Wow- well said.
I happen to the the IT Director for a national charity.
I'm 43 years old, and the rest of the management team is 30 years older than me. These guys have no idea what I do. They gave me a mandate 5 years ago to bring the company up to date technologically. So I did that. And I'm still doing that.
About 6 weeks ago part of the management team showed up at my house on a Friday and fired me. It was surreal. I couldn't believe it.
Apparently- someone's poker buddy had trashed my work at a poker game- convincing several important people that I wasn't doing my job. And they fired me.
Needless to say it was one hell of a weekend while my wife and I scrambled to make sure bills would be payed.
By Monday things cooled off. And I was looking around for contracts and talking to a major linux vendor about coming on as a systems engineer. My phone rings and it's my former comptroller. He asks if I can meet my former management team for dinner. I wasn't so hot on the idea but since he is a friend I figured it was the right thing to do.
So I show up, and they offer me my job back with a massive raise, apologies, and major ass kissing.
Apparently, the so called "expert" who had trashed my work, had convinced them that the local computer store could do my job for them. The local computer store showed up and told the board that they were nuts for firing me, and they couldn't handle it. Then the "expert" lobbied for my job, took a look at the systems, and then decided he couldn't handle it.
So code monkeys aren't the only people with false assumptions.
But the upshot is that now the computer store offered me a nice fat contract to maintain their Linux clients in my spare time. And I still have my management position.
Karma is wonderful. Competence is king.
Although it would be nice to get a thank you for those 3am pager calls. That's what sysadmin day is about.