Zentropy

Surely by now you’ve heard them. Constant radio ads promising a fulfilling job, insane pay and benefits, and a REWARDING CAREER MAKING 50, 60, even 70 THOUSAND DOLLARS IN THE HIGH TECH INDUSTRY!! How do you achieve this? Why, I’m glad you asked, it’s so easy! Just take a few night classes at your local certification mill, and you’re ON YOUR WAY TO A HIGH PAYING MICROSOFT [INSERT TITLE HERE] JOB!

Sense the sarcasm? Perhaps a bit of irony coming from a guy who makes his living developing software on the Microsoft platform? Good. Not only are these ads Rosie O’Donnell-level annoying, they’re also misleading.

The pitch sounds fantastic to the regular 9-5 suit who spends his time filling out TPS reports and playing solitaire, or to the joe without a college degree working a blue collar job. Yes, come to our technology classes, and in six short months you’ll go from being a hack in the whatever industry to a SUPERSTAR making oodles of cash in the technology industry, as a Microsoft Certified [INSERT TITLE HERE].

I’ve got news for you. You’re still going to be a hack, and probably still in the whatever industry.

Why? Well, for starters, certification classes aren’t really designed to teach you real-world applicable skills. They’re designed to get the maximum amount of enrolled students to pass certification exams. They do not teach critical thinking skills, or promote creativity. If you go in expecting to learn how to build a website or network from scratch, you’re going to be disappointed.

Another reason? Just like any other industry, if you don’t have experience, even a little, you’re probably not going to land a job (let alone a high paying one). If you DO get a job, it’s not going to be at a top level. You’ll be starting at the bottom rung just like everyone else. Imagine an employer: “So, I see you’re certified, but have been working at Target for the past 4 years.”, or “Your certification is nice, but why didn’t you finish college?”. The trust factor just won’t be there for the interviewer. Because when it comes right down to it, a certification is just a piece of paper, acknowledging that you can pass tests created by Microsoft (who, incidentally, makes a ton of money charging for these tests). A certification is a nice complement to experience and a college degree, but it is NOT A SUBSTITUTE.

I have a few more problems with these ads.

The inexperienced “graduates” of these certification courses flood the market with their resumes, effectively driving down the salaries. If you’re one of the lucky ones who found a job with no prior experience and only the MCP label attached to your name, being thrust into network administration or development projects responsible for millions of dollars in revenue and productivity is downright scary. Your buffoonery could bring a lawsuit on the company, and cost everyone their jobs.

The ads also make it a point to promote the ‘average salary of a Microsoft Certified Network Administrator’. This number is going to be skewed because of higher cost of living and thus higher salaries on the East & West Coasts, where the majority of technology companies reside. You’re also going to end up with people in the industry who are only there for the money, not because they love tinkering with computers or writing code. There’s a tradeoff for that money….like being on call 24/7, or spending a week troubleshooting a weird network glitch only to find out it was a bad CAT5 cable.

My advice? Get your degree if you don’t have one. The classes are really designed for people like myself who have the experience and want a little icing on their resume cake, while the ads are designed to get money and keep enrollment up. The companies running the classes are under no obligation to actually get you a job. Be prepared to deal with rejection, and take the promises of riches and job fulfillment with a grain of salt.

So last night I was reading an article on Indystar.com about the reaction of a pastor to the city’s consideration of putting foot-sinks in the Indianapolis Airport for Muslims. If you don’t already know, Muslims are required to wash their feet before prayer. Now the pastor had, unfortunately, lost a child to the war in Iraq. His response to the foot-sinks was the classic “we’re at war with Muslims. Why should we cater to our enemy?”. Now, his response didn’t surprise me. However there are two issues to which the pastor is speaking. The first is that we are at war with Islam. The second is that we should not be using tax dollars to appease one specific religious group.

To me, the second issue is cut and dry. We have separation of church and state in this country (well, maybe not so much anymore, but we used to), and unless the Catholics are getting holy water dispensers in city hall, the Muslims should not be getting foot sinks in the airport. The citizens of the city should certainly not be paying for something like this.

The first issue was kind of a head scratcher. I didn’t realize we were at war with Muslims, in particular the Muslim cab drivers of Indianapolis that frequently visit the airport. Apparently, though, my thinking was in the minority as I read through the comments submitted by readers to the Indystar.com story.

The comments were downright scary.

I remember one in particular…in the first part of the post, the commenter noted that we are a Christian nation (and that he himself was a God-fearing Christian), and that Muslims have no rights here. In the second part of the post, he advocated nuclear attacks against the entire middle east. Others followed by stating that the Koran explicitly states that non-believers should be converted by the sword.

Well, the Bible states that the world was created in 8 days, but very few Christians actually believe this. Just as the vast majority of Muslims do not take a literal interpretation of the Koran, and are quite peaceful people.

The problem seems to be that their religion is undergoing a sort of dark ages that the Christians went through several hundred years ago, along the lines of the Inquisition. Their fundamentalists (and literal Koran interpreters), are the people we are at war with. It is the fundamentalists who are murdering non-Muslims, yet it seems that very few people in this country are making that distinction. Not only that, but they seem willing to throw their Christian values out the window and make blanket generalizations about the situation (All Muslims are evil! We should nuke the middle east! Don’t fool yourself, a Muslim would murder you where you stand!).

Unfortunately, there are three things at play here within our country that contribute to this mentality. Those three things are the rise of Christian Nationalism, the declining public education system, and the ubiquitous media and press access. In combination, these three issues lead to more and more people not thinking for themselves. As my father told me once, it’s a lot easier to follow the pack than to think for yourself. With media blowhards and propagandists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly leading the charge (not to mention the countless pastors who use their power in the pulpit to preach hatred and purposefully misleading FreedomWatch.org ads), is it any wonder their listeners do not see the hypocrisy within themselves? Be a good Christian! Kill a Muslim! (or a rotten librul…those darn free thinkin hippies are gunna git us all kilt!)

We are in the midst of an ideological war, in addition to a military war. In order to swing the much more important ideological war in our favor, the Christians of the world need to practice what they preach. They need to show compassion, outright disgust at war (whether it’s our own country’s war or anothers’), and stop shouting down ideas that conflict with their faith or politics. We have taken a massive step backwards in invading Iraq, as this has helped radicalize some Muslims that may have been on the fence, and solidified our image as an imperialist bully, constantly harassing and shaking down the little guys for our own economic and power gains. We need to understand our enemy, understand that they hate us for our foreign policy and hypocrisy and NOT because of our freedoms. Ask the youth of Iran, who would gladly replace their fascist theocracy with freedom American-style (of course, not at the cost of losing loved ones and having your country bombed into the stone ages in the process). We need to keep our eye on the proverbial ball and win the hearts and minds of the world Muslim majority by showing compassion, forgiveness, and love, and cease spreading fear, war, and hatred.