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From Software to Soup: On Trading Coding for Crepes
Legal Serf writes "Having lived through the best of eTimes and the worst (hopefully) of times, I bet everyone (still employed) has had daydreams of chucking it all and escaping the present malaise permeating most tech companies. The NY Times ('open' but not 'free' registration) has a piece about ex-dotcomers who've traded visions of iBuzzwords for soup, crepes and hotdogs. What?s most interesting is that everyone interviewed pretty much said the same thing: It's nice to provide something of real value to customers who are actually happy to trade money for goods, even if it's just dessert. Anyone out there feeling the same? (About the value of tech or the temptations of other trades?)
(I keep thinking about these tech friends I have that fantasize about opening a hip babershop...)"
fantasize about opening a hip babershop...
Ignoring for the moment that I don't know what a 'babershop' is, and assuming that what was meant was 'barbershop,' what is a 'hip barbershop?' Is it, by any chance, a place at which one has his/her hip hair shorn? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't have a very significant problem with hair on my hips...
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
"... escaping the present malaise permeating most tech companies."
I'd like to see stories about the sociology of technical companies. Billions of dollars were lost in the dot com failures, and there seemed to be very little discussion about why. How could such supposedly smart people make such big mistakes?
Incidentally, I recommend the book, "Dot.Bomb", about the failure of Value America.
I can't help thinking that if I had the chance I'd quite IT and get a regular job. The crap you have to put up with every day in this industry is just not worth it. You might not get paid much flipping burgers but at least you won't be asked to work a 7 day week and you can actually take a lunch break or even, gasp, a holiday!
Last time I tried to take some of my holiday entitlement I had to cancel at the last minute because my boss changed his mind and refused to let me take it. A week later a memo went round 'Nobody is using their holiday entitlement - why not?'... If I'd had a gun at that moment...
The latest piece of crap was that unless everyone got eye tests at their own expense* they would have 1/3 of their wages docked for that month.
McDonalds here I come.
* They said they'd pay it back but that was two weeks ago and I'm still waiting... this company don't pay their bills, even to their employees.
It's nice to know your work actually has some actual value in some real, easy to see way.. rather than simply expecting to get paid tons of money from a company who isn't actually making any.
That guy who comes in because your crepes are so good is going to make you a lot happier than some manager who is also getting paid too much bitching at you because the stock value is falling.... and wanting you to dialogue about utilizing resources, and action things.
I have seen a large amount of laid-off techies going and getting their teaching certs. I suppose in a way, they are contributing back to society this way and with a lot of states (in the NorthEast I know at least) the states help pay college debt. This is crucial for all the recent grads who cant find jobs because of the current down-swing. I think it is a good idea. As long as people can teach.
..."open" but not "free" registration
In what was is NYTimes registration not free? Is it the part where you pay $0, or the part where you don't give them any money?
slashdot!=valid HTML
On a cold weekday afternoon last January, 34- year-old Brian Benavidez plopped down with his girlfriend on a big white shabby-chic sofa in his loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to watch a documentary about hot dogs. Mr. Benavidez, an M.B.A. and former investment banker, had been out of work since October, when he was laid off from his six-figure job at Bolt, a Manhattan Internet company.
After a couple months of reading and sleeping until noon, he had begun to interview for jobs, but things weren't looking so good. Mr. Benavidez described himself as "just professionally depressed."
But something about that hot dog documentary caught his attention.
"I noticed that everybody who was being interviewed was happy," Mr. Benavidez said. "The people who worked behind the counters, the owners, the customers, they were all smiling. I told my girlfriend, `I want to make people that happy.' "
A few hours later, Mr. Benavidez said, he had an epiphany: "I'll do hot dogs."
Selling hot dogs and cheese fries was hardly the career Mr. Benavidez imagined for himself when he earned his degree from Columbia Business School in 1996, in the early days of the Internet boom.
Back then, everyone had a business plan in his knapsack and venture capital flowed like Evian on a corporate charge card. But these are times of adjusted -- if not diminished -- expectations, especially for those young ambitious professionals who were swept up in the technology bubble of the late 1990's only to be unceremoniously disgorged a few years later.
A few like Mr. Benavidez are refusing to let go of the entrepreneurial spirit and the dream of self-made riches that fueled start-up mania.
Instead of spending billions to build a global brand, these recalibrated entrepreneurs are spending a few thousand dollars to make it big, or at least medium, in their own neighborhoods. They are opening concession stands, spas and bakeries, many with a post-millennial twist. Mr. Benavidez, for example, spent weeks searching for the perfect hot dog before settling on a hormone-free beef frank from grass-fed cattle on a California ranch.
If the Internet economy was built on vapor, these new ventures are all too real. "I buy eggs, flour and cheese and turn it into things people like and will pay more for than I did," said Assaf Tarnopolsky, 31, a Wharton School of Business graduate who is now the proud owner of two crepe stands in San Francisco, under the self-bestowed title of the West Coast Crepe King. Mr. Tarnopolsky lost his $125,000-a-year job last September when his employer went bankrupt, so he turned to an earlier love.
He had grown up eating crepes in Geneva, and as a hobby slopped batter on a hot iron at a San Francisco farmer's market on weekends. After a couple of "miserable" interviews, he said, "I decided, if it works on Saturday and Sunday, why not Monday through Friday?"
The lifestyle change has not been easy. "Despite what people think," he said, "it's more stressful and more work than my corporate job." Mr. Tarnopolsky frequently wakes up at night worrying about crepes, and he and his wife now live with "a Depression-era mentality."
"We're pinching pennies, cooking at home and not going to weddings we'd love to go to because they're too expensive."
Ari Ginsberg, director of the entrepreneurship program at New York University's Stern School of Business, says that's what it takes. Mr. Ginsberg said that in every generation of professionals there are some who seek the stability of corporate jobs and others who are driven to go it alone.
The current wave of scaled-down start-ups, Mr. Ginsberg said, is being run by "a breed of people who came of entrepreneurial age when there was a gold rush."
"They were in a fantasy world. Now we're in a back-to-basics mode," he said. "Hot dog stands are about handling real merchandise and interacting with real customers. It takes hard work and time to see results when you build a business the old-fashioned way."
Alas, few choose the old-fashioned way voluntarily. Most are like Andrew Reback, a 32-year-old M.B.A. from Boston University who was a director of product management at Excite@Home until he was laid off last Sept. 25.
Mr. Reback said he had received no severance pay and his final paycheck bounced. He liked baking, so as he looked for a job in technology, he started selling desserts like chocolate mousse cake. The technology job never materialized -- Mr. Reback said everyone in his six-unit Burlingame, Calif., apartment building is unemployed -- so he kept on baking.
Technology was all entree and no dessert, Mr. Reback said. With mousse cake, he said, "You get a sense of `It tastes good, and I like it.' I never got that at Excite."
Mr. Reback grosses only "hundreds of dollars a week," he said, not exactly New Economy wages. But he said it did not bother him.
"In the brief period of time I've been in business," he said, "I've already been more profitable than Excite@Home ever was."
And while life in technology seemed like one long strategy meeting, his current job is much simpler. "I don't need a team of M.B.A.'s to tell me what to do next," he said. "The strategy is: make more desserts."
For H. Joseph Ehrmann, a Thunderbird Business School graduate, it's soup. Mr. Ehrmann was laid off from his job at a California software company in July last year. Like many dot-com refugees, he took a monthlong soul-searching trip, to Indonesia. When he got back to San Francisco, he said, "There was a longer line at Starbucks than at any time in the boom."
Mr. Ehrmann got the picture. He needed income, he said, so he joined a friend who had recently started an organic soup business called Heartland Soups.
Where once a sales call meant driving to a mirrored glass building in Silicon Valley to pitch clients on $250,000 software packages, Mr. Ehrmann's pitches now involve handing out little plastic cups of soup to people on the street.
"People love soup," Mr. Ehrmann said. "I say I'm building a soup company and people say, `Soup -- that's cool.' It's satisfying. You're giving people something that affects them right away."
After quitting their jobs at a rapidly failing technology company in Vancouver, British Columbia, Chris Scott, 31, and Jamie McKeough, 33, spent some time in local spas and noticed "this overriding seriousness, like, `We're going to save your soul,' " Mr. Scott said. Their idea: a laid-back spa with no New Age pretense. As for music, Mr. Scott said, "No Enya."
For all the touchy-feely talk about life on five figures, there is one thing about these young professionals that has not changed. They still want to get rich.
"The way to be really successful is through ownership, not through being the 5,000th hire at a company," Mr. Tarnopolsky, the crepe maker, said.
In the middle of the dot-com boom, Mr. Tarnopolsky said he aspired to be like Sky Dayton, the prototypical dot-com whiz kid and founder of EarthLink, the second-largest Internet provider in the United States. His new heroes? Debbi Fields, who started Mrs. Fields Cookies from a counter in Palo Alto, Calif., and Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks.
"He successfully marketed and branded something that's been around for a long time," Mr. Tarnopolsky said. "I think the same thing can happen with crepes."
According to Po Bronson, an author who chronicled the technology boom and who profiled 75 people contemplating their careers for his upcoming book, "What Should I Do With My Life?" (Random House), for all the talk of scaling back, today's entrepreneurs have not given up entirely on the dot-com ethos.
"They come to it with the notion that the Internet may be dead but a lot of the values they believe in are the same," Mr. Bronson said. "They believe they can become an expert in something quickly, that brains might be better than experience, that most companies don't push hard enough. But the biggest is, `Life had meaning, and I was juiced when I took risk.'
"I've seen a lot people say, `I'm going to find that same thing somewhere else, maybe not in the Internet but with a hot dog stand.' "
If there's a thrill to be found in staring failure in the face, then small-business owners will have no shortage of excitement. According to the Small Business Administration, less than half of new businesses survive more than four years.
