Tech: Always know the basics

I am a tech guy, though I specialize in hardware and systems. I do notice something common these days which is the newer people who join into the work force lack basic technical skills.I am not talking about skills in specific hardware or software or even programming, but basic skills such as setting up your computer, getting it connected, trouble shooting connections are pretty bad.

What's going on? I think it has to do with the fact that everyone is trying to make life easier. Lets just take basic networking as an example. In the past, we had to know how to load drivers for the network card, how to cable it up in a token ring as not to lose connections down the line, how to setup our IP addresses, subnet masks, DNS etc. These days, just plug it in and let DHCP take care of it for you.

I find it amusing when people have no idea what is a DNS, why is it important and why if you change it to 8.8.8.8, you can't access your corporate network at all. 

Don't believe me? Try changing a colleagues DNS to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (Google DNS's) and see how long does it take for them to figure out why they can't access their email, file shares and other i

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