Slashdot Mirror
Lifetime Careers in IT?
CyPlasm asks: "MSN Careers had this article posted the other day that asked about a "Lifetime Career in IT: Is It Possible?" Does the average Slashdot reader think they will retire (with a pension, benefits, etc) after a long and successful career in IT?"
We have a few lifers, and they're always the source of plenty of good information. Don't have to know the latest languages to be good at thinking about how things work.
Not me though. I'm going to claw my way to middle management and worry about TPS reports.
Anyone need an overpriced mechanic who specializes in aircooled VWs/Porsches?
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
It's not as if you have to be on top of the game in IT. At least, not the government sector.. Most managers and senior support staff are in their 30's and 40's and completely ignorant of whats been going on for the past 5 years.
Let's see;
One week it's another company is dotbombing
Another week is a company replacing all technical people with Taiwanese made sock puppets
And now how we better think about something else if we want to not starve when we reach retirement age.
I can't feel the love guys, are you trying to kill us with more stress???
- sigs are for wimps.
The million+ folks who got laid off since the burst of the dot-com bubble and have not yet gotten a new job say "NO"!
After spending 20 years as one of the lowest paid (yet consistently employeed) network/sys admins on the planet, yes, I will get a pension, benefits, etc.
if you're willing to move to India and take 1/10 of your current pay, you can have a lifetime job.
And I don't see that being in computers makes it any easier or harder. Sure you've got to retrain every year, but we've got it easy compared to doctors, and even your average factory job changes enough that it's an issue there too. Stop learning and you die, first mentally then physically!
Delivering militantly anti-commercial music to all two people who care!
Maybe I'm missing something but:
1) Why on Earth not? The article doesn't offer any reason to doubt the rather obvious conclusion that, of course, people will have lifelong careers in IT. Except that "MSN Careers member EsTeeJay" thinks otherwise.
2) Maybe I'm nitpicking, but why is a pension a prerequisite for a lifetime career? I'm not holding my breath for a pension but still expect to spend a lifetime doing what I do.
The only reason I can think of to doubt the long-term potential of an IT career is that systems may become so intuitive there's no need for a admins. But given the way software progresses, one doesn't see much chance of that.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Asking a generation x geek today if they will 'retire from IT' might in 30 years seem as inappropriate a question as saying, "well gosh, do you think you could spend your career in education?"
The obvious answer being that of course you can spend your lifetime in IT work. In it's current manifestation, it is a new field. One that will continue to branch out in ways currently not imagined.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Consulting: You work for a consulting firm and merc yourself out to the highest bidder. (Benefits: Lots of money, though little in corporate benefits (Stock, Options, etc.))
Management: The top of the IT ladder is CTO. Most companies have them now. (That puts you on the Board of Directors, and a VP after your name). (Disadvantage: You are now a technical manager, not a technician.)
Company Leap Frog: Work for Company A, beef up your resume and jump to Company B (higher up the corporate food chain). Work for Company B for awhile and do the same and jump to Company C (again with an increase in Title and Wage) and so on and so forth. (I have worked longer in my company the Every Director/VP in my building. Most have not worked here longer then 2 years.)
Conclusion: It is possible, even using tactics found in other departments. But is the end result really worth it? (Even if it is what you want to do for the rest of your life?)
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
When we fire you, we kill you.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
So yes, lifetime IT jobs probably exist and they don't necessarily have to be boring. It really depends on what you are looking for.
Someday I'm going to sell my stock options and retire early on the proceeds. Of course, since the options are so far underwater there's little hope of them ever seeing air again, my retirement years will be spent in a cardboard box underneath a freeway overpass.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
you blow your brains out at age 30. This is the only industry I know of that eviscerates itself every few years and rejects the knowledge of its senior experts. I'm 45 with experience from design and assembly to sales to engineering to programming, and I've been looking for an IT job for years. Ever heard the term "gray-listing"...?
