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My Job Went To India
Josh Skillings writes "The author, Chad Fowler, draws upon his experiences as a software engineer, a team leader over a group of Indian developers, and as a jazz musician, to describe 52 ways or tips that will help you to become a more valuable employee. These tips are described in two or three pages each, and are usually illustrated by a practical example or story. The tips are well thought-out, well-explained and make sense. Chad draws upon the open source movement as well, highlighting ways that contributing to and learning from open source can improve your career. These tips gave me greater respect and appreciation for the open source movement in general." Read on for the rest of Josh's review.
My Job Went To India (and All I Got was This Lousy Book)
author
Chad Fowler
pages
185
publisher
The Pragmatic Bookshelf
rating
8
reviewer
Josh Skillings
ISBN
0-9766940-1-8
summary
Offers 52 ways you can keep your software engineering job, or grow yourself into an even better job.
Chad encourages the you to think of your career as life cycle of a product, and as such divides the 52 tips into the four areas of "Choosing Your Market", "Invest in your Product", "Execute", and "Market", and then two extra groups called, "Maintaining Your Edge", and "If you Can't Beat 'Em". This grouping works surprisingly well and provides an overarching context that makes sense. Many of the tips have specific calls to action at the end, which are useful if you don't already have ideas on how to apply the tip.
For example, under "Choosing Your Market", tip #7 "Don't Put Your Eggs In Someone Else's Basket", Chad encourages you to refrain from learning vendor-specific technologies that can disappear with the vendor, and then calls you to action by suggesting you write a small project in a technology that competes with the technology you are used to using. This will help you understand why the technology exists to start with and what opens your horizons for what might be coming next.
Under the section "Investing in your Product", tip #14 called "Practice, Practice, Practice", Chad offers suggestions on how software engineers can get even better by specific kinds of focused practice. The action items at the end of the section suggests practicing "Code Katas" katas similar to martial artists, but instead in code and in different languages.
With 52 tips, this book has a lot of tips, a tip for every week of the year, but you should expect to spend much longer than a week on most of them. A few of the tips you are probably doing already, but many of them you aren't. Some of the tips are fairly straight forward and easy to put in to practice. You could spend your entire life attempting and never achieve some of the other tips, such as tip #39, "Release Your Code." The ultimate goal of this tip is to be able to say in a job interview, "Oh, are you running Nifty++? I can help you with that- I wrote it." Chances are this scenario won't ever happen to you, but by working towards this goal in the ways the book outlines, you will definitely become a better, more valuable software engineer. Many of the tips will make you a better person in general, regardless of your career, such as tip #28, "Learn How To Fail", where Chad emphasizes how to fail gracefully and the rewards that can be learned from failure. This wide range of time, difficult, and application of the tips gives you something to work on today, next week, and next year.
The title of the book is silly. Yes, it was catchy enough for me to notice in the bookstore, with the red cover and the homeless (software engineer?) holding a sign, "Will Code For Food". So from that point of view, the cover worked. However, unless you've read the book, you might think it's as campy as the cover and wonder if it is somehow anti-Indian. I think a better title would be along the lines of "How to Get Any Job You Want", since if you can master all of these tips, you'll be the best there ever was.
While I didn't expect any specific technical advice, I would have liked some. I understand that an author needs to be sensitive to how fast technology changes, however just one tip with a warning: "This information is my opinion on April 11, 2007 and will probably change tomorrow". And then describes about how Subversion is a great tool, Python is a great language to learn, and learning design patterns can make your life easier, would have been appreciated. A tip like this would help you to understand the author a bit better and further encourage you to learn more.
If you want to improve yourself and you can accept advice, this book is for you. You will find things you can do better and skills you've never considered. Like some of the other Pragmatic Programmer books, I will never be able to master everything in this book, so I'll be reading this book again and again, trying to get better every time. Don't let the cover put you off, this is a great book.
You can purchase My Job Went To India (and All I Got was This Lousy Book) from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
For example, under "Choosing Your Market", tip #7 "Don't Put Your Eggs In Someone Else's Basket", Chad encourages you to refrain from learning vendor-specific technologies that can disappear with the vendor, and then calls you to action by suggesting you write a small project in a technology that competes with the technology you are used to using. This will help you understand why the technology exists to start with and what opens your horizons for what might be coming next.
Under the section "Investing in your Product", tip #14 called "Practice, Practice, Practice", Chad offers suggestions on how software engineers can get even better by specific kinds of focused practice. The action items at the end of the section suggests practicing "Code Katas" katas similar to martial artists, but instead in code and in different languages.
