Slashdot Mirror
Techies Working for Peanuts
The San Francisco Chronicle has a story about laid-off techies getting desperate and going to work for, well, nothing. No offense to these people, if you're up against the wall you do whatever you can, but I hope they're aware that most of them are not going to get even the slightest compensation for their time.
Could it be more depressing to be about to graduate with a computer science degree?
If experienced people are having to work for nothing, what hope is there for a recent grad? Any advice?
Same story different source, most of the people in these situations are either a) product/project managers or b) marketers/sales people. Talented engineers and programmers can always find work, if they are willing to relocate.
a jobless friend of mine volunteered to work for free at a company that he desired employement with.
about 3 months later they hired him.
his work ethic got noticed, and a several people figured out he was too valuable to let go.
My opinion? I know a lot of techs with good work ethics...and I think that some of the managers now had a name and a face and they only had good things to say about him.
when a slot came open....instead of interviewing hundreds of hungry techs...they hired him.
Whilst I couldn't see myself managing for long without regular compensation, if I was out of work I would definitely consider voluntary/low-paid work simply to keep up to date. There is no easier way of keeping up to date with standards and new technologies than working in your area of expertise (xml/xsl + related in my case). I realize this is only applicable to those who work with technologies that change (I guess most of us here ?) but is still valid for others as its a great way of keeping the brain ticking and looks pretty good on the CV/resume too. Gareth.
In all honestly, these people - where they can, I recognise some have families with other major commitments etc - need to move to where there is work. Yes, salaries are five digits every where other than a few hot spots - but those hot spots (a) are effing expensive to live in and (b) don't have the jobs any more.
IT remains a growing field. The adjustments in the last couple of years were specific and related to a crash in one, relatively small but high profile, area of the industry. If you're prepared to work for options, consider instead casting your job searching net over a wider area.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I got laid a bit before Thanksgiving, the market is soft, etc, etc. While I get serious about the job hunt (and have rested enough to recover from just plain burnout on my part), I've done a bunch of "free" work for interesting places.
It's not benefiting corporations, but helping wire up a community center, getting a box read as a firewall and one ready as a mailserver/file server/web server so that they can teach kids computers and how to build web pages is kinda rewarding.
Do I expect another volunteer to mention me to their company when they have a need? I wouldn't turn it down, but it's not WHY I started.
Am I learning new skills? Not from this, but I'm doing some stuff in that playground that I've wanted to learn (playing with AFS and LDAP and such).
Fill your time as you want, gain new skills.
I'm not too hyped about doing real work for no real compensation (I have plenty of single ply stock options and they chafe - I much prefer the two ply stock options).
I hate to quote a movie, but, "You are not your job.". I firmly believe that.
And I agree, people do ask, "What do you do?". I started truly hearing that when I was unemployed, and it finally started to click with me that for most people, their jobs are their lives, whether or not they like those jobs. That's truly, literally, sad.
I challenge any of those posting that people should go get a job, or that if they have good skills they can find a job, etc., to please post their phone number at work, so people can call and ask them who at their company to contact.
Companies posting job offers in Silicon Valley are getting THOUSANDS of resumes. So give people a break about finding a job, please. It ain't gonna happen. Even Starbucks isn't hiring.
In fact, if you live in a town where a Starbucks is hiring, please post that.
I've hoped this has knocked some of the pomposity out of a lot of you; if so, this cloud has a silver lining.
2 years ago 95% of the people on slashdot were CONVINCED that they would never worry about work, since they were just so amazingly skilled that they could always get a job. Unemployment was for those other people, those liberal arts majors and all the people that made fun of them in high school and aren't we showing them since we're all rich and will stay that way. Oh, guess we won't.
Most of the laid -off people I have seen are in this category
- novice graphic designers (2 yrs exp). Most of them working some totally unrelated field then saw the dot-com boom, went for a quick diploma, and joined the 'hi-tech' companies
- marketting types..
- 'irritable' programmers, who think all programming is pressing that button in Visual Studio IDE. These are again the 'quick-buck' types, who doesn't know what a 'stack' is..
All my friends who are real techies (programmers / engineers / sys admins) are still employed. Sure they don't get 20% raises these days. But they still have a job.
This just my observation, I am NOT saying who ever doesn't have a job is not a real techie. What do other slashdotters think?
please no flames.
A typical engineer response. "What the fuck do we need marketing for?"
I used to work in Engineering. I was the sysadmin in the VMS Development Group, amoung other positions. I moved to marketing because I was annoyed with the way things were done.
Needless to say, I found out it was alot more difficult than I thought. It's not a hard/fast science like coding. THAT'S was makes it difficult.
Don't knock someone elses job unless you have walked in their shoes.
FWIW, I've been out of work since Aug 01. I went back to school full-time till my son was born, now I'm a stay at home Dad till things pick up.
