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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...)"
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.
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 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!
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
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.
You hit on an attitude I've seen over and over-- not one that is necessarily wrong, but one that separates those who do thier job based on principles of enjoyment where others do thier job based on priniciples of economics.
I love computers. I am 16. By all accounts, I should be some dork cracking away at IIS boxen in between my job at Subway and my evil evil filesharing.
But I'm not.
Instead, I actively seek out oppurtunities to use my skills- even for *gasp* free! And honestly, not only has some of my non-paying work been my most rewarding, but it has also lead to experience and oppurtunities to make lots of money in a short amount of time-- what many in the industry seek out, and miss, because they have the wrong approach.
For example, I work for my school's computer lab during the summer. Not a whole lot of money there-- I'm not sure, cause I haven't checked the math, but I'd bet I make maybe 2 or 3 dollars and hour for my work there. I don't do it because I want to make all kinds of money-- I do it because I want the experience, and I see hacking BSD in an air conditioned lab as a much riper experience than washing dishes for the local college. Anyway, our school was approached by a company selling a management product that would allow students to track grades and assignments using a webbased interface. As such, our school's BSD server needed to be configured with MySQL and PHP. So impressed was this company with my configuration that they recruited me to setup Linux solutions for their other clients-- at a far better wage. Soon, I will be coding small stuff for them. From there, I hope to progress with the company as they grow and mature.
Those who treat their IT job as an investment rather than an easy way to a good salary are the ones who will find what the other is looking for.
~geogeek
Where the hell did they ask about stress levels? They certainly didn't ask in Los Angeles.
If you're fixing Joe Superstar's guitar and time is ticking away at the most expensive studio in town and you've got people from Big Ass Corporate Music Company calling you every five minutes asking "Is it fixed yet? Is it fixed yet?" then damn straight, you have stress.
One of my best family friends would be placed in this situation again and again. He eventually left the LA area, first for Tokyo to work for a guitar company, then finally for Portland, OR where as far as I know he's now working for a nondescript music store.
I'm sure music techs in New York City have horror stories like this too. That NPR story is full of crap.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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.