For this reason, perhaps, the budding capitalists have encountered plenty of skepticism from family and friends. Mr. Benavidez approached several business school classmates about investing in his hot dog stand, for example, and was turned down by all of them.
"They said they had got so burned investing in their friends' tech companies that they were tapped out or just too hesitant," he said.
And the new business owners aren't past having their own doubts.
"I've vacillated between thinking I was an absolute genius and the village idiot," Mr. Tarnopolsky said. "I feel a lot of pressure to succeed. This business is all wrapped up in me and my identity."
When that pressure builds, new entrepreneurs seem to fall back on the same M.B.A. training they used to fuel growth in the dot-com sector. After a few days of feeling good about his hot dog epiphany, Mr. Benavidez "went into business-school mode," he said.
He researched the margins of the hot dog market and analyzed neighborhood foot-traffic patterns, going so far as to count the number of customers going into local restaurants at certain hours.
He used unwitting friends as market testers, serving them homemade relishes and mustards at a Super Bowl party and noting their preferences.
And he dashed off a four- page business plan -- about 75 pages shorter than the average business plan he toted around during the boom -- that led to a $50,000 investment by family and friends.
Mr. Benavidez added $40,000 of his own money ("Everything I have," he said) and early next month he will open his stand on North Fifth Street and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. He named the place after his dog: "Sparky's American Food."
"I'm going to be the one slopping chili on hot dogs and cooking burgers," Mr. Benavidez said. "The sky's the limit if we do things right. But my main goal, is, Please make this little shop work."
I'm currently doing Unix admin work, and the company I work for is great (one of the few companies actually growing right now, and pretty fast at that), but I find myself thinking about jumping to something else.
... :-)
Right now the money keeps me where I'm at, because I can't really afford my lifestyle with much less. But that's about it -- I constantly wonder if I just chose this work because it comes naturally, and I apparently have a knack for it. I want more challenge, more spice, something to really look forward to every day.
I don't think it'll be a barbershop, though. But it probably won't be computer stuff, either. Perhaps all of us (fairly) high-paid tech workers shouldn't be complaining -- maybe it's only because we get paid so well that we can afford the luxury of considering something else. Less skilled workers would probably jump at the chance to sit behind a desk all day and make $75k+ a year. So maybe I won't bitch *too* loudly
This is just sad.. Going from making $125k to making crepes.
I know it's happening more and more. Why did I go to college for 6 years? It doesn't seem to improve my job prospects over all those liberal arts majors I thought were slackers.. At least they were content to enter the economy and make crepes..
I'm currently in my fourth year of college and I often feel some of the same feelings about my chosen career field and I'm not even out in the real world yet. I have often thought of going to cooking school and perhaps opening a small restaurant. If I wasn't so far along in school I probably would. I think there is just something about a job such as cooking where in my opinion you are providing something that people need and enjoy. Not that I wouldn't love working on computers, but I just think sometimes that my life would be better focused on providing a more essential need.
I figured that if my skills start to go downhill, instead of becoming a project manager at an IT firm, I'd just become a home builder. More or less the same thing, but wood can be easier to mold than coders at times.
With extra time on your hands, and about three years of experience jammed into two (if you worked stupidly long hours trying to keep your company alive), you probably have a lot of knowledge in your head.
I sometimes give non-gratis tech help to people I meet who are trying to get started on the web, or in computers, or starting an e-business. I get a warm fuzzy feeling, and still get to do the stuff I enjoy.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
The last three years of my life has been work on a series of projects cancelled or abandoned before rollout. So I've had time to speculate on better roles. I've noticed over the years that the weather is a common topic of conversation. So what better job than to be paid to talk about something you were probably going to talk about anyway. And if you're constantly pessimistic, then everyone's happy you're wrong.
After being unemployed for a while I moved from IT to a kitchen job.
;)
I guess the easiest way I found to summarise the difference, was that in the kitchen I got covered in shit, but at least the shit I got covered in would come off in the shower at night.
I can't say the same for an office job.
After 3 Years of working in the dungeons of Tech Support, I've finally started getting free.
I'm a consultant now, offering advice to the same companies I used to support. Telling 'em all the things I never had time to on the phones. And I'll probably be doing this and other IT-related stuff for a while yet.
But I've started building some new skills, skills that have a purpose. In my case, its woodworking.
Have you seen the utter crap they sell at Art Van lately? I can make furniture at the same prices that is SO MUCH more durable and attractive.
And when I finish a project, I can look at it and say "I built this." and know that means something. I've created a solid piece of furniture, that will be making some family (maybe my own) happy three generations from now.
Not some ephemeral little app that noone will ever use anyway, or telling some moron what he should have been able to do himself, if he could only learn to think.
It makes me happy, like I havent been in years.
--"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
I work as a noise control engineer and have the same feelings; I provide a valuable service, but it is so abstract... I originally got into engineering to "do stuff" and "make stuff", not "think stuff" and "program stuff".
For the past few years, I have been seriously considered starting my own muffler manufacturing business. Provide an actual product, one that makes the world a better, quieter place, at a reasonable cost that actually performs as advertised.
Right now, it is just a dream. Still waiting for a certain set of noncompetes to expire...
Yet another slashdolt has been identified as possessing a lame, corny sense of "humor." Triangulating position for destruction now...
The NY Times ("open" but not "free" registration)
/. as well as a gazilion other websites. As far as I know, since I'm reg'd there, is that the NYT site is FREE to register. So you can't just link stories from /. to it without doing so. Big fucking DEAL!
So you have to reg at the NYT website. You are asked to reg at
They have your e-mail address. OH NO! You are now part of their evil plan to get your e-mail address and allow you to view their content. Those monsters!
While I admit it might be annoying, its not criminal, and it's certainly more generous than many other pay sites. Get OFF it people and try to be original.
Next week I will explore the reasons why beer IS NOT FREE, unless you steal it from your neighbors refrigerator.
after a few years of working in my childrens' preschool classrooms, I discovered I really enjoy kids. so I got a "summer job" teaching sailing to 9-16 year olds. I am having a blast!!!
as tough as kids are some times, it sure beats working with a bunch of maladapted, socially incompetent, no-hobby, no-life, nerds like at my last programming job.
the only problem is, I make 1/6 of what I used to make. so I gotta work more hours than there are in a month just to pay the mortgage. gotta figure out something else. probably get back to coding eventually, but this is a nice break for now.
good luck finding a job, it is really tight out there!!
What we have here is a failure to communicate. If you're surprised, it's not just a problem with them....
You need to understand why they're not working in IT anymore. Here are some possible reasons:
They're still trying to clarify the requirements. Some projects have well-defined requirements, but many real ones don't, and maybe their parts are fuzzier than yours, or maybe they need help understanding them.
They're still designing interfaces and test plans, and are wisely not writing code until they know what it should do and how to do it right. Maybe your part has more obvious interfaces than theirs, or maybe they need some help defining them, or maybe you're rushing off writing code before you've done your critical design work. Writing code is only the middlish 10% of the job.
Maybe they're trying to build tools they need to build their real code. This could be forward-thinking planning, or it could be they don't realize the resources they've got available and need help finding / getting them.
Maybe they're underskilled and over their heads and don't know how to do the job - but apparently you haven't been communicating with them, and also apparently they haven't been communicating with you.
So talk with them first and find out what's going on. If you can't come to an understanding, find a manager to help -- I don't mean a Boss to tell them what to do, I mean a Manager to actually manage the project and people. You probably need one of those anyway, and sometimes programmers can do that but sometimes they don't have the people skills to do it.
As an animal lover I've always thought I'd love to give them more than just monetary support. Sure, it's likely not the idylic job I've conjured up in my mind, but I'm sure that I'd feel one hell of a lot more fulfilled knowing I'd saved a few dogs and cats from brutality and death than knowing I'd written X lines of code for some business.
Hell, if I had enough money behind me I'd go work for them for free!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Imagine not having to worry about network connectivity, users, clients, technology, licensing, unrealistic deadlines, and projects with zero budget.
I would be so much happier. Alas, I need to be able to pay for my house, and I like living a comfortable life. I've been without money before, and I appreciate the amount of money I make now. It's probably hard to make nearly 6 figures selling hot dogs or making crepes. If I could find a trendy furniture store to sell my designs, I'd probably make more than I do now, but finding the time is not easy.
The money in IT is great, but the stress is almost not worth it.
Shut up hippy!
This is an even better reason to kill people. If disgruntled employees who took too much crap killed their bosses more often...
Maybe bosses would think twice before being jerks?
Its like Columbine... people used to pick on us at school, but after Columbine... all the stupid jocks thought twice before messing with us. Muahahahaha. I learned a lesson there, I'll kill anyone that persecutes me in any shape/form/fashion. Be it a peer, a boss, a wife, a preacher, etc.
I have recently been part of a lay off after 2 1/2 years as a Sys Admin. Having been rather disillusioned with my company and the industry as a whole, I am currently contemplating a switch to a job in the Criminal Justice field, which I hold a Master degree in. While it is almost assured that it will pay less, I believe, perhaps naively, that it will make a difference somehow in the long run. At the end, when I look back, I really do not want to see that all my life's work was just to make some fat-cat CEO and money-grubbing stockholders rich as a cog in the corporate machine.
I still do this when I write code, mostly HTML, for people with small businesses. For example, my mechanic runs a fan website for his favorite car (the Pontiac Tempest). I maintain the site (which includes UBBS chat area) and in return he works on my car for free.
most of the dot-com-boom workers were barely
qualified to be short-order cooks anyway -
now they're where they belong, and the rest of
us that actually Belonged in the industry by
dint of skill and knowledge can possibly affect
a salvage of some kind.
