People (the public) have to understand how this really works. System administration skills are unique and perishable. These skills are built up over a ten to twenty year period. The experience levels are irreplaceable at the large installation level. As the technology is constantly changing, you are forced to constantly train and re-qualify your skill set -- spend six months on the beach and you'll have a lot of trouble finding a job. Granted, there are many new automation tools to help, but that doesn't mean that the user base isn't calling you 24/7 to complain that they deleted their files and can't you skip your dinner to come in an restore the files that they carelessly erased. You do get to sleep in your own bed, but often only after working 24-36 hours straight to rebuild a machine with a "RAID" drive that really wasn't. And for all this, you get paid a wopping $75K/year. And work 50-75 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. </sarcasm> Doctors used to be in such a earning class, but the pressures of the health care costs have eaten away at their salaries. Sure, some make more than pilots, but most are closer to that $75K mark than the $200K mark. Wonder what similar pressures on the airline market will do? It pushed Boeing and Airbus to automate the cockpit and make very low fuel consumption aircraft. Will further automation lower the mark on the skill set, and thus the barriers to entry to the profession? Have they already? As to sports stars, that's so very apples and oranges. Like rock guitarists and movie stars, they're paid by their drawing power, which is pretty easy to monitize -- who's been to a Herman and the Hermits concert lately? Or are we paying pilots to continue the air travel mystique? That didn't work for the railroads and it won't work for airlines. --On Monday, March 31, 2003 20.35 -0500 User169331@xxxxxxx wrote: > People (the public) have to understand how this actually works, and > Mike=20 Gammon has given a good indication in his post. -- | Kenton A. Hoover / Private Citizen / shibumi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |