Tech Professionals' Aggravations Rise, But So Do Salaries (dice.com)

Nerval's Lobster writes: Despite some concerns over the stock market and whether the so-called "unicorns" will survive the year, it's apparently still a good time to get into tech: New data from Robert Half Technology suggests that salaries for various tech positions will increase as much as 7 percent this year. Which is good, because tech professionals have confessed to a host of aggravations with their lives, including too-expensive housing, lengthy commutes and gridlock, inability to achieve work-life balance, and a disconnect from their jobs. It's neither the best nor worst of times, but the money could be pretty good.

Comments

But is the money worth it?

[codeButcher]

There comes a point, and its exact location may differ from individual to individual, where more money is just not worth the aggravation. Selling your health and/or your relationships for money???

Nice spin Dice.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[dgatwood]

There comes a point, and its exact location may differ from individual to individual, where more money is just not worth the aggravation. Selling your health and/or your relationships for money???

The point, in my experience, is approximately five miles up the 101. More than about five miles of that 5 MPH traffic, and I'm looking for VC funding to develop Dogbert's anti-traffic missile system.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this not what we all do? We sell our time and energy. There is wear and tear associated with all this. There are differences of course - some work in uranium ore mine others in well paid hobby as work paradise. There are limits to everything and there are costs to everything. That is why we are compensated for our work.
Other than that I agree - working in the industry for few decades now I see only assholes and geniuses have good lives. The rest of us low lives pushes the buttocks together and goes on into the pit every morning and pays for it with health and desperation.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well at least somebody is selling clicks. The "article" has supposedly ten points, which are spread out on 10 sub pages and each one loads a new set of ads. Clickwhoring for those ad dimes like this is aggravating to say the least.

As I recall, there was once a Grease Monkey script or similar that blocked all Bennett Haselton's rants. Maybe someone could share with us a script that blocks all these Dice's ad-filled trash submissions from their shill account.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a trade, job security for health. I took on a role as sysadmin despite being a sr dev. I also agreed to 24/7 on call.

Long, long story short my health took a holy hell of a beating. Days and at one stretch weeks at a time not getting a full nights sleep (and of course no fault of my own).

I did it for the job security I told myself. I also did it for a pittance. I figured it would buy me browny points.

I am now unemployed, fired roughly two weeks before xmas. My boss is a cunt. I am a sucker. Replaced by my lacky. I documented my work well.

I took a solid month off after that, I feel a LOT better health wise now. And mentally.

I'm 40 now. Been doing this 20 years. I never Learn. Yet I'll say it one more time.

Never. Again.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot on...I've come to that crossroads myself and am going to have decline the money.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

There comes a point, and its exact location may differ from individual to individual, where more money is just not worth the aggravation. Selling your health and/or your relationships for money???

Nice spin Dice.

"...tech professionals have confessed to a host of aggravations with their lives, including too-expensive housing, lengthy commutes and gridlock, inability to achieve work-life balance, and a disconnect from their jobs..."

I'm not sure how you translated that list of aggravations into money, money, money, money, and money, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the only issue being addressed.

And this is a salary guide. What exactly were you expecting to find in this report? The hair length to job happiness ratio?

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post really hit home with me, mainly because I'm almost the exact same: I'll be 39 this month, been a *IX SA since 1991 (and add NA since roughly 1999). I did graveyard NOC jobs for almost 9 years to make ends meet, which took a massive toll on my body and mind: I've developed severe IBS, I have difficulty sleeping, generalised anxiety, minor long-term memory loss, and in the past year or two have noticed I can't multitask effectively as I once could. I have to work entirely from home as a result (which also makes finding salary positions difficult).

I was paid well (at peak, US$140K/year not including benefits or stock), but I never did what I did for the money nor did I want it. I'd ask my bosses after annual reviews "is there any way I can exchange this pay raise for more time off?", and the answer was always no. I quit my last job, which was in DevOps, after being there for little more than a year (my job prior to that was at a company for almost 8 years; I prefer stable work). I couldn't stand the "fix the problem with the least amount of effort, and stop trying to figure out how all of this works from top to bottom" mentality. I've been living off savings and spending frugally since May 2015, and doing that in Silicon Valley is difficult to say the least.

When I started seeing SRE and DevOps terms show up circa mid-to-late-2000s I became concerned with the direction my field was heading. SA/operations folks have always worked with developers, but we do and think about very different things: I can code in a multitude of PLs but I'm in no way a professional programmer and couldn't tell you how to implement a complex algorithm if I tried; in contrast, software developers don't have decades of operations knowledge and procedure, good design, or know the importance of application of KISS principle (especially in systems architecture). Like good programming style/approach, these are very hard to convey quickly and effectively. How do you instil over 20 years of knowledge into someone in 10 minutes? You can't. But companies today want the quick-and-easy solution (oh, and it needs to be cheap too. And efficient. And it needs to do our laundry. And herd cats. By the end of this sprint).

I've been wanting out of this line of work for the past 7 years, but especially within the last 2-3. The storage industry is where I'd like to go, as I find things like ATA protocol and doing data recovery quite enjoyable. The problem is that the storage industry is very... "niche" (some might stay stale). Finding someone to give you a chance and open the door for you is very rare.

Many of my friends and colleagues in systems/operations today share the exact same view I do -- there is something "shallow" (I would use the term moronic) going on when it comes to systems/operations. Any time I hear the phrases SaaS, agile or waterfall, DevOps/TechOps, cloud (context here depends), or scalability (outside of appropriate context) I cringe. Like me, my friends are trying to get out of this field, but because our skills are pretty much honed in one area switching to a new career is nearly impossible: companies acknowledge you, but upon seeing your work history go "oh wow, you have lots of operations knowledge, there's this opening we have in DevOps..." and not want to pursue any other discussions. It's like a curse.

Did I choose poorly? No -- I chose doing something at the time (early 90s to early 2000s) was incredibly exciting, rewarding, and enjoyable. But what the job role is *today* is not what it used to be (and what it should be, IMO). The rebuttals I get are "yeah well, adapt or get out" -- adapting doesn't work (a frontal lobotomy might work?), and getting out is almost impossible without taking up, say, giving everything up and flipping burgers.

Long story short: is the money worth it? The answer, 98% of the time, is a big fat NO. The 2% exception is if you know you need extra money and you know the thing you're doing is brief (say, under 6 months). It's never worth it long-term. I just wish companies would embrace this fact already; I'm still unsure if the millennials have.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[vel-ex-tech]

Wow, very well said. Please mod up. (Millennial by about 6 hours and 2 minutes here.)

"Shallow" is a very good way of putting it. My job has become more and more digital burger flipping without satisfied customers. Actually, I think I got more recognition when I used to flip burgers. People can understand burgers. However, it's been more and more glaringly obvious that nobody understands what I do or even why I should do it. They just use me for no particular reason--just because they can. The work is all meaningless. It's like I show up at 8 am, and someone starts shooting at me saying "dance!" so I dance, and I dance mad. Then at 5, I go home, and I've contributed nothing to the world except perhaps entertainment for 5 or 6 individuals.

I mean, granted, I used to keep dancing mad into the night because I thought it'd keep them happy. Now it's just 8-5, because I don't care anymore and they've given me no reason to care anymore other than to keep the paycheck coming so that I can get myself out of the stupid financial situation I got myself into thinking I had a career ahead of me.

Flipping actual burgers is the way to go. Somebody's always going to cuss you out over something, but I felt a deep satisfaction when I used to flip burgers for a living because, well, burgers make people happy by and large. What I do now makes nobody happy. It's a mine field, and there's no point to it at all. People give me tasks just to see me fail at them because I didn't notice some stupid detail five forwards down in an email.

I mean, literally! I'm currently implementing an API which is a Rube Goldberg machine to work around a piece of shitty proprietary software, and I know it will never be used.

When I cook somebody a burger, I can see them eat it and be satisfied. When I'm done cooking this API, it'll be thrown straight into the trash the moment the cocaine-snorting assholes who wanted it have their next cocaine-induced vision, which will happen just as it gets ready, and then that next one will be thrown straight in the trash as well.

It's like a restaurant full of people all ordering absurd burgers, complaining that they're starving to death but they just need a mayonnaise sushi burger with Worcestershire sauce made with ground duck and half a bell pepper so they don't starve to death, and when it's ready, they just throw it in the trash and demand another absurdity.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

People can understand burgers.

Can they? Burgers sound insanely complex. I wouldn't touch the subject unless I obtain my PhD degrees in material physics and biochemistry.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[gfxguy]

My commute is pretty long - nearly 25 miles one way. I naively moved to this area when my wife was pregnant with our first because it was a better school district, but I've regretted it ever since... but we're just not in the financial condition to move, unfortunately, and my wife does freelance work now at a number of places near where we live.

Anyway, I've tried a number of things that the company seems to conspire to make not work for me, despite their "green" initiatives and advertising alternative schedules for "work life balance."

I tried a compressed work week - came in an hour earlier and left an hour later for four days (M-Th). It was good because traffic was better earlier and later, and then I had a three day weekend. You think "great, I get to spend extra time with the kids because of the three day weekend," but what happened was I left for work before they got up, came home when they were going to bed, and within a couple of years they were both in school on Friday anyway. So I was seeing them less. My jackass of a boss would then keep scheduling private meetings with me on Fridays, and it was obviously just to f#@k me up, because I'd come in on Friday and wait all day, then he'd say "I don't have time, let's meet on Monday." And yes, I'm certain it was intentional.

So I tried work from home (and still do). Hey, if you can work one day a week at home, that automatically cuts out 20% of the weekly aggravation from commuting. And if everybody did it (I know they can't), and the days at home were spread evenly through the week, then everyone's commute every day would be 20% better. But it doesn't work that way, and I can't do it when people schedule meetings or I'm working on a project that requires me to use resources at the office. But on the whole it works pretty well.