With 52 tips, this book has a lot of tips, a tip for every week of the year, but you should expect to spend much longer than a week on most of them. A few of the tips you are probably doing already, but many of them you aren't. Some of the tips are fairly straight forward and easy to put in to practice. You could spend your entire life attempting and never achieve some of the other tips, such as tip #39, "Release Your Code." The ultimate goal of this tip is to be able to say in a job interview, "Oh, are you running Nifty++? I can help you with that- I wrote it." Chances are this scenario won't ever happen to you, but by working towards this goal in the ways the book outlines, you will definitely become a better, more valuable software engineer. Many of the tips will make you a better person in general, regardless of your career, such as tip #28, "Learn How To Fail", where Chad emphasizes how to fail gracefully and the rewards that can be learned from failure. This wide range of time, difficult, and application of the tips gives you something to work on today, next week, and next year.
The title of the book is silly. Yes, it was catchy enough for me to notice in the bookstore, with the red cover and the homeless (software engineer?) holding a sign, "Will Code For Food". So from that point of view, the cover worked. However, unless you've read the book, you might think it's as campy as the cover and wonder if it is somehow anti-Indian. I think a better title would be along the lines of "How to Get Any Job You Want", since if you can master all of these tips, you'll be the best there ever was.
While I didn't expect any specific technical advice, I would have liked some. I understand that an author needs to be sensitive to how fast technology changes, however just one tip with a warning: "This information is my opinion on April 11, 2007 and will probably change tomorrow". And then describes about how Subversion is a great tool, Python is a great language to learn, and learning design patterns can make your life easier, would have been appreciated. A tip like this would help you to understand the author a bit better and further encourage you to learn more.
If you want to improve yourself and you can accept advice, this book is for you. You will find things you can do better and skills you've never considered. Like some of the other Pragmatic Programmer books, I will never be able to master everything in this book, so I'll be reading this book again and again, trying to get better every time. Don't let the cover put you off, this is a great book.
You can purchase My Job Went To India (and All I Got was This Lousy Book) from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
They took my job; they took my job; they took my job.
The American companies are to blame, it has nothing to do with America or India. If Dell, HP, GE outsource to India, don't buy their products anymore. Simple as that. But don't blame the poor people over there trying to make a living with what the CEO of Dell does.
Anyway, Python is a great tool, yeah.
slashdot rocks
... MY job went to India.
The smartest man in the whole, wide world really don't know that much. - Mose Allison
This book was published three years ago. It's a little late for a review of a topical work like this.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Yeah, but it pays really well when you know something that's hot i.e. the latest fad product (that's ALWAYS called a "new technology"). Just save your money and be prepared to jump to the next big thing.
"Learn How To Fail", where Chad emphasizes how to fail gracefully and the rewards that can be learned from failure.
Failure. The trouble is if you fail big, you're labeled as a failure and you're fucked for a very long time. And folks just love to kick a guy when he's down. Then you become older, wiser, and fucking bitter at the goddamn machine!
I have to go. The cafe is throwing me, my cats, and my shopping cart out.
The best thing to do if you are in IT now, try to get out.
If you have kids, or know people you care about. DON'T let them go into IT, or major in it in university.
Hey boss, be sure to take your malaria shots before you go!
What irks me is that they've been trying to offshore computer works for 50 years with mixed results. What the real problem is that they keep asking for more guest workers (who can't change jobs [easily], who aren't citizens, who can't form unions, and restricted to certain employment). Is it our government's role to provide subsidies for wealthy companies and stifle small business? If we're going to have immigrant workers, why can't they use the usual immigration process and not H-1B non-immigrant guest worker policies?
It's a management vision problem, not an American worker productivity problem.
...but if your job went to India, you're expendable. Learn some new skills, get better at what you do, etc. The company I work for now is 70% India, 30% US. They trimmed the fat and sent the cheap labor to India.
If you haven't learned by now that you need to stand out from the crowd with an invaluable skill, your job is going to keep going to India.
by having multiple trades. Don't be so specialized.
What?
Maybe the author should stop by where I work. He can talk to the people they are hiring *back* after the off-shore company ripped us off for millions giving us crap code which was basically unsupportable written by the "experts".
"Get a security clearance".
Those jobs aren't going to India.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
when bidding for projects of people like these, indian houses that shell out $3 bids are at disadvantage.
Why don't they raise their prices then? If it's just the too-good-to-be-true quote.
I know someone who realised western companies weren't comfortable paying only $10/night for quality hotels in Eastern Europe (this was a few years ago, I forget the actual numbers). He bought a small hotel business in a capital city, translated the website to English and bumped up the price to $100/night -- now the hotel is full of western businessmen and tourists, but the hotel doesn't cost much more to run.