"Back in my day, we didn't even have cybornetic implants. We had to interface with the computer through this thing that had all of these buttons, and another thing that moved around and had 3 buttons. And another thing. We had a command line. When we used Xwindow, the corners were so sharp we had customers sue us for it. That's why we had to use the round ones. And there was this company called apple....."
My grandfather is 90. He is in perfect mental and physical health, and "officially" worked as an attorney until a few years ago. He still occasionally takes depositions and adjudicates some lesser disputes.
Aside from the fact that that side of the family has a history of longevity, I believe that the two reasons why he kept going were (a) he didn't feel like quitting, because he enjoyed his job, and (b) he worked in a field (partner in a mid-sized law firm) where nobody could dictate to him when to retire. His expertise grew over time.
In Europe, a lot of societies which have historically cherished the idea of retirement at age 65 with a generous pension are starting to re-think this concept, primarily because the pension funds simply won't be able to keep up with the glut of baby boomers retiring soon, but also because peoples' attitude towards work is changing.
Lack of job security nowadays means that, while you may show professionalism towards an employer, you do not display the traditional "loyalty for life". As I can tell, it is in the nature of companies to act in a manner they perceive to be economically rational (regardless of whether it is or not)--this takes precedence over keeping old Smithers but-he's-only-got-2-years-to-go-until-retirement around at all costs. Concurrently, people are discovering that they are far more mobile in the labor market, recession or not, than they once were, and employers generally seem to recognize that fact.
Especially in IT, where actual hands-on know-how may become obsolescent fairly quickly, but experience in how to manage that know-how (project management, design, business-side consulting, etc.) grows over time. I can imagine that we will see an increase in the number of over-40 employees going part-time consultant, and simply not quitting at 65. I don't know about you, but I love my line of work, and can't really imagine just stopping dead in my tracks one day to go play shuffleboard with a bunch of walking corpses.
So a classical "employment-until-pension"? No. A "job for life"? Definitely. I don't know about you, but I would love to still be a part-time IT consultant when I'm 70.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
You go through school, going deep into debt, to learn the trade. You get a job, where they work your nuggies off, for a "salary" that's laughable in hourly terms. Then, after ten years struggle, you're either RIFfed, or, if you're darned "lucky", they'll "reward" you by taking away the only thing that made the job even tolerable - you'll become a low-level manager, and never again be permitted to dirty your fingers typing in code.
Thanks, I'll take a pass on IT as a career. In many ways, I'm glad that I came down with MS *before* I got RIFfed, as it has allowed me the time to realize that my "career" had cost me my health, my social life, and one of the things that I enjoyed most - the joy of crafting a well-thought-out and well-executed program with my own two hands.
Pension? Get real! To get that, you have to stay in one company for ages. Fat chance of that, with companies dropping like flies all the time.
No, you might actually be better off if you skipped school, and stuck with your "You want fries with that?" menial job. At least you'd have some semblance of a life with that, and after paying off the student loan that allowed you to join the exciting and fast-paced world of IT, I'm not so sure that you wouldn't actually be ahead financially, too.
Lemon curry?
Honestly, how many people in MANY OTHER FIELDS got layed off within the last 2 years? Granted a lot of people in the Silicon Valley Tech industry got layed off, but that includes more than just "IT" workers.
Sales Managers, Marketing Employees, Graphic Designers, Gophers, PC Technicians, programmers, and Administrators were layed off.
Some of the Marketing people I know that were layed off had been with the company for over 15 years. You can be layed off or fired in any field - it doesn't matter. As long as your smart, have a plan, and quite a bit of luck - you can get your way through anything (almost).
Ave Molech Setting
According to this and this article, close to half of all IT workers could be displaced in as little as two years. International outsourcing, contractors, part-timers and consultants will do most of the work. If you want to work in IT for the rest of your career, you need to be planning your strategy now. So quit munching pizza and watching cartoons and figure out what you want to be when you grow up.