Alternative hours - this is where I get aggravated. So I manage to get my ass out of bed before five; the gym at work (at least we have that) opens at 5:30. I work out, shower, and I'm at my desk at 7:00am. Work eight hours (lunch at my desk, typically), I can leave around 3:00 or 3:30. Traffic is a dream at those times. Unfortunately, a lot of the artists I work with don't even come in until 10:00am or so. They schedule meetings at 3:30 and 4:00. To make matters worse, I work in television production and write playback interfaces for on air graphics. I'm not a graphics operator, but we're not union, so when all the graphics operators are booked, they ask me to do it. It's a nice change of pace... but the show we do is at night, so my schedule is shifted by almost exactly 12 hours.

So one of the keys to good health is keeping a regular schedule, and they make it impossible... I might go for a week or two, but then something always happens. Sure, there's a few special events I need to deal with every year, which might take me away from home for a week, but it's the constant interruptions in your daily schedule all throughout the year that lead to health problems. Frankly, I don't know how the graphics operators do it, because when they're not doing live shows, they're in during normal work hours to prep.

I have an unusual position, though, and it does pay well (although I haven't gotten a decent raise since they could blame the recession... all the while boasting publicly how well the company is doing and posting increasing revenue year after year). I also like my job, on the whole, because it's different, and the work is constantly changing. So I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but if a bunch of money fell into my lap right now, I'd quit for sure, and I'd take less money to work elsewhere. But my job is so specific, it's hard to find decent compensation anywhere else... few companies need someone with my talents.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

can confirm: moved into investment banking for a year. Total loss of social life, extreme increase in salary. Overall life status: worse.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a couple years older than 39. I quit nearly a decade ago, moved to someplace cheap and after a decade of 70 hour work weeks, had enough in savings to last until "retirement". Even if not, I have built up substantial equity in projects that I've worked on at home that I never had the time to work on before. I feel I'm more up to date on a larger set of technologies than I was when I was working, but now do it in a completely relaxed manner plus I no longer have to worry about things like the economy.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Storage industry != data recovery

Re:But is the money worth it?

[interval1066]

I mean, literally! I'm currently implementing an API which is a Rube Goldberg machine to work around a piece of shitty proprietary software, and I know it will never be used.

Preach brother. I did the same thing, a crazy mishmash of code that was impossible to maintain. I'd suggest ways of updating the code and removing redundant methods (one code section was concerned with converting decimal to hex, something that today could be accomplished with 3 lines of code) but I was told the code worked, and "we don't want to invest the money in updating it."

Re:But is the money worth it?

[avandesande]

I had this same line of thought years ago but with bagels- would love to have a bagel shop. Who doesn't like bagels?

Re: But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to be able to implement complex algorithms to work as a developer. Like you said KISS. If you're implementing complex algorithms chances are you're not keeping it simple, and should be using a library or other preexisting implementation.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, literally! I'm currently implementing an API which is a Rube Goldberg machine to work around a piece of shitty proprietary software, and I know it will never be used.

I used to write for a living. Our software was good, and there was time between feature-complete and fixing the bugs pre-release for me to document what the customer saw. Then the Agilistas came in and decided it was more important for me to document the 10 iterations that were never going to be released. Because SCRUM, that's why. That was easy for the first 5 iterations. "Extract the tarball and run this script. There is no front end." Then I had to document the next 5 versions - none of which ever shipped - as the UXtards masturbated over Photoshop and the front-end developers tried to keep up with the UXtards.

The quality of my work on the actual shipping product - the line of business for which people actually paid us money - declined. I got some well-deserved flak for that, but it was nothing compared to the flak I got when I gave up on even attending the standups for the Next Big Thing because there was literally nothing actionable going on there even when the front end started to be built. Eventually, the Next Big Thing shipped. It made nobody happy, achieved zero traction in the marketplace, and was eventually shitcanned. But not before the Agilistas were able to add "implemented an agile process" to their CVs and leave the company. Most of the people actually doing productive work also left.

What I'm saying is I loved your burger analogy. Thanks. You're not alone.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[NetNed]

Some times you have to be a little underhanded to get the douche bags off your back. They all screw something up from time to time. I find that if you tell those in charge what happened or complaining to HR that person X keeps screwing things up, most times beyond 2 or 3 times it's amazing how quickly they change their tune.

The bonus of my position is that I get all the info on the maintenance scans on people's computers, and a lot of times people have things that show up. Sometimes it's just unwanted stuff, others it's straight up malware and sometimes even viruses (software we use requires local admin for users for it to function properly). Whether or not a big deal is made of it is up to the person themselves. If they are an asshole or been an asshole to me, a big deal gets made of it with words thrown in like "could have took down the network". That gets people walking on egg shells and gets them talking to me in the nicest of ways. Pull that one enough times and you'll find that the whole dance routine will not happen much anymore, pretty much only when there is a big problem.

You position is most likely different in nature than mine, but social engineering books go a long way in handling the day to day dick-erey of the work place. The Art of Human Hacking is a good start.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

software developers don't have decades of operations knowledge and procedure, good design, or know the importance of application of KISS principle (especially in systems architecture).

I quit my job as a software developer (web) after working there for a year. I have 30 years experience programming, and they recently hired a new guy who's very junior, who promptly fucked up the entire stack with buzzword technology and now they are developing themselves into an overly abstracted mess. KISS never made it on the blackboard in his classes, I guess. The CTO is also now just getting into client-side programming and he's on the same bandwagon of bad decisions, because he doesn't really understand the tech. Neither wanted to hear about my ideas on an easier way to do what they needed, so I quit. I had 3 offers in 3 weeks of looking and now I'm in a Senior role, and not like the previous company that had a flat-org that does away with titles and no value for experience.

I've changed jobs 3 times in the last 2 years. Previous to that my record was fairly stable, 6 years at one company, 4 years at another, 3 years, and so on. Now it seems like the glut of juniors in the field is causing too much instability - I'm being interviewed by people with 3 or 4 years experience who have the title of "Senior", when I have 30 years experience. Yeah, I know, I should be managing or director or something higher - but I love to code, and I solve the difficult problems that the 3-year-seniors choke on. And the money is still good, but the web industry is a cesspool of bad ideas and people repeating mistakes of the past and ignoring 'just because they can, doesn't mean you should', and they think KISS is a band their dad listens to.

Re: But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrm, sounds like you work for a WPP company.

I dealt the the same bs as you described with my old job.

Companies and/or the management that runs them care less about their employees now a days and will abuse you every chance they get no matter what they "promise".

I said, "Fuck it. I'm going to the highest bidder" due to the BS / abuses I had to deal with at my last job and I'm better for it health wise and monetarily.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

#1 thing that sucks about working in Silicon Valley: The hideous, anti-intellectual, greedy, man-hating women of Northern California.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well freaking said! There is something very wrong with IT these days and it's only going to be getting worse. IT sure does pay the bills well though considering; but the atmosphere of the profession is gone. A few lucky people seem to enjoy their job but most people I meet in IT that are older then 32 seem to be burnt out or are well on their way to being so.

I've only been doing IT professionally for 7 years but I knew something was quite wrong with the field after 3 years or so. It took me two more to figure out my exit strategy and two more after that to implement it. I start nursing school on Monday. Not exactly burger flipping but it'll work for me.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[Urgazhi]

25 miles is not a long commute. Quite a few people I know of at work drive 2 hours, or more if its snowing.

Re:But is the money worth it?

[micahraleigh]

What was your replacement to web software dev?

I have 2 problems with this post

[vikingpower]

1) This is Dice stuff, posted on a Dice website. Intrinsical value seems questionable, if not for that of a place-filler. Slow news night / day ?

2) Regarding housing and commutes: this concerns only Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, a tiny part of the world. A large, large majority of us techies work somewhere else: Australia, Europe, Asia, other parts of the world. Scope of post seems limited. Also TLDR.

Re:I have 2 problems with this post

[Anonymous Coward]

2) Regarding housing and commutes: this concerns only Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, a tiny part of the world. A large, large majority of us techies work somewhere else: Australia, Europe, Asia, other parts of the world. Scope of post seems limited. Also TLDR.

Irrelevant. Bay Area is the future and everywhere else people follow.

The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed. -- William Gibson.

Re:I have 2 problems with this post

[Narcocide]

yea uh that's kinda what i was thinking i guess... i was thinking "of course they want people to think salaries are rising, how else will Robert Half summon the fresh meat?"

Re: I have 2 problems with this post

[loufoque]

London, Europe's biggest location for software developers, is very expensive too.

Re: I have 2 problems with this post

[vikingpower]

Agree. But that is not caused by a heavy influx of techies; rather by speculation (Middle-East tycoons driving prices up) and London's position as financial centre.

Re: I have 2 problems with this post

[Anonymous Coward]

London, Europe's biggest location for software developers, is very expensive too.

I'm not sure why people translate "biggest" into "only", but we really need to knock that shit off.

Negotiate a cost-of-living adjustment in your salary when moving to one of the most expensive places on the planet to work. This isn't fucking rocket science, and those who are hiring you will certainly understand. If they don't or refuse to, then you're not worth it to them. Again, not rocket science.

Re:I have 2 problems with this post

[sociocapitalist]

1) This is Dice stuff, posted on a Dice website. Intrinsical value seems questionable, if not for that of a place-filler. Slow news night / day ?

2) Regarding housing and commutes: this concerns only Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, a tiny part of the world. A large, large majority of us techies work somewhere else: Australia, Europe, Asia, other parts of the world. Scope of post seems limited. Also TLDR.

Housing rates have skyrocketed in many cities around the world. I'm in Paris and it's very expensive here since AirBNB came along and some percentage of the market became unavailable to normal renters / apartment buyers.

Google "airbnb effect on renting" and you'll see that it's not just California.

