Scor­pio News

Reciprocal Qualification

Take for instance Dave’s Law of Reciprocal Qualification. This states that the better qualified a man is (and the louder he shouts about it) the more likely he is to make a complete jackass of himself when dealing with matters outside his own field.

This is exemplified by a Nascom 2 we had for repair once, returned by a person who had a prestigious title before his name and more letters behind his name than in it (think about that). All this qualification to learned Institutes pointed to a highly successful career in theoretical physics. Now he was complaining bitterly that his Nascom would not work, despite perfect construction and having followed the instructions to the letter. We had to agree the quality of construction was unusually high. Perfect soldered joints, leads on resistors perfectly shaped before insertion into the pcb and all that. In fact a thoroughly good assembly job. There was only one thing wrong, it had been assembled 100% on the wrong side of the pcb.

Pointless Qualification

Every law also has a corollary, which more often than not tends to negate it. Take for instance, the converse of the above, Dave’s Law of Pointless Qualification. This states that it doesn’t matter how good you are at it, bureaucracy likes letters behind a name.

Many of you will be aware I am a night school teacher, teaching an unrelated subject at a Technical College. Three or four years back they found themselves without a night school lecturer in microcomputer studies. Now the particular course consisted of teaching how to build and program a minimal Z80 system. So the Computer Department, thoroughly aware of my connections and knowledge in the subject, asked me. I admit I was hesitant about it, the teaching side that is, I didn’t doubt my ability. I think as it was going to be a stand-in for one year, what bugged me was the amount of preparation I’d have to do, with no following years where I could teach with virtually no preparation. A lot of effort for just one year’s work. However, the Computer Department was enthusiastic and it was argued that if I made a go of it, I might get the class the following year, and so on.

Anyway I reluctantly agreed, until that is, I had an interview with the twits who run the place. “What paper qualifications did I have for the job.’ Simple answer to that, ‘None.’ (They already knew my electronics qualifications, it was microcomputers they were worrying about.) ‘Why not ?’, they asked. ‘Easy.’, I replied, ‘When I learnt all this stuff, you didn’t run courses on the subject, so I couldn’t come here, or anywhere else for that matter, to get qualified in the subject.’ ‘Oh’, they said, ‘We’ll have to think about that.’ As far as I know, they’re still thinking. In the meantime, they no longer teach that particular class.