A website has security holes and fraudulent use of your poorly protected data are used? Bad luck, there is no warranty you can use against a coder for a bug and ask the company to pay back for the consequences. That is the reason why you are force fed insurance contracts to mutualize the costs of bugs. Customers pays when companies fail. 0 risks taken.
Games are buggy? Not the company problem. You lose your novel because your hardware or software crashed? Not in the IT backyard.
You use a software since 10 years and make value out of it for your business? Well, IT don't care, they will stop editing it and leave you without notice. How much software from google, facebook, mozilla have been discontinued to make an example? Hundreds of them.
IT hardware that are put in devices that are engineered for decades can be discontinued in few years. And the millions you invested in a payroll system have to be invested once again.
IT fails what makes a profession respected : liability, the capacity to guaranty some kind of correctness, durability or even cost reduction.
It is all the more difficult that IT constructions are complex and obfuscated and given the actual legal system, the burden of proving the responsibility is often on the shoulder of the victim. And trying to investigate the backend of a website without authorization is a crime.
Decompiling software in most country is a crime. And if not a crime at least some tedious costly operation.
As long as there is no legal and financial liabilities there will be no incentives for the IT to become professional, and IT companies will still on the other hand will be able to sue you for not paying the bills.
As you can guess the absence of liability favors not the one who cares about the users but the dictatorship of the companies able to hire a lot of lawyers and lock customers by growing fast thanks to cheap money (thanks the VC/hedge funds) and do not favor competitiveness.
If you think I am wrong, tell me as an IT specialist do you have knowledge of colleagues that were sued or if anyone you know a professional whose responsibility was engaged resulting in anyone going to jail or paying money for a line of code written or typed in a terminal in a corporate environment by a customer?
Yes maybe you know some (like in the dieselgate case). Now compare how few these are compared in proportion to restaurant closed for not respecting basics of hygiene and security. And do not pretend it is because IT workers are intrinsically better, it is just it is as hard to sue any IT workers as any artists.
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