Re:I have 2 problems with this post

[vikingpower]

Interesting. I'd not yet thought of this, living in an owned house. Darn yankee unbridled-cap'talism croonies!

Re: I have 2 problems with this post

[interval1066]

London is a software powerhouse, I know from the people I work with and the ads I see begging for engineers. But Tons of software is produced in places like Croatia, Czech Republic, places like that. I've dealt with a group of devs in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Re:I have 2 problems with this post

[mjwx]

2) Regarding housing and commutes: this concerns only Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, a tiny part of the world. A large, large majority of us techies work somewhere else: Australia, Europe, Asia, other parts of the world. Scope of post seems limited. Also TLDR.

I live in Perth, Western Australia and affordable housing causing long commutes happens everywhere. Even here in Perth with it's low population density. In fact combine our poor public transport system, lots of single lane roads and overly aggressive drivers, it's easier to get around peak hour LA than it is to get around peak hour Perth.

If you want an affordable house here in Perth (meaning $250-350,000 USD) you need to live on the outskirts of Perth. This means a driving commute into your place of employment (which for a lot of white collar workers is the CBD and blue collar workers, various industrial parks that are often on the other side of the CBD). Housing affordability and commuting problems are not the sole domain of large, popular cities like London, SF and NY.

Re:I have 2 problems with this post

[sociocapitalist]

Interesting. I'd not yet thought of this, living in an owned house. Darn yankee unbridled-cap'talism croonies!

It is what it is but the consequence is that anyone who doesn't make a lot of money and can't work remotely is going to have trouble making a living in a touristic city without incurring a long commute (assuming jobs that can't be remoted). If salaries adapt then it balances out but are salaries adapting?

Or, as my boss put it

[smittyoneeach]

Or, as my boss put it:

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Re:Or, as my boss put it

[kmoser]

Or, as my boss put it:

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

He's up one world and down one soul. Duh.

Re:Or, as my boss put it

[smittyoneeach]

And then the heart beats its last.

"Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

16 hours a day Mon through Thu then 12 hours per day Fri-Sun eventually gets to be too much.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

And lack of vacation just makes that worse. I haven't had a full week off since 1992.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

But notice how the Indian employees always get two weeks contiguous off every year.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

At Microsoft we use the term vacation inequality.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't had a job in almost two decades that didn't require at least 80 hours a week. Tech jobs suck.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think of anyone I know in the tech industry that's had a day off.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why I quit the tech industry.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying to India takes so long and is so expensive so it's only fair we get more time off.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait till you have a boss that uses Agile as an excuse as to why you need to work more than 100 hours a week.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Never had a vacation. I'm to the point where I think I'd rather die. My Asian coworkers are allowed time off.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[tysonedwards]

"Can I interest you in the feature driven model methodology?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

By definition Agile requires that you make working software within the deadlines so if you aren't working enough hours, then by definition you aren't doing Agile.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

According to agile if eighty hours a week isn't enough, then you must work more.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the way of the Agilistas

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

And things are just getting worse in the tech industry. I only have two friends that are married, and both were fired for getting married.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

We allow vacation time, but since you are required to attend all meeting and we use Agile, you might as well work since we have scrum twice a day which takes about three hours total plus more daily meetings.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how many hours a day that Agile requires in meetings. I don't mind not being allowed vacation time, but the meetings are killing me.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting crushed by agile meetings! Also, the methodology doesn't allow a day off.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really mind the hundreds since the vast majority of the extra time is spent coding.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

After a thirteen hour long sprint planning meeting today, I'm ready to kill the next person I hear say agile.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of those hours are in meetings?

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Agile requires making working software. It's the only requirement.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like your own fault. You need to work on your planning poker.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you don't do TDD. As long as you don't, you're always going to play catch up trying to fix bugs. We went over 18 months without allowing vacation time until we got everyone on board with TDD.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

You do what you have to do to hit release dates.

Re:"Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Fruit]

WTF is with this thread? Is Dice paying people to generate fake comments now?

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Agile accounted for time off. Agile is killing the industry by over working us.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Agile's definition of velocity doesn't allow for any time off.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. If you can fake the estimates, you don't have to work seven days a week.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[tehcyder]

And lack of vacation just makes that worse. I haven't had a full week off since 1992.

No offence, but you're a fucking idiot then.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[tehcyder]

Getting crushed by agile meetings! Also, the methodology doesn't allow a day off.

Then get a new methodology.

You people are like turkeys who think Christmas and Thanksgiving are great for business.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Our certified scrum master allows for 2% slack in velocity measurements which corresponds to 2.6 days off per year. Sounds like you need to fight for that 1%.

Re:"Seattle Hundreds" suck

[tehcyder]

WTF is with this thread? Is Dice paying people to generate fake comments now?

Agreed, there can't be that many identical morons in the world.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

That's too long. Any planning meeting over six hours is not agile.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

We do too. The Indians get two to three weeks off a year while the rest of us are lucky to get a long weekend.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[tweissin]

Someone is having a conversation with themselves.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[AlterEager]

Me, I get a month or so off every year.

Of course, I live in a civilised country.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Happens everywhere. The white employees aren't allowed a day off while the Indian guys get more than a week off!

This. I'm really tired of that horseshit. People shouldn't be allowed such extravagant amounts of time off just because their travel expenses are so much. I want more than a long weekend off, and I haven't been allowed that in the twenty-seven years I've worked as a programmer.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

So I can't take more than a day off in a month, but you get two weeks off? That isn't fair.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

My employer for the past nine years has never allowed a non-Asian to take more than two days off in a row.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Agile just has too many meetings.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have too many spoons in your Porsche?

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I think prison gives you more freedom than Agile.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

This. That is not agile. We limit scrum to an hour and sprint planning to four hours a week. If you do more than four hours then you should start providing food.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

As if that justifies the vacation inequality.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

This(except spelled properly)

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, free junk food will solve everything!

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was because of the smell; it takes about two weeks for the air to clear up.

Re:"Seattle Hundreds" suck

[vel-ex-tech]

WTF is with this thread? Is Dice paying people to generate fake comments now?

Agreed, there can't be that many identical morons in the world.

I was wondering the same thing. It's like an AC Gish gallop.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

You and all these other folks need to a) review FLSA guidlines and b) stop it.

And seriously, B. If you and all the other idiots would simply STOP WORKING STUPID HOURS the industry would stop expecting it.

It's machismo. Computer nerds look down their noses at jocks or 'regular' office workers because they carry around this intellectual superiority crap; "well, since everyone else around here is so stupid, looks like Super Me will have to work all weekend again and get the job done."

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd think that after twenty-seven years you'd have enough experience where you could easily find another job with better benefits or even go free agent. I used to job hop and never once worked for a company without few weeks (if you add in holidays) of vacation time. I really liked my work so I alays took the money instead, but the option was there.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Kielistic]

It does if you account for it. It helps if everyone on your team knows ahead before the sprint when they will be off. It's just a matter of guessing how much the missing people will cost the team in how much it can get done. In reality agile accounts for missing people really well. If the sprint goals aren't met then too bad. Unfortunately no one respects that aspect of agile.

It probably largely depends on how it is implemented at your company. A lot of scrum seems to have been created because "Agile doesn't allow managers enough micro-managing power". Add to that if you hire someone whose sole job is scrum meetings they're probably going to have a lot of them just to look busy. Where I work we use "scrum team captains" instead and the teams are largely autonomous. I am just a developer that handles a lot of the extra scrum stuff. And since I hate meetings and I'm in charge of scheduling them the team gets to avoid most of them.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[interval1066]

Bingo. Agile. The bane of my existence.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[interval1066]

Test driven development is good, but its no cure-all. But it makes more sense to me than agile, which was supposed to fix everything, and is not "agile".

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[interval1066]

LOL!

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think we will find in the FLSA?

They classify us a "Salary Exempt" thus no over time pay.

One job I worked as was notorious for having selective Layoff's of any tech employee who scheduled and took two weeks vacation. Management used to say "If we did not need you for two weeks, then we do not need you as an employee." Mind you they would give everyone 4 to 6 weeks vacation time every year which you could not take more than a few days at a time.

I was walked out of one company, after 4 weeks of 100hr each week I decided I was done with the BS and started working 9-5 M-F. Turned my phone off when I was not at work, and when 5pm came around I was out the door. 1 week after starting it I was laid off, no reason given just here is a box, load your stuff up and dont let the door hit you on the way out.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[BVis]

That's because the rest of us don't get mandatory, statue-guaranteed vacation time. But try to bring that up and you get shouted down by the corporate lobbyists who would not only like to continue to be free to abuse "exempt" employees who don't get overtime (or sick days, or parental leave, or a lot of things common in other First World countries), they find it offensive that they can't chain the cogs to their desks.

Mandating vacation time would put everyone on the same playing field, instead of one company being tempted to cut PTO to a smaller amount than the competition, so that they can "increase shareholder value". Eventually a race to the bottom hits the bottom.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[BVis]

Because they don't have to. Most companies will actually let you take the vacation time you've earned, but many have turned PTO into a meaningless number on a screen. You might have 160 hours of vacation in the bank, but if you can't ever get a vacation approved, you might as well not have any at all. And that's perfectly legal; with only a few exceptions (FMLA, which is unpaid; jury duty, National Guard exercises) that they'll still try to fire you (or at least try to screw you out of getting paid when they're required to) for using.

As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the only thing that will curb this abuse is mandating vacation/sick time by law. But that benefits the employees, which obviously makes the government fascist.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[BVis]

In theory scrum does give the developer some insulation from managerial bullshit. The product owner (idiot MBA usually) decides they need a new feature or an enhancement, the tickets are written and groomed, and they're presented in the backlog at a sprint planning meeting.