We outsourced to India ... and are now scrapping and rewriting in-house ....
The code works but ... trying to change anything with the time differences involved is a nightmare, it does not matter who they are just where they are ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
You give the same answer you give to someone who asks "are you a god?"
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
12%
An indian software engineer can earn about 400,000 rupees ($10k)at the moment. In 10 years that will match the west, but long before then the difference will be too marginal to make it worth offshoring.
Deleted
Confucius say "Job is like a woman. Smartest programmer in world cannot keep job from leaving if it wants to."
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Learning new software, programming languages, code-katas or whatever is NOT going to help.
Indians have access to the internet too, you know.
They can learn all this new stuff and provide the same service cheaper.
Some random points:
(1) People who code, administer or test will not survive. If you write/fix any kind of code or scripts or do any kind of testing at least once a day your job is in danger.
(2) People who are unable to create something from nothing will not survive. If you need a well-defined set of requirements and design before you can do your work, your job is in danger. If you need someone else to take some vague problem from the customer/boss and come up with a solution that you can implement, your job is in danger. If, however, you invent solutions, you will be fine.
(3) People with inability to solve problems will not survive. This goes to general smartness/intelligence. If you are the kind who can use a cool-head and solve most of problems (job-related or not) through a combination of steps such as keeping a cool head, knowing what to do, who to approach etc, you will be fine. Many problems are tough but you would be surprised to see many people give up before they even take a stab at the easy ones.
As an example: Here is a problem given to you by a customer: "Size the work effort that you personally will require to install DB2 on my AS400 box"
Bad answer: We are a C++ coding shop. We dont do DB2 admin. We dont know how to size this.
Good answer: 6 months (cuz we have to learn all the shit first)
(4) People who will survive are those who can talk to customers to elicit business requirements, design tecnhnical solutions and coordinate project activities - not people who know how to change a config file to get Linux to play mp3 files.
(5) Good-looking people who can talk with management and customers in a confident non-geeky way in perfect English will survive.
(6) If you can relate well with people and can get them to do favors for you, you will survive. If you are the type of person who ends up leading meetings and discussions, you will survive.
(7) If your job is in IT but deals with some kind of calculation involving dollars at least once a day, you will survive.
I have over 20 years of software development experience in the U.S. I am not working in that field anymore.
One of those big U.S. based multi-nationals laid me off. I have found myself in another engineering field (not software).
My current employer is happy to pay a good salary while I learn this new business. I have now worked there longer than
most of my jobs in the IT world.
When I apply for software jobs, it is all I can do to get people to return my calls. I have to followup
over and over to get to the next step in the interview process. I say, who needs it.
I am turning my back on IT. They only seem to want to pay for 2-5 years of experience. If you have 10 or more years,
they don't want you. They want energetic and cheap. They want to keep making the mistakes that were made 5 years ago.
I think the current technical job market will dissuade people from entering the IT field in the first place. The work
is hard to do in the first place, and they are going to cast you aside eventually.
Indian companies will have an advantage because they will not need to manage projects across so many timezones. They
will have lots of people coming out of college with lots of jobs for them. U.S. based companies will only be able to
find the people they need at the price they want to pay overseas. They will continue to use their money to train
armies of software developers many timezones away.
Over time, these non-U.S. companies will master the rest of the business and bury the US-based ones. Free trade or
protectionist stance will not affect this outcome.
My advice to current U.S. IT workers: don't get too deep into debt and plan a backup career.
This is overlooked by too many people. I'm a physicist/computer guy by training, but I decided to broaden my employability a bit. I used my employer's tuition discount to take some business classes at the local community college, enjoyed them, and went on to earn a MBA at Vanderbilt at nights/weekends. I've started taking pre-med classes at the community college partly for fun, but also because Nashville is a major medical town and I suspect it will increase my employability even more.
I get a 70% discount on a 3 hour class. At the local community college, that works out to ~$300 per class including the textbook. That's $900 a year. That's a no-brainer in my book. I've never bought an asset, never owned a stock, never owned a mutual fund, that has a higher rate of return than my brain.
While I don't think my job is going to India anytime soon, you can't be sure about tomorrow, and why wait until tomorrow when you can do something about it *today*. Most people ignore their tuition benefit. I'm sure most people fail to fund their 401K to the company match too; that's not the company's fault. Take control.
"As an example: Here is a problem given to you by a customer: "Size the work effort that you personally will require to install DB2 on my AS400 box""
DB2 is already installed on your AS/400 box by default - it's part of the OS.
