Re:thats all well and good (Score 3, Interesting)

While your comment is amusing...there's also a real crisis there. Government CAN'T get good IT people, or at least can't keep them (I work in IT for the government, so I have to be careful here :). Seriously, if there's anyone on the planet that you would want to have the best IT people it's your government...so they provide better services to the constituent. The problem is, the government just flat-out can't afford to keep IT people. They have no problem getting entry level people, which is where I began three years ago. Government jobs are fantastic if you're just getting into the field...you'll get LOTS of experience. Take me, for example. I run a Win2k network with Win2k servers, Red Hat servers, Cisco switches and router, SCO Unix server, and an NT server. I am the one-man IT department. It's great because I'm getting lots and lots of experience doing lots of different things. However, at some point the value of the knowledge I'm gaining here will be outweighed by what I could make applying the knowledge that I have in the private sector, and I'm gone! Not to digress from the main thread or anything, but I just wanted to insert my 2 cents in here.