This is where it goes off the rails: According to the scrum rules, the developers get to decide if an issue is ready for development or needs further grooming, and if the issue is too large to get done in one sprint and needs to be broken up further. The developers are supposed to be able to decide, ultimately, what goes into a sprint. However, what ends up happening is that the developers get ignored, as usual, and end up with the same unreasonable workloads and weasely ambiguous requirements. Scrum is supposed to limit the product owner's ability to ask for the unreasonable; however, most idiot MBAs have never met a ridiculous deadline they didn't like, and since they're usually above the people who do actual work on the org chart, they don't have to listen to the developers.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Kielistic]

Agreed. No matter what rules are put in place the people that don't do the work will end up wanting more than possible out of the people that do.

This is where you need "leadership" from the development team. Go ahead and fuck up my sprint. I'll tell you form the get-go that it's probably not going to work. And when it doesn't I will hold you responsible.

This requires a "corporate culture" that allows for this. But I would say successful software development requires some form of listening to the devs. That said our product owners do mostly listen to us so this isn't a problem in the first place.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, in a typical 2-week / 80 hour span, you'll have 2.5 hours of standups (15 mins / day) and 4-6 hours of planning meetings. I can see how, with up to 10% of your time allocated, you'd feel that there are too many meetings for you to get anything productive done.

Be honest, now - we know you spend more time surreptitiously playing with your balls at your desk.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[painandgreed]

And lack of vacation just makes that worse. I haven't had a full week off since 1992.

No offence, but you're a fucking idiot then.

They're not an idiot, They're a fictional creation. It's and entire thread of ACs spouting crap to each other. It's probably just one AC who is doing so at his job where they get paid to do no work, be they still feel oppressed.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

At Microsoft we use the term vacation inequality.

I spent 10 years at Microsoft (mid-90's to mid-2000's) and never had a problem taking long vacations.
Every 2-3 years I took 3 weeks to a month off. I never got any crap from anybody about it.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor Americans. We get 4-6 weeks off a YEAR, with greater productivity and standard of living to boot.
America really never got over that whole slavery thing.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[david_thornley]

That is Agile done wrong. The Agile Manifesto says "people over processes", so if you get shoehorned into a process that doesn't work, it ain't Agile, even if that's what it's called.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[david_thornley]

Calculating a day as six hours of work is more realistic. In the long run, you're not getting more work than that anyway.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[david_thornley]

There seem to be two definitions of Agile going around. One has something to do with the Agile Manifesto, and one is a buzzword management uses to screw employees over. I'm reasonably happy with Scrum myself, but we actually do it more or less right around here.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Grishnakh]

That's why you change jobs every 6-18 months. Every time you change jobs, take a month off.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Grishnakh]

No True Scotsman fallacy. If it's called "Agile" and that's how most companies practice it, then it IS "Agile".

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[BVis]

Yeah, a fucking idiot that wants to keep his job. At many companies, actually taking the time off that you have earned is a one-way ticket to not being a "team player" and poor performance reviews. Vacation is optional here. You can get fired for taking vacation (because of poor performance reviews because you took vacation).

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[david_thornley]

"Agile" is a term that is more or less defined, and using it improperly hurts our ability to communicate. There are two concepts here, Agile more or less based on the Agile manifesto, and Agile the buzzword. How do you propose to distinguish them? I'm a bit tired of Free-as-in-speech and Free-as-in-beer myself, although I don't have a better idea.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[JesseMcDonald]

The No True Scotsman fallacy doesn't mean that technical terms (jargon) cannot have precise definitions at odds with their common use. It just means that you have to define your terms before you can meaningfully claim that something does or does not qualify. Claiming that someone is not a True Scotsman raises the question, "What attributes must one have to be considered a True Scotsman?". Until that question is properly answered, the claim that one is not a True Scotsman remains an unsupported assertion.

There is a widely-accepted document known as the Agile Manifesto which partially answers that question in the case of agile development. If a development methodology includes elements which are contrary to that Manifesto then it is unreasonable to consider it agile development, even if it is commonly referred to as such.

It's fine to disagree with someone else's choice of terms, but that does not automatically imply that they are committing the No True Scotsman fallacy so long as their terms are consistent and well-defined.

Re: "Seattle Hundreds" suck

[Grishnakh]

The problem is, if absolutely no one actually practices it the way the manifesto says, then the manifesto is irrelevant. No one's talking about some mythical thing that no one really does in the real world, they're complaining about how it's actually used in real life. It's like communism as described in Marx's writings versus how real communist countries actually act.

No worries!

[tanveer1979]

I think the best part is no worries about money drying up after retirement. Work hard, party hard, die of heart attack at 45!

Re:No worries!

[tehcyder]

I think the best part is no worries about money drying up after retirement. Work hard, party hard, die of heart attack at 45!

If you're working 100+ hours a week you are not also partying hard.

Re:No worries!

[Lumpy]

This is why I have a bottle of good Whiskey in my drawer at work...

Well that and the fact that I have to sometimes drink at the office to deal with some of the idiots in management.

Re:No worries!

[interval1066]

I have to admit to keeping a bottle of scotch my my useless lower file drawer.

fluff

[sociocapitalist]

I love comments like "can increase as much as" which don't mean anything.

The attached article from the staffing company reads very well as marketing/recruiting material but strikes me as optimistic.

What are your impressions of the labor market where you are ? Do you see such demand that rates/salaries will go up the significantly this year (assuming we don't get slammed too hard by outsourcing / H1B) ?

Re:fluff

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been at my job for 2 years and at the moment I could make a 54% increase by changing jobs.
From my experience a 20% to 30% raise in salaries over a year is kind of normal. Provided you change jobs every couple of years.

Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choice

[ishmaelflood]

$132000 a year, 38 hour week, six weeks leave a year, plus public holidays. Oh, and I work one day a week from home. My commute is half an hour from one house, or an hour from my weekender.

So this whole tech worker thing sounds like wool mill workers in the 1880s. Are you the new proletariat?

Is any job worth it?

[jellomizer]

Back in the 1990's during the "Tech Bubble", "Economy 2.0". Tech workers were treated like gods, High pay, large benefits, and easy jobs. Anyone who was around during that time was lucky. A lot of people skipped college and went straight into tech, as "Web Developers", with an increase of people going to college in degrees that they really didn't care for but because it made a lot of money and was an easy job.
So what happened it created a glut of bad employees, lazy tech workers, who were over paid. Well new immigration laws, and the rise of Free Software allowed these business who realized that "Economy 2.0" was "Economy 1.0" in a market bubble needed to switch to more profitable entities. So they outsourced to cheaper countries for many of these easy jobs at a much lower rate, and kept raising the bar until, they found a happy medium.
So Tech workers who are employed in the US today have to be the following to be competitive
1. They need to be at a particular skill level, if not they will need to work harder to compensate. I am sorry but in my 20 years of professional experience, I have found the person who is working past 50 hours a week is either new at the job, and is working up experience, or just not technically savvy enough to get the job done right and on deadline.

2. They need to know how to be professional. This means a degree of people skills, not being insulting. Also knowing a bit how to deal with politics, how not to take blame for every problem yet willing to work on a solution to fix it. Also if you are to point blame you need to be professional about it, and make sure it isn't too sharp of a point.

3. They should understand the business they are in. There isn't a "Tech Industry" No one works in Tech, Apple make Consumer Product that happens to be computers. Google/Facebook/Twitter... are advertising companies with interesting software to keep its viewers engaged. Your technology skills should be used to benefit the business they are supporting. Medical IT work is different than Industrial IT Work, which is different than Government IT work... Know the business is important.

4. Know your place. In tech we tend to work across the organization, so we get high level glance at every job, and try to improve it with technology. This sometimes makes us think that we know how to do all these peoples jobs... You do not. You can make the best hammer in the world, but it doesn't make you a good carpenter, but your hammer may make a good carpenter better.

Yes today we tech workers have to be like the rest of the middle class staff. We are no longer treated as gods having the skills unknowable by mere mortals. We are not expected to produce, and be part of the team.

Now my experience, I don't work in metro areas, I have worked for startups, large and small orgs, Governments and industries. I found for the most part I found my aggravation is from my own pride being stomped on by reality, not from The Man who is trying to keep me down. Much of IT work is very creative, however working as part of the team means your creativity is limited to the needs of the group. So you will not get your own way.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Lumpy]

"Also if you are to point blame you need to be professional about it, and make sure it isn't too sharp of a point."

Nope, I'm old enough to stop caring about this, if a manager fucked things up so that a project failed, I will not only call him out but also throw him under the bus and sick the dogs on his body.

Pieces of crap that single handedly destroyed a project with their ineptitude have no right to stay employed and it's the rest of us that need to make sure they burn for their deeds.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[shawn2772]

"Also if you are to point blame you need to be professional about it, and make sure it isn't too sharp of a point."

Nope, I'm old enough to stop caring about this, if a manager fucked things up so that a project failed, I will not only call him out but also throw him under the bus and sick the dogs on his body.

The GP was talking about situations where you are at fault, not someone else. Is immediately deflecting blame to your manager your strategy for avoiding blame for your own mistakes?

Personally, I've always found that when I screw up the best thing I can do is to say so and then work to fix it. Worst case is that the company culture is one that latches onto any scapegoat and I get fired... but in the long term that's a place I'm better off not being anyway.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked your post. I do have a different spin on this though:

>There isn't a "Tech Industry" No one works in Tech

I would argue, over time, every large business is in the tech industry. The success and failure of your systems can make or break your business. Businesses that regard their systems and networks as a cost center, are already gone, or soon will be.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. They need to be at a particular skill level, if not they will need to work harder to compensate. I am sorry but in my 20 years of professional experience, I have found the person who is working past 50 hours a week is either new at the job, and is working up experience, or just not technically savvy enough to get the job done right and on deadline.

Really? Tell that to my boss 3 jobs back who decided to save money and laid off 1/2 the department then called a meeting to tell us A) We were lucky to have a job and B) we would all be required to work 80 hour weeks to make up the difference.

