On Sat, Aug 21, 1999 at 01:35:46AM -0400, Walter L wrote:
What about saying that clueful internet engineers are getting greedy, and are afraid to teach junior engineers in an attempt to save their jobs and not loose there high salaries. For example...
I have not found this to be the case at my place of employ. Aye, the gurus are often too busy for immediate clue transfer, no doubt due to the workload caused by clueful geeks being so scarce, but I have never had a reasonable question ignored. YMMV, of course, but I am young and foolish enough to believe in a moderate degree of altruism among geeks. If there were enough to go around, then what you suggest might be the case, especially if there were a surplus. OTOH, such is not the case, and it is quite plausible to believe that the scarcity of clued net-geeks has left them in the position that they will gladly educate youngsters (like myself) if only to offload some work, which has piled upon their desks because there aren't enough of them to get it all done. For the other part of it, I cannot overemphasize that I did not obtain what little clue I have by continuously pestering the Oracles of all things IP with whom I have the good fortune to have 24x7 access to through virtue of common employment. I have read countless RFC's (some even authored by those aforementioned Oracles), thick dry texts (Stevens, Comer, Halabi, Hunt, Liu, etc), and numerous scattered references on the WWW (yes, Virginia, there really is useful content on the WWW). Not to undervalue the clued geeks, but responsibility for the education of would-be clueful engineers is at least 90% student, at most 10% mentor. As I gain clue, it becomes increasingly more apparent to me which people asking me difficult questions have put forth the effort to find the answer, and need only the right subtle hint to find it on their own, and which are just looking for a clue handout and have not prepared themselves with sufficient background knowledge for the answer. I have become increasingly patient with the former, and increasingly intolerant of the latter. Perhaps it is this phenomenon that makes the clueful few appear to outsiders as pompous, arrogant elitists, but it is also this phenomenon that ensures that those following in their footsteps will indeed be of par quality. I've also learned that the long, slow, hard way *is* the fast, easy way. If someone wants the big-$$$ geek jobs, they can have it, but they have to be willing to invest in themselves, my $Ye+3 bookshelf is a testament to that. I am not out to prove myself, I am out to improve myself. party on, Sam Thomas Guru-in-training if you do not find this message to be of operational value, please press the key (click on the button, recite the incantation, etc) to delete it.