Every time I listen to the radio, there's inevitabley a commercial along these lines:

"Are you unhappy in your job? Want to make more money? Be a part of the new and exciting IT Industry! Take our classes and become a Certified Professional..."

It's absolutely disgusting and wrong.

You shouldn't entice people into "the new and exciting IT Industry" by money. People who want to be in IT, should be in IT (sometimes not then, but that's for another topic), and people who think that some magical position in a software company is going to change their entire life, are going to find out the hard way that it won't. People who think to themselves, "I'm going to make a drastic career change because I want more money", are going to fail.

I'm not saying that someone can't learn to be a developer, or a network admin, or any of a variety of careers. I'm saying that you should be in a job that you like to do, and that you have a skill set and a natural disposition for. You can't just go through some distorted MCP bootcamp and expect to make it to the top, or even the bottom. You won't, unless you know what you're doing and you're good at it, and you want to do it for the sake of doing it.

Developing has a personality with it. It's not for everyone; it takes a certain mindset. The person who speeds through certifications for the sake of certifications (the idea of certifications being totally wrong anyway) is going to work horribly with others and is going to feel like an akward part of any team. IT has a certain passion to it that can't be faked, no matter what the radio advertisements will try to tell you in loud voices over techno music.