Or my last job where they had 4 SA's to manage 2400 servers, 60% of which were over 10 years old. All on the statement "Gartner says we should have a Server to Admin ratio of 600:1 so you should be able to manage these."

In my experience it is stupid shit from management that causes IT to work more than 40 hours.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[BVis]

The tech bubble generated a lot of annoyed middle management who suddenly found themselves at the mercy of people who did actual work and knew actual things. While it's true a lot of startups from the wild west of the tech bubble were more about fleecing people out of VC than actually generating useful products, neither of them could even pretend to exist without people who knew a modem from a printer. These were the people the fratboys bullied in high school/college, so to have the tables turned, to a point where they were basically at the nerds' mercy, was incredibly galling. When the bubble burst and the market for tech workers cooled off, instead of finding new and interesting things to do with the suddenly-more-plentiful supply of smart people, the fratboys decided that to use that supply to drive salaries down and make one person do three or four jobs (AKA "DevOps", "Full Stack Developers, etc) was a lot lazier.

We have always produced. We produce what we're tasked with producing. The issue is that the stuff we're tasked with is total irrelevant garbage that some MBA dreamt up in the middle of a cocaine binge. We're tasked with updating the shade of red on the homepage when the spit-and-bailing-wire infrastructure we've been tasked with fixing without any additional resources or budget is on fire. We get ignored in meetings when we're standing on our heads trying to make the fratboys understand that we can prevent Bad Things from happening; we then get blamed when the Bad Things happen, and have to clean up the mess.

"Know your place"? I think we found the walking-haircut MBA shill. Our place is as valued members of the team, where the expertise we're paid to have and maintain is actually listened to, where it is accepted that not understanding something does not immediately make it irrelevant, where people understand that spending money now to do preventative development will save money in the future. No business can survive without our knowledge, yet tech workers are routinely treated like shit; nobody from Marketing or Accounting would ever accept the treatment tech workers get without someone getting fired for it.

Our place is in the boardroom, not in the steam closet fixing some piece of shit networking equipment that one of the CEO's golf buddies said we should buy. Knowing "our place" will allow the idiots to continue to do stupid things that we then have to clean up. It needs to stop.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Billly Gates]

You are a cost center. They are a profit center.

If you throw them under the bus do not be surprised if the PM who has contacts with the VP's including the HR VP throws you under the bus too! It happened to me and I was luckily only demoted and not fired! It sucks having a 20 something year old kid bark orders at me but it was because the PM failed and I pointed it out and she told me it was all my fault 3 levels above my boss and she wanted me fired.

That my friend is life. If you suck up and treat the PM's well they won't throw you under the bus when they make a mistake

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Billly Gates]

Well they earn the bills. You cost them.

Of course you will know your place or be terminated with an Indian who will care. If you do not like that then work at a .com or tech company where your input generates real revenue.

Sorry if that sounded demeaning. It is but that is reality you can't change in a non tech company. People who make revenue growing corn in an agricultural company will be Gods. In the restaurant industry the managers in restaurants and VP's of operations and sales are the Gods. At a hospital if you do no thave a PHD then you are the custodian of the pipes of data like plumbers. As long as it works they do not care etc.

We try to bring improvement ideas but that is not our job. That belongs to the MBA's unless again it is a .com or tech company where you are more involved with revenue and that is how it should be. Start your own company if you disagree.

Also how are you or I any different from every other department. Accountants think they are Gods too. Sales ... well hey if it were not for us you would all have no customers etc!

IT is no different with pride than any other group. Of course accounting firms treat their accountants better and marketing companies treat their sales as Gods too.

To be viewed as not the guy who just cleans up a mess that is on your department to make yourselfs professional. Respect is earned and not given. GP is right and it is not 1999 anymore. There are more of us overseas and here who want our jobs and IT stuff is not cutting edge or cool anymore. It is just like electricity and plumbing. Essential yes but as long as it works and you are courteous they will treat you better. If not go update your resume but still they have a right to put priorities that are not IT 1st.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[BVis]

The poor treatment I'm talking about is not related to within IT, it's without when we have to fix the AA's computer for the kajillionth time because they don't understand that pop-ups are bad and they shouldn't click them. The IT person will immediately be blamed for the problem, since they fixed the computer in the past, and when they try to do their jobs and educate the user on how to prevent the issue in the future, they either get ignored or have their jobs threatened. I routinely had to fix a laser printer that some dumb bitch in AR kept fucking up, and I got told that unless I stop that from happening, I'd be in danger of losing my job. For something she did, something that I tried to educate her about, and something that broke the printer consistently every time.

If you fuck up your budget and need Accounting's help, you don't blame them or threaten their jobs over it. If you need some paperwork from HR for a review or something, you don't blame HR for your needing it. But, somehow, when it's IT, abusing them is not only acceptable but encouraged. Those nerds never do any work anyway, they're just down in the basement playing Warquest or Evercraft or something.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Lumpy]

Yeah, they tried that. I then threw the VP under the bus with the CTO by emailing him the chain of evidence where the VP tried to cover his ass by saying he didn't, but my emails and the audio recording of the conference calls where he authorized the purchase of the wrong equipment said otherwise.

Works great to keep all email and all communications, that's how you make your bus big enough to run over a VP without even disturbing your beer.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Billly Gates]

Yep.

She had proof. I did not even have a chance to respond. Just a phone call syaing this guy is my boss now with my job title and the door is there if you do not like it ... etc

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Billly Gates]

The poor treatment I'm talking about is not related to within IT, it's without when we have to fix the AA's computer for the kajillionth time because they don't understand that pop-ups are bad and they shouldn't click them. The IT person will immediately be blamed for the problem, since they fixed the computer in the past, and when they try to do their jobs and educate the user on how to prevent the issue in the future, they either get ignored or have their jobs threatened. I routinely had to fix a laser printer that some dumb bitch in AR kept fucking up, and I got told that unless I stop that from happening, I'd be in danger of losing my job. For something she did, something that I tried to educate her about, and something that broke the printer consistently every time.

If you fuck up your budget and need Accounting's help, you don't blame them or threaten their jobs over it. If you need some paperwork from HR for a review or something, you don't blame HR for your needing it. But, somehow, when it's IT, abusing them is not only acceptable but encouraged. Those nerds never do any work anyway, they're just down in the basement playing Warquest or Evercraft or something.

I would update your resume. It is not worth being treated that way. But my point is if money is thrown down the drain yes accountants do get threatened too. If your department goofs off all the time then yes it impacts you. Attitude and service is everything at a level of desktop support. The sys admins can be more jerks as they deal with problems with someone violating privacy. How did you talk to that lady in accountants receivable? Do you say hi to her when you are not fixing something? Have casual conversations? That goes a long way when things hit the fan. If the printer has worn out rolls (hence causes the jaming) you can show her and her boss and ask to get it replaced. Then it is on accounting if they refuse to fix the printer if she has to use onyl a small amount of paper in the feeder (in my example). You are off the hook and she needs to realize.

Yes some departments do goof off. Guess what the reputation is deserved. IT doesn't work th en they are lazy

Re:Is any job worth it?

[BVis]

I have yet to see a support job where that wasn't the case. Accounting or Marketing need to do something wrong before they get abused; support folks do not, they are there for you to bitch at about things you can't do anything about. You don't even need to say or do anything. With the workload I had, and the treatment I got from the mundanes, I had no time or inclination to talk to any employees that weren't in IT, lest I get roped into doing something that I didn't have time for.

It doesn't matter if the rolls are worn, or what the workload is for that printer, it's your fault. Then it's your fault when their request for a new printer is denied. No, it doesn't make sense, but you're there and can basically do nothing if they yell at you, so that's what they do. It's like yelling at the fry cook because you think they should have sweet potato fries; they can't do anything about it.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

this is fine and all, assuming either (a) the company culture is fine with this, or (b) you have some degree of impunity derived from seniority or the company has little-to-no one to replace you with.

im in my late 20s and some gov't contracts ive worked on love this frank mentality, assuming you can implement a solution to the problem (ultimately demonstrating the validity of your original claim). then at a financial company ive worked at, mgmt didnt want you to even mention names directly when discussing "issues"; it wasnt until i established a rapport across departments that i get shit done in a very matter-of-fact manner that i could openly critique the company's culture of prioritizing personal accommodations for holding projects hostage.

so i guess in summary, be "professional" and everything else jellomizer said until you're fairly confident you can do otherwise. And if you can do otherwise, fuckin' do it provided the company benefits.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I heard, the middle class is gone. It's either the 1%-ers and the poor.

Guess where most of us folks now fit in?

That's a big reason why we're all miserable.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[KGIII]

I could not even imagine working in an environment like that. It shouldn't but it still does sort of shock, disturb really, me that not only did you feel compelled/obligated to keep such evidence but that you had to use such evidence. I just, I just can't picture having to do that sort of thing. This is probably going to be a bit longer than I'd like but there's a bit to say - some background, and an observation. 'Snot major or anything but, well... It's an observation, more than anything - at least I think that's what it will be. So, bear with me and I'll try to keep it reasonably short.

At the end, I had a few more than two hundred employees. I knew them all by name. We had an obscenely low turnover rate (like single digit) and nobody ever got "thrown under a bus." There was no bus to throw them under. Mistakes were made, sure. Nobody was malicious. If you made a mistake, the culture was such that you dealt with it immediately and asked for help cleaning up the mess. It didn't matter what your job title was, when a mistake was made you helped - and that included me and mistakes as small as someone knocking over the coffee pot.

The one employee we had who might have been like that was kind enough to realize that he was not an appropriate fit and tendered his resignation on his own - we did not need to ask. He came in to work early, worked through lunch, and stayed late. Well, it'd be more apt to say that he was in his seat early, more often, and longer. After a few weeks he began to point out this, to find fault in other folks work (where no fault was - that we could see, and we honestly tried), and to seem to think that his presence in a seat meant that he was due both additional monetary compensation and a senior position.

