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Dream Jobs of 2004
prostoalex writes "We've read about the worst jobs out there, the most overpaid ones, the worst job postings and the outsourcing tendencies. Can an article on employment in scientific and engineering fields can have a positive outlook? February issue of IEEE Spectrum talks about the dream ('coolest, baddest, hippest, grooviest') jobs, where people have fun and enjoy what they're doing. IEEE publication covered the dream jobs for Electrical Engineering majors only. The linked article is actually a story about 9 different people with 9 different jobs, each leading to a separate article."
Work in Germany, under German law every worker must get 6 weeks paid vacation, from a janitor to a CEO.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Why would Indians get our jobs if they're salary is higher? There will be jobs here, people will just have to adjust to lower pay. Simple supply and demand.
Which is great. But by raising overhead rates to pay for the extra vacation time, the overall effect is to make German industry less cost effective than a less enlightened country (all other factors being equal).
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Personally, I'm in my dream job. I get paid nicely to play with computers.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
The linked article is actually a story about 9 different people with 9 different jobs, each leading to a separate article.
Actually, like the article says, they really do talk about 10 jobs. They just don't link to the last one in that summary page. Here's the index page:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/contents/index.html
You probably shouldn't click this.
PNL is hiring a Senior System Administrator for the world's largest Linux cluster and 5th fastest supercomputer.
That's just not true. The legal minimum is 21 days a year, depending on one's age. That translates to about 4 'real' (ie., non-work) weeks.
... since he referred to "a less enlightened country" as one that makes you work more than Germany, presumably the two of you are in violent agreement.
Sean
Same in Sweden. And it goes up from there to about ten weeks. Plus, you can't forget the month off at Xmas, from about 15 December to 15 January. And still we're both amongst the most productive countries in the world per capita. I wonder why that is?
Poor aboriginals in those third world countries like the United States...
Social security is getting worse. The last step was the "Gesundheitsreform" (health reform) of January 2004, which made the healthcare system a lot worse (at least one death directly due to the changes has been reported, and is currently dealt with in court). The unemployment rate here is as bad as everywhere else, esp. in the IT sector, and the Arbeitsamt ("employment agency", the guys that take your money while you are employed and might perhaps give you a fraction of it back when you aren't) is less willing then ever to help you find a new job, or a way to pay for food - it was also involved in a major political scandal in the last months, which forced the chairman to resign (his successor hasn't been chosen yet), which didn't help either. Going back to Uni is also not an option (at least in my state, north-rhine westfalia, other states already did that or announced to do it in the next years), because it costs EUR 650, in addition to the ~ EUR 150-200 that it cost before, for "long-time" students (about 60% of all students), something explicitly ruled out by the social-democratic party (which has the majority both in NRW and the germany as a whole, together with the green party that promised the same) in the last election. Taxes are going up. The software patents situation is likely going to get a lot worse this year, and copyright law already has in 2003 (and the equivalent of the RIAA has just annouced to massively sue private file sharers). The weather is lousy. Everytime you stand up in a Bus to let some wrinkled old guy take your seat, you wonder if he has been a member of the NSDAP - but that problem tends towards a bilological solution, unlike the militant young nazis that keep beating up foreigners and bombing jewish cemetaries and synangouges. At least they are not the only antisemitits or fascists, at least once per 6 months, some prominent politician or author gets some publicity for being one as well (not always bad publicity, mind you). After the monetary reform (from german Marks to the Euro), a lot of things have become a lot more expensive. You cannot buy beer in cans anymore, because of the 25c "Dosenpfand", cheap beer is now sold in plastic bottles, which sucks. The german pop culture is pretty much a mixture of the worst parts of the american pop culture and some really, really bad german artists. Did I mention that the weather really sucks?
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
" Which is great. But by raising overhead rates to pay for the extra vacation time, the overall effect is to make German industry less cost effective than a less enlightened country (all other factors being equal).
Not that there's anything wrong with that."
What a boneheaded thing to say. There's no logic to it. Perhaps German cultural factors make Germans more productive with a mandatory 6 weeks paid vacation. Personally, I'm a lot more productive when I know I'm going to get breaks to enjoy other aspects of life. As a software developer, my job requires mental focus. If 6 weeks of mandatory paid vacation allowed me to be more productive during the time I was there, the overall net benefit is to my employer and the GNP.
All your analysis shows is that you can do a quick back of the hand calculation given some data points. Your analysis lacks any understanding of the data points and does not look at results. Germany happens to have productivity rates near the US depending on how you count software in the numbers. Also you equate attendence with productivity, while productivity only has sustainable gains when you get more done in less time, not simply work more to get more done.
This assumption treats humans like machinery, which every totalitarian regime has shown, doesn't work. Humans tend to be far more productive when all of their needs are met. Expecting humans to act like machines is operating them out of spec. It's just like overclocking, sometimes you can get away with it, but in the long run, you'll have problems (over numerous chips) like stability or lifespan.
Take the US growth numbers from 4Q03. They were huge, but with no job growth. That meant that a lot of these productivity gains were made through working people harder and finding cheaper labor. If it had been through honest to god productivity gains they would be listed in SEC filings, like supply chains, software and the internet were in the last decade. These things would then be "hot" markets.
One can't simply look at dollar amounts involved with labor. They have TOC and ROI values much like any other component of an organization, it's just that it varies from "unit" to "unit". Most bosses I've known would have shot the employee that suggested paying $50k a license then skimp on the $10k support contract for production software. You simply have to look at the TOC for an employee and factor in things like downtime and maintenance.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me