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...)"

Comments

Yes..

[mindstrm]

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.

Oh yes.

[MattTC]

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.

Re:I agree

[case_igl]

So, ummm...Why don't you quit?

If it's because you are in love with the material goods and life you can (or can't) live because of your income, then you have no place to complain.

I currently manage nine people, four of whom are developers. I have to say I have more respect when people have a little backbone and say "No, I requested this time off under the company policies" than "Okay boss, I'll cancel my wedding to reboot the server."

Not standing up for what you really believe in won't get you very far in life - in the IT department, or while working drive-thru. You'll always be the whipping boy until you learn that.

Case

Re:How Sad

[Tablizer]

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..

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.

Technology heros

[ergo98]

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.

Odd, that...

[Verteiron]

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.

There ARE meaningful IT jobs

[HisMother]

I know I'll get modded into oblivion for this, but people, if you take a job you don't like just because you're promised big bucks, then you're a whore. If you like programming or administration or software design or whatever, then fabulous, have at it. Find a job based on the value of the contribution you can make, at a company that values your contribution. I'm sorry, but they DO exist. They don't promise you big bucks, because they do REAL things, not make believe, pie in the sky things. There are companies where no-one's ever used the word "paradigm."

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.

I succumbed!

[pongo000]

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."

Grass is always greener....

[maggard]

Years ago I lived with a sweetheart and a room-mate. We all worked in tech and none of us in positions that ever saw anything "produced". In my case the job was basic drudgery, in their's they were Engineers at Wang who had every project they worked on cancelled in it's last month (and folks were suprised when Wang foundered!)

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.

Re:Grass is always greener....

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Just what I have ALWAYS said. If you HATE computers, what are you doing? I GENUINELY love working with computers and fixing problems for users, setting up new servers, fixing pcap files so things print correctly and just about everything I do at my job. I live and breath computers. I have a PDA, a Laptop as well as a desktop and I can't imagine parting with any of them. Now, don't get me wrong, I know when to put things down. I know when my family comes first (always). When I am working with computers though, it feels like play to me. That's why I love it. I can't imagine doing anything else. I can also point to all of those schedules coming from my printer and when I see a student carrying their schedule between classes, I can point to those 18,000 students and say, I made it possible for these folks to know where their classes are (with a little help from my developers!). I can point to those graduates and say I ran the machine that kept track of their records making it possible to tell if they could graduate or not by pressing a button. That's my product. I don't need to see a hot dog, a cake or crepe to know I have done well. All I have to see is a happy student when a registration clerk tells them they are all set to go for the next quarter or that the school had recieved their transcript. Granted, I have always know what I did, but sometimes IT folks live in their own world so much they don't think or know what they are programming or fixing things for. Next time you want to go for a walk, try walking around in other areas of your building and meeting the users you set that server up for. Sometimes, they are actually nice people! Sometimes you find out that valuable piece of information for that bug you are tracking down. Sometimes, you make a friend.

Alot of dot commers are bitter is because they were truly just in it for the money. They really hated the job, but they liked the money so they came in everyday and worked many hours. If someone offered me gobs of stock and told me I would do this and I asked them what did they do and they told me just publish a webpage or give away free coffee or sell groceries online, even then, I would have laughed in their face and walked back to my job confident that the College I work for would still be there at the end of this crazy mess. Who still has a job? Granted, I will never make gobs of money (not much risk at all in my job), but I will have a house, a car and a happy family to show for it. That's all I can ask for. I don't NEED a BMW. I don't necessarily need a new computer (although one would be nice, my current one works just fine). I don't need a IN Home Movie Theater(who has time for it?). My point, be happy with what you have. If you don't like your situation, change it. If you are unhappy, but making gobs of money, find some job you'd be happy in that pays enough money. In the long run, you will be much happier and a better person. Oh, and I don't think most people CARE if their Hot Dogs were made from hormone free beef (wait, don't cows already produce hormones??). All they want is a good hot dog. If you can produce that and stick to your morals and do it for a good price, you will do well. It appears the Hot Dog guy in the story is doing OK. And isn't that all we can ask is that we are doing OK?

Re:Grass is always greener....

[guttentag]

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

Office parks are the factories of the modern age. If you think they're cushy, you need to stop drinking the Kool-Ade.

I worked in one Silicon Valley office park that was built on top of a dump -- we had various gas meters in the building to measure the noxious fumes that were seeping from the decomposing waste up into the building and flashing warning lights no one understood that would blink for weeks until an inspector showed up. You fight your way down the parking-lot freeway every morning, spend five minutes looking for a parking space, and ultimately you end up parking several buildings away and hope you don't get towed. Your boss says "we're working on it" every single time you ask about it, until you realize that the only thing you're likely to influence by asking is your future employment with the company. You "clock in" by swiping your access card at the door and wander through a beige cubicle farm to the cloth-walled space your boss refers to as "your office."

Management tells you that your cubicle is a gift of privacy from them, but there's nothing private about it. It's designed to make you face the wall so anyone can walk up and look over your shoulder for several minutes before you notice the cheaply-constructed floor quiver a bit when the person shifts his weight. You turn around and ask how long he was standing there. "Only a person who has something to hide would be concerned about people looking over their shoulder," management says, despite the fact they told you the cubicle was a valued gift of privacy.

On an assembly line, you sit/stand with a person on either side of you. That arrangement is inefficient because you could turn to your neighbor and socialize to break the hours of monotony. Worse yet, you might find out that you're doing the same work as your neighbor for half the pay. In a cubicle, you are intentionally isolated -- you can't look someone in the eye without turning around and coercing them to do the same.

If factory workers on the assembly line had cubicles, they would never have organized unions. By isolating employees in their own, mass-produced boxes the company gains the advantage to trample the employees individually. You can flatten one worker bee without a problem, but you'd have some respect for an organized hive. The company calls its flyswatters "policies" and tout them as though they have the force of law.

"Company policy is that we don't pay anyone more than X. You have to do X because it's company policy. You have to provide your own computer because it's company policy. And when we terminate you, you have to leave the computer with us. Everyone else is doing it. It's company policy. No we don't travel expenses, you must have misunderstood company policy."

You generally don't see anyone unless it's a social engineer who has had the word "manager" appended to his title (product manager, account manager, project manager, etc.). Sixty percent of the people in my company had the word "manager" appended to their title to scare the 30% who had "engineer" in their title into acquiescence. Thus, a "manager" who really has no authority over an "engineer" can go to an engineer's cubicle at 5:30 and demand an all-nighter, threatening to call the engineer "uncooperative" if his plate is already full. Meanwhile, the "manager" goes out to dinner, to a bar, home to sleep and comes in the next day at 9, at which point he turns his cell phone back on. Most of these "managers" know nothing about the work that needs to be done, but they make up for that as masters of office politics, often dumping insufficient information on the engineer's desk to shift the blame for a "slipped" deadline.

Office parks are not posh. They are simply designed with the bare minimum needed to present the appearance of complicity with labor laws and ensnare workers who fear the stigma of a traditional factory. I wouldn't go back to a cubicle farm if the company actually paid me.

Re:Plumbing

[Tony]

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.

Dude, if you're out of work, any job is an advance in salary, not a drop. Face it, your current salary is $0/year, no matter what your more most recent job paid.

Depends on your management...

[kstumpf]

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.

Why the bubble really burst when it did...

[Tumbleweed]

> 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*

Manager Double-speak

[GoofyBoy]

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"

Passion and Balance

[_Sprocket_]

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.

Re:So true!

[Tablizer]

I work from home thousands of miles away from my employer (Sun Mic) and love it....I don't have to travel. I dont' have to drive. I wake up and I'm at work. Couldn't be nicer. Not to mention the six figure salary.

Aside from rubbing your paradise into the wounds of the rest of us who got screwed in the melt-down, do you have a point?

Besides, if they are not bothered by remote-ness, then your replacement may be in India or China, where they *don't* have to pay six figures and can get FOUR hard-working people for the same fricken price.

Don't underestimate the power of bean-counters. Your number may be up soon.

I Love My Job

[gnugeekus]

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.

Yes.

[Hard_Code]

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...

A Classic Dilemma

[PMadavi]

This, of course, is what many socio-political theorist in the early 20th century noted as being one of the main problems of capitalism: The separation of the worker and his product. However, they didn't account for the grace of consumerism, which can remedy the malaise they thought capitalism brings about.

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. . .)