I used to work as a marketing engineer at Alpha Processor Inc/API NetWorks.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
I'm a laid off Network Engineer with a CCNA. I couldn't get shit so I mooched unemployment for all it was worth and got a job as an automobile mechanic. Thankfully I had formal education in both fields. I was so sick of the IT world, I'm just glad I had a backup plan.
They don't want 15+ years experience in 5 different platforms, 8 languages, database design, applications, systems analysis, or training and documentation backgrounds.
They aren't looking for programmers who understand business requirements, or who have full life-cycle experience with real-world applications.
They want youth, to be ground-up and spit out in 10 years.
Yes, I am bitter. I am a damn good programmer. But I'm 37, with no degree, and a mortgage and family to look out for.
Even short-term contracts are impossible to find these days.
I am starting to take some vo-tech courses. I'm thinking welding might be a good career move. Programming and UNIX administration is a field for the young.
I was un/under employed for about two years before finding my current job. I lost my last decent tech job just as the economy really began to bomb and was foolish enough to turn down a couple offers I had right away because I'd have had to move across the country. Within a couple months all offers had dried up and then the rest of the economy followed the tech economy down the drain and I could barely find minimum wage grunt work. I didn't have a lot of debt or a lot of savings. I had turned down better paying jobs in order to stay near my family so I didn't make big bucks during the boom.. making the mistake of figuring I could move to one of those areas after I had plenty of job experience soaked up. I made the mistake of thinking that not having credit cards or debt was a good idea. Boy did I get fscked. No income soon meant I owed back utilities and rent. Then the car went to shit (hit a massive pothole in the street) so my roommate couldn't do her job which required traveling to clients homes. (They were supposed to make other arrangements for her but luckily both her supervisors quit at that time putting her job in limbo.) Now totally screwed as we were unable to pay much of anything outside buying enough food to survive. Then the brilliant utils company shut off our electricity ruining our fully stocked fridge of food we couldn't afford to replace. Lease was up and we didn't have any money to renew it with so we started hoping around living with friends/family. Finally got unemployment to start sending me a check but they refused to send my roommate one because supposedly she quit her job (because her supervisors never filed the paperwork for a position change). Make due on a little unemployment check for a few months and then that runs out. Hang out with no money at all for a while and finally each find a shit job (at the same place.. after removing most of our resumes) and I got some contract work for about $.50/hr to help out a little. Were both offered better jobs for which we agreed to move for.. got there and they changed their mind so we're screwed totally. She's still unemployed but I finally got a new tech job. Doesn't pay what I'd like but I'm thankful to have something above minwage and not cleaning toilets. But for the most part we lived off something like $3000 for two years and racked up thousands of dollars in debt and much pain and suffering and thoughts of suicide.
:)
The only benefit was I cranked out a lot of good opensource code while unemployed and learned some new geek skills.
Now that I'm working again I'm paranoid to the extreme. I'm working on starting a couple unrelated small businesses. I still do freelance geek stuff but am also doing non-geek stuff to keep me from being so reliant on a single market.
The concept of being overqualified IMO is something that should be legally removed from job applicant considerations. You should not be able to turn down someone because you think their over qualified or just don't understand most of what is in their job history. An intelligent experienced worker has as much right to work at Burger King as a pimple faced virgin teenager. Just think American Beauty every time you're turned down for such a job.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I agree, but unfortunately, in my case, he was at fault.
He would never try compiling any of his pre-done-up code examples, so they were riddled with syntax errors (which newbie coders don't need to be exposed to, since they were already confused enough)
He'd have an example dealing with a data structure that was a "person" consisting of a first name, last name, and student ID. And then halfway through the code, he'd stop using person.studentid, and instead start using person.salary for no apparent reason.
When someone couldn't quite grasp converting numbers between various bases, instead of trying to explain it, he'd just throw more examples at them & get increasingly aggressive and demeaning when it didn't magically clarify itself for them.
So I'll fully agree, there are plenty of times where people are just nitpicking (like at conferences, when during a presentation, someone will stop the speaker to point out that they have a typo on their slides, and it should've been a period, not a comma at the end of that sentance), and I wish that were the case, but no such luck for me.
I managed a testing project for the main Intranet project for a top Fortune company. The project was managed in the US, coded in India and tested in Australia. There were also a lot of Indians working in the Australian centre. I have worked with Indians in the past too, as well as other Asians. They have an incredible aptitude for detail and complexity.
But I have found they lacked the knowledge and background to come to terms with the importance of managing and unifying the overall software architecture. There was little knowledge of programming to standards, managing common libraries, UI consistency, working to business and functional specifications, documentation, etc, etc. And also the business and legal implications of straying from these guidelines. Everyone suffers from these things, but to my mind it doesn't matter what advantages one has, if one does not have the knowledge and skill to implement good SDLC procedures, it handicaps the whole project.
The other thing I noticed is that these developers are willing to work long hours, and they do not seem to get as stressed as those from western cultures, they seem to just thrive on the work.