Maybe the analysts are wrong, but do you want to bet your career on it?
The warning signs are out there.
IT professionals still wonder what to expect if they choose to devote their entire career to IT.
Since 1987 I've endured thankless all-nighters and many wasted weekends to satify the insane schedules of inexperienced project managers. I've also had the crushing responsibility that comes with installing and supporting systems that multi-billion dollar companies rely on. I've been shit on as a consultant and exhalted as a savior and treated like a hero. I have experienced a full-spectrum of environments. I am now 35 years old.
But the one thing that has been consistent thoughout this whole time is this: I love what I do. Maddening at times - yes. Mundane - yep. But almost always interresting. If you dont have passion for technology, you wont last.
"You have to keep yourself trained even if management will not pay for it," says Edward Pilling, who participated in the discussion. "You have to have one critical skill set that is in need."
This is what I mean. Learn the new technology. Stay current and informed. Read Slashdot (mod me up now). Take classes. But most of all, stick your nose into it, roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. If you are going to get up each day and drag your ass into work, you might as well enjoy your workload. Sure, most IT jobs pay well, but if you hate computers it will show and you wont survive the influx of new grads and you will fall to the side of the road while the fast pace of technology marches on without you. If you love it, you wont be able to get enough of it, and you will succeed.
My short answer is 'no', I don't think anyone can really be in a position to retire from an IT career if they are expecting things like a pension and other retirement-age benefits.
If you want to work in IT and you want to be able to retire you need to look into:
- Building up retirement funds in a 401(k).
This is tax deferred income and if your employer matches you contribute to the MAXIMUM percentage that your employer matches on. Just keep in mind NEVER EVER EVER touch that money (unless you're retiring, or need to buy a house). Basically pretend the money disappeared and you have no idea where it went.
- MANAGE your 401(k).
Watch those investments! Make sure that where your money is invested is continuing to grow and perform. If it isn't, the contact the company holding your 401(k) funds and move it into investments within the program that *are* performing.
- When changing employers roll the 401(k) into the new employer's plan (if it's a good plan with varied investments).
- Investing in land.
This is a tax shelter while you're working (since interest in a mortgage is deductible) and land always appreciates in value over time (even in Arizona <g>). When you retire you can sell the land and if you're over 59 you can skip paying the taxes (this is a one-time benefit). And if you invest in land by buying a home and you live in the home for 2 of the last 5 years, you can keep the gains from the sale of the house *tax free* up to 250k (500k if you're married). Go put that into some IRA's and life will be gooood come retirement age.
But if you think that pensions and social security are going to get you by in your later years, forget it. The only one taking care of you will be YOU. And the sooner you get started the better. GWB just said that most people age 50 are not anywhere *close* to being in a financial position (investments, pensions, whatever) and that's a real problem.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
I see the job market in general as coming full circle back to an environment similar to that of that of my great grandfather. In those days a person with a given skill set worked for whomever payed them the most and provided the most interesting projects. Experience is as valuable back then as it is today.
The days of working for a company for 30 years and retiring with full pensions are gone. Companies I see rarely offer pensions and more often than not you hear tales of them raiding pension funds anyway. At least with a 401K our money is out of their hands.
As an IT person(web primarily), I spend a lot of my personal time researching and learning new and different technologies. Partially because I have to, but mostly because I love to play with things on my LAN just to see how they work. Will I be doing the exact same thing 10 years from now as I am today? I hope not!
The IT field moves fast, as an IT person it is important to me in a job that the employer is willing to 1. Train me in additional skills and 2. Allow me to freedom to implement them however is best. If they can't offer that, then it's time to find one who will. Or freelance with someone who will.
Yes, times are dark now for the IT field. Things in the DotCom Craze swung so much out of control and the pendulum was bound to swing to the other extreme. God willing, things will balance out. Some great people have been hurt in the downturn in the IT field, but then again a lot have been flush out who had no business there to begin with!
