Is it time for an International Vintage Computer Association? Was:

Tony Duell wrote: Fair enough :-) [snip] You're absolutly right; I forgot that my corner of the world isn't the *only* corner of the world, and I'll be the first to admit that in my little corner salaries are utterly whacked in comparison with skill sets -- but not universally so. In my case I've on collecting those machines that I worked with growing up (although the PR1MEs are an exception to that rule). As a consequence of the things that I learned working with those machines I have a comparatively successful career which allows me the luxury of throwing money at my hobby -- although that usual translates as paying somebody a chunk of change to haul something hundreds or thousands of miles as opposed to actually purchasing the stuff. [snip] As I said, head space on my part. Over here being *good* isn't even a requirement -- all you need is the ability to spell "engineer". That was kinda my point, but my argument was flawed from a societal standpoint. Someone with the mental horsepower not to be put off by such silly warnings would generally have all sorts of options open to them in the Valley. Yes, but not repairing 60's calculators or fabricating parts for 8" drives. My point is that someone who can perform the level of analysis and engineering required to do these things is a *real* engineer, as opposed to the people who are because they've got a piece of paper that says so. At any given time there's usually between 17K and 22K unfilled engineering positions in the valley. Even factoring out all the support and grunt positions my guess is that there are more than just a few staff engineering (or above) positions that could benefit from the skills we're talking about here. [snip] No argument there. Far too many things get re-invented because people have no knowlege of prior art -- but it could be argued that we're describing the need for senior staff positions (which are *very* hard to find -- everyone wants you to be a VP instead) and better education. The latter in particular; maybe it's just me, but it seems like most newly minted master's I see these days are barely qualified to operate the coffee maker. [snip] I certainly agree with the latter -- the ability to do effective design isn't found in a book, but rather in experience. Nothing scares me more than walking into a CPU lab and finding a copy of one of Patterson's books on every engineer's desk as if it were a bible. Chris -- Chris Kennedy chris(a)mainecoon.com http://www.mainecoon.com PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97