For some reason this crazy thread was interesting for me. That said, does it really take 8 years to be a full plumber allowed to work on residential and commercial jobs in California? I assume there may be union requirements also to follow. This seems to restrictive. Now if we put unions a side, why cannot a 2 year technical school let you do residential work and maybe 2 more years as an apprentice for commercial? Or if you can pass a test speed things up.
I remember a very old thread on this forum about a guy who wanted to get into the plumbing trade and had to work his way through the union process. From that thread it looked like he was never going to succeed as the union had control of who gets what and who works. I see no reason for this.
The IT post was a small stretch for safety. But, I have worked in the computer programming business for 35+ years for a large company that produces a lot of code. This code could cause a lot damage both in human and financial losses. But no apprenticeship is required to write this code. I have worked with programmers who had no programming education but are brilliant in design and implementation of that design. And then I have worked with college educated computer science majors who have no clue on good coding and testing practices. And as programming has been now moved off shore to China and India, it is a crap shoot on what you get. But, I can say they are learning and will eat our lunch.
So, if you want to be a plumber you should be able to do it in a reasonable time frame and not be controlled by artificial procedures and process. The original poster on this thread wants to be a plumber you can 'hear it' in his questions. If the inspector let it happen then it seems ok to me. As one of my favorite movies, Breaking Away, said: Son: I did not know everyone cheats Dad. His father responds: And now you know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJETB-MfpnQ