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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 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!
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
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.