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Former Dot-Com Workers Crowd Homeless Shelters
An anonymous submitter sent in this AP article - Former Dot-Com Workers Crowd Homeless Shelters. This article has inspired huge threads on two mailing lists I subscribe to, people coming out of the woodwork saying that they too were laid off/fired/quit many months ago and haven't been able to find jobs. Is the job market really that bad?
Here in Seattle, my view on the situation is that if you have hard skills - solid C++ and/or Java programming skills or even good network admin skills with experience - then you can get a decent job. Unfortunately, for all those who were working at dot-coms doing customer service, order fullfillment, copyediting, etc. you are out of luck and have to look at customer service jobs at old industry firms - which come with low salaries and no-fun workplaces.
I think people assume that dot-commers were techies - most weren't. I think a lot don't have well-defined skills and are generalists - which is hard to sell to employers these days.
As the veteran hacker (12 years) at my company, I've been tossed too many of these techno-wannabees to train. They are clueless. They ask me why I don't rewrite the Perl form processor in Java. When I ask them why I should do that, they say "Because Java is better." That's it. No qualification beyond that. Geez.
I call these people "buzzword employees". All they do is spew buzzwords to try and look 31337 and all they do is fuck everything up. It's like high tech Boomhauer CB lingo. "Yeah man, we gotta ODBC the IIS enterprise with the Sequel (SQL) Server and ramp up the TPS count and interface it all to the Excel Template for report generation for the CIO, I tell you whut."
Yeah sure, you go whip up some powerpoint slides, while I ignore you and keep the system up running normally, just as it has been. I will not upgrade my system just to make it buzzword compliant.
Well, not the shakeout is in full swing and these cookbook guys are the first to get the boot. Good riddance, I say. They were never really useful to begin with. Hope they got a Starbucks on skid row.
After reading many of the comments here, I've come to the obvious conclusion that many people here are talking out of their posteriors. I'm here to set the record straight and in doing so, punch a hole in a couple of the ridiculous dot-com myths that seem to thrive here and elsewhere.
"Good people don't get layed off" This is one of the most absurd generalisations floating around. People need to get a clue about how layoffs work. The people making the decisions about layoffs don't know shit about how good people are. All they see are numbers next to names and a burn-rate they have to go below. These guys can't pronounce half the stuff on the resumes of their technical staff, much less judge their competence.
"I saw the dot-com bust coming long before anyone else and the dotcommers are getting what they deserve" This is classic I-told-you-so-syndrome that pops up in all facets of life, whether you're talking about the dot-com bust or telling someone how you alone predicted the Rams would win the 1999 Superbowl before anyone else. The fact is that most dot-com worker saw a chance to do something they loved, in an atmosphere they enjoyed with an opportunity to make tons of money. Some jealous-folk wipe a bit of sweat from the brow in reassurance when these young people did not end up as successful as the hype of a few years ago was leading the public to believe. Using other people's misfortune for self-justification only shows how pathetic YOU are.
"Layed off workers living in San Jose should work at McDonald's to make ends meet" Trust me, if you're working at McDonald's in Silicon Valley, you'd still be in a homeless shelter, believe that. Your time is much better spent looking for a decent job either in Silicon Valley or somewhere else.
This post isn't meant to crap on ALL the comments here. Many of the comments are obviously spoken by those who've gone through layoffs or at least have true familiarity with them. Yes, there are people out there who turn down decent jobs just because they aren't paying their overpriced salaries of a year ago. And yes, people who only know HTML are in trouble while the market for C++/Java programmers is still pretty solid. But unfortunately the legitimate commentary is in the extreme minority.
Those of you doing this chortling obviously haven't actually been looking for work.
Things changed, changed badly, in the past three or four months. The job market right now is TERRIBLE, at least for Internet-related jobs. I'm a Solaris admin with 6 years experience in Solaris and >10 years total in various flavors of UNIX, and I can't find a position. (A highly skilled sysadmin, mind you, with great professional references. I'm no experience-poor hobbyist calling himself a sysadmin or a clueless tech-wannabe with a padded resume.) I stopped looking for something specific to my skill set weeks ago, and am now looking for ANYthing, even a LAN job. And still nothing. The recruiters don't call you back. Resumes are thrown in the circular bin. That flood of calls that always used to follow posting your resume on any job board has been conspicuously absent.