This would show me the customer is a DULT and doesn't know anything about the system they bought/use.
(I'm a former AS/400 operator/Administrator/RPG developer - Turned Java programmer).
The Truth is a Virus!!!
It's really sad that what our country needs most to remain competitive in the future is more young people learning science and engineering. But because of the effects of globalization our advice to them is to avoid these fields.
It's pretty simple really:
Nationalism = what's best for us, at the cost of everyone else
Globalism = what's best for the world, at the cost of the least efficient (in this case us)
It's all fault of John McLaughlin!
Ditto. Although we used developers from another country. It seems that US companies are outsourcing because it's the popular thing to do. Our outsourced "developers" cost the same or MORE than US ones. Add in the communication issues such as time, culture, and language, and I don't understand what my company was thinking. Eventually, our outsourcing was also scrapped in favor of redoing the project in-house. This decision had mostly to do with the fact that what they sent technically worked, but there were no standards or best practices. Everything was just hacked in on the fly and I basically had to rewrite everything as it came in anyway. Even though they "already did QA." Right.
The problem with outsourcing in general is that you change the business
relationship between what used to be internal customers and internal
providers to one where you've got some outside company with interests
that are probably completely different than your own.
You're no longer a cohesive team. Those other people will not necessarily
pull together for you anymore. They will have their own bosses and their
own sucess metrics.
Your relationship will be defined by a contract that is designed to
prevent you from abusing them too much. Processes will have to be
formalized far better. Changes will be far more tightly controlled.
Depending on the project, it may be dramatically more expensive to
outsource (like something with insane dev schedules).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Are you a Microsoft astroturfer? You sure sound like one.
OSS increases the total size of the market, providing more jobs for software engineers. The only companies OSS is bad for is software companies like MS, that have a business model built on proprietary software.
Personally, I work at a semiconductor company developing Linux kernel code to support our products. If OSS didn't exist, we would either have to contract outside companies to develop firmware for us, which would be inefficient and very expensive, making our product probably not viable in the marketplace. Quite likely, many, many products simply wouldn't exist without the presence of OSS.
Imagine a world where almost everyone was illiterate, because a few ivory towers held all the dictionaries and books about written language, and only allowed people to see these books for a high fee. There wouldn't be any writers/authors out there, and all the other industries that rely on written communication simply wouldn't exist. Having access to these tools for free or cheap (remember, education is free in most developed countries) makes the size of the overall market much larger. It's the same way for OSS. Unfortunately, there's some companies like MS who don't like this state of affairs, and want to keep everything secret and under their control.
I entirely agree that individually you need to be as valuable as possible. That's why all the CCNPs I know are working to finish their CCIEs and the CCIEs are working on their Juniper/Avaya certs. All of this is on top of their technical degrees.
The problem is that you and your "invaluable" skills really aren't being taken into account. It doesn't matter if firing you would cripple the company because we're typically thinking 90 days at a time. If you replace a $150K CCIE with a $20K wanna-be, then you as a manager can claim a $130K dollar "savings." Hooray for you, here's your bonus.
When that $20K wonder takes all of your customers down -- and here's the beauty part -- you aren't blamed for it. No one is currently drawing the line between your $130K savings and the customers that walked with their millions of dollars.
The really scary part? I frequently work on municipal, hospital and 911 systems. Infrastructure disasters here can cost lives. I've watched the cheap guys take down emergency systems, and I tried not to think about the calls that were getting dropped as I fought to get them back online. I push the frantic calls for help out of my mind, because if I let my imagination run with what an unanswered 911 call could mean...
The cheap guy's response as I berated him for putting lives at risk? Basically, what do I care? It's not my country.
Every one of the guys I know are putting in 60-hours weeks routinely. Hours like that mean divorces. They mean early heart attacks. They mean neglected children left to raise themselves. They mean broken homes with the societal carnage that goes with it.
It's the classic tragedy of the commons. The people who lead our country are insulated from the carnage associated with gutting our workforce. In the meantime, my country is falling apart. I've got a CS degree from a prestigious college, a CCIE, and a decade of international experience and even I am feeling the heat. I weep for those not as lucky as I.
We're gutting our middle class. We just are, and if you don't see it, it's probably because you're young. I hear your "Well, it's not a problem if you're the best of the best" bravado, and I wonder what you propose to do with the other 99% percent of the population, because they're not just going to just disappear.
I was downtown during the LA Riots of '92. Rodney King and Daryl Gates might have been the spark that set it off, but that riot burned on the fuel of unemployed people. Last time I was in LA, more than a decade later, the damage still hadn't been repaired.
I'd really prefer not to see that happen on a country-wide scale. But me and the other gray-hairs are worried, especially the people I know out in LA. We're getting that "vibe" again.
Things are stretched beyond breaking. Our teachers have flat-out given up. Our cops are showing the sort of violent and unstable behavior you would expect from PTSD. The wave of earnest enlistees that flooded the military after 9/11 have become the sort of weary jaded bastards that could put the most burned-out Vietnam Vet to shame.
We are, for the first time in history, routinely using mercenaries in almost every level of our military and law enforcement. I'm seeing military families, families with generations of service, hang up their uniforms and forbid their children from serving.
Our hospitals are literally allowing people to die from neglect in the ER. Our bridges are falling down. Our electrical grid is one snapped breaker from going dark.
Katrina should have been our moment of clarity. The fact that it so clearly wasn't scares me to death.
But you go ahead, and keep humming that "I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best" mantra. Keep closing your eyes as tight as you can and shut your ears tighter. Find a good teddy bear, because the old man, the old man has seen all this before.
I'm terrified of where this train is going.
What I noticed in my experiences with code written by outsourced coders was that while it worked, it just wasn't that good. They knew the LANGUAGE, but they didn't know how to PROGRAM. Not very well, anyway.
While working with the outsourced coders for a client of a managed hosting company I was sent a 250-line SQL query (for MySQL, no less) and asked why the query was running so slow. It was a mess. The guy obviously didn't understand SQL or database design and was using brute force to get the data.
You're kidding, right? If you work on the right projects, they can't keep you from using the product for free, and things like this tend to grow exponentially. When you've got a program that runs a game, suddenly you need a good AI, which will be made so that it's a plugin rather than native. When you've got good AI's going, you find that a web client would be appreciated for that game, so you make one. It just keeps going on and on, all the while you're writing code that can be seen by everyone, and if a company starts supporting the code you're writing, there's a good chance that you'll get hired by that company.
Growing the market is only good. Without Linux and Open Source, I know over 100 developers who wouldn't have their current jobs.
I'd say it would depend on what stage of your career you are in, and what responsibilities you either have or think you might end up having.
If you are in your early 20s, and want to have a family, or own a house definitely change to something that will help you 20 years from now when you are in your 40s. Given the globalization issues, I wouldn't recommend putting all your eggs into any job that could be done through an internet pipe.
I'm in my late 40s, the mortgage is over halfway paid off, and there's no kids to worry about. Worse case is that I lose my permanent position job (for whatever reason), and have to take a pay cut, or do temporary consulting at bargain rates.
I chose IT 25 years ago because I knew it would afford me a nice standard of living, that at least for the foreseeable future there likely would be a job that would pay enough to cover the kind of house I wanted to live in, and leave a little extra for vacations, emergencies, retirement, weddings, etc. It worked out, but I wouldn't recommend it for someone starting their career today. It's definitely a sad state of affairs.
I'd say that one could learn to do something that you can't outsource, like nursing - but even that isn't guaranteed. Many of those jobs are being "insourced" - that is people from developing countries are being hired here at a lower rate than what us locals are willing to bear.
I guess the best bet (if you don't want to deal with the uncertainty of working for yourself) is for whatever you decide to do, to find a job working for a small company that has a good business model. One, which as part of its culture, tries to keep money local -including the money that it pays to its employees. One that really doesn't have the resources to outsource or sponsor people for insourcing.
Don't forget to blame the Shrub for the eventual decay of the earth's orbit until it is consumed by the sun.
The idea that programming is mere grunt work or that programmers can be commoditized is one reason why so many software projects and products are utter crap.
Also, with the advent of server virtualization and data center consolidation and aggregation, those system engineer jobs may not be so safe and plentiful onshore in a few years, especially when so much administration can be done remotely. Maybe the CAT5E cable monkeys can unionize to protect their wages.
I know of very few programmers who can effectively administer.
I know of very few administrators who can effecively "code"
Okay, next topic.
Obviously you don't know many attorneys.
Fact is, very few high-level jobs let you work 40 hours a week. Just the way it is. You're right on one point though, there are certainly no worries about overtime.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Cause the fact of the matter is that whether you specifically keep your job or not is not really the point. Instead, potential IT workers need to realize that wages will be pushed down across the board.
If you love the job, then you've got a choice - do what you like even in a job market that does not compensate you fairly (relative to other industries where your brain will get you far), or get out now and start concentrating on an industry that will not be marganilized as much - think law, finance, etc.
