>> The art of mailing list is slowly dying. people who spend 5 and more years
>> investigating unix want to get payed and are sick and tired of not finding
>> a job because a potential employer could just send a question to the mailing
>> list and get the answer he *should* pay for.

Are you referring to a specific case when an employer did something like
you describe?

I have a counter-example: a few months ago a company wanted me to come consult
them, because they had a pressing question. I answered the pressing question
they had via email (without charge!), but after that they still wanted me
to come consult for them! I guess when you need a consultant, you probably
don't need one for just one question.

> I'll say it gently: the service a consultant provides should not be
> equivalent to an answer on a mailing list. If it is, said consultant
> is doing it wrong... 

I'd say the employer was doing something wrong, and the consultant was
just taking advance of the situation :)

There are several problems with the view that a mailing list can replace
a consultant, because it makes several assumptions on what consultants are
needed for that usually aren't true: That view is problematic because:

1. It assumes the employer has the time to formulate the question well,
   send it to a mailing list, and hope that it will be answered well and
   soon. The time of the employer (I'm thinking about some sort of highly
   paid manager or researcher or something) time is actually worth something
   too, so wasting it in order to save consulting time is silly.

2. It assumes that every question gets answered on the mailing list. What
   if the question isn't interesting enough and never gets answered? The
   employer still needs an answer to get his work done, and paying money
   is the only way to make *sure* that something gets done, at least in
   our existing society.

3. It assumes the employer would know how to formulate the question well, and
   to which mailing list to send it. Many times this isn't true.

4. It assumes the employer only has, say, one question a month and it is
   an interesting question. Mailing lists subscribers usually despise
   posters that smell like they are asking technical directly-work-related
   I-didn't-bother-to-try-solving-this-myself kind of questions.
   If the employer has 5 questions a week, and some of them are boring and
   technical, a mailing list wouldn't be a useful address for these questions.

5. It assumes the questions the employer has can be solved in, say, 10
   minutes. Very rarely someone on a mailing list will write a piece of
   software for you, search the web for you for hours, or otherwise help
   you in a way that took him hours to do that. If the employer does need
   some time-consuming research or work done, he will need to pay for it.

6. It assumes the only thing the employer is looking for is an "answer".
   Many times the employer doesn't need an "answer", but rather something
   *done*. He doesn't want to know where to find a document about configuring
   a DMZ - he wants someone to configure a DMZ for him (see also the "time"
   issue earlier). Obviously, a mailing list could not help with that.

7. Most questions an employer might have, have something to do with problems
   in an existing product. It might take an experienced professional to
   be able to separate all the product-specific issues from the problem
   and ask a general question on the mailing list, but worse - many times the
   employer cannot do such a separation. Since he cannot describe his entire
   product and the whole situation to the mailing list (boring, and will
   reveal his trade-secrets!) his only recourse is to have an on-site
   professional - full-time employee or consultant.

Because these assumptions are rarely true (especially not all of them
together), consultants and professional full-time employees are still
useful, and professional programmers/sysadmins/researchers are still needed
in the hightech industry (albeit in lesser numbers than were needed a
couple of years ago).

An employer uses consultant rather than a full-time employee when the number
of problems/questions they have doesn't warrent full-time work, and/or when
they cannot get a full-time employee - perhaps because they're looking for
help in an issue that is so advanced that only a few people know it and
these people already have jobs (this situation was very common until not
long ago, and in some areas it is still true).

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Friday, Sep 13 2002, 7 Tishri 5763