"one less web designer"
I'm tired of the IT field (10+ years). If I had another skill to fall back on, I would be doing it right now. I spent the last three years at a dotcom, and I swear it feels like 5 or 6 years - the pace was that fast. Now I want to improve my cooking skills, learn to weld, or even switch over to robotics, *ANYTHING* different. I think it just comes down to burnout.
Based on my limited but successful classes in economics, and the fact that I survived the dotcom fallout (still an employed programmer, at that), I have my own theories as to how "smart people could make such big mistakes."
Most of the "smart people" weren't technicians, but business-savvy entrepreneurs. And plenty of THEM weren't all that business-savvy, at that. These were the ones who actually founded companies. The tech-geeks were, typically, just along for the ride.
The REAL loosers were the rich venture-capitalists. The products of a booming economy, they had extra cash to toss around and a brand-new universe of investment potential.
Demand for computer programmers was so high that anyone who had taken a single night-school class in M$-Visual Basic could get a job with a ridiculous salary and ridiculous benefits. And, to fill the vacuum, many such people did.
Though, ultimately, all the technical decisions were being made by non-technically-inclined managers, this was the trend before and after the dotgones had their day. The real disaster struck when advertisers realized a very humbling fact: people don't click on ad banners.
There it went. *poof* Advertisers stopped paying exorbident rates to have their banners on any site that wasn't part of standard vocabulary (such as Amazon or Yahoo). Most businesses had scraped by on advertisement income alone. So that was pretty much that.
The people who suffered most were the investors. The wannabe computer programmers went back to jobs for which they were more cut-out, and technical salaries dropped back down to reasonable, market-value levels. Once again, computer programmers, DBA's, and what-not have to compete with each other for jobs, just like everybody else.
so there you have it.
$0.02 or so.
The problem with restaraunt work is the boredom: doing the same thing over and over again.
I could not tolerate that without a radio or some mind-altering drug or *something* to relieve the boredom.
(Then again, fixing poorly-factored copy-n-paste speggetti code from jerkoff programmers is also kind of repetitious.)
Table-ized A.I.
Its the part where you give them your email address and endure thier spam.
but i'm just "too proud" to go from IT to making someone's food. it would disturb me, cuz i'd always feel that i'm doing less than i'm capable of.
anyone else get that?
I daresay not everyone's tech job sucks.
Just those instant jobs where they were willing to pay shitloads of money to wankers with little or no experience.. those jobs are gone.
There are still jobs out there for those who actually took their beats early, didn't job-hop every 6 months for the bigger-better-deal, and didn't fuck over their employers when they left.
I just moved from being a sys/net admin to a job where I act as direct, personal support for adults with developmental disabilities. So, I know what the people in the article have gone through.
My new job has taken me in a totally different direction from everything I've ever done. Instead of babysitting computers all day, I now help people do things that their mental and/or physical disabilities preclude them from doing. It's basic day-to-day things like laundry and lunch, but it's much more fulfilling on a personal level. I know that if it weren't for people like me, these people could not live on their own.
Now, I harbor no illusions about my geek-ness. I will most likely be back to a system/network admin job in a few years. It's just that right now, I want to stretch myself in other directions, and this provides a suitable challenge. Geeks are traditionally not so great when it comes to social skills, so this will continue to help me grow in that area. In effect, this job will help me do my old (and future) job better. (I think.)
± 29 dB
I remember a discussion at work a couple of years back where we pretty much concluded we'd all have been better off ignoring computers, skipping college, and instead getting apprenticeships as plumbers. I still stand by those conclusions - a skilled plumber makes a good amount, is often self-employed and thus can't be laid off, and the need for plumbing is pretty much a constant.
Plus keeping up with the latest in plumbing technology isn't quite as arduous as keeping computer skills up to date.
Right now I'm out of work and while I'm generally looking at programming positions, at times it's a temptation to tighten my belt, accept a 50% drop in salary, and go do something completely different. Programming and system administration pay well if you're measuring it purely in financial terms, but when you through in long hours, on-call, the way companies routinely take advantage of salaried employees by making "40 hr work week" closer to "50hr work week"...maybe making less money but having a life outside of work is worth more.
"Good evening sir, my name is Steve. I come from a rough area. I used to be addicted to crack but now I'm off and am trying to stay clean. That is why I am selling magazine subscriptions and I was hoping you could help me out."
The article talks about M.B.A.s, not coders. There are too many M.B.A.s and still too few well-educated coders.
I was so burned out on work and income taxes that I quit and 'retired' to Bolivia. Now I just read news sites and political news, walk and continue my study of programming (Python right now) and Spanish. I went back to a modem from DSL, but it is good enough to keep up on the geek news and such. I also have a maid that cleans, washes clothes and cooks for $1 a day. With what the government 'allowed' to keep, I can do this for the next 20 years without 'real' work. But I did teach English for a bit, which was extremely interesting.
A lot of the job disatisfaction in the technology industry, particular software, I am fairly certain is the result of job heroics (at least in talk) by fellow software engineers: i.e. we all cause disatisfaction of each other. While I'm sure this hits other fields as well, I don't think there is any other field where the metrics are so abstract, and there's so much new group pioneered (and hence so little empirical numbers to rely upon).
What do I mean? I know that I've faced situations quite a few times in the industry where I have been presented a problem, and I propose several solutions and timeframes, only to be met by a manager or peer who gloatingly informs me that Jimbo, the programmer over in section C, says that it should only take 2 hours and he could program it in his sleep. Hell, I know that I've made these idiotic off the cuff comments quite a few times. The downside is that whatever you're doing has now been trivialized, and the bar has been set in a manner that you can do nothing but fail: It's just a matter of the scale of the failure. I've spoken to peers and have found that this problem is absolutely rampant.
The easy solution, of course, is to simply say "Well then let Jimbo do it", but due to project partitioning and company lines that just never works. What many end up doing is sniping at Jimbo's projects to undercut him as he so helpfully did to you, and it becomes a perpetual cycle. I worked with one gentlemen who literally could not keep his mouth shut about how trivial every single situation was (yet once you have some experience in the industry you have more of an ability to recognize pitfalls and risks, but senior management doesn't want to hear that: They want to hear the most heroic "I'll have it done tomorrow!" story), yet in the entire time that I worked with him he never, ever, produced a single line of code. It's situations like those that make people want to switch careers.
I jumped on the 'net bandwagon in '94, a few years earlier than many. For seven years, I worked twelve hour days, often with no weekends off and with very little vacation. In return for my dedication and hard work, I was treated like a piece of furniture - shuffled from project to project according to the whims of upper management, and discarded like an old newspaper when that was more convenient for the bean counters.
Bitter? Hell yes I'm bitter. I've wasted twenty years of my life, spending every spare moment teaching myself to be a better programmer, when the only skill that gets rewarded in this industry is that of piling a mixture of buzzwords and bullshit. Time and again, I've watched some of the most talented programmers around get fucked over, simply because some hotshot wannabee was a little better than they at self-promotion, and a little less scrupulous about being honest.
Just like the music and movie industries, the computer industry was started by people who sincerely loved their art, and like those industries, it's in the process of being slowly dehumanized and made into a commodity by bean counters in suits. There's no longer any place in the industry for people who do what they do for the joy of it.
I'm a bit luckier than most - having served in the military, I have some educational benefits that I can use to retrain. I have an "escape hatch" of sorts. And, I intend to use it - I'm sick of this whole sordid mess, and I'm getting out of it.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
No matter HOW bad your comptuer is fucked up with windows 97 alpha 2, if you offer me a case of beer, i WILL fix it.
Berto
I've had a lot of strange feelings about my chosen career. I thought along these lines... my chosen area of expertise is one that exists only in a high-tech, advanced society. What happens to me if something happens to that society? I'm not donning my tinfoil hat, but something very well COULD happen.. what if, for some reason, the tech industry vanishes? Where will I be? I can cook some Italian cuisine, but... I think I need to take up another skill, a backup, as it were. Something basic, like, well, plumbing. Or carpentry.
I swear, no matter how great my accomplishments in the computing field, there is still the feeling of nothing REAL accomplished. Nothing permanent, nothing that anyone appreciates. I don't like that feeling.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
If you DON'T like it, and are just doing it because your roommate told you an MCSE was a meal ticket, then yes, go flip burgers. There are plenty of us who have been here for the long haul, doing it because we want to -- not because of the whole get-rich-quick scheme the Internet turned out to be.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
It was pretty obvious to anyone who looked at this that all of those companies produced little real world value or services, with few exceptions. At the end of the day, did you end up holding something in your hand? Probably not.
To this end, there were a lot of jobs created where people got paid a lot of money doing nothing. Sounds good? On paper. Until after a few years you're watching your life tick away, and you're accomplishing nothing besides making a lot of money. That would make me very depressed, and I think sooner or later you'd realize it somewhere in your soul. Once the jobs ended, working someplace where you got to produce something would be a real psychological uplift! Nevermind the freedom of leaving work at work, not constantly worrying about problems and deadlines.
This shakeout is good for the industry. People who are better off doing something besides IT will end up doing something else. It's happened before, and it'll happen again. If it's your calling, then you accept that. I've never had a problem finding a job for the market rate if I was willing to move around. Welcome to the sad employment future, sucks if you want a family.
IT was never about producing things, that's the point. IT is about helping people produce things and solve problems. Now that we're through with the madness, business as usual for 10 years or so.
..don't panic
I still have a 9-5 job as a IT project manager (but slowly moving away and losing interest).
Instead, I opened up a dive bar and I have lots of fun. I get to hire good looking women to bartend for me and I date more now (in fact, I date 4-5 times a week). Still, no one in my second life knows that I am geek by day. You get a different perspective behind the bar. I also have a friend who is a successful pediatrican with her assets and trust fund, she can buy a small island in the bahams but decided to be a bartender at a popular club (in a BIG metro city). She is 34 but dates guys in their early 20s and pretends she is clueless and airheaded.
Well, back to my story. The clientele think I am just another schmoe behind the bar and don't even know I own it and don't even know that my net worth is probably worth more than everyone there combined. It has been a humbling experience for me to meet real and down-and-out people (aka alcholics). They all think I am just some punk kid and I like to keep it that way. Its bad enough, I meet so many gold-diggers that want to date me when they find out that I have a nice car and own the place.
Anyways, if it fails, I'll just move to Costa Rica. I don't need to make lots of money, just enough to be happy. I already have a villa that I am buying there so I am working on my escape plan very soon ( say 4-5 years) when I get too old to do the IT thing.
One thing for sure, I sure like the new lifestyle.
I'm sure that everyone here remembers office space, and the reference to the career placement exercise:If you had million dollars, and never had to work again, what would you do all day? The point is that whatever your answer is to this question should be what you try to get paid to do. So if you say you'd cook all day, then you should become a cook, if you'd work on cars all day, you should become a mechanic. And perhaps....if you'd read slashdot, code, and use computers all day (my answer, and probably the answer of most slashdotters deep down), then maybe, just maybe, you're in the right field after all.
Me, I plan on leaving IT and starting a brewery. Fuck, at least you can profit from your failures... get drunk off your ass and forget you are unhappy.
Plus, Even though Microsoft is the Budwieser of the software company, at least it's only Budwieser that's the Budwieser of the brewing industry.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
18 months ago, I got laid off from a job I enjoyed. Just over a year later, I got another job which I've enjoyed. Sure, the unemployment time was bad, and significantly detrimental to my savings, but there I still don't see any job in another field I'd enjoy as much .... much less one flipping crepes or hotdogs on a push cart vendor.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Two years ago I was making 65k as a web designer. Work was coming in through the walls and the hours were long. I felt the humanitarian hippy kick in somewhere along the line, threatened to resign unless they gave me part time hours (and they did) and tried to get a part time job working at a wendy's three blocks down my street. It was extremely hard to get the job because the guy wouldn't let me work there because I was "overqualified and would get bored in a week". I offered to work for free for a week and they still didn't take me. So I got a job at a Bennigan's in the same plaza by lying on my resume. I lasted three weeks.
Why'd I quit? The list is endless. After the first week I remembered that people are grumpy, disgusting, and for the most part are stupid and suck. Wearing a colorful uniform with your name badge on it sucks. Cleaning after people sucks, especially when you calculate that on the average full day of LABOR you made as much money as you did when you were a techie looking at slashdot for 1.5 hours a day while eating Wendy's at the expense of your boss. While I did feel more human sweating as I swept floors, and appreciated catching the occasional gaze of a beautiful girl pounding away at chicken fingers, I'd long for my cozy conditioned office. The number 1 reason I quit, however, was the fact that YOUR MIND IS NOT REQUIRED TO DO THESE JOBS. Techies and creative people have busy brains. We just can't sweep the floor - we have to come up with ways to make it more efficient or more fun. I just couldn't turn my brain off and do grunt work.
I left the IT industry after 10 years (and a layoff) and started teaching. I teach high school and community college classes, and have gone back to school to work on my PhD in educational psychology.
A good friend once told me he evaluated choices in his life by asking, "When I die, would I want this choice on my headstone?" I think having "teacher" on my headstone would be much more satisfying than "cubicle occupant" or "corporate grunt."
I got tired of dot coms not paying me..
.. more so than I have been in years..
So I got a day job working for the Feds..
Entered some programming contests use the proceeds to raise some capital
and coding on my spare time to build products for my own company..
starting the process of picking a project to contribute to for open source..
I am extremely happy
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Didn't the guy who originally spurred Mozilla off of Netscape leave and open a café a couple of years ago? And then a few months ago, when Mozilla 1 was released, they held a Mozilla 1 party in his café?
What happened to that guy?
mogorific carpentry experiments
Thus we used to all enjoy making dinner and actually enjoyed doing dishes, were happy to see at least one visible accomplishment in our day. Pile of dirty dishes - 20 minutes later a nice shiny stack of clean ones. It was sad but it was the only thing we could do and point at and say "I did that!" and feel good about.
I've any number of friends who have/had resturaunts, or guest houses, and all of those other "I'd chuck it all to..." business. In my case they're in Vermont and Provincetown and Ogunquit and al of them agree: It looked better from the outside. They too work unreasonable hours and can't take vacations and work always comes home with them...
Tech isn't the be-all/end-all but if you're a go-getter you'll be gotten in any kinda job. If you're looking to stop and smell the flowers you can do that anytime - there's nothing magic about working in anything/anywhere. Heck my landscaper makes the exact same complaints and he's out in the sun all day, planting flowers, charging buckets to run a crew of leafblowers (yes, I've said "no" to that particular horror.)
Running off to find one's self in a new career, a new place, and new life, always seems to involve one problem: It's still you. Go ahead and go for the change if you think it's gonna make you happy but don't think it's gonna change you. That stuff comes from inside and doesn't directly relate to the outside.
If cooking crepes and serving them on heavy plates all day really does give you a kick, if you really want the lovely cottage and the endless loads of laundry your guests will generate, if spending all day leaning over the potters wheel to make the 1000'th identical syrup pourer is really your kick then go for it.
But remember, half of those folks would chuck it in for a cushy job in an office park with a keyboard and juice vending machine down the hall.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Although food service can be rewarding it can also be very grueling. My grandfather ran restaurants and I worked in one of them for many years when I was growing up. The work is hard, the pay is low, and you're frequently surrounded by idiots. :-) I am much, much happier as an "office girl." I don't get burned, or end up smelling like grease, or get yelled at by tourists when I'm sitting behind a computer!
-- Jessica
-- Jessica
The mutant geek grrl from Hell.
this is the exact reason I'm not going to programming... at least not with a big corporation... I've been told more than once that I could have work my ass off in high school and go to the University of Waterloo and then make tons of money! but frankly, I don't want to... I love programming, yes... but a job with a huge corporation brings huge stress...
so I decided to be simple... not give up computers entirely... I don't think I could... so I'll teach it... in high school... I get to do what I love, while making something of a difference in people's lives... and a whole whack less stress... and a whole whack more happiness...
Web Design Tips
Now, as accurate as the "Free but not Open" statement is, I much prefer the statement in the title of this message. I mean, everything's better with beer in it!
I used to be addicted to crack but now I am off it and trying to stay clean. That is why I am selling magazine subscriptions.
Peter: You're a software engineer?
Steve: Yep.
Samir: Things must be very rough for you.
Steve: Actually man, I make more money selling magazine subscriptions than I EVER did at Initrode.
The majority of IT jobs are bad, but not all of them.
My last job was at GameSpy, and I can honestly say it was a total horror story. We started out with a horde of great people who, over time, became undervalued, underpaid, and overworked. Remember: arcade machines and free coke do not a good job make.
I'm grateful for the things I learned while I was at GameSpy, though. I picked up alot of skills and more importantly, I learned what to look for in my next job.
With everything I picked up, I immediately landed what turned out to be a fantastic job webmastering for a software company right down the street. Why is it great? I have the best boss in the world. He makes sure I have just enough work, but not too much. He sticks up for me and my work. He makes everyone in the company aware of what I do. He's like the IT Godfather.
On top of that, everyone at the company appreciates my work. Last week, I had an important project with tight deadlines and alot of money and revenue on the line. I had to work over the weekend. When I came in monday, a bottle of wine was on my desk with two tickets to the jazz festival. I also got time off to compensate for the weekend, AND a manager of another department involved with the project spoke to my boss and insisted on adding a note of my good performance to my record for consideration at my next review. I also got nominated for the quarterly employee award. I love my job.
All that being said, I find it hard to believe I can ever match or best this position. I would not be surprised if I were lured away from IT in the future if my current job came to an end for some reason.
Anyway, my advice is interview your potential employer just as closely as he interviews you. Its likely the deciding factor in your happiness at work.
I've spent the last 7 or 8 years in various computer related jobs, most of that time programming. I've spent the last 28 years of my life in an ever-increasing search for new ways to amuse myself and to accumulate wealth.
A few months ago, I realized that none of it mattered to me. No matter how many videogames I played, lines of code I laid down, how much cash I could pull out of my wallet, it didn't change the fact that at the end of the day, I wasn't doing a goddamned thing for anyone but myself, I wasn't improving the world or helping people in any way. And it was something I had known for a while, but it finally became something I can't ignore.
August 26th, I start back to college, working through my degree in biology. In four years, I plan to be in med school. My only regret is that I didn't start sooner.
I highly recommend an occasional evaluation of one's life, to see if the path travelled is the one that should be travelled. If you're happy with what you're doing, great. But don't just stick to programming or sysadmin or, hell, being a doctor for that matter, without examining why you do it, and if that goal makes you happy. Life's too damned short.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
The treeware edition had a similar article a month or two ago about several folks who had dropped out of the dot com, high tech world to work at various ski areas. Lift operator, ski instructor, etc. About the only one who was doing anything at all close to their career was working as a marketing intern at Vail (sounded like an unpaid position) and wanted to actually get into marketing. Sounded like making living expenses (barely) but having fun.
Kind of a hoot if you can swing it financially. At least it makes being "underemployed" fun. Sounded like some had an oppotunity to "go back" under less than favorable condition and just said "no".
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Business 2.0 has and interesting article entitled "Bubble Babies" by Brian Caulfield in
their September 2002 issue on those who cashed out
and got rich before the Internet bubble burst.
Quite interesting read, although many of them are giving money away to many, IMHO, rather questionable and ridiculus charities....And many of them seem to be rather eccentric to put it mildly...but to each his own.
> Simple: The Damned future is too hard to accurately predict.
Hardly. The real reason why most dot-coms went belly-up is two-fold.
First, a lot of really genius-level techies came up with some great ideas. Too bad the vast majority weren't marketable, or, the business that they made had no real business PLAN. You can sell just about anything to anyone with a great business plan. Or, like Microsoft, you can sell crap, even with a really bad attitude, with a really great business plan.
The second problem was started by a combination of Clinton and the British PM, and ignorant daytraders.
Here's what happened:
A company (Celera) was trying to map the human genome, or major parts of it, before the Human Genome Project could, so that they could patent things. Big uproar (duh), and Clinton & his British buddy come out and declare their opposition to patenting human gene information. Instantly (like, to the DAY), traders freak out and start dumping all their gene-related stock. Then stupid daytraders, hearing, "dump all tech-stocks!" start dumping ALL technical-related stocks, not just the stock of the few companies that were planning on patenting human gene sequences. Within a month or two, the dot-com bubble had burst, not because of _anything_ relating to the Internet, but because of a badly-worded speech by Clinton, and the stupidity of daytraders who don't bother to understand what they're doing, or research things they invest in (or dump).
Et voila, the bubble burst. Even business, like a couple I was involved with, with fantastic business plans, with serious revenue potential, could no longer attract investment to complete our projects, because who were most investors in tech startups? Why, people who made money in the first wave of tech startups, of course. At one company, we were a day or two from signing our major round of funding by a guy from Real, when he looked at his stocks and realized he was no longer rich enough to fund us. We lasted about two months after that. *sigh*
Well, Im one of those people however i am about to choke the next person who says dotcomer. I gave up on the tech industry about a year ago (after 15 years) and spent a bit of time trying to figure out what to do next. About to take the wife and kids out for a year in an RV and see what there might be to do next.
Unfortunatly there was a wave of idiocy that swept through the tech industry where people started using nasty words like professionalism which of course has no place in computers. It became a giant mess of beuracracy and fell apart shortly after as a result of stifled curiosity.
Presently the wife and I are thinking about purchasing a campground or some other buisness which might be a bit more fun to do for the rest of our lives. Maybe we'll buy a buy a bowling alley. Were not real sure. Time to wander and find out.
House goes on the market in 3 days. The RV is loaded. should be intresting.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
It's heartening to see people pondering these questions. I've often wondered what would happen to our world if too many people decided to take up jobs that never really produced something useful: food and shelter immediately come to mind.
Working on projects that have long hours, high stress, and questionable usefulness is nothing new to Corporate America. We're just seeing the corporatization of the IT and tech industries in general. Even Apple, the flower child of the computer industry, has had to change their whole business model around.
I'm still in school to get my CISE degree, but I've thought long and hard about taking a job as a translator for a few years. And, if I wait too long, I may never get a chance to do that kind of work. I'll be replaced by code.
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
I'm currently in the process of chucking in my job as a web developer to do a PhD. In the job market I think the employers have too much power.
My employer also has a sweat-shop mentality where everyone must stick to their speciality, eg coders can't do any design work because it is more efficient for a designer to do the work. I see their point but it also makes my job less fun.
After 5 years of doing development I'm beginning to realise that there's really not that much to it in the end. Basically I'm bored and want to do something more challenging and with more variety.
With a grant and extra help from the social security system, my family can live almost as well as if I was working.
For me, at least. I helped start a dot.com for Fun and Profit, and it turned out to be a bad choice. The company's still around, which makes me feel pretty good about the whole deal, but I burnt out on software production for a living.
On the other hand, hobbies are a completely different story. I'm currently running a non-profit web server, writing collaboration/discussion/sharing software, and I'm getting into embedded r/c flight control software. Can't get the geek out of my system, and I don't particularly want to, either!
Regardless, after I quit my job at the dot.com, I pursued my other big interest: photography. I worked both as a photographer, and as a professional assistant. Being an assistant was great, because I was making money hanging out with models, and it's an intense way to meet people and learn about the business. When I did my own shoots, there was a very tangible result which was almost completely the product of my blood, sweat, and tears.
I speak in the past tense, because I've decided to go back to school, and I no longer have the space or time to do much photography on top of my school work and geek interests. Regardless, I expect I'll get back into it after I've completed my formal education.
So, sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence. There's only one way to find out, though.
Speaking purely for myself, the day I quit coding is the day I open a vein. I hope they find me slumped dead over my keyboard with a smile on my face. I hope my tombstone has "Memory released, pointer nullified" on it. I will NEVER give up coding.
A lot of people have jobs they hate. Most people have a job that satisifes them, some are lucky and have one they enjoy, fewest of all are the people doing what they were born to do. I'm luck enough to be one of those people.
The problem is that the dotcom silliness led to a whole bunch of people doing something they weren't really interested in because it paid well.
I'm sorry, but if you don't like the long hours, the tight deadlines, the mental stress, then CODING IS NOT THE FIELD FOR YOU. Find out what you *DO* like and do it... if you love it that much you'll find a way of working around the pay.
In any job you do, the primary motivation MUST be the love of the job; the pay should be a secondary factor. You'll be much happier doing a job you love for less money than one you hate for lots of money.
When its a theroretical post on a website, its "a person with a little backbone".
In real workplace, its "a un-managable and difficult person"
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I admit that I havent read the relate article to this /. post. However, who's to say that such people provided any such "real value" to their projects?
I've not had any difficulties charging $75/hr for my hardware/software work. However, I do not feel that charging simply by the hour is a proper metric for "valued computer work". Rather, I charge based on my clients' satisfaction w/ project. (i.e. If I promise a certain feature and it's not done on time, I don't make and excuse and charge extra, I'll finish the feature and accept the prior established price)...
Maybe I'm too jaded or maybe th industry is so full of itself it doesn't matter whether competence is available? Out of 100 IT people I've met this past year, approx 75 have turned out to be bullsh-t artists claiming to be "experts" yet only understanding Dreamweaver or FrontPage (egads!!!)!
The old adage "Provide true value to earn true profit" is still true today as it was hundreds of years ago.
I'm sick of people with no talent/skills whining about IT's "tough" market now that the fantasy bubble burst and many peoples' lack of talent is showing...
- Mobster75!
For all of you "techies" out there, I hope you enjoy the 12 hours a day 7 days a week, Office Politics etc. It took awhile to get tired of you souless money mongering pathetic swags. Yea, its ok to enjoy the fruits of your labor when you actually bear fruit. And I believe you should be paid for what you know. But the current green techies are so bad I had to puke, its one thing to cover for someone who knows something, its another to cover the whole mess. yea, I got out. Yea, you can call me weak, a quiter, or what ever. But I dont have to deal with the "mechanic" mentality of the "suites" who think the real stuff is easy to come by. I have spent the majority of my life behind these computers, and when I say life I mean from age 8 to 31, ah the day of the sinclairs. I had no life. I was in a prison of sorts. when a "suit" says your life is only worth 50k right now, your a commodity. I begin to laugh out loud. The death of techs who really loved what they were doing is upon us. And it will show shortly. It became something that was no longer fun for us. All of your readme's and how-to's are going away, and we find it hilarious that you can no longer function. But the best part is when them "suits" want something done, and it is no longer doable.
I'll be more than happy to see lots of people get out of the technology sector.
Many of them got in because they thought they saw a big stack of money waiting for them there. It was the next "get rick quick" industry. Hopefully, most of these people are now quite deluded, and ready to move on.
If so, it'll leave the jobs for people who truly do love technology. People that are more likely to search for technologies they love and then go get a job working with them, instead of trying to attach themselves to MCSE=CA$H or some other such nonsense. Seriously, I've actually seen people decide on their career path by thumbing through job advertisements and noting which industries had the highest-paying jobs. Doing that gives you a possibility of eventually landing a job with decent pay, but it's a sure-fire way to guarantee that at some point in the near future, you're going to be miserable.
As the wise philosopher Eric Cartman once said: "Follow your dreams. You can reach your goals. I'm living proof. BeefCAKE!"
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Who fucking told you to buy a 400k house and lease 2 cars? If you like it...fine...but you sound like you hate your job and you fill your life with meaningless possessions to make yourself feel better.
BTW if your kids want cool clothes tell them to get fucking josb and earn it. Kepp spoiling the cunts and they will grow up to be bigger dick suckers than you already are.
I quit my job as a Perl programmer for a promising startup in order to buy the comic book store I worked at as a kid. I'm working twice as much for half the pay, but I'm happier than I've ever been. I'm using all the things I learned as a systems administrator, release engineer and programmer to create a complete inventory solution for the unique problems of a comic book shop.
I worked for some big names and some not so big ones, but now when I call the boss an idiot, I know what I'm talking about.
dan shahin
hijinx comics
2050 Lincoln Ave
San Jose, CA 95125
(408) 266-1103
dan@wackyhijinx.com
to mail me, first remove the evil spam.
I haven't seen a story abuse mixed metaphors like this in quite awhile. He sprinkles them so liberally and with such abandon, it's really tough to tell what he's actually talking about...
Like a seeing the trees through a forest.. A cat on a hot tin roof... Crepes for hotdogs... Like curiosity that killed the chickens before they could imagine a beowolf cluster of--Oops. Too far.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Setting up a hot dog cart/coffee shop/etc is by no means cheap. I'd love to be able to drop my job and set up a coffee shop.
I hardly feel sorry for anyone that got laid off from a $125,000/yr job anyway. Chances are he's got huge amounts of $$ sitting in the bank collecting interest while he has his relaxing job with his hot dog cart.
Oh, the agony he must be going through. *snort*
perspective is a funny thing. when everything you know is completely obsolete, people will still want crepes
After being laid off then suffering through a miserable contract job, i find that implementing the random nonsense that shoots out of the minds of marketing people is no longer even morbidly amusing. I'm 60% seriously considering applying as an AM book shelver at my local Borders. The trick is convincing the wife that a 60% pay cut is a good idea.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Apparently, some people just don't fucking learn...
And he dashed off a four- page business plan -- about 75 pages shorter than the average business plan he toted around during the boom -- that led to a $50,000 investment by family and friends.
Mr. Benavidez added $40,000 of his own money ("Everything I have," he said) and early next month he will open his stand on North Fifth Street and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. He named the place after his dog: "Sparky's American Food."
First they make crepes, then move up to manage creeps.
All that "slacking off" was simply a non-credit course in shmoozing, which is a very important skill that many of us geeks unfortunately never perfected.
Raw merit can be found in dollar-per-hour Indian programming sweatshops and desparate docile immigrants. If you want real money you have to learn to brown-nose with those who have it.
So far brown-nosing is the only thing left that is still tough to import.
Younger kids have Dilbert to explain the score to them, so I'm a member of what's probably the last generation that bought the bullshit that jobs that require intelligence and skill have high status and good pay.
Nope. Money and status are for people who already have money and for the (minimal number of) people they keep to protect their wealth. Programmers are paid whatever your bosses think they can get away with paying them - and not a cent more.
Why are managers paid so much more than their much more skilled employees? So that a class divide can be maintained between those who protect the owners wealth and those who generate it (as cheaply as possible). Solidarity between managers and employees could cause problems when execs decided to screw said employees, so it helps to place that class barrier between the two.
I'm not a communist, but I think we all need to understand how our system works. Capitalism doesn't actually generate meritocracies, it generates whatever system people with money think will buy them the most wealth at the moment. That's only good for workers when there's more demand for us than supply.
Rocky J. Squirrel
Our whole view of the stock-market has been upside-down. A general increase in stock prices is bad. It means the cost of retirement has gotten more expensive.
When the price of gas or electricity or food goes up, people don't say "gee, look how great our economy is doing".
But they do just that when it come to stocks.
Of course, if you already own the stock or have stock options, you love it when people drive the price up irrationally.
I've done this evaluation of my life as well.
Probably at the end of this year, I'll be giving up on doing serious IT stuff for a while.
Going back to uni, and working towards Theology qualifications (3 yrs), then a grad-dip in Linguistics (1 yr). Then going to Papua New Guinea and doing Bible Translation (for people who want it but don't have one yet - as they don't have a written language).
There's plenty of challenges there: Learning a language that is only spoken (and probably by just a few thousand people), devising a written form of their language, writing down the people's stories, showing people how to read their own language, translating educational books, and bibles for them.
Linguistics and Translation now use computers fairly heavily, especially for voice processing and pattern matching in speech. Clear and logical thinking is also a bonus.
I'm sure that it will be an interesting journey - and after 4 years in college my IT current knowledge will not be worth much at all, so it's a major career shift. I'll keep using my brains and applying the skills that have got me this far.
Of course I'll keep up to date with things that are happening in the field, but I won't get the same questions all the time.
I've had fairly good jobs in my 15 years working in IT: Computer tech at a private girl's school. Similar work with my church admin office. Currently working for a superannuation company.
While I enjoy my work, get respect and satisfaction from what I do, it just doesn't campare with the useful work that I have done. I prefer helping people learn and make something of their life, as opposed to just helping people make more money.
Ian.
After two years in a dot com with nothing actually released, I was feeling pretty depressed about what I was actually contributing to the world.
Now, two hours a week, I help underprivileged kids with their reading.
Try volunteering! It's easy, it's addictive, it's fun, and it's rewarding. And you get to put something useful on your gravestone.
I hope that you really meant to talk about crêpes and not crepes. As the former is the correct word for thin pancakes and the latter does not exist.
Dave Barnes 5 breweries within 6 blocks of my house
While reading this article, I couldn't help but notice that these people were not technologists. They were not passionate about technology. They were business people; focused on growing a business. Ultimately, they are entrepreneurs first. The product being focused on by their business seems to be a second consideration. They are dedicating their lives and passion towards the act of growing a business... which is good. Growing a small business takes that kind of drive.
I would suspect that Slashdot's readership is a bit different. To this group, technology IS the focus. In some cases, the business of technology is never an issue as one does not make one's living at it. In other cases, business comes a close second as it enables one to make a career out of working with the technology one finds interesting. Would this group be just as happy running their own hotdog stand? Perhaps not.
So what about that feeling of a fulfilled life? Seek balance.
One does not have to achieve all of life's satisfaction out of one's professional life. One should have other activities in one's life; hobbies, friends, community, etc. Feel like you don't accomplish things at work? Pick up a creative hobby and create on your own. Feel isolated during the weekday? Go be a part of your community on weekends or a social activity with friends. Balance your personal and professional life.
Become friends with your boss. Make your own hours. Work WITHOUT flourescent lighting.
No doubt, with all this and art you like on the walls, you will be much happier.
I agree 100% Not in all cases mind you, but I have no objection to giving this particular site my email. So far I have had zero emails from NY Times that weren't requested (ie I reinstalled my browser and forgot my spaghetti-goobledygook password.)
Who did what now?
After 16 years in the IT industry I got tired of contracting out to pointy haired bosses. So when the market crashed I left the industry and became a starving Nursing student this summer.
On one of my classes I turned in a paper one day late and the teacher got all hardcore and wanted to lower my grade from an A to a C. So I used my former $70/hr sales and programming skills to offer her a class web page if she would settle on a B. So she did and I did and that's how I kept my GPA up this summer. Took me just a few hours work and I photoshopped her picture to make her look fatter (Ha HA!)
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
Now, all I need is for a truck to sideswipe me as I back out of my driveway, and I'll be set for life!
--
Socrates was asked where he was from. He replied not "Athens," but "The world."
HR Director: So, what do you want to do?
Me: I don't know. I was thinking I like... animals. Maybe I'd be a vet?
HR Director: An evil vet?
Me: [long pause]...No... Maybe like work in a petting zoo...
HR Director: An evil petting zoo?
Me: You always do that!!!
HR Director: What?
Jesus...
I guess as a guy who got into this whole 'computer fad' back in the early 80's, I don't have much sympathy for all you poli-sci "Johnny come Lately" sorts.
I love computers. I make things w/ computers. I produce, and produce well. I never worked for any of those stupid one-night companies with no product, no vision, and nowhere to go after wasting a few million dollars.
And I have no plans of changing my profession now. But I can say one thing, thank god, and good riddance.
"...a piece of paper valuable only as ass-wipe."
I'm a 42-year old returning to get my bachelors degree. Believe me, without that "ass-wipe" you don't get past the morons in the human resources department.
Without that "ass-wipe", you get no interviews. Without that "ass-wipe" you have to shake down your friends for leads -- and they have none to give to anyone without "ass-wipe".
--Richard
Before I get flamed, let me say - I've worked in IT support for about eight years; before that I was studying CSEngineering; now I work for a Business Faculty (including the Business Graduate School aka the MBA factory), directly supporting these people face-to-face, holding their hands and practicing my sock-puppet theatre tutorial skills.
Furthermore, everything said here is my opinion only, not that of my employers / current educational institution.
So let me get this straight: as was with the Y2K bug, we informed our managers and clients that some machines and programs might have some problems that need to be examined.
Similarly, we tried to explain to our managers and clients the potential involved in facilitating communication in the Internet.
And just because these suit-wearing, tie-cutting-blood-supply-to-brain, six-figure salary, two-figure worth, oh-so-hip, oh-so-hot business brainstormers took what we said, amplified it beyond all reality to their managers and CEOs, stupidly leapt before they looked, blabbed it to the same media that gave us "Current Affairs" shows NOW describe themselves as "professionally depressed" and describe our work as "vapo[u]r" and have epiphanies over hot dogs then proceed to have idiot photos taken of themselves with huge wood and plastic hodtdogs, I'M SUPPOSED TO ADMIT THAT MY PROFESSION IS ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS!?
Screw that, screw the MBAs and CEOs and screw the media who pushed that image onto the public and pushed the unjustifiable horror stories of Y2K and gave undeliverable promises.
I write scripts and still write programming assignments for the degree I'm doing now. When I make it work, I'm proud of the work I produce and I'm proud of the fact that my clients understand what the problem is and how it has to be fix because I can explain it to them in non-technical plain English.
What's Brian Benavidez going to do if his hot dog franchise falls over? Blame it on carryover and net lag from his IT boom? Could it be in ten years time when the next historically-cyclic tech-boom takes off and he's missing out on his corporate bennies and kickbacks and six-figure-salaries, he's going to blame IT people again? He's going to blame bad offcuts from animals with Mad Cow disease for his poor product? Or maybe it's because Sony didn't allow his cross-marketing scheme! Damn the media for not publishing any good and sufficiently inspirational and motivational books for him to read while he read and slept in 'til midday!
Or maybe it's because those CEOs and MBAs and TLA POQs didn't have enough of a clue to listen to the people who understood the situation better than he did.
"I buy eggs, flour and cheese and turn it into things people like and will pay more for than I did". Well, I like the idea of writing code that makes people go "ooh, cool" or fixing some user's problem and having them go "oh, thank you so much".
"Hot dog stands are about handling real merchandise and interacting with real customers. It takes hard work and time to see results when you build a business the old-fashioned way."
Yeah, well my IT service takes hard work and time. I can look at my code and see that I can make it really work. I can talk to my clients and see that they're real small furry clients from Alpha Centauri.