If, on the other hand, you can tolerate programming, but are not necessarily passionate about it, and are more concerned about making good money, having a more prestigious job, less risk - probably less brain intensive than software developing - get the hell out of the industry now! You will be miserable competing with third world wages while doing a pretty tough job.
A few years out of college and I'm learning myself - I worked my ass off in engineering school for five years. The guys that had Fridays off (business school) and did about 5 hours of homework a week are making the same as me. Their most complex assignments use Excel, while mine require far more intelligence, experience, and energy. I'm very confident in the belief that, even though far less people could do what I do compared to the amount that could do what they do, our salaries do not differ due to the offshoring/H1B visa probs.
In the end, you'll just get pissed off doing more work than everyone else, while getting paid the same (or less), having a position that is constantly being threatened by management to be 'outsourced,' and absolutely earning no respect.
Just my .02
Funeral. Home. Director. (or Owner if you can get the seed capital together).
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos011.htm
Median annual earnings for wage and salary funeral directors were $49,620 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $37,200 and $65,260. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $28,410 and the top 10 percent earned more than $91,800.
Salaries of funeral directors depend on the number of years of experience in funeral service, the number of services performed, the number of facilities operated, the area of the country, and the director's level of formal education. Funeral directors in large cities usually earn more than their counterparts in small towns and rural areas.
There will always be people dying......
Layne
This is a touchy subject for everyone, I'm sure. However, you have to admit there's some good nuggets of advice in there.
My background is in systems administration and engineering. We're not as bad off as software developers...yet. But I do know the day will come when it will be deemed too expensive to hire anyone but the best from my field locally too. Right or wrong, short-sighted or not, no one can compete with the greater numbers of lower-paid workers in other parts of the world. Look at what happened to manufacturing -- that's coming for almost every non-management job in the US and Europe. It's a done deal, we let it happen, and now we have to work with the resulting landscape.
So, if you want to stay employed, you have a couple of choices.
I freely admit that I'm not a big fan of outsourcing...projects take way too long because of the language barrier, incomplete requirements, and the difficulty of coordinating efforts. BUT...it's here. Instead of fighting and complaining about it, work within the system you're given. Become really good at what you do. Study. Keep learning outside of your skill set. Get yourself a reputation for being a problem solver.
Why do I say this? One of the tips was to never put your eggs in one basket. That's excellent advice. I'm constantly learning outside of my specialty because I know Microsoft isn't going to be the king forever.
Anyone who's tried hiring people lately knows that the field is still full of people who truly don't understand things beyond the narrow scope of duties they have. These are the "eggs in one basket people" and the most likely to be replaced if they are deemed too expensive. I would much rather hire a natural troubleshooter and problem solver who can figure out the details of a system after reading the manuals and playing a little. The innate ability has to be there. Everything else is teachable.
Some specialization is good too. You have to balance the need to be a good generalist with having a current, in-depth subset of your skills that you can market. Look at all the OpenVMS and IBM mainframe consultants out there. They print their own paychecks going from one weird specialist project to the other. Along the way, they pick up skills.
In summary, stay educated to stay employed. Never assume your job situation won't change, and be ready for anything.
And what would you suggest Obi Wan? Maybe Medicine? Law? Literature? Give some alternatives.
For anyone with aptitude in math and physics and who is always trying to figure out how stuff works, you could consider getting into the field of aircraft structural engineering.
I manage the structural engineering group at a medium-sized Canadian company. Yesterday we tried to offer an experienced guy a $75/hour contract job and he politely declined. We can't afford him. He is contracting because he wants to and has several other offers. With bonuses and OT he would have grossed around $200K per year and it wasn't enough.
I have two Indian subcontractors working for me with another on the way. We do that not because of the cost but because it's so hard to find good people in this field. I have working for me one Indian/Canaidan girl, a French/Canadian guy, a plain vanilla Canaidan guy, the two Indians, a Moroccan, a Brit, and a Venezuelan guy working for me. Americans don't seem to be on the market because they are all sucked up by US defence companies that like US citizens for security reasons.
The labour market is tight right now. It is cyclic but I have to admit I haven't seen any unemployment amongst my peers in 20 years, the last rough spot being the late 70's/early 80's.
Here's how you get into it. A bachelors in mechanical or aerospace engineering is basic. Most people have a Masters, try to orient that toward materials or structural analysis. A thesis on composites would be good. The education is hard, you have to think of it on the same level as getting a medical degree. Suffer through it if you have to.
Develop an interest in manual analysis with a pencil. I get lots of resumes from people that can make finite element meshes and run NASTRAN, what I want is people who know what a piece of structure should look like and why and you get that ability from just sitting and thinking about things and reading the bible "Analysis and Design of Flight Vehicle Structures" by E.H. Bruhn. That book is 40 years old and anyone who knows it forward and backward can get their $200K job.
