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Home Sweet Sweatshop
gdbear writes "Found a very interesting article on digital corporations and the new work ethic of never leaving work. It's a bit disturbing.
" Reading was deja vu all over again-live in the place, work in the place. The 20 foot commute is a boon and a curse. The perks of the lifestyle sometimes cover up the huge suck of your life that jobs like this take.
Can you get that 'first job' if you take that last vacation in college? If I look at the ads in the newspaper, or look at what recruiters post to the USENET, all of the ads say "experience required". Can you get a job in today's computer industry if you're not a 4.0 student (hackers rarely are, too much time programming neat hacks late at nite!) and you haven't taken internships or otherwise worked during your "vacations"?
Open Source offers another avenue -- work on a cool project, get a reputation, get money thrown at you. Still, it doesn't seem to me that college kids can be too sanguine about getting a job if they're going to "slack" during the summers the way our parents did.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
That's B.S.!
A union would do nothing but make things worse. There are an enormous number of open positions in IT-related fields all over the country. If you don't like working in that sort of an environment, don't take the job!
Take something else. There are pleanty of people who love working in that sort of a creative, energetic environment. If your choice of employer doesn't fit your chosen lifestyle, its your choice of employer that's the problem, not the employer's way of doing business. This isn't the same as being a assembly line worker in a one-industry town where you have no choices.
If the pace of change and expectations of working environments in the IT industry don't mesh with anyone's ideas, they should rethink the field they're going into, or find a place that works for them. Don't expect the industry to change. The fact that there are so many jobs paying six figures to people too young to even rent a car is attributable to the fact that there is just energy and committment among those people. You can have the cooshy fourty hour a week job, or the fast-paced six figure job where you do nearly everything under the sun at any given point. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I think, if anything, the greater problem is the number of companies that DON'T provide that sort of a working environment, and wonder why they can't hire people. There's been a lot of bitching this year here in Connecticut about "brain drain" and why companies here in state can't find technical workers. A local rag had an article this week saying that companies weren't looking in the right places, using highschool students and inner city kids as examples of untapped skill markets. They were completely off base though. Its a piece of cake to find a worker, but companies that don't realize the level of benefits that they need to give to their employees won't keep them.
When a worker slaves 40-50 hours a week at a mediocre pay sees that they could be working 60 hours a week, for more money in an environment where blowing off steam is expected through vicious games of parking-lot street hockey, pinball, beers in the fridge, or rides on the company yacht, there's not much reason for them to stay, particularly given the fact that the most easily available people for those positions are typically young men and women without families and a lot of ability to pick up and move.
A union won't change that. A union would slow the pace of innovation, hurt the pay scales (since unions have a tendancy to even out pay scales -- you'll no longer be payed $40k more than your next door cube mate on account of your greater skills...), and hurt the ability for companies to change and move quickly in the market.
Unions are a plague in this country... they've served no useful purpose since work environments stopped being dangerous, and in most industries where they exist, they serve to line the pockets of the union leaders and keep underqualified and incompetant workers employed.
If you're in IT, you don't need a union to protect your rights, you just need your feet. Walk out the door, the place across the street will probably give you 20% more anyway. The only workers unions will help will be the ones who overstate their qualifications and experience anyway.
They think that because they work 18 hours a day, neglect their home life, end up divorced, have kids that don't know them, and few real friends, they are "Heros". They gave their all, 110%. Guess what, for that 110%, you will get a watch and maybe a small pention when you retire. You will dye alone, and no one that ever worked with you will care. There is so much more to life than the grind. People who overwork themselves aren't heros, they are idiots. I must admit though, for those of us with a slightly higher intelegence, it sure is nice to have all you mindless worker ants making the world a better place for us. In fact, tonight, I am going to go home, and enjoy the fruits of your labor. I'll be sure to dream a dream for you, while I rest assured in my bed tonight. Onward my little worker ants :)
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
This article certainly gives food for thought. I really don't want to be 'eased out' when I am 35 years old, and I do want some sort of life outside work. (Actually, I work at a university, so I think that we don't get exploited as much as in the corporate world ... though, allegedly, we don't get paid as much as those in the corporate world, either!) I have forwarded the URL to several friends who are also working in New Media/IT.