That last bit might sound well and good but we started people in that role at a figure greater than six figures (in the 1990s - programmers mostly though lots of cross training with modeling) and we never did bother really sorting out who was and who wasn't the manager. Err... We didn't need to? Oh, we also had benefits and bonuses. Times were a bit different then and most people who were into traffic modeling were in areas like fleet management, cargo, air traffic, trains, etc. We were also expanding into the area of pedestrian traffic modeling (think malls, arenas, and even some outdoor events - and things like optimization, patterning, and safety) and so it was a very interesting time and place. It was all relatively new and largely theoretical in some areas.

At any rate, they did not fit in well. They did not last long. As we'd paid both a signing bonus, relocation, and help with their tuition... Yeah, lesson learned. We were in a crunch and things were coming online at a very rapid pace. We could have taken them to court and recouped some of those losses but I chose to accept the resignation and accept the short term losses for the long term gain. I can not, for the life of me, see why people would let that person remain on staff. Let's just say that they were made keenly aware that their resignation was anticipated and welcome. The other option would have been less enjoyable but there was another option.

What I don't understand and what I'll probably never understand is how this is functional, how it got this way, or how these companies manage to remain in business. I don't know what programmers are like today but, well, had I kept that person on staff, had they not tendered and I accepted their resignation, then others would have just walked away. I have no doubt about that. I was never, specifically, told this but I'm quite certain they would have. This is the same group of programmers that, one of which, gave me my oft-quoted remark - directed towards me, the owner/boss: "Code comments go in the code, not on a coffee-soaked index card, asshole." That's nearly verbatim.

So, I don't know what changed or how it is even functioning. From the outside looking in, it looks like a house of cards. For all our quirks, and we had many, we were nothing - I mean ab

Re:Is any job worth it?

[KGIII]

Erf... Alright, I'll try to make this short but it does need a preface. Try to read this with an open mind and not take slight where none is intended. Okay? If you can do that, read on.

In short, I'm retired. This is fairly well known but I don't think I've interacted with you before. So, I'll mention it. I sold my business and retired. My business was definitely a "tech" business. In fact, it was very tech oriented as we were among the earliest to really get to "market" with traffic modeling. As in, we were using clustered, distributed, computing before it was fashionable. We had drive arrays that allowed us to work with data sets nearing a full terabyte - by the end of the 1990s. Yup - I dare say we were geeks and it was a tech industry. I sold and the sale was finalized just about today - back in 2008. (I'm comfortable sharing that, enough people here know me, some in real life even.)

So, I said that for a reason... Eventually, I needed staff that does the role that I think you're describing. Help desk? Support? If so then, please, understand that I actually held that role, in my own company, and probably have a very different view than you but I've at least experienced the work that goes into it. I'm told that I'm abnormal and I guess that's true - there's a point to all this. An example might be that I actually paid myself less than some of the people that worked for me. Sure, I still controlled the budget and still had the cookie jar, but the more that remained to grow the company, the larger and better we would be in the future. So, I paid the least amount that I could pay myself - to myself. It was actually much lower than some of us made.

That should be some background and give you a bit of perspective. With me still? Good... Now, this isn't going to come easy but... You're a janitor. Yes, you are not a rock star. You can be replaced, quickly and easily, by a whole bunch of other people. It'd serve you well to keep that in mind. But - do not stop here, read more before you reply, please.

I've shared a long story about a kid who broke into my office and how I got him a job with our cleaning company instead of putting his ass in juvenile detention. At first, before he went to that company, he worked directly for us at half-wages (I still paid him) so that he could pay for the damage done. He was, for the most part, ground's keeper or janitorial though he did spend some time with the devs and we tried to teach him some programming. He didn't seem too interested - even though, and I might be biased, he had access to the greatest traffic simulator ever made. (It didn't actually have any graphics at all, at that time. But it was still fun!)

Basically, he now owns his own janitorial service in Winston-Salem and hires underprivileged youth or at-risk youth to work with him. He recently opened an after-school facility to get kids off the street. I don't keep in touch but a friend keeps some tabs on him and, I guess, he's doing good things. He opened the center not too long ago and I know only because that friend forwarded a link to a blurb in the local newspaper.

Where am I going with this? Well, you're a janitor, as I said. Except, you should be appreciated. Even the janitor's job is important. If the facility isn't clean then there may be health and morale issues. If the janitor is behind then I don't care what your job title is, and this includes me, you help them lug out the trash. If the janitor's job is not essential to the company - then the company should not employ the janitor. If the janitor's job is essential to the company - then the company needs to treat that job, and that employee, like the valuable asset that they are. It's a matter of appreciation and respect and, judging by what you've written, that's what appears to be lacking.

Where can you go? This is a little difficult to say. What can you do? I don't really know. I'm too far, too distant in time, to really know and I'm entirely unfamiliar with corporate culture. I do, however, see a few choices. They're

Re:Is any job worth it?

[BVis]

Your suspicion that you don't really understand the issue, not having been in that situation yourself, is correct. Let me tell you what will happen if you take the advice you're giving, in the 2, 3, 4 order you suggest.

2: You have got to be fucking kidding me. Your users make you miserable every single day. If it's not their blinding stupidity or refusal to learn anything ("That's not my job to know that, that's your job" "Oh, I don't have to know that") it's the attempts to have you fired for doing your job or the fact that nobody seems to be subject to IT policy except IT. What you're suggesting is about the same as treating the guy with the shotgun on a chain gang you're on like your best buddy. After about a day and a half of being all sweetness and light you'll be dead inside. (I myself have been told both of those things.)

3: A few issues here. 1) Management does not give a single flying fuck if you like your job or not, because they don't understand it (and therefore it cannot be important). 2) Management is the source of many of the problems faced by IT. It's like asking the kid spraypainting graffiti on your wall to help stop people spraypainting graffiti on your wall. 3) You seem to think that you can make yourself more valued by doing your job well. You can bust your ass 60 hours a week or you can do just enough work to not get fired, your status and treatment (and salary) will not be affected. This is not limited to this particular field; these days the only thing hard work gets you is more hard work, and if you want a raise that does more than keep up with COL, you need to find a new job (where you will be treated just as badly, if not worse).

4: Why do you think people you would deal with working independently would treat you any better? If anything, it's worse, because you're on your own and the only defense you have against abuse is to fire your customer, and they know that. At least with a corporate IT department, there is some sort of process, if a completely ineffective one.

If anyone treated the janitor like they treat help desk / support folks, they'd get fired. If anyone spilled garbage on the floor deliberately every day and yelled at the janitor for the floor being messy, they'd get fired. If anyone yelled at the janitor because they don't have access to a restricted room and demanded that they open the door, they'd get fired. If anyone yelled at the janitor because management has implemented some sort of insane new recycling system that requires 5 different bins, they'd get fired. All of these things happen to support folks on a daily basis.

Your comments smack of privilege and victim-blaming. Why should support folks make any extra effort when they know that nothing will change, they'll just be dead inside with the same paycheck and the same oxygen thieves breaking their computers. Perhaps the problem is how disposable and sub-human the user population thinks IT folks are. There aren't many jobs where someone will try to have you fired because you did your job. No, the problem is not IT workers' attitude, the problem is the treatment that led them to have that attitude.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[KGIII]

I dare say you reached some strange conclusions. The most salient being that, had *anyone* treated support like that then I'd have ensured they no longer worked for us. It simply would not be tolerated. If we don't need you then we don't employ you and if we employ you we appreciate your contribution.

That said, surely there's somewhere left that carries that same mentality? If it is as you describe, that's borderline insanity and nobody should be expected to tolerate that. Also, I'd not count out the part about striking it out on your own - there seem to be a number of people that do so. They're also willing to fire their customers. Ask a few and see how they manage?

I've fired customers - but never without completing my contract. There were two whole States for whom we'd no longer even submit a bid and several large municipalities - almost all of which was because of abusive treatment. In our case, we finished the contract, to the letter, and never submitted a bid again. If were were asked why we did not bid then we told them the truth. A couple of them indicated that they'd ensure that such behavior didn't happen again but there was no way we'd have worked for them again, no matter how many promises were made.

If it were me, and I had control of my life, I'd probably strike out on my own with the goal of being more an intermediary. Instead of you being in the trenches it'd be someone you hired. If it is as you describe, I'd have walked long ago - and probably taken a job as a janitor. However, it seems that you're stuck on Option 1. While you seem disinclined to try other things you can be reasonably sure that doing nothing will mean that nothing changes. I don't know what's happened to the tech industry in the past years to make it so dour but if it's as shitty as you indicate then I'd bail. Then again, I see lots of posts saying that people have changed fields to become plumbers, electricians, and whatnot.

Either way, good luck. I know the credit union is bending over backwards to give loans to people who are starting businesses. Maybe that's a route to look into? Surely *all* the businesses can't abuse tech employees that much?

Oh yeah, for the privilege? Heh... I started with a $5000 grant and a loaned computer. I've eaten Ramen noodles. I've driven a third-hand car. I've even had to work on said car, at night and in the freezing cold, to get to the office the next day. If that's privilege then I'm unfamiliar with the usage of the term. While I am male, I'm not actually white or anything. Well, I have some white in me - not a lot. I dunno... I guess you could say that I'm quite privileged now, if that helps.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[BVis]

Oh, I moved on from support years ago. That's why I'm still alive and sane. It's the ditch digging of the 21st century; it's hard, unforgiving work, with those who consider themselves better than you laughing at and occasionally spitting on you.