Hiring freezes are everywhere. Companies that aren't in hiring freezes seem to be looking for Supermen-- sysadmins and programmers that can fill the shoes of five people, simultaneously. Some of the job descriptions I've seen are INSANE. Positions for senior-level sysadmins that are also senior-level network engineers while also being Oracle DBAs with certification! I have to assume this has something with the downturn... knowledge-poor management assuming they can combine positions and Save Bundles Of Cash[TM].
It's bad, people. Pay attention. This could be you next.
The lesson I learned from this? I still don't have a job, but I know that as SOON as I can, I'm going to acquire expertise in a UNIX other than Solaris or Linux, and in a context other than the Internet. I just hope I get a chance to do so. (That's not intended as a slam against either... it's just that there seem to be a lot more jobs for the other flavors than those two.)
And I'm getting OUT of this goddess-forsaken, PHB-ridden industry as soon as I can.
It's sad to see dot-com workers lining up for spots in homeless shelters, since such spots are scarce enough as it is. There must be a better answer, and I think I've found it:
It's time to resurrect the modern leper colony.
Today, Molokai island stands as a pristine isle off the coast of Hawaii's main island. Well into the 20th century, people who had contracted Hansen's disease (leprosy) were corralled and left to fend for themselves apart from the rest of civilization. Though the leper colony became obsolete with the advent of modern antibiotics, it remains a powerful idea with a powerful purpose.
Geeks are little different from lepers, when you look at it. Both suffer from an incurable disease (at least in classic times), both are shunned by mainstream society, and both are wont to have random body parts die and fall off. A leper colony for geeks would be the natural and proper solution.
But how to get them there? Unlike in ancient times, we can't just throw them on a boat and leave them off on the shores. We need strong incentives. Part of the job is already done for us: Hawaii's pristine beauty and untrampled (except by zillions of tourists) lands are unparalleled in popularity and acclaim. Advertised as an island getaway, the leper colony could attract a large number of geeks on that fact alone. The rest of the mopping up could be done with promises of excesses of bandwidth and numerous sexually available local fauna.
Once isolated, the geeklepers would live out their natural lives. Since we all know geeks don't have sex, we needn't fear the propagation of their species. After one or two decades, the last remains of an unwashed mass of pimpled sociopaths could be collected and used as compost.
Above all, homeless shelters would again be free to admit truly down-and-out members of society who didn't go to expensive colleges and didn't recently live in the lap of luxury. That is a world worth fighting for.
Jamaica hasn't seen unemployment that low as far as I can remember. Right now we are floating somewhere around 35% and have never been in single digits. At least not in the last 40 years.
Worse yet they have a screwed up way of measuring unemployment. If you work even 1 hour out of every 3 months you are called employed. Nobody wants to count the way I suggest. I.e. If you earn minimum wage or above you are considered employed.
They are afraid to reveal that more than 1/2 the population is unemployed or at least not earning a living. At my company we have gotten applications from people who graduated university in 1998 and have never had a job.
So next time a valley worker gets laid off just stop whining jump in the car you don't actually own anymore. Draw out all the cash in your account. Dump your most expensive toys in the trunk and start driving. Stop and look for work at every town you come to. Ask about rent and other expenses too. If you find a place where you can hold $1000 per month after paying the basic expenses (Light, Rent, DSL) just settle down.
New York is paying $50,000 per year for veteran schoolteachers. Find out if you can get the government to foot the bill on a teaching degree so you can go get the $35,000 or thereabouts for an entry level classroom victim.
Money isn't everything but when the glamor goes a little of it is all you need. Better yet servicing printing equipment for a small town newspaper or going door to door for a utility company will leave you enough time to write a book, talk to people, perhaps even have sex.
OK. That last one may be wishful thinking.