Then get a job with a large prime like Boeing for 5 years. Think of that like your internship. At the end of that you can start contracting, or move jobs to push your salary up. I would recommend contracting, not just for the money but for the contacts you make. It's a small world in this business and if you know the people you can always get a job.
So if you are 18 now, you are looking at a plan that will get you in a really good place when you are 30. Not many people want seem to have the stomach for that kind of commitment, but it'll pay off, I promise. And, all along the way you get to work on pretty cool stuff.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
"Copy-and-paste-oriented Programming" is what you get for $3.
Then again I have encountered expensive Oracle developers doing much the same...
Attorneys get respect by Joe Sixpack. The tech field sadly gets nothing but contempt.
I think you got that backwards. How many lawyer jokes are there compared to IT worker jokes?
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Your mod points were offshored? Here, have a (Belgian-owned) Bud.
Anything that we can do here, they can do there.
And most often for less.
They made buying generic drugs illegal here, they made
going to Canada for your drugs illegal.
Protect the corporate profits, not the citizens.
Saw an old man boarding a bus on TV saying he was a criminal
and grinning. They go as a busloads to Canada to get
their 'illegal' Meds so they don't die because they are poor.
It is pathetic.
We have billion dollar bail outs of banks, and ppl are thrown
out of their homes.
Why no bail out for the home owners ? Protecting Cash Inc. again.
I'd say a job that requires a Security Clearance, or the
person needs to speak very clear English. That doesn't
equal many jobs for the average person though.
Everything else is fair game for being offshored, outsourced,
near sourced, Alphabet VISA'd, or worked by border jumpers.
Things like the L1 Visa have 'unlimited' caps on them, and
H1-B has been raised to huge levels per year.
Once the VISA workers live here, they get a guest VISA
for Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, etc etc etc.
The person with the guest VISA never goes home and you meet
him at the local fast food place serving you food, or quickie
mart selling you your gas, etc etc etc.
This game is going to continue until they can reduce wages
on any and all jobs to the point the Corporate Whores are
happy with their level of profits.
In case you have not noticed they always want more...
You do the math...
The race for the Bottom is on ! Who is the winner ?
Not the Sled Dog ....and that is the working class.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Does that book say what industry those jobs were in? I'd be willing to bet that most of them are in the IT, high tech or software development industries. The point of this article was in relation to IT and software development, not all jobs. Sure the people who's jobs can't easily be off shored (Doctors, Lawyers, teachers) don't have anything to worry about, but for those who's job may be subject to off shoring, this book might be useful.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Your listening to corporate Propaganda again.
The H1-b workers ALONE have exceeded your tiny 500k number.
Do some research before you post.
The Alphabet list of VISA's are listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_visas#Select_List_of_the_Various_Types_of_Visas
Sell your Corporate Whore Bull$hit somewhere else.
The truth is the truth, no amount of bull$hit is going
to cover it up.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Fair enough. My only two responses to that would be how many of those 500,000 are call center jobs? Also, a lot of IT jobs simply can't be farmed out because of security controls.
My point is more though that there are plenty of jobs out there, but you might need to do more than just throw your resume out there and demand employment. I also think that the disadvantages of off-shoring are becoming much, much more apparent now and it is not going to be as attractive as it once was.
As somebody that hires developers - and has been doing so for 10+ years, there is a point but not much of one.
Work on a large open-source project might be an indication that a developer can work with others well. Work on a solitare open-source project is an indication often of a huge ego and complete inability to work with others. Not only that, but it strongly suggests the candidate eats, sleeps and codes and has no life away from the keyboard.
If you are looking for a "coding god" and this person comes along the ego might be tolerable because of the work output. In a team environment this sort of person is a disaster.
To boot, you work 8 hours a day, five days a week, no worries about overtime.
*Boggles* You've obviously never been a lawyer.
(just as an example, many of the prestigious law firms want you to bill at least 2,000 hours in a year only to be eligible for a bonus - that's over 38 hours per week assuming you don't take any vacation, and that's purely billable hours, so expect to be working a LOT more than that)
Median annual earnings for wage and salary funeral directors were $49,620 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $37,200 and $65,260. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $28,410 and the top 10 percent earned more than $91,800.
Have fun trying to live on $50K in any major or minor city in the USA, particularly if you want to have a family.
Advice: on VPS providers
Grunt work? Setting up and administering systems is "grunt work" in my book. Programming requires far more skill and expertise.
