...where the same signs don't apply?

The point is, you can't. The same signs apply towards being a waitress, a pig farmer or a men's room attendant.

Imagine where the industry would be without, "highly oppositional/controllers," at Silicon Graphics or Netscape, and full of bubble-headed nitwits who were really a bunch of nice guys and gals, but who couldn't engineer their way out of a double-knotted shoe lace. IT needs people, was built by people, who can relate more with the machine and the machine's problems than with small secretaries who's feelings get hurt when proper business English is used in e-mail (that is, no emoticons).

Articles like this serve only one purpose: to lower the level of IT knowledge to that of the users by driving out the engineers.

I do envy surgeons. They, at least, get to knock out their idiot user first.