Hopefully not.
> Are you are talking about the people I rely on to . . .
I sure as heck hope not. I'm talking about people that a lot of programmers rely on so they can get on with their programming, but not the people on whom they should be relying.
I have MS certifications. I've been a network administrator. I've been a datacenter technician. I've done IT consulting in a number of different areas, including network architecture and deployment services, integration, disaster recovery, migration planning, and a bunch of other stuff. I've been the kind of guy on whom you might find yourself relying so you can get on with programming. What I was not was a glorified button pusher -- because I cared about my skills, my job, and the services I offered others. I took an interest in the knowledge and skills related to the job, and took an interest in the needs of the people I supported.
The fact that you can't do your job as well as you do without the help of IT professionals does not mean that all IT professionals are worthy of respect, y'know -- just as the fact that programmers provide the software that enables what IT professionals of the non-coder variety need to accomplish at their jobs does not mean that all programmers are genius rockstars. Some programmers are just blub-language daycoders who spend more time trying to look busy while doing as little as possible than actually trying to do their jobs, just as some network and system administrators are glorified button pushers who would have no idea how to deal with a real IT crisis on their own -- and don't care.
I have never met an IT pro who was or could be worth anything who did not either know at least one programming language to a level of admin scripting competence or work at entry level with learning a programming language in the near future. Most IT "professionals" I've met outside of Linux User Group meetings don't know any programming languages and consider learning a programming language beneath their dignity -- and, of course, they refuse to learn how the systems they support work under the hood, too. They learn interfaces, and consider themselves "experts".
If you think that kind of IT "professional" is worthy of respect, I'm afraid there's no getting through to you.