I guess what I am trying to say is that for an educated man to suffer he must be forced to stay in a place with limited upertunities (like Jamaica with can get only so many visas availeble to our citezens) or he must give up and surender to his circomstances.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I attend job interviews (as an interviewer) on a semi-regular basis where my role is to ask the technical questions. Out of 10 people I may interview, only 2 or 3 will have any decent knowledge in therr area - the rest really struggle with even basic concepts/situations.
I find it really depressing that there are so many people in the IT industry with useless skill sets or with no in-depth knowledge. And to make it worse, most times they don't even realise (or want to accept) that their skill base is so poor.
From what I have seen, skilled IT people have no problems getting jobs - it's (generally) the unskilled ones who do.
Just how much of this is due to the insane
rents in the SF Bay Area? I'm (almost)
willing to bet that no such story is happening
over in Boston, which certainly saw enough
of both the boom and bust, and where
rents are high but not insane.
Sorry, I can't moderate and post the same thread. Besides, you're at 4 as of when I'm replying. That and I didn't get any points today, anyway :-)
One of the problems in the technical fields is that there has been a huge influx of new products, tools, languages, features, and systems to learn. Then businesses end up making (usually stupid, and often horrendously assinine) decisions about which of these things to commit themselves to, then when they look for a techie, they demand only someone who has precisely that set of skills. If one skill is missing they can't "hit the ground running". And if they have excess skills, they are "too expensive". This greatly complicated the effort to find technical talent. For every 100,000 people out there with hireable technical talent, maybe 5 to 10 actually were exactly what they were looking for (because they were so picky about an exact match) and of course they were not in the local city.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I find it hard to believe someone that used to earn around 100k is now homeless.
Don't you have any savings?
And what are they doing in the sillicon-valley anyway? Move to somewhere else, find a decent job, if you where good enough to earn 100k, you're good enough to do lot of other jobs - c'mmon, 4.2% unemployment is not that bad. In my country, unemployment is around 10%.
So don't work in what you used to do - find some other job
It's a blessing in disguise. Now's their chance to really help society, and get the homeless up to speed on technology. They'll learn Java! They'll set Google as their default search engine! They'll learn to turn off JavaScript in their browser! They'll change the world! They'll be no more "digital divide".
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Heh, if you're living in a homeless shelter, then that should be a big, red, blinking sign that your life is not on track and you're not following a sustainable path for employment in the future. Learn how to do something else. Go back to school. Assess what you're trying to do with your life. I think anyone paying $3 grand US a month for rent in Cali is insane. Move somewhere else. Reality-check time.
Nobody - but nobody - that I know who legitimately understands technology, has good qualifications, and most importantly, can do something besides useless "process meetings" and powerpoint slides - is worried about getting a job, or keeping a job. I still get cold calls, and a quick scan of monster.ca lists loads of jobs in technology. This is in CANADA! Our unemployement rate is more like ~8-10%, and in my area (Atlantic Canada) it's more like ~20%. Most americans need to contend with a rate below 5%!
Mind you, I did my time in the trenches, I produce product to deadlines, and I understand what I do. I have a Engineering degree, not a CS degree. I might have done CS, but there were way to many of those cookbook .com'ers in CS when I looked at it - people wanting to program for the money, not because it was what they were good at. That devalues the degree in the workplace. I suspect it's these people that are screwed.
Those who can do things will never have a problem finding work. If you can't do anything, then you're in big trouble - and you should be.
Another few words of wisdom are to make sure you have at least a few month's bills worth of cash in the bank. If you don't, then you're spending too much money. Having debt is one thing (ah, I love my student loans..), as long as you're able to service that debt through a dry spell.
..don't panic
And if they have excess skills, they are "too expensive".
This seems to be the tip of the iceberg in a major anti-tech backlash - probably consistent with the "irrational exhuberance" against solid techs in the stock market.
I've been dealing with private company funding (yea, nice timing, eh?) and have had to deal with a consistent thread: technical people are making too much money.
Mind you, I'm paying a CCIE and RF expert $75K, a CTO $85K and the CEO is still under $100K - for a growing startup with good performance and a team with exceptional industry experience (these people are starters as well - commandos who build, operate and manage with solid backgrounds doing this before). These wages, which would be considered poverty levels in the tech industry a year ago, are only marginally balanced to the recepients by their equity.
