There needs to be licensing for technology providers

I've seen it more times than I care to count in the customers I support: Some office's "tech" (and I use the term loosely) throws a 2TB drive into their "server" (again, loosely) to be their main drive, and doesn't bother setting up a RAID of any sort. He then carves off less than 100 GB as the C: drive, leaves the rest as data storage space, and then doesn't bother to call us when he installs the software, nor does he check the path it's installing to. Therefore, the software that's supposed to be eating up that data space on the secondary partition starts filling up the primary. Flash forward about six months to a year, said software has eaten up the majority of the C: drive, and the office calls us flipping their lids that they're running out of space, blaming us for their predicament.

This is the kind of stuff I deal with on a daily basis, and it's not an isolated thing. Too often a company will hire a tech without knowing what the tech can and cannot do. Too often that "tech" is a FOAF (friend of a friend) who "knows some stuff about computers", when in all actuality they were just barely able to set up their own DSL modem and get their shiny new smartphone to talk to if over WiFi. These are the kind of guys who can barely install a printer on a workstation, much less share it out and make sure it works properly for other computers on the network in a workgroup configuration. Then, finally, when they make a dog's lunch out of the setup of everything, they blame the issues the software is exhibiting on the software, instead of the underlying network or computer configurations, and play dumb when we call them on the carpet.

These are the situations that make me cry for a proper licensing for computer technicians. I'm not talking about specialized certifications, like those provided by Cisco and other providers. I'm talking about a general, standardized technology certification that confers a license to service, repair, and otherwise handle computer and network hardware. CompTIA's certs are the closest thing I've seen to a general certification, with the A+ and Network+ exams, but even then there is no requirement for someone to pass these to be able to call themselves a "computer tech". Automotive techs have to pass ASE certification to prove their competence. Lawyers have to pass the bar exams. Medical practitioners have to pass their own licensing exams. Yet, for some reason, there is no blanket certification authority for computer techs, and it just makes me shake my head.