The default reply here when anyone criticizes the way US tech workers are treated is some variation of "Well you must be one of those shitty techworkers who got downsized."
The fact of the matter, for me, was this: I was making a very good pile of money in tech jobs with side consulting. Great, fine, I was unaffected by the crash. Except that I'm not going to work in an industry that's proven itself to have extremely low levels of job security. I saw extremely hardworking friends, many PHD'd, get sacked in the last two years due to no action of their own but machinations far above them on the economic food chain. So, I changed careers. I'm not going to work in sweatshop conditions.
I think a lot of technicians spend a lot of time immersed in fantasy worlds like Star Trek and Everquest. I think maybe if they pulled their heads out of the sand, they'd see the real world, and their own situations, in a rather different way. Not just techs, of course... lots of people spend five hours in front of the TV and think it's normal. I'm mentioning that as a possible explanation for the incredible amount of apathy I see from techs about their situations. They don't necessarily like their situations, if they realize what's going on at all, but they feel powerless to change anything. That's bad news.
Lots of techies, a surprising number, are on the right side of the political spectrum. The very idea of any kind of labor organization was abhorrent. I think a lot of this is because until recently we've lived cushy lives.
Now there's a hard-hitting new pimp in town and things aren't quite so nice.
How much more of this FUCKED UP REPUGNANT SHIT is it going to take before people wake up? We're the ones who run the machinery here during this all-important war effort. What are they going to do if we won't work, for free, conscript us?
No joke, I've worked at a company where there were blue-haired old ladies-- former janitors from 30 years ago-- who had established a power base surrounding the AS/400s and wouldn't let it go.
This is one reason why the company was still running Arcnet and GOD AWFUL TERMINAL SOFTWARE IN ALL CAPS in 2001.
This hardware company, 30 years ago, started out in a chicken coop-- and these old ladies had been there since the days of the chicken coop. This is all true and I am not making any of it up!!!
Yeah, it may send the "wrong" message about trust enforcement priorities.
Their job is to enforce antitrust legislation. To the extent that they have not enforced it upon Microsoft (and numerous other conglomerates) they are not doing their job and are guilty of dereliction of duty.
Are they worried this "wrong message" might get people thinking about what should be done to aggressive monopolies, and get people talking about the fact that pork and kickbacks are now driving policy in the US under the current administration?
So this study, doubtless funded with some ungodly amount of money, told them this:
Women have difficulty operating some mechanical devices.
This is news?
I don't mean this as a sexist jab, though I think it's kind of funny. There are just some things that women very often aren't good at. Then again, there are certain things that they are very good at that men aren't. It's all relative.
You talk to people about it and the response is always something like "Uh, unions bad." This from very intelligent people who are being whipsawed by their corporate masters.
How owuld you go about getting this sort of thing started? I suppose one idea might be to talk to leadership of current unions.
It's not even so much that I'm worried about my own job security as that I'm tired of many things about IS, and job security is certainly one of them.
I kind of gravitated into it, it was awesome for a while, but I'm disgusted with the way US corporations have treated techs, and there is no debating that (not that you tried.)
You're right, med school is not going to be easy >:O
This is just my opinion and all, but I don't think people from the US should have to go to India in order to chase jobs that emigrated from here.
I know that's against the principles of free trade and all, but we invented this technology, we are the ones who built it, we supported it, and now the corporations we built it for are selling our jobs for pennies on the dollar to third world countries.
What I'm doing is changing my field, after around 14 years, because the way technical people in this country have been treated is utterly reprehensible.
Also, of course you're right, and I SHOULD NOT be working in the computer industry. I don't belong there with the 400 pound bearded everquest elf-maidens and the skinny hitler-mustached guys who can only talk about septic tanks and walk around with 10 inch ethernet pigtails hanging out of their flies.
(True stories btw...)
I can't stand it anymore; it seems like a joke to me.
Notice above where I said I was going back to school to train into something totally different.
Yes, you're right, I did get very tired of the environment and the nature of the work. I hope to go into a highly paid field of medicine, and do that while I study other things.
And also, I can tolerate just about anything for the right amount of cash as long as there's some job security. There's no such thing in the computer industry and if you think there is, you're fooling yourself.
You apparently differ; differing opinions make the world go round.
The situation in the computer industry is like medicine would be as if every kid who had dissected some fetal pigs decided to hang out a shingle and become an obstetrician.
You're looking at replacing a secure, varied and financially extremely rewarding field with a field which is insecure, hypersaturated, and arguably can be done by someone with very little education.
Not only that but IS work lends itself to ruts. Wherever you work, you're going to be learning an API or a network system, and then you're going to be writing for or supporting that API or network, until you get another job, where you could very well be doing exactly the same thing.
If you're interested in spending your time in overcrowded cubicle farms full of stressed, angry, reclