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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.
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 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
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...
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.
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.
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
"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."
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.
(* 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!!!....the only problem is, I make 1/6 of what I used to make. *)
If you are male, you will be discriminated against. Parents see you as statistically more likely to be a child molestor, so they may steer clear.
Me, I just molest code.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Free means freedom of speech. Free means freedom to use a product in the manner that you choose. Free does not mean giving personal information to view copyrighted news.
You missed the definition of free which also means you don't pay for it. In that sense, NY Times registration is free.
Funny how that works,isn't it?
Je ne parle pas francais.
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!
(* 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. *)
What do you mean by "well educated"? MBA's?
I started taking some MBA courses once. Many of them were vague common-sense bullsh8t, especially courses in "magement techniques". I suppose if you totally lack common-sense it might help.
Table-ized A.I.
well, i guess the obvious question is: is what you are doing now all that you are capable of doing? do you really feel that you'll never be doing anything better?
some years ago, i was listening to bruce williams on the radio one night and he commented that he would never hire anyone who was unemployed. The reason, he said, was that anyone who really wanted to work could find a job. in his opinion, someone ready to take an 'inferior' job just to be self-sufficient was an employee who would do whatever it might take to get a job done. someone 'too proud' to take an 'inferior' job was someone who would only do those parts of a job that he felt were 'worthy' of him.
<shrug> ymmv.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
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'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."
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.
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.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
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.
Bruce Williams? The guy who writes an advice column for the Jewish World Review? He's supposed to be an expert on hiring?
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
> 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.
You forget, these are the people who'd rather spend hours whining about something than spending 5 minutes to find a solution. They like having something to complain about.
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.
He's still got his nightclub.
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'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!
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*
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."
And IT is more important than food? I can do without computers. I can't go without food.
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.
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.
You will help those hapless folks more if you build one house for them as opposed to spreading middle eastern mythology to some indigenous tribes that have plenty of their own.
Get a grip on what really matters. Become a doctor or a carpenter and you will truly change people's lives. Become a theocrat and you just help breed hatred and division within the human race.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
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?
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?
It's the part where they demand personal information.
And if you think your personal information isn't of value, ask yourself why the Times wants it. Then go find out how much it costs to buy a mailing list.
Dude... you write like... William Shatner... speaks...
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
well, the bruce williams to whom i was referring used to have a 'how to succeed in business' radio talk show ... probably still does. according to himself, he put himself through college while working three jobs (stay-at-home wife & several kids, too) & went on to found a number of businesses which made him a millionaire. then he got into the business of telling other people how to be successful in business.
the radio show was often interesting.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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!!
...a program that shaves 0.0001 penny off the books with each transaction. My God it's genius!! They'll never notice!
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?
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.
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.
(* Did you try to take CS courses in some known university? *)
:-)
This was *after* the CS degree. I wanted to de-nerd myself.
Management books said things like, "If your employees seem upset about something, then morale may be low. You may try to get some feedback about why they are upset. Remember, though, that you should never wait until problems are apparent to obtain feedback."
Good fatherly advice, but ahole PHB's purposely don't do that crap, and nagging them via book ain't gonna help.
Nagging does not fix aholes. It just gives them more ideas for how to best piss people off. (I just wish my wife would realize that and give up
Table-ized A.I.
(* Nope. Money and status are for people who already have money *)
I don't necessarily agree with that. I see a lot of immagrants make their way to the top by playing the BS game well.
(* 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.*)
*All systems are run by BS*. Merit *is* a factor, just not the primary one. It may be say 30 percent in a capitalist economy and 10 percent in a socialistic one, for example.
One thing the PHB's don't realize is that they could probably pay many geeks *less* if they treat them better. It seems they get their jolleys from stepping on people because that is what was done to them before they rose.
They make the mistake of thinking that everybody is like them.
Table-ized A.I.
> 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.