I'm one of those people who have had several "careers" during his career, and until the current economic downturn I was able to slide where the work was. I started in embedded programming, moved to technical writing, managed a QA group, built and ran a couple of testing labs, got into the software publishing business, and right now I'm a product maintenance and tech support specialist and part-time security guard (two jobs).
My choice? Not really. Companies kept dying on me, and I would have to move on. [This is nothing unusual when you are at the "bleeding edge" of a field -- I've heard the refrain time and time again as friends/colleagues tell about their experiences, "...and then IT died!"] In most cases, I was able to recognize the leading indicators of impending job expiration and "jump ship" before the blow landed. (In one case, Black Friday happened three weeks after I left a company; management there got sticky about recognizing my contributions...and the reason was that the parent company was dropping the axe on the subsidiary and didn't want to bother.)
In spite of all this, I have received exactly one unemployment check, and that because I didn't act quickly enough before being pink-slipped by a company positioning itself to be purchased -- and the company suffered a near-death experience only to rise Phoenix-like in the UK a few years later -- but not with me anywhere near it.
Unlike a number of my colleagues, I didn't job-hop per se; I tended to stay as long as the company, or project, stayed alive.
One bad effect: the deaths of so many of the companies I worked for left me with no pension, none at all. This was before the days of IRAs and other instruments of retirement benefits that follow the employee even with the demise of the company that offered them. Because I followed the call of the job and not of money, the coffers are not exactly bulging at the moment. Indeed, when you strike the side of the money tank, the ring lasts for a long, long time...
Today, I'm told I'm too old. Oh, no one wants an age discrimination suit, so they don't say it right out loud, but I get the message anyway. So I continue to chase the crumbs and send in resumes, waiting for the day that I have to auction everything off and try a nomadic lifestyle.
Retirement? I don't think so.
Can one find a lifetime career in IT? Don't bet on it.
I started out in Cobol, moved to Fortran and PL/I, and then Turbo Pascal and GW Basic. When I became a consultant, I had to learn C, csh, Borne shell, C++, Java, Perl, JavaScript, SQL, PHP, and VBscript. I've done some stuff that sounds pretty interesting in retrospect, although it didn't always seem that way at the time. (Imagine programing on a PC/AT at midnight in the middle of winter in Wyoming in a building where the sole source of heat is your PC and a single 100 watt light blub overhead!)
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
You'd be surprised, a good mechanic and a body technician (repair wrecks) can make really great money. It's really hard work but good mechanics can make 65K and body guys can top 6 figures and that's just working for a shop. Most of those guys get paid by the bill hours and the job hours aren't how long it actually takes. There's a big book with how many hours it takes to do EVERYTHING but if you can do it in half the time that's twice the money.
My dad, who was in one tech job or another since high school, finally gave in his last retiremnt notice at age 81. 5 months later, he passed away.
He had gone from radio repair, to manager at a major defense contractor (fighter jets), to nuclear power plant design. After retiring from the 'regular' job, he went into teaching programming classes at a local computer chain.
An "IT" job does not necessarily mean coding day after day for 40 years. Explore the various segments of the field. As you age, you'll find you some things better than others.
As long as I'm breathing, I'm going to be doing something.
It's been well documented that the average career of a programmer is about 4 years, before they get promoted, move on to something else, or go insane. People just can't take being a code monkey, with the insane hours, for longer than that. There aren't enough management positions for all of them to get promoted within 4 years, so a lot probably quit for something else.
Of course, it begs the question - why does this situation exist in IT? I think the answer is that there is such a flood of programmers (both domestic and "imports") that employers have 0 incentive to make them happy. Programmers are disposable - those that aren't promoted get used up.
I would say there are only a few ways out of this. Either educate kids how shitty an IT job can be, or close off the tech visas for foreigners. But really, neither will happen. So we get to enjoy generation after generation of programmers (and admins) get disillusioned with what they used to do for a hobby.
Happy life!