If these MBAs were too dopey to see that they themselves helped build a house of cards and cried cried cried when it all fell down, whose problem is that - the IT people whom they wouldn't listen to, OR THEIR OWN STUPID SELVES?
If they still want to get rich, either turn them on to manual labour or tell them to use the brains they should've been developing while they were buying their Masters of Business Administration degrees.
As most people just seem to be telling their stories, for good or for bad, about the IT industry, maybe people have some ideas about this:
What are the most portable IT skills? I love the IT industry, but would rather live outside major cities, or at least have the option to move around. What skills, other than doing desktop support, are the easiest to find work in?
I know far too many people who have quit their kosher IT jobs because at the end of the day they felt they hadnt created anything. Most of them moved on to be music producers and chefs. In my opinion(and im sure the masses will agree...) work sucks. But I find OTHER things that keep me happy such as playing music or some other form of release. Finding a job that keeps you happy AND comfortable is like finding that $100 bill just lieing in the middle of nowhere... its highly unlikely to happen.
I think it's a freaking disaster.
This business-secotor needs to pull themselves out of this misary and go back to do sound business.
I would like to open an Open Sauce restaurant where you get the recipies for what you eat. Just to prove I would prepare and serve it better than the customers could themselves. And they would know what they eat.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
... for those dot-commers who have the balls to leave the tech industry and make a living in more traditional industries. As a former Excite@Home employee, I've had the opportunity to see myself and many coworkers that I consider my friends get laid off without little or no severance. And I had the opportunity to see the diversity of how different people handle the situation. One of my friends who still has yet to find a job, insists he is still worth $110K per year and will not settle. Others had the balls to admit they need money more than they need pride and have taken interim jobs. Myself, I've been lucky enough to find another tech job, albeit, with a 30% pay cut from my old salary.
And me being a technologist I have to say that I would hardly qualify for anything else but technology! I would probably kill myself while taking care of the pizza oven or whatever. I know it's sad and maybe an alarming signal for the state of our society but I think I'm not alone here. If you're a techie, you're a techie for life (sometimes)! Sometimes I wonder what I would have done if I had been born 100 years ago...
And even with this background note that it's also possible to have a completely different after-work life, like having a girlfriend, going out, having non-tech hobbies and stuff. That's where I think the geek stereotype is overrated, because probably most of us have this sort of balance in one way or the other.
don't flatter yourself
No, money cannot get "lost". Real money goes from hand to hand: this means some people made a lot of money out of the dot-com bubble.
I you mean of course "potential money", which are shares and stock-options... Those were not real money: you couldn't use it. If you but a share at 5$ and it soars up to 50$, you have not made 45$: you would make 45$ is you sold it at once...but until you sell it the share itself is just worth 5$ to you. If the company where you invested 5$, goes belly up, you lost 5$...nothing more and nothing less. And that is the "real" money that was lost..and someone has got it in his pocket. Who? Nobody, knows..but someone has.
I've watched some of the most talented programmers around get fucked over, simply because some hotshot wannabee was a little better than they at self-promotion, and a little less scrupulous about being honest
Welcome to planet earth, if you think it owes you a living think again. If you act like a doormat you will be treated like one. The world isn't fair the world isn't honest and it sure as hell doesn't owe anyone a living. Its all a game, learn the rules and play well and you will succeed. Let other people push you around shuffled from project to project according to the whims of upper management and you aren't in charge of your own destiny.
And as for the idea that Just like the music and movie industries, the computer industry was started by people who sincerely loved their art what a load of rubbish. United Artists anyone ? Just for the love of it ? Rubbish it was about power and control and a recognition that having control means you don't get buggered over. Why did the Beatles found Apple ? To get control. Being the person who gets pushed around has never been the place to be happy. Whether a pleb under the Romans, a serf in the middle ages or a basic coder in the 90s, you are the smallest piece that others will treat as nothing. Sounds harsh but the only way out is to change things yourself. By being someone who seeks to change you become one of the people telling rather than the people being told what to do.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Big time fun! Besides, people are gratefull: sometimes I get more than a case of beer. Last time a got a whole box of Champagne, real one, no shit! Okay, it was a letfover from a marriage, but who cares.
I the beginning I wanted nothing, but for some reason people hate it when you provide them a service for nothing and won't call. They *always" wanted to give money (average 25$/intervention). I don't want that, I like helping people so I came up with the "case of beer" contract. Works great! :-))
Recently I have often thought about opening a sandwich shop, or a restaurant, and kissing the I.T world goodbye forever. There seems to be something intrinsically honourable about providing real physical goods in return for payment - sometimes I feel like a vulture in the line of work I do, as if I am just adding percieved value, not anything tangible.
Because most of what I do is completely abstract - and I suppose this applies to most tech workers - sometimes I feel as if I am not providing any "real" value. After all, how can you measure, in physical terms, the analysis of a kernel panic,the securing of a network, or a chunk of code?
Ideally I think I would like to be a lumberjack - get up, chop wood, sleep. This kind of life really appeals to me right now, especially as my curent "skillz" will be obsolete within 2 years.
Making a business from selling food, clothes, even chopping wood is not innovative or daring. However, everybody needs to eat, everybody needs to dress, and we all need wood products. Maybe what I am feeling is my first realisation that I am not invulnerable - the last 18 months has taught me that *nobody* is indespensible - especially in the service industry we work in.
Super Awesome Broadband
I really don't understand what's wrong with all of the people I see on here complaining about how rough their tech job is. It makes me wonder if any of them have actually had a non tech job in their life.
I'm a senior systems engineer at a very large, well known corporation, and I love it. I've been working in information systems for 8 years and I'm no where close to 'burning out'. Every day, I come to work and work solving interesting problems designing and implementing large scale internal applications that help the people I work with do their jobs better. Not only do I get to use the tools I want to use, and create useful tools that the people I work with enjoy using. I work with a lot of really intelligent people that are fun to work with, and while we all work hard we all enjoy what we do and enjoy working together.
I started out my "career" in life digging holes in the ground for a landscaping company. I worked a lot of other crappy jobs as well.. dish washer, prep cook, data entry... I hated them all. I got lucky and landed myself a position in technical support in 1994 and worked my way up into higher paying more skilled tech positions and I never looked back.
when I'm driving to work in the morning and I see a road crew laying asphalt on the highway in 100 degree weather, the LAST thing I'm thinking about is how hard I have it. I really think a lot of people responding to this article need some perspective.
BTW, if you want me to test a revolutionary new header design, I'm game. I just want the lil' car to be quiet enough to hear the tunes - it could be ballsy yet quiet, right?
db
Cig:
ôô
Sorry to say it, but buddy, you don't know anything about small business.
The story was about dotcom people opening up their own businesses. Not leaving hi-tech to work for McDonald's.
In a small business, you have even less time to take vacations with. Your small business, is your life. Without it, you have nothing.
If you open up a small business, there is little to no chance of you being able to take a vacation until you have at least moved past that 4 year mark. Then and only then, you can probably take a weekend or two off. That is, IF you have someone that you can trust with your life manning the place while you are gone.
Again, I say that, because a small business is the life of that business owner. Now, if that small business becomes larger and starts to branch out, like Starbuck's and a number of other companies. You have less to worry about as you will be moving into more of a CEO position.
However, from your statements. You haven't the drive to do that sort of thing. Stick to your job, it's thte only way that you will be able to live comfortably.
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
For the same reason you got bored. I work as a junior engineer on a project at my university, and the pay is great and most of the work is challenging (for an undergrad job anyway)
Anyway, this summer i started doing odd jobs for people in the area nights & weekends. Mostly grunt work. And I like doing it, albeit fewer than 15 hours a week, simply because it doesn't require my mind, and I actually accomplish something visible. Sometimes I enjoy being alone to my thoughts, and my thoughts are rarely on my work anymore than needed- which isn't much.
my $.02
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I read your rant, and if that's reality to you it's not mine. Complaints? Sure. Plenty. Going through each of your comments shows that while you write well your comments don't mesh with anything I've seen -- and I've seen some nasty environments. It's like you are attempting to out do Office Space and forgot that Office Space was fiction.
From what you've said, it looks like you worked in one or two jobs and now you want to extrapolate. For example: You were lied to by the company about cube privacy? You have eyes and a brain, look at it...it's a cube! Get a mirror or a shiny rock if you don't like people watching you. Drink less cafeene. Grow up and look for a better environment; smaller companies are generally better and more honest.
I'm a manager of a SysAdmin team, coming up the ranks from desktop support to server support to here. I know everyone has thoughts of "chucking it all" and doing something different Perhaps its the notion of getting out of a rut, and into the groove.
My parents, neither one a techy, keep talking about opening up a B&B. Every so often they go and look at B&Bs, attend a seminar, etc. They don't, for one reason or another. Perhaps after retirement...
Still, there is something to be said for delivering something that has permanence. I took a stained glass course a few years ago I finished my project a bit ahead of everyone, so one of the guys took me in the back and showed me this door he finished. Absolutely beautiful work! I looked at it and imagined this door on a house a century later, the family moving in talking about how fine the door was.
(Yes, all you cynics out there, I know the door could be broken in that time. Bite me!)
In contrast, most of the systems I support will likely not be around five years from now, much less fifty!
Why don't I chuck it all? I'm OK but not great at stained glass. My other hobbies (dancing, biking, cooking) are things that, though I enjoy and am pretty good at, but not good enough to make a living at. Besides, I think that, if I were to do some of these things professionally, I wouldn't enjoy them as much--it would be my new rut.
So, I have a job that I'm good at, make a good living at, and kinda enjoy. I accept that there ar parts I don't. And, I enjoy my life outside work.