Yet I'm hearing frequent whines from prospective individual investors about "how horribly overpaid the technical people are" by an alleged factor of double (this coming in many cases from old money, and Wharten MBA grads, mind you!). There's also the frequent reference to how technical people really shouldn't have equity stakes, since they "don't understand the business the way an MBA would."
Suggested retail price for techies?
CCIE: $45K
Wireless Engineer: $30K
Network Operations Staff: $6/hr
In other words, the establishment is having its counter-revolution and working with great vigor to counteract the impact technology has had in creating new wealth (and disrupting the social order).
*scoove*
"Top consultants and contractors once named their salaries in the valley. Now, even those who qualify for unemployment benefits soon discover the $40 to $230 weekly check will not cover an apartment here, where rent averages around $1,800 a month."
Which brings up the question:
1. Why didn't they put any money away for a rainy day? If they bought their own hype, expected to live off stock options, and didn't put any savings away, then they deserve to suffer for their own lack of foresight.
2. If it costs so much to live in the valley, why don't they move somewhere else? The saleries may be lower elsewhere, but the cost of living is generally MUCH cheaper. Here in Austin, decent aprtments can be had for $600 or less. And Texas, unlike California, has no state income tax. Nor does it have an artificially induced power-shortage brought about by short-sighted politicians who didn't understand economics and evidently didn't realize that prices can go up as well as down. (Or, like the poor yuppie victims mentioned in the article, that stocprices could go down as well as up.
3. Why aren't they staying with friends or family who are still employed? If they don't have any in the valley, why don't they move away? And this isn't some "if you only walked a mile in their shoes" BS. I spent four years living in someone's living room while I worked temp jobs and paid off credit card debt from my immediate post-college years, when I was making a hell of a lot less than $100,000 a year (try around $20,000 in 1991). Easy? Hell no. But I did it, and I'm currently debt-free. Unless your relations are really strained with friends and family (and there's another sign that something might be wrong with your outlook on life), they can support you during lean times, and expect you to do the same.
4. I've been to the valley twice this year, and I seem to remember a lot of "Help Wanted" signs in McDonalds, Burger Kings, etc. Why aren't they working there? There's nothing wrong with working a lower paying job until something better comes along, and to my mind it's far less injurous to your dignity than mooching off government handouts or the kindness of random strangers.
This story reminds me of that National Pravda Radio story on the woman who got a job with Dell, and then was let go before she ever started working. I felt empathy for her right up to the point where they mentioned she had spent $3000 on a purebreed dog to play in the yard of her custom-built house. Not only did she count her chickens before they were hatched, she spent the money she was going to get from the chickens in advance. If you're going to spend money like an idiot, don't expect any sympathy from those of us who put our money in the bank instead of spending $3000 on a dog. (Here's a tip: You can get a dog that's just as cute and friendly at the SPCA for under $100.)
Look folks, no one is guaranteed a ticket to easy street. No one should be saved from the consequences of their own poor decisions. Yeah, getting laid off sucks, but how you prepare for and respond to those situations is up to YOU. You shouldn't ask society and/or government to bail you out from your own shortsightedness. Thankfully, in a capitalist econonomy, you can generally get as many second or thirtd chances as you're willing to earn. In nature, making mistakes gets you killed.
"3.2 percent unemployment rate"? Poor frigging babies! Go over to France, where they have all sorts of welfare and unemployment benefits. And, directly related to same, unemployment around 15%. That's why high French officials warn other EC countries darkly not to engage in "tax competetion," because they know their creaking, failing socialist economy would inevitably lose jobs and industries to dynamic, nimble economies, like those of the United States. Yes, you're more likely to get laid off here than in Europe, but you're also much more likely to find a higher paying job afterword. The creative distruction and economic dynamism of capitalism offers far more opportunities to rise to the top than tired old socialist economies. That's why people write books with titles like "Thriving on Chaos." Yes, you're more likely to get laid off, but in the long run that's the only way that your children will be able to enjoy better lives than the ones you lead. That's a price worth a few layoffs.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
In my past dotcom life I was a "product manager." As an unemployed bum, I haven't had but 2 interviews in 4 months of looking. I think that employers are figuring out that "product manager" means "talentless middle-management hack" and they are figuring out how to do without us.