You may understand that IT folks are human beings, and as a small (I'm assuming) business owner you have some more flexibility in how you take care of your people. I am also gratified to learn that there's still someone out there who thinks of his employees as human beings instead of cost centers. Unfortunately, you are in the very small minority. It's especially bad at larger companies, where the ones making the decisions about how people get treated are sometimes three states (or an ocean) away, and they're just numbers to them. All they see are statistics (tickets closed, hours worked, number of user complaints, etc) and cannot think of them any other way. It's even worse at publicly held companies; they have a responsibility to the stockholders to minimize costs and maximize profits, and most unimaginative managers, rather than find some innovative way to improve efficiency, just start treating workers like crap to save money.

With your business, you had the choice of whom you wanted to work with; if a customer was too much trouble or cost you money, you could fire them. Not so if you're a help desk jockey or a desktop support drone; that useless Administrative Assistant who only has a job because she's banging one of the executives and who doesn't have the brainpower to solve a jigsaw puzzle will still fuck up her computer on a daily basis and you will still have to fix the exact same fuckup every single time. You don't get to choose.

It's not just the tech industry where this happens. If anything, it's WORSE at companies in other sectors. Hospitals are the worst from what I've seen; imagine supporting not only nurses who were born before computers were a thing (it's a very gray population), admin assistants who are also banging one of the doctors, and doctors themselves. Doctors are usually pretty smart, capable people, but they also believe the world should modify itself to line up with their expectations, and that they should never have to change any of their behavior. So not only do they fuck up their computers, they keep fucking them up deliberately until IT decides to break several rules and give them what they want, just to get them to go away. I've worked in multiple Fortune 500 companies doing support; one thing you learn is to never try to tell anyone at the director level or above that they're violating IT policy (or in fact doing anything wrong at all, even when it's your job to tell them), because you most likely like having a job. I have seen CEOs whose passwords (the ones protecting their email, and preventing someone from emailing gay porn to all the stockholders) were simple dictionary words, or the name of the company, and never expired. This was because someone tried to tell them they were subject to the same policy, and naturally they don't work there anymore. The rest learned from it. Shoot one hostage, the others start cooperating.

I have washed my hands of support. It is miserable, hard, maddening work that pays nowhere near what it should. Chances are that janitor is making more money than someone on the help desk. (This is because the janitor gets paid a fair wage, not because they're overpaid.) Dealing with stupid people all day is not unique to support; what is unique that their ignorance is funny and will be defended tooth-and-nail. (I worked one place where the union had a rule that computer literacy could not be made a condition of employment. I'm pretty pro-union but it's fair to say that's an abuse.) I'm a programmer now making nearly three times what I made a few years ago. But even now, someone who doesn't understand what it is I do or how important it is can look at the balance sheet and decide that I can be replaced by someone in India who has the same job title, but nowhere near the prog

Re:Is any job worth it?

[KGIII]

Ah, that's good to hear. I might be an asshole but I was legitimately curious if you were still putting up with that.

I sold back in 2008 and retired. It's been almost exactly 8 years since the sale was finalized and I was able to divest the shares in the now-parent company. I am, shall we say, quite comfortably retired.

I don't know what it was, or how it happened, but somewhere before the time I sold and now, things have really changed. If I had to lay it out there and guess at a date, I'd say it was probably around 2003 but a huge dive at around 2008/2009. Somewhere, somehow, they lost respect for the IT staff, the programmers, the devs, the ops, the support, etc...

I wonder if it was partially due to the torrent of barely qualified people who were coming online (I'm sure you've worked with/for some), a change in corporate culture, the recession - it seemed to really drop a lot around that time, or what?

And yeah, we were small but quite profitable. We had a few more than 200 employees. We were one of the firsts to do traffic modeling in both vehicular and pedestrian fields and "on a computer." At the time I sold, we had a bunch of assets and there were a huge number of "shovel ready" jobs (they weren't shovel ready) coming online, to the tune of billions of dollars, as the government worked to restart the economy. In other words, I got damned lucky.

Either way, 'tis good that you're out of it. That would suck and I'd not wish that on my worst enemy. Seriously, work shouldn't be like that. I'd have done very little without the people who worked with me. Without them, I'd have very little. I don't know how to change that but I'm seeing more and more small businesses pop up. So, maybe there's hope.

Re:Is any job worth it?

[BVis]

Support has sucked for a long time before that. Saying it got worse around 2008/2009 is kind of like saying you're being crushed by 15 tons of rocks instead of 10. My first job in tech was in 1997 working phone support for a dialup ISP and it's gotten steadily worse ever since. Stupids gonna stupid.

Yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

My aggravation definitely rose when I tried to read the f***ing ten page, one paragraph per page, article!

Sausages

[quintessencesluglord]

To be clear, are there any professions out there that don't suck in some fashion? Is there some magical career that is reasonably compensated, where the management isn't evil, and it is possible to have some semblance of a life outside of work?

The smart money sez that if IT is so awful, maybe it is time to jump ship and look into careers of being plumbers or country doctors.

Or maybe the notion of work culture needs to change, and that is certainly not going to come from above.

Re:Sausages

[Lumpy]

Yes. CEO you get paid handsomely when you destroy the business, you get paid handsomely when you don't do anything, etc....

Re:Sausages

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that technology jobs are sucky; it's that they are sucky and do not compensate well enough.

While there are a tremendous number of incompetent people in this field who don't belong, they are held up by the people who actually are capable of getting things done. This is ignoring the sometimes harmful actions of management.

And this is where compensation comes in. For the same job level, the difference in salary between a competent person and an incompetent person is just not worth it. You hear all the time that the super performers can do 10x the work of the average, never mind the dreadful. And yet, I'd be very surprised if the super performers are paid even 2x of the average.

It's just not worth the aggravation. It would be better to be a doctor or go to Wall Street, put up with a bunch of garbage, but at least get paid enough to be able to retire after working just five years.

Re:Sausages

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that technology jobs are sucky; it's that they are sucky and do not compensate well enough.

They're no more sucky than most other jobs. And they are paid FAR HIGHER than most other jobs - making them, by nearly any measure, VERY GOOD jobs that compensate very well. If you're a tech worker, chances are you're making at least 60k per year. That puts you solidly into the top 60% of *households* in the US. If - as is quite likely - you're making between 82k and 129k, you're in the top 40% of *households* in the US. Take in more than 129k? Congrats, you're in the top 20% of *households* in the US.

This sense that "somehow, I oughta be making 500k per year to administer Linux servers" is only rooted in your own fatuous sense of entitlement, and is not rooted anywhere in or near actual, objective, reality. You are already paid handsomely for your efforts, and you make more than vast numbers of people who have - again, objectively - jobs that come with much more bullshit than yours does.

If you can't pull in a six-figure salary as a tech worker, then I humbly submit that "being a doctor" or "going to Wall Street" are not avenues that are likely to be open to you, anyway, by virtue of your own astounding lack of intelligence, ambition, and self-discipline. Please stop looking to Hollywood as your touchstone for "how the world oughta work," it just makes you look like a bumpkin.

Re: Sausages

[GodelEscherBlecch]

IT is not awful, it is just full of whiners who got into it for the wrong reasons and think that simply being able to code should automatically propel you into a 6 figure salary. My long hours don't come from employer abuse, they come from my love for what I do, so much so that I will stay up until 3 AM working on it because I am literally giddy to see the next piece drop into place and watch the gears turn. My employer no doubt capitalizes on this obsession, but they also pay well and give me lots of freedom. I would do the same for less because this is what I do, I did not choose it because it was trendy or appeared on a 'best careers' list. It seems to me that if you are right for IT, it is right for you.

not enough.

[Lumpy]

Yeah, 7% is bullshit. we need a 35% to make up for the decade of not getting ANY increases.

Re:not enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
 
Overpaid person says they deserve to be overpaid even more.

Re: not enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

But enough about CEOs already. The only job that gets massively overpaid even for being a total failure.

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[Anonymous Coward]

$132000 a year, 38 hour week, six weeks leave a year, plus public holidays. Oh, and I work one day a week from home. My commute is half an hour from one house, or an hour from my weekender.

So this whole tech worker thing sounds like wool mill workers in the 1880s. Are you the new proletariat?

Prolotariot? Could you explain what you mean by this, sir engineer? I failed all my classes of the calculus therefore my Latin is not that great.

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[Anonymous Coward]

But the proletariat doesn't have no damn STOCK OPTIONS!!11

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful. Not everyone is as lucky as you are. There are plenty of us with engineering degrees from top 10 engineering schools that haven't managed to swing high salaries or continuous employment. Count your blessings.

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[110010001000]

Let me guess: you are working for the government so the taxpayers are paying you. Well guess what: the rest of us need to work in order to generate enough tax revenue so you can get your 38 hour week.

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful. Not everyone is as lucky as you are. There are plenty of us with engineering degrees from top 10 engineering schools that haven't managed to swing high salaries or continuous employment. Count your blessings.

Yeah, I'm still wondering where these six-figure jobs are, other than in the bay area or on some offshore rig for months at a time.

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[Anonymous Coward]

6 weeks leave - government or education (contractor). too high for college job though

If you're getting into tech because it's a good...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. industry, PLEASE DON'T.

There are far too many people working in IT who simply shouldn't be, and they just make stuff harder.

All salaries should be 10 times higher

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why: money supply chart

Housing costs

[Dasher42]

What's really important for us to realize is that we're a favored group of the working people, but we are not immune to how the current system treats workers, and we need to look at our impact on others.

We haven't taken this recession quite so much on the chin as blue-collar workers; jobs may be on the rise again, but not well-paying jobs for most. In the meantime, those landlords who are charging high rents in tech-heavy cities? They're making life hard for us, but nigh well impossible to other people. That gentrification is displacing people of less means, often people with roots and community. Watching the Mission in San Francisco become a place that the Latino culture that gave it its character could scarcely hang on made me really think about this. I had occasion to have a bunch of housemates who worked in the restaurants, and they were barely hanging on financially, a non-stop cliffhanger. Seems to me we're enabling a racket.