The key is to have multiple sources of self-actualization. This means that, should one thing be sour at a moment (sucky time at work, stretch of bad weather that keeps me off the bike, etc.), my whole sense of worth doesn't go down the tubes.
Finally, someone else saw the article for what it was.
I can't stand it when the press starts writing about all of these out of work 'techies'. They tell all of these stories about young, out of work people, and what they are doing now that they don't have there huge corporate salaries anymore.
It seems that in all of these types of articles, they are no stories about 'techies', but instead about managers, marketing personnel, and sales people that happen to work for technical companies.
For the most part, the real geeks are doing just fine.
Even though I haven't coded for years, it seems like you always have the option to do so with Open Source. You can create your own project, no matter how small, and say "I did that". And if it takes off, you could change the world. Napster, Linux, etc.
But I have to say that I have about had my fill. Just because tech isn't as fun as it used to be. Big business has kicked tech in the nuts too many times. Now you can actually get arrested for hacking around with tech things. The DMCA and their breed of laws are going to force me to just quit the tech industry all together, after 9 years of working in it.
What'll I do? I have considered going to cooking school, just because I love it so much. My other option is to move to the south of France and become a goat farmer. Just something anti-tech.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Here's the real news... Diploma worth nothing. Experience worth nothing. Walk in to a D.C. area company with a security clearance, walk out with a job. Homeland security is the new boom, baby. There's more welfare flowing to the consultants and contractors than you could possible spend in a lifetime. Skills and personality, not required.
If its in rupees that would be...
100,000 rupees = 2,061.33 USD
Umm maybe it isn't much to boast about if its in China its
100,000 Yuan Renminbi = 12,081.96 USD
Still not very much. I feel sorry for the chap.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
...those who can't do, teach. Put that on your headstone, you self-righteous bugger you.
and it's taking that long, I'm sure Joe can just get another Fender Stratospheric 5,000 dollar pearl inlay ax and write it off as a "business expense"
No sig for you!!
You are making an argument in favor of ongoing deflation. Think about this for ten minutes.
Let's see, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley,Citigroup, and Bank of America made millions in the dot-com boom. A handful of techie types did too. The only people left high and dry were the suckers, as usual.
There are two types of people; those who divide people into two types of people, and those who don't.
Nobody seems to address the fact that a 30 year old with an ivy league MBA doesn't really do shit for most companies out there.
Of course you're not going to get a fucking job, you're interviewing for a top position and you have no track record! "Uh, yeah, if I worked for your company, I'd recommend saturating the market with $20 mil in advertising."
When my dot-bomb went under, the developers had little trouble landing on their feet. I went to a client, primarily because they needed someone who could be a mediocre designer, a decent coder, a flash and javascript hack, run meetings, write docs digestible by management....in short, a swiss army knife. The cocky 30-year-old 'executives' at my company were SOL, on account of their hubris, devotions to their own 'visions,' and inability to listen to criticism. It took me 3 days to get an offer, and a couple of these guys finally had to accept some lower-level footsoldier positions about 6 months later!
This article doesn't make any distinction between a 'dot-bomber' and a six figure MBA dot bomber.
It might sound popular to make those who chase the money sound like they are miserable but its not always true. There's nothing wrong with doing something only for the money. Some folks have actual after-work lives, therefore they don't have to love what they do. For them its just a job. If its a high paying enough job, they know they won't be doing it forever so its even better then anyway. Once they have reached their financial goals they will have completed their dreams and how could that make anyone miserable?
So to those who are chasing the dollar, CHASE ON!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I'd buy you a green dress.
...but not a real green dress. That's cruel.
...a program that shaves 0.0001 penny off the books with each transaction. My God it's genius!! They'll never notice!
Oh, thænk yöu trøll.
Typical corporate/commercial programming does sort of engender existentialism. I mean, basically you are shifting around little electromagnetic bits. Your craft lies entirely in your head or in some human inaccessible form (at least authors actually have hardcopy). It's hard to feel you *produce* anything. Maybe the solution to the malaise is to find something morally fulfilling to do with your skills, unfortunately most of the more difficult problems in this world will not be solved by computing skills.
Anyhow, it's nice to do something, anything physical. Sometimes I wish I were the groundskeeper outside...at least they *do* something. When they are done they can point at it and see that they have made a physical difference in their surroundings. I guess it's just romanticism. Although if you own a house, you probably have ample opportunity for handiwork. Just the other day it took me about four hours to fix a really old toilet involving two trips to the hardware store because the mechanism was so old. But once I fixed that bitch it felt good. Not like software problems where you fix it and you're like "wow, I spent how long on that stupid shit? because somebody misplaced an operator. yay"
I'll be at the head of the exodus of tech workers become farmers...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
There are downfalls - there is a lot of uncertainty in the market, our company just got bought, there will be layoffs, we don't make much money. But we do MAKE something - semiconductor inspection equipment. Real hardware that costs big bucks.. And I like my job and am happy with it!
I never got in with the vaporware/web economy crap which was mostly driven by ADD-inspired entrepreneurs with a VISION but not a good one.
Richard
It was show true in the courts (in the US, at least) that personal information does have a value and you cannot advertise something as free if you provide it in return for personal info.
The current tech industry malaise is good for this reason: people are in the tech industry just to make money will get out and do something else. For those of us who love tech, will stick through the tough times. I can't imagine working a non-tech job, even for more money. I say if your not happy working in tech, get out of it and do something else. Even if you're making a ton of money, in the end you won't be happy if you don't like your job.
If you make/sell donuts, haircuts, etc. . . you're likely to immediately see the results of your work. Someone eats, or looks good, they're pleased with the service, and bing-o! You feel happy, you've done you're job. However, most jobs that give such a instant and tangible feeling of satisfaction, tend not to pay quite as well as the more typical office job. Not too much money to spend on stuff. Some leave these jobs and find more lucrative work, in an office cubicle.
In essence, many of us are trading in this feeling of gratification for more money, which allows us to spend more (new toys make us happy). Eventually, some people get tired of their neat little shit, and want to get more out of their work, so they go back to selling homemade donuts.
I suppose it's really just a matter of which you prefer, a quickly satisfying job, or Soulcalibur 2 'till your eyes bleed (mmmmm, soulcalibur twooooo. . .)
--What, you ain't know about them country fried sessions?
Pfft... Sorry I'm so cynical right now, but as someone on the sysadmin/hardware tech. side of things, I'm finding it extremely difficult to find a new job.
Meanwhile, my daily job searches and "search bots" on Monster.com, hotjobs.com, stlouisatwork.com (I live in St. Louis, Missouri), brainbuzz.com, and other such job search sites only bring me hits on jobs requiring software developers.
For every one job asking for a system administrator or support specialist, I find 20 or 30 that want application developers, web developers, Java or C++ programmers, or other similar jobs which I can't perform.
I get the distinct impression that software developers are complaining mostly because they aren't seeing the salaries they'd like... not because the jobs aren't out there.
The gentleman who wrote MMM, Fred Brooks, has somewhere in the book, I believe in the foreward of the 25th anniversary edition, that 'for the ability to earn my daily bread doing that which I would gladly do for free, I am eternally grateful'.
Honestly, that's almost the level of love you need to stay in this line of work.
I know this is going to sound like 'boring old fart lecturing the kiddies', but for those of you without 10+ yrs of experience in the biz, you need to remember that decent salaries for doing this are a pretty recent phenomenon. I didn't earn $40K a yr until '95, by which time I was already getting close to 20 yrs of experience. The salaries being handed out in the early to mid 80's, particularly to those who worked with PC's, were abysmal at best. Those who entered the field in the late 70's to early 80's had to do it for love, because it sure as hell wasn't for the money. I was grateful simply for the ability to get paid at all to do something that I got such a charge out of in high school.
So, to the hot dog and soup guys I say I'm glad you found your calling, and I hope it brings you as much pleasure as mine does me.
Personally, I just liked having the money. Trade hot dogs for a $100,000 paycheck. Yeah right.
Yes! Money goes somewhere!
A similar situation: people say the dot.coms "blew" all their investment money. But money goes somewhere. Well, they were spending it on goods and services provided by other companies and individuals. In a way it was a great redistribution of wealth, while it lasted: e.g., rich investors money gets spent on web design and previously unemployable philosophy degree holding designer makes 40k then 60k then 80k a year. Wish it would have lasted...
I get the distinct impression that software developers are complaining mostly because they aren't seeing the salaries they'd like... not because the jobs aren't out there.
Trust me, it's pretty horrible for programmers as well. There's been so much convergence that the privilege to compete is reserved for the few.
It depends on where you live, too. UK, Canada and the U.S. all have different deficits and surpluses depending on the branch of IT you're talking about.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Ok, not a very useful comment I guess, but I survived the commercial breakdown by just not doing it in the first place. I currently work for a library, and previous to that for a public service broadcaster. Yay me! ;)
> Of course, not funding a nice technical solution to spam is still a terribly good idea, wether five years ago or now.
You must be on crack. Funding a technical solution to spam is a great idea if you have a good business plan with realistic revenue sources. ANY business plan with realistic revenue sources is a good idea to fund! My idea doesn't rely on crude filtering to eliminate spam, and it would also kill it on the server level, thus freeing up all that wasted bandwidth (which filters don't do). It would completely kill the entire spam industry. And the business plan I've come up with has 5 different methods of revenue generation (none of which are based on advertising). I've been through 5 high-tech startups in Seattle in 7 years, and I know where and why things go bad. I'm moving back to Seattle within a month or so, so hopefully I'll be able to find a programmer or two to help me create the initial free version.
Sadly, I too will have to change careers and not by choice. Tendonitis has made typing unbearable. I don't have a clue what to do now. Here I was doing exactly what I loved but no more. Wish me luck!