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
1) Bring in lots of suckers out for the $$
2) Purge them with the bad economy
3) Post stuff all over the web about how terrible the IT field is so no one new enters.
4) Profit!!!!
Uhhhh, yeah, thath dithgustin. [The lady's man]
People like to blame <your-personal-subpopulation-here> discrimination for there own short-comings and lack of willingness to keep current. The way not to be a victim of age discrimination is to embrace change and stay current. Employers will pay for experience as long as you can apply it to current technology and the problems to be solved NOW.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
that 35-45% of IT positions in the U.S. may be outsorced, not that they will be eliminated. And just because the positions are outsourced doesn't necessarily mean they move overseas. I might also note that a lot of the managers they interviewed for the story on outsourcing didn't think it was cost-effective. Do you really believe that someone halfway around the world is really going to understand what your needs in software are? That's a tall order. It can be tough enough to make systems work when you are dealing face-to-face with a customer. I think career planning is helpful, but I think it revolves around the notion that you affirm that this is what you really want to do, and that you are going to commit to doing what is necessary to be gainfully employed, such as keeping up with new technologies and being open to changing employment arrangements.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
And until someone codes up the AI that creates the software, there will always be good work to be had in IT.
If you're talking CASE tools - until they write the AI that tells the CASE tool what the business plan is, and how to turn that business plan into something the CASE tool understands - there will still always be good work to be had in IT.
In its broadest sense, IT is about taking things that exist in human minds (ideas) and expressing them in a form that machines (bare silicon, compilers, or CASE tools) can turn into code.
Because that process always starts with a human, until machines develop sentience, there'll always be a need for humans in IT.
The level of abstraction rises - but that's a good thing. Would you want to design and code something like KDE using front panel switches? An assembler?
Those of us that enjoy what we do for a living can and WILL make a career out of IT.
The people that won't be in this for the long haul are those that were told, "Hey, get into that IT thing. You can make a ton of cash and play games all day."
Those that got into IT because it was the "place to be" will vaporize into whatever the next "place to be" is.
To me, this means that I won't have to listen to people bitching about how they took a desktop job and don't get to work on any servers. I won't have to hear, "I worked on this, that, and the other thing" and the words 'but you don't know what cut and awk do' ring in my head.
Sorry, I'm venting because these are the folks that are kicking and screaming to stay in IT, but they don't really belong in IT and the "next big thing" isn't here yet for them to hop to. There are many good IT folks out of work today, and these whining people need to make room.
"...the shortest distance between two points may be straight line, but it is by no means the most interesting."
Ba. Where I work, firing any number of the "developers" would thoroughly and permanently cripple the company. These guys are just irreplaceable. Use Strict? Option Explicit? Comments? Documentation? Proper English? Any jedi craves not these things.
While on the subject, is anyone looking for a young, highly disciplined software developer? Please? Anyone? Help, the escape key isn't working!
Precisely why I included the phrase "only your government can take it away" when referring to dollars in your own personal accounts. I originally wrote "where nobody can take it away" until I remembered that guys with guns can always take your stuff.
I pointed out a wealth tax as one way in which wealth could be destroyed, but hyperinflation is another.
The key is to watch, anticipate, and adjust accordingly. Does the value of a house drop in a hyperinflationary environment? No - it stays flat. If you anticipate hyperinflation, sell paper assets (stocks/bonds), get rid of paper liabilities (rent) and buy hard assets (houses, gold, jewelry).
The trick is doing it before capital controls get implemented by the guys with the guns. My original point - that if we get to this point, we're all fux0r3d anyways - still stands. And while it can happen here, I think it's exceedingly unlikely, even if the upcoming war doesn't go our way.
Do I have it all taken care of? Hell, no. I still have to save diligently and invest prudently, and that's a non-trivial task, particularly over a 20-year timeframe. Do I have enough of it taken care of that I think I'll be able to at least survive most economic scenarios? Yeah, I think I do. My point wasn't (and isn't!) to brag, but to point out that I don't think I'm doing anything special that can't be done by anyone else.
