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"Mike O." wrote
> > And just how do you get to be a high-end
consulting firm? Maybe losing
> > the authoritarian boot is the first step?
>
A. Plato wrote:
>Perception of value. If the market percieves a
skill as valuable (and rare) it
> will be priced higher. A skill that is
commonplace or oversaturated is priced
> lower.
Anyway, supply and demand, yes (supply is
plentiful, price falls due to competition etc).
And yes the range of values of a service (i.e.,
the $$$/Hr) is driven by the the consumer's
perception of it's value.
Therefore, a corporation that believes that an
attack on their network could cost them millions
of ducats in lost productivity is willing to pay a
security analyst hundreds per hour and considers
it a good deal. I suspect that some sort of
certification will eventually be deisrable among
security analysts, and that their price will stay
high even as their numbers increase.
It is somehow easier to imagine a security cartel
than a cartel of tech writers, but if we could
just get organized...
Tech writers would be in the catbird's seat if we
played our cards right. A few good case studies
ought to do it for us. Our selling point ought to
be that corporations do lose huge amounts of money
when their in-house developers walk (maybe over a
dispute, for a better job, or simply to exercise
their power) without documenting their work. The
cost of finding a replacement is staggering (try
5-6 figures) but a corporation already deals with
that knowledge. But tech writers need to point
out that the cost doesn't stop there--add to that
the costs and lost time of having that replacement
person backtrack to pick up the undocumented
threads and resume development. Good project
documentation, we might pitch, is worth as much as
the additional cost of recovering from a developer
walking.
Of course, at that point that you claim you can
provide good project documentation, you have to be
some sort of methodology guru in order to produce
the promised good project documentation. And
wonder of wonders, a methodology guru does make
the big bucks. No mystery about a mystery there,
I'm afraid.
>
> Generally, the rarer a skill is, the fewer
people know it. As such, there is no
> reason to be an authoritarian, since you cannot
easily replace the workers.
>
Reason to be authoritarian = because I can
(replace you easily)?
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