I for my part have chosen to build a tiny house, get a mobile hotspot, telecommute, and work on scaling my lifestyle to my actual needs. Landlords don't usually offer that; they're trying to oversell as much as anyone, and to as generic an audience as possible. We could work on changing that. I see people turning to community land trusts to try to keep housing possible for low-income people. It's hard for artists that make San Francisco to remain there without such measures, at this point. If we in IT gave this our energy too, we'd be keeping more of what we toil so many hours for, but it'd give momentum to something that's a lifeline to others. I'd rather not just work long hours to give the landlords incentive to evict the artists that made me want to live somewhere to begin with!

In short, we're in the business of being problem solvers at work; if we do this for ourselves and the communities we're in or neighbors too, it could change a lot of this.

Work work work

[phorm]

Yeah, I hear that. As I write, somebody is trying to schedule a "follow up meeting" for an issue. Since I'm pretty much booked up with actual work all day, her answer "oh, can we just schedule it at 12:30" then.

Yeah, the answer to me being too busy for more meetings is to schedule one in my lunchtime, because apparently my calendar is open there...

Re:Work work work

[Sperbels]

Quick fix. Book a recurring daily meeting for yourself at lunchtime.

Re:Work work work

[Anonymous Coward]

And you should be happy she did not realize your schedule was open at 12:00 midnight. I had a boss that used to schedule meetings after 10pm because that is when everyone was available on the calendar.

Re:Try working 3 jobs POOR $12/hr

[Anonymous Coward]

She made $1200 per week and couldn't afford food? I'm guessing at least one of your numbers is totally made up...

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[Anonymous Coward]

What you've got here is a bunch of sad keyboard jockeys who aren't very good at their jobs. If you're not shitty at your job, you can do just fine in tech too.

Software engineer - 140k/yr, up to ~50 hours /week, 4 weeks vacation + public holidays... work from home more or less whenever I want. Commute is about 25 minutes for me if I have to go into the office, and about 15 seconds for me, if I'm working from home. My boss stays out of my hair for the most part, and my coworkers are generally enjoyable to work with.

I'll admit, 6 weeks leave & a 38 hour week would be nicer, but I don't particularly feel I'm being abused. I know of literally nobody I've ever worked with in my 18 years of experience that worked the types of hours being claimed here, either.

It seems to me that whiners gonna whine.

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[Anonymous Coward]

My current six figure job is in the boston metrowest area. I've also had six figures offers in NYC, Dallas, southern NH, Raleigh, San Diego, Chicago, Toronto, and Kansas City.

If you're really struggling to find them... the problem might just be that nobody's willing to pay you for your overinflated sense of entitlement. Those of us who get 6 figure offers are presumably either 1) really good at negotiating, and/or 2) really good at our jobs, and create lots of value for our employers, thus justifying a high pay rate.

No complaints here.

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience may not be typical but I make almost exactly 6 times what I was making when I started in this business 17 years ago for the same job title (add a "senior" or something but it's the same job). The politics and BS are actually LESS cumbersome than they were back then (not the same employer). The hours are still long but they've always been and I don't expect that to change. I do get quite a bit of vacation though and have no problem using it.

I come from a blue collar family. My dad would come home dirty and tired. I wouldn't trade my 60 hours at a desk for his 40 hour work weeks.

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm still wondering where these six-figure jobs are, other than in the bay area or on some offshore rig for months at a time.

As a software engineer with kids I would LOVE to spend months on some offshore rig. No commute, minimal interaction with people outside of work hours. Maybe enough quiet to catch up on reading.

Sounds like paradise to me :-)

Crushed by the weight of protecting the guilty

[Anonymous Coward]

The toughest struggle I have dealt with is knowing about people within an organization that are inept, malicious, and breaking laws. Anyone who deals with networks or storage systems that aren't carefully designed to hide the information they move or store from the technical staff will ultimately run into this.

My worst experience was when a new employee for a very senior position arrived with a USB-key containing sensitive information from his former employer. I won't say exactly what, but this was a government organization, like a healthcare clinic or school authority, and the information was about their clients (ie. patients or students). I didn't realize the information was sensitive until it had been on our system for a while. Worse, the way I found out about it meant that a bunch of people knew about it, and we all knew who knew. With guidance from a government body that handles these sorts of issues, I learned that it was a severe breach of the law and should be taken very seriously. When I made an appointment to talk to the person within our organization responsible for handling these matters, the fellow at fault took that position for himself, meaning I would have to report the breach of the law to the person who breached the law. Worse, he announced the change to his staff as I was waiting in the lobby for the appointment, meaning he had been tipped off as to my plans. Until that point, I felt the fellow was just ignorant, but then realized what he was capable of doing a great deal of damage.

Keeping the story devoid of details, I continued to work at the organization for a time. It was hell as this fellow kept making moves to consolidate all decision-making power within the organization into his position but would sit on any decision for weeks or drop it altogether. He also went on a reputation destroying campaign which was aimed at, strangely, the best few individuals in the organization. That was the worst time of my work-career. The hardest part was the whole time he was making up stories, I was holding my tongue about his law-breaking for fear of losing the job. Eventually, I decided I no longer wanted to work for this organization, or even in that area of tech again, and that I would report him to the authorities on my way out. I reported the law-breaking to a board-member (which is exactly what one is supposed to do in this situation), knowing that if they acted maliciously, they would be breaking more laws. To my surprise, they did exactly that and ended my contract. A legal battle ensued and after almost two years, I came out the victor, but only a little ahead money-wise. But I couldn't work a steady job through the process and it was a wild roller-coaster of a ride that took its toll. The damages being sought by both sides grew from tens to several hundred of thousand dollars. I had to carefully schedule contract work for times of relative calm in the litigation process as sleep was impossible during the worst of it.

So I learned what it is to be a whistle-blower, that the protections for whistle-blowers are pretty weak, that the sort of behaviour I reported and experienced is pretty common, that the sort of behaviour goes unpunished even when reported, and that the legal system is biased towards those individuals and organizations with the most money, but my most important lesson came a few days after the job ended. For the first time, my son read a book to me at bed-time. When I told my wife, she expressed that he had been doing so with her for months. The realization that I had very few recollections of spending time with him was devastating. The job had been dominating my life to that degree for nearly as long as he had been alive. It had been more stress and sacrifice than it was worth for most of that time, not just during the downward slide at the end.

The only way I would let my career dominate my life again is if it would significantly change the world for the better, my co-workers and management, were truly righteous, and I had a good deal of control. Until I find that, or create it, I'll happily work a job that doesn't follow me home, study in a field where people are likely to be working for the greater good, and volunteer where I feel it is most worthwhile. Life is too short.

Re:Try working 3 jobs POOR $12/hr

[Anonymous Coward]

I think she needs a new boyfriend. I bought my GF a car, as well as my wife, and both of my daughters.

If she was my GF I would not have an issue buying her a car and making sure she did not go hungry. ;)

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[Anonymous Coward]

Mechanical engineer here (mix of software & mechanical engineering actually). $180k/yr, 40 hr/wk, 4 wk/yr vacation + holidays, flexible schedule, 20 min drive from work. Also, not in an expensive city, so cost of living is reasonable (i.e. $500k buys you a modern 2500-3000 sqft house in a good neighborhood). Am I lucky? Hell yes.

Re:Try working 3 jobs POOR $12/hr

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor fool - he just doesn't realize she was getting plenty of sausage and gravy on the side, and didn't need to buy food.

If you know what I mean.

Is this the SV bubble we're talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?

My raise last year was 1.9%, basically a SoL increase considering the gov't gave tech folks a 1% increase. 7% says I'm truly in the wrong company/job.

Cost of housing is ok, gas is cheaper, but the positions are bland/generic.... where this article talks about complaints on high housing, 7% increase, and a boat of positions.... Silicon Valley (which is what this article really discusses) is not the tech industry. It's a major hub, but the the be all end all.

Re:Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choic

[ishmaelflood]

No, I work for a car company that didn't get bailed out by the US government recently. I work 38 hours because that's what my contract says. They pay me to do stuff for them, I do it. That's what contracts are for.

Robert Half recruiters are pricks

[Anonymous Coward]

PSA: Robert Half's recruiters are total assholes.

Re: Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choi

[Anonymous Coward]

Your envy is showing. I do better than that in all categories as a software engineer in the private sector. It's called being talented, dedicated and responsible. You should try it sometime instead of blaming all your problems on the government and pretending there are no good jobs. The truth is just that those jobs are too good for you

Re: Maybe mechanical engineering was a better choi

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be interested in hearing how you got that job. I'm guessing you didn't do it via the treadmill of submitting resumes, going to interviews, and fielding recruiter calls only to be rejected by HR goons with no clue about what the position actually entails, or whether you're in fact qualified for it?

Life/Work Balance

[ChoosyBeggar]

I worked like an absolute swordfighter in 2014: Up at 6AM, working in the morning over breakfast, working on the train, (first one in the office,) skipping lunch and pressing right through to quitting time, (last one in the office,) working on the train ride home, dinner, reading documentation in bed, and often waking up in the middle of the night to get some work done. After all, I needed to prove myself, and sharpen my skills. All the while, my boss was a total prick who openly hated me for not being able to instantly fulfill whatever fantasy he dreamed up. The developer at the desk next to me, whom he liked much more, had more experience than me, yet was given much easier tasks. He would stick up for me, telling our boss that the problems he was giving me were being handled by large teams of PHDs at other, larger companies. He became as fed up as I was, and we both quit. Now, I just turn around a few small gigs here and there, just covering my half of the rent and bills. I spend a lot less, and I sleep a lot more. I'm not stressed. I ride my bike most every morning. I work on personal projects. I paint. I'm much happier, if a bit more frugal by necessity.