I am not a programmer, but everywhere I look I see job opportunities for them. That part of the job market looks plenty strong to me. But if you don't actually PRODUCE something, god help you! I'll be working at Kinko's soon for 1/3 the salary. The last few months have definitely been a personal low. (Can I get a +1, Pity now?)
I guess it never occurs to people that they might do what college students, recent graduates, and other financially strapped and/or marginally employed people have done since time immemorial: Find a roommate! Sheesh. When I got out of school in the early 90s and went to live in New York City (making a princely $10/hour -- this with significant business and tech experience and a degree from a top-ten university), I had friends who somehow managed to get by on even less than I did. Typically their living situation went something like this: Minuscule two-bedroom apartment with three or four people occupying it. Either there were bunk beds in the bedroom(s), or someone had a bed lofted over the couch in the 80-square-foot living room. Dinner was ramen noodles, the entertainment budget was sufficient to cover maybe two beers a week (though probably not if you bought them at a bar), and there was nothing as extravagant as cable TV.
This does not make for a glamorous life, but then again, it doesn't require much income either. Assuming rent of $2,400 a month, that's $600 divided four ways. You can cover that working at Starbucks: Every time I visit the Bay Area, I laugh when I see the help-wanted signs offering $9+/hour plus tips and benefits and, probably, a handful of stock options! Maybe that's not quite enough because you've still got student loans or something, so you get a second job temping or whatever. Oh, the tragedy.
Basically, I contend that former dot-commers who declare themselves homeless are either (a) unwilling to stoop to a job they consider beneath themselves or (b) unable to throttle back on their consumption. There are homeless people with real problems: They're substance abusers, or mentally disturbed, or illiterate, or single parents with kids. Them I feel sympathy for. These posers who are whining about not being able to find sufficiently cushy jobs, on the other hand, are not about to earn my sympathy.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
The problem is that I'm simultaneously underqualified and overqualified - I don't have the depth of experience in any one or two skills to make me the "best" candidate for a job with a narrow focus, and all the extras just tell most employers that I'll be looking to leave ASAP, so they'll have to hire someone else anyway (which isn't true in my case, but they don't know that). My last IT job was working technical support for a well-known tax-preparation company's consumer tax software. All my "evaluations" said I was doing well above average, but I was still one of the 98% or so laid off in the middle of April.
And do you know what I'm doing for money now? Any day I don't have an interview (most of them) I'm down at the day labor agency at the crack of dawn; when I'm lucky I get called to work for barely above minimum wage doing semi-skilled construction work.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
No, its not that bad. But most .com'ers won't settle for too much less than the huge startup they're coming from. There's thousands and thousands of jobs, many minimum-wage or aroud there, and they can at least find SOME income instead of that "I can't find a job and will rely on the rest of you guys to support me" mentality.
There's jobs, but no former CEO would catch himself dead flipping burgers or working retail, even though they're perfectly good jobs for anything. No, its not an IT job or something "high tech", but its a freaking INCOME. Glad my taxes aren't only going towards the guys using the money to buy more drugs, but lazy former suits who would rather not work than work for $5-$8 an hour.
- A few weak statistics to "back up" their claims.
- A "personal perspective" (interviews with individuals) to show that the statistics are true.
- "Expert" commentary. (Ilene Philipson, the clinical psychologist).
- Overdramatized prose. Like: a surprising number of former high-tech workers are rubbing elbows with society's castaways
Remember how we were being told that there was a terrible shortage of tech workers one or two years ago? Perhaps there was, but I certainly didn't see it. At the last two companies that I've worked for, I spent a significant amount of time interviewing SW-Engineer candidates. Time I should have spent programming. If there was such a shortage, then were did these people come from? (btw, most of them were very qualified)Like most of what you see in the media, this article is partial-truths, rumor-mongering, hype and fiction.