The IT profession – and it’s debatable whether IT qualifies as a profession – needs to get its act together and start acting like one. Today, IT behaves more like a high-school clique, knotted together in the cubicle maze, snickering and slandering everyone who’s not one of them. There’s only one other career I know of where blatantly insulting your customers is acceptable, and that’s stand-up comic. (Of course being a comic also requires you to be funny, and material like select * from users where clue > 0 isn’t funny.)

We should be thankful that not all professions are as self-assured and blameless as IT. It would be very demeaning, for example, if doctors – taking a cue from IT – began referring to patients, in public discourse, as “meatbags.” Or if an august publication like The New England Journal of Medicine published a paper positing that the placebo effect worked because most patients were just idiots who believed anything they were told. I hope I never see a T-shirt for sale to physicians declaring “You’re Not Sick – You’re Stupid” or “Cancer Patients Are A Waste.”

That would be a hoot, huh?

“So what,” the IT employee might say. “We’re just blowing off steam. So a few less-intelligent-than-me users get their feelings hurt.” Fair enough; I’m sure all professions have some subject that’s a dependable butt of jokes. I can’t imagine that doctors and lawyers and newspaper reporters don’t occasionally vent their spleens about their patients, clients or readers. But if they do, they do it behind the scenes, away from the public eye. For them to do otherwise is to risk public censure (at best) or banishment (at worst). Doctors can lose their licenses, lawyers can be disbarred, and reporters can be fired for failing to live up to their professional responsibilities.

Smarmy IT professionals get magazine columns.