As a young (not yet grad) student that has worked on and off in between school the biggest problem for me is the reality of the 9-5 work week. It sucks.
I first went through a 2 year computer technology program that taught mostly in Java. It was challenging, and fun. Learning data structures, operating systems and having interesting assignments based around that kind of thing, or hacking away at assembly code. That kind of thing was always interesting.
But when I went off to my first Co-op job for a semester the reality quickly switches and all I get to do is be bossed around by some guy with less education than myself to do all the crap jobs.
No big deal though, its a co-op job and my first in the industry.
After that I landed a pretty good job doing Java, PHP, SQL kinda stuff with a lot of responsibility and great bosses at a small software firm. Still though, wasn't nearly as interesting as school so I decided to go back, this time transferring into university.
Now, every time I go and apply at a position the majority of the jobs are the same sort of thing. The actual work might be ok, but I hate, HATE being stuffed into office buildings. It seems like every single time I get a new job they are almost never prepared for me and being a young worker I get put wherever they can "fit" me.
The real problem though, is that through school we learn to work at oddball hours, on our own time and we get the job done. But as soon as we migrate over to the workplace we are forced to work 9-5, 40 hours a week, sometimes have to wear ties and dress up even if we never speak to clients anyway. I suppose I just find it incredibly frustrating knowing that we've got the technology to be able to work from home, or wherever and still i'm forced to go through the monotony of this factory-like existence on a weekly basis.
So, I wouldn't consider myself someone expecting more than I'm worth. I just wish more companies in the IT sector would make the move towards work flexibility. Working on my own schedule is my biggest want in a job, but it is often hard to find as a young programming, in my experience so far.
Plus, it should also be considered that all of us young guys are often without a family, mortgage, car payments and all of the other "freedom" traps that the older generation have to deal with. As a result its harder to keep me simply because if I get bored, I leave and go elsewhere and unfortunately it doesn't take me long to get bored of office life.
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As a young (not yet grad) student that has worked on and off in between school the biggest problem for me is the reality of the 9-5 work week. It sucks. I first went through a 2 year computer technology program that taught mostly in Java. It was challenging, and fun. Learning data structures, operating systems and having interesting assignments based around that kind of thing, or hacking away at assembly code. That kind of thing was always interesting. But when I went off to my first Co-op job for a semester the reality quickly switches and all I get to do is be bossed around by some guy with less education than myself to do all the crap jobs. No big deal though, its a co-op job and my first in the industry. After that I landed a pretty good job doing Java, PHP, SQL kinda stuff with a lot of responsibility and great bosses at a small software firm. Still though, wasn't nearly as interesting as school so I decided to go back, this time transferring into university. Now, every time I go and apply at a position the majority of the jobs are the same sort of thing. The actual work might be ok, but I hate, HATE being stuffed into office buildings. It seems like every single time I get a new job they are almost never prepared for me and being a young worker I get put wherever they can "fit" me. The real problem though, is that through school we learn to work at oddball hours, on our own time and we get the job done. But as soon as we migrate over to the workplace we are forced to work 9-5, 40 hours a week, sometimes have to wear ties and dress up even if we never speak to clients anyway. I suppose I just find it incredibly frustrating knowing that we've got the technology to be able to work from home, or wherever and still i'm forced to go through the monotony of this factory-like existence on a weekly basis. So, I wouldn't consider myself someone expecting more than I'm worth. I just wish more companies in the IT sector would make the move towards work flexibility. Working on my own schedule is my biggest want in a job, but it is often hard to find as a young programming, in my experience so far. Plus, it should also be considered that all of us young guys are often without a family, mortgage, car payments and all of the other "freedom" traps that the older generation have to deal with. As a result its harder to keep me simply because if I get bored, I leave and go elsewhere and unfortunately it doesn't take me long to get bored of office life.