By way of analogy - geeks often say things like "There's nothing magical about computers" to nontechnical people. For those geeks to whom the world of money seems daunting, I was just pointing out that there's nothing magical about sound financial planning either.
I intend to do something similar: I love computers, and I hope to work in computers until the day I die.
What this probably means is that I'll die penniless - a broken man - and that my genius will only be discovered 200 years later after my death (when corporations are overthrown by the starving masses, declared illegal, and their suppressed documents are released, causing a second renaissance and pulling all the world out of the second dark ages).
Or I'll just do something else that I'm good at.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Yes, here are a few ways you can make it happen right now.
1. Take an electric cable and fit a plug on one end. Put the plug into an electric socket. Hold the other ends of two wires in your hands. Switch on the power supply and you can see Lifetime IT career reaching you soon at electric speed.
2. Take your server machine to the topmost floor. Tell your assistant to put down the server in five minutes. Go down to the ground floor and stand right below the server. Within five minutes, you can achieve lifetime IT career falling into you.
3. Disassemble all the parts of your computer. Eat the parts in the following order. Processor, RAM, Video Card, Audio Card, Motherboard. This method is so special that you can get rid of your hunger at the same time you acheive lifetime IT career. wow !
That's all for the trial version. For full version of advice, please register at http://lifetimeITcareers.gotse.cx. Hope you enjoyed our tips. We wish you good luck !
getSexySig();
There's a difference between "raising awareness" and telling people to run for the hills. A lot of the stuff I'm seeing on Slashdot has been of the "There is nothing left in IT that you can ever do, and IT is dying."
There's a WORLD of difference between saying "Sure, the city's a little flooded right now, maybe you should spend a couple of nights in a hotel outside of the city for comfort", and "SHIT! THE CITY'S FLOODED! THERE WILL NEVER BE A CITY AGAIN! PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!"
In case you haven't heard, most people are NOT making money now, no matter what profession they're in. My dad makes BOXES in a factory, and they're having paycuts. My mom takes care of the mentally ill, they're having paycuts. (the caretakers, not the mentally ill.)
-Sara
Hey I'm going to school @ UTI. The web addy is like www.uticorp.com . You go to school to learn like your basics, if you have good grades you can go to the manufacturer's programs. Not just BMW, but Porsche, Mercedes, Volvo, VolksWagon. The fun part of going is the few classes that add up to make hotrod u : power and performance classes, street/hot rodding/ NOS ... I'm taking Diesel as well and industrial which adds refrigeration and hydraulics.
BMW's by the way use fiber optics to drive all sorts of systems. The courses I believe take 22 weeks.
I used to work in computers. Overclocking just doesn't feel the same when you tweak an engine and hear it break class and make car alarms cry.
If you have any questions or would like to know more about UTI , the BMW manufacturing program, let me know. I'll be glad to help. email: crea5e AT yahoo dot com.
Here's a good example of a life'er:
A few years back, IBM was reevaluating the FAA systems for Y2K compliance and they came to a conclusion:
There is nobody left who understands the system.
Moral?
Work hard and then fuck the documentation when nobody is looking.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I'm 33, have an M.S. in computer science, and got my first paying job in software development in 1990. While I expect I'll always be playing around with computers, I doubt that it will be my primary employment in the long-term.
Partly this is because of my growing frustration with the universality of poor management; partly it's because of the ceiling I see for techies who don't want to become managers; partly it's the threat of jobs moving overseas.
I'm a second generation programmer. My father started programming in the late 60s. He had a pretty good career going (a few rough times, but all in all pretty darn good for someone without a college degree) until about a year and a half ago. When the downturn hit, he found that no one was interested in hiring a 58 year old programmer/analyst. (What percentage of coders, designers, and analysts at your shop are over 50?) He's finally just about given up on getting back into the field, and gone on to take real estase classes, just passed his licening exam.