However, this isn't the only career with these sorts of problems. Before becoming a programmer, I was a graduate student in micro/molecular biology. As a graduate student I was expected to work far more than 40 hours a week on a stipend of approx 15K/yr (at the University I attended - this will vary depending on the institution, city, etc.) This included my lab work and teaching. What happens when you finish your doctorate? Why, you continue with post-doctorate work (or training). Post-docs tend to be 1-5 year positions, usually salaried between 20-35 K/year, few benefits, if any. And once you have finished one or two post-docs, THEN you can apply for a permanent job! The good ones are apparently hard to get - with cutbacks in education, many professorial jobs are being eliminated. Industry jobs are often less than secure in biotechnology. Most of these jobs are not lucrative, either (with the odd exception, of course!), and there is sometimes a bias against older applicants, or people with gaps in publication records. (If you are a female scientist, wanting to have a family, you will likely be creating those dreaded publication gaps.) Life is expected to revolve around your science, and from what I have seen, young scientists spend more time in the lab than programmers in the office around here!
Anyhow, it is tough to be an educated professional these days, in several fields. I enjoy what I am doing at the moment, and it pays reasonably well. Someday, I may have to switch careers again (when I am eased out at 35, perhaps?), but I know I won't be the only person in this boat. I don't see any immediate solutions to the overall problems in the industry, so it is probably up to each individual to keep their own options open, and decide the order of priorities in their lives.
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
Let's see.... there was the ultra-hip software company where the owners provided free soft drinks, coffee, and snacks. The snacks stopped when the company president realized just how many PowerBars a 200-pound powerlifter could eat -- oops.
:)
Then there was the up-and-coming ISP with a habit of telling my team about urgent projects two days before they were due. They used the "you'll get stock when we go public" tactic. After too many 12-hour shifts and 3:00 am drive-to-the-office server reboots, I used the "I'll end up divorced if I stay here" resignation.
Overall, though, it's been a fun ride so far. I wonder what's next.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Your career is yours. You build it, you cultivate it. When you go somewhere, your career goes with you.
Your JOB is not yours. It belongs to the company you work for. At best it's on lease.
Don't get attached to a job. DO get attached to building a career.
I'm a senior at college working towards my BS/MS in Computer Engineering/Computer Science. Alot of people that started the world of college when I did graduated this past year. Most of them had interviews and offers flung at them as if they were beads at Mardi Gras.
One trend I notice to be very disturbing is the amount of overtime in the tech industry, observed from friends and internships. I can think of two reasons this is, and I don't know which is the greater cause. One is the obvious lack of workers.
But second, and what frightens me more, is the thinking that since college students coming out of college have alot of energy and no life, they can work 60, 70, 80+ hours a week and not miss a beat. There are companies that were hiring straight from college at my university this past year, and they just wanted the overachievers. It wasn't unheard of to be up 24-7 during training, and put in ungodly hours once they got out of that as well. The average time one was with that company was only 3 years. I suspect burnout.
I'm also currently working in an internship where if you're here after 5PM, something is terribly wrong. The environment here is very 8-5, suit, meeting driven, etc. etc. And I don't feel fulfilled. It's like I don't feel productive.
Yet at the same time, I don't want to go somewhere I can't back out of. I know that in a few years, I'm going to want to start a family. I want to come home every night and kiss my wife. I'm starting to wonder if there has to be a trade off.
But from the patterns I've seen, most companies like the out-of-college type because they can be overworked. And I don't want that. That scares me.
Maybe I should just go get my MBA and become a management drone. -sigh-
Texodore
This is certainly quite a change from the standard view. When I mention to people that I am a college student working towards a CS degree they immediately mention that there are many job opportunities. Everywhere I turn people are looking for experienced programmers. This story certainly makes one wonder about long term job security. Sure one can get that first job, but later? The example of the 40 year old with knowledge of multiple languages and OS's without a decent job was a bit scary...