One of the mysteries of IT is that you can call yourself an IT professional without any qualifications whatsoever. If you are clever with the use of words, you can do it without experience as well. I must admit that I'm fairly relaxed about this because some of my best development teams have benefitted greatly from people with raw talent but little in the way of formal qualifications or experience.

However, for anyone used to a better-regulated profession such as Medicine, Architecture or the Law, it comes as a shock. I can see why too. As the surgeon sharpens up his knives and starts eyeing you up, it is comforting to think they are properly trained and qualified. Why are we so relaxed about this in IT?

One answer is that from top to bottom of the IT industry, you will find 'New Men'; people who have reinvented themselves and even lied about their experience and qualifications. There was a time when your experience and qualifications, as stated on your CV, were alone enough to get you a job. Now, of course, when we require expertise, we've had to adopt the defensive technique of requiring 'technical interviews' or exams to prospective job candidates.

One argument I hear that just won't wash states that the industry completely changes every three years or so, requiring us to completely re-learn our tech skills, and therefore rendering experience and qualification less relevant, because the knowledge gained quickly becomes archaic. This is a ridiculous and pernicious idea. The core insights of computing were all in place by the mid-nineteen-eighties. In fact, there is very little that I learned in the nineteen seventies that I don't still use. Experience gives you a neat and adaptable mental database in which it is easy to stuff new knowledge and expertise.

Another skill that comes from years of reading articles, and sitting in presentations, by the New Men of IT is to completely switch off if your internal Bullshit-o-meter goes 'ding'. You sit there with an intelligent and alert look on your face, nodding occasionally, whilst the mind races around working out how to fix all those computing problems that are squirrelled away in your memory.

You can never completely avoid the meaningless word-salad of the 'New Men' of IT, but nature kicks in with excellent avoidance mechanisms. It is in gifts like this that experience in IT has its power.

Phil Factor.