I've decided not to wait, but start laying the groundwork for a second career now. I've cut my day job back to 30 hours/week and will be starting classes in Shiatsu in a month. No rapidly changing skill set in massage and acupressure....
I hope that in five or ten years, I'll have my own bodywork practice, and do some computer consulting on the side.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I work for the government, in an IS department. We have people who have been working there for 20+ years. One of them still has the same office. The great thing about government is that since one gets raises based on time automatically, one does do better the longer one works somewhere. Granted the raises aren't as fast or as potentially rewarding as private sector, but one doesn't have to worry about one's employer going out of business either.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
I've been twenty-two years in Silicon Valley, and I'm _trying_ to keep
...
...
going as a geek,but it gets tougher every year.
Technology companies have this inherent need to plan projects for the
earliest possible completion.
It's _always_ a race to market.
There's _always_ schedule pressure.
When you're 22 or 25 and just out of school, single and with few
responsibilities, "challenging" projects are fun, in that masochistic
geek way that we'reall so familiar with. Possibilities are exciting;
obstacles exist to be overcome. You're gaining mastery.
You *know* that you can bring in on time if onlyyou work nights and weekends
for nine months or so. Maybe a year
So you work insanely hard for three years, maybe five, and the company "appreciates" it. And eventually that company goes under, or closes your
division, or something, and you move on. (Those options? Never were worth
very much, and you never sold any of them anyway.)
Then you're 37 and have young kids and a spouse who works.
Your manager comes to you with a right-to-left project plan that you _know_
will require nights and weekends. Again. And you sigh, and sign up, and do
the work -- it's familiar, you know the right way to do stuff, you know the
problems and what the solutions cost, you know the tradeoffs.
You do it, but it costs you -- you have to miss your kid's school talent show,
you're not home nights, you have to work the week you had planned to take the
family to the beach. Your spouse resents the hours, but they've promised you a
sabbatical after only five years, and you've got lots of stock options.
Somewhere along the line you try management, and parts of it are OK,
and parts of it you're real good at, but it's tiresome to work at such a high
level of abstraction, where there's no right answers, only "issues". And it's
soul-killing to watch your boss, and his boss, try to avoid understanding
inconvenient facts. At some point you know, you _insist_ that the plan under
discussion is unrealistic, because it is. You're not a team player.
Your review is painful, for the first time ever.
Back to engineering.
You work hard for a year, and they cancel the project.
You work *really* hard on the next, critical, save-the-company project --
and they cancel that one too. You go to meetings for three weeks trying to
define another product, and then that company folds. Your options are again
worthless. The company stock you bought through the ESPP is worthless.
You're burnt out emotionally, and your health could be better -
a dozen years of sitting in a cubicle typing under fluorescents
has taken its toll.
You resolve never again to sacrifice family life and emotional health in favor
of working too hard. You limit your hours,never come in on weekends any more.
You won't sign up for plans that demand sixty hour weeks -- but most of your
co-workers are youngsters just out of school, and eat that stuff up. You look
unmotivated and cynical by comparison -- in fact, you _are_ unmotivated and
cynical. It's great doing stuff with your own kids for a couple years (but
they're teenagers now, and don't have much time for you), but your reviews
aren't much fun. They hand out options and you get damn few. You stop getting
raises.
Then that company folds, and you're forty-nine years old, looking for another gig
in a downturn. The companies that need you are looking for someone to come in
and work _really_ _hard_ to save a project that's fallen behind schedule
but you could pull it off, with only
nine months or so of working nights and weekends.
Maybe a year
----
All you young guys should read Tracy Kidder's excellent
_The_Soul_Of_A_New_Machine_. Maybe read it twice.
Wait a minute. Didn't I say that on the other side of the record? I'd better check
I know a highly skilled mechanic who makes $150k as the head gearhead at a Kia dealership. Nobody wanted to take the gig, so they bought him a complete set of tools as a signing bonus. (prolly $25k worth)
He's been approached by a NASCAR team and offered even more as well.