He's here all week. Tip your waitresses.
Advice: on VPS providers
Have fun trying to live on $50K in any major or minor city in the USA, particularly if you want to have a family.
Are you kidding? You must live in San Francisco or something.
You can afford a home living in Houston making $35k/yr. Making $50k/yr in San Antonio is living like a king. If you're not living in NY, DC, or the West Coast, $50k/yr isn't bad.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Have fun trying to live on $50K in any major or minor city in the USA, particularly if you want to have a family.
Actually I live in NYC (Manhattan) with a wife and kid making less than $50K. It can be done, but don't expect to live the lap of luxury, or eat out, or have a car, or ... It's surely not "fun" but it beats not having anything.
If today's corporations want their regular rank-and-file employees to wear many hats, be multi-talented, and have a lot of business skills, then they're simply not doing their own jobs correctly.
When you are one of the major players in a monopoly or cartel-controlled industry, you can get away with that kind of sloth. All you really have to worry about is using your leverage in the market to make sure that when your employees leave and start their own business, they fail.
If you stop and look around at what's happening, it terrifies you. So you quit looking and try to kill or at least discredit the messenger.
The last time I was in an emergency room I was escorting someone with uncontrolled bleeding. I had done my boy scout best, but I am not a medic. It was a three-hour wait while the orderlies joked about how much weed they were planning to smoke that weekend. When I asked for a doctor, they referred me to a security guard. I mentioned the incident to my doctor at my next visit. She winced and said "Yeah, we avoid that place like the plague when we can." It's the largest, best-funded hospital in the area.
The last time I asked a cop for directions in a strange city -- wearing business casual clothes, mind you -- he placed his hand on his weapon and told me in rude terms he wasn't a tour guide. I'd like to think he was just a random jackass, but the attitude smelled like he was trying to bluff through insecurity and fear.
The last time I went on a business trip, I watched a TSA agent browbeat and threaten a small clumsy woman with incarceration if she didn't take her shoes off faster. When I spoke to his supervisor, he called over an armed officer in uniform and threatened to arrest me. The supervisor caved and apologized when I pointed out the surveillance camera recording the incident.
My kids' teachers have that vacant look of learned helplessness in their eyes. They were idealists once. It's been beaten out of them.
There's a major elevated highway in my city. It's been basically condemned and it's still in use. When it falls, there's a large number of buildings and thoroughfares that it will take with it. Everybody knows. No one can do anything. I try to avoid it when I can.
Forget McCain and Obama. We need a seance with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln and both Roosevelts, Teddy and Frank. I honestly think it would take all six to get us out of this mess, after they kicked all of our respective asses for letting it get this bad.
Even with life expectancy going up, people will eventually die......
The "baby boomer" group is hitting retirement age / dying age. Even if they live longer, there are lots of them.
The population growth is about 1.0%....but that is COMPOUNDING.
The death rate in 2007 was about 83 per 10,000. In cities with populations approaching 1M, that's 8300 per year.
The birth rate in 2007 was about 142 per 10,000. Almost twice as many people being born as dying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
And it will be hard to outsource the job of funeral director to another country.
"I'm sorry ma'am, but your husband's remains were shipped SmartPost and won't be available for viewing for another two weeks. Please accept our condolences."
Layne
You're exactly right -- there's some (sic) whining about experience having no value, but this is the value of experience: not only knowing the syntax, but knowing in-depth about a language.
Unless you've worked to maintain code over a very long term, often you don't know the impact of poor coding, or have the insight from that to fix your final deliverable. At the same time, work cannot be outsourced to body-houses based on maintainability, only on functionality at time of payment.
Experience only generates deliverables that are comparatively better in the long-term, but you need to be an employee, rather than an outsource-body, to leverage the benefit of ease-of-maintenance.
The act of shopping by price alone gets you software that will require more work to maintain. Iterative shopping means that you'll get repeated slap-together quick-jobs to get paid. resulting code quality can only degrade, but how can we truly make that known?
Well lawyers can't bill for every single hour they spend in the office. They do try though.
Every time incomes come up, people say stupid stuff like that, because everyone is convinced it's impossible to live on any less than their own actually generous income.
Median Household Income, New York City, 2007: $46K
Half the households in NYC live on less than that.
Do some research before you post.
The Alphabet list of Chemical Elements is listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elements_by_name
The truth is the truth, no amount of bull$hit is going
to cover it up.
(now, where is my Informative mod?)
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Shouldn't have violated the Prime Directive. "The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal affairs of other civilizations" If we didn't give them our "advanced" technology, we wouldn't have this problem.