I find it amusing when IT dorks and Project Managers turn their nose on skilled mechanics and plumbers because they get their hands dirty. Skilled blue-collar workers make big bucks without having to pay for the trappings of success (fancy car, $50 ties, etc.) that schmucks who sit at a desk all day do.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
My grandpa was an engineer. Pretty much spent his day doing a lot of what I do, solving problems. He was freelancing/contracting when he died in his 80's.
My uncle got into computers before I was born. Retired and freelancing.
I've been at this since I was a teenager. Every project/process I have used has long since gone away and been replaced by something more complex. The amount of available work has grown exponentially throughout.
What'll I be doing in 20 years? Retiring... and by that I mean shifting to part-time and being selective about the projects I do.
Do I think the specific work type I'll be doing will change? Yeah. Appreciably? Nah. I'll be teaching things how to do stuff. It might be computers, it might be lightwave-based tools, and it might be little microbes. Assembling logic-based tools is what I like, regardless of what the tool looks like. I/T, to me, is the epitome of wise laziness... rather than doing it all myself, I spend all day inventing ways to automate tasks.
-- advaitavedanta
Meanwhile, those of us still doing development are watching in horror as we receive awful newbie-grade code from these off-shore super-genuises, projects slip as communications fail (verbal and connectivity-wise) or the foreigners simply go missing for hours or days at a time, delivery dates come and go and the apps still don't work right -- the stories go on and on.
Now, this isn't a simple case of us having just chosen the wrong company to contract with. As I noted above, we're an enormous company (Fortune 50). We have contracts with many companies in India, and in some cases contracts with American companies who employ off-shore resources in turn. So far, I haven't been able to dig up any success stories. I have been personally involved with (although thankfully not responsible for) quite a few ridiculous failures -- none of which would have occurred if we hadn't been chasing this magical off-shore solution. However, the trend will continue in big companies because middle management has no choice but to show (and therefore report) success, and upper management has no connection with what's really going on day-to-day which means they only rely on the falsely-rosy middle managers' reports.
I should point out that nothing I said about our experiences with the off-shore effort was even a little bit exagerated, either. I have personally been involved in these problems for the last seven or eight months. Here are a few examples I've seen in just the past 45 days or so:
Again, those examples all involve completely different off-shore contracting comapies, unrelated projects, and very different skillsets and responsibilities -- yet they are all characteristic of every report I've heard from co-workers and colleagues at large companies who are enduring this fabulous new technique for managing the bottom line, and similar examples are not hard to find if you go digging around on-line.
In a nutshell, so far it appears the only positive stories come from managers, and they mostly appear to focus on up-front costs -- not quality, or long-term costs. (And in a company this big, believe me, even the worst little application can have a lifespan measured in many years.)
I'll say this much -- it makes me miss working for smaller companies. Sure the pay wasn't as good, and the risk was greater, but at least mid- to small-sized companies simply don't have the option of sustaining the massive waste of exercises like the great off-shore push.
Now before somebody goes and labels me racist or a nationalist or jingoistic or whatever thesaurus.com spits out next, please understand I don't blame these off-shore guys in the least. If I could live on a few bucks a day (I read recently that the average programmer in India makes about $12K) I'd be undercutting the big boys too, and my skillsets be damned -- at that point I'm competing purely on price, and even the shittiest hack-job code still has a chance of running right; certainly business managers aren't going to review it. But so far, in my experience and in the considerable experience of many people I know, the basic quality and skills are sorely lacking, and success stories are few and far between. This is my opinion based on real experience. If my experiences change (and by god I hope it does, given the way our current project is spinning out of control and requiring the stereotypical "heroic efforts" of our now-scorned American programmers) then I'll gladly sit back and agree with the Wisdom of Management. But I've just seen too much failure to deliver in the Great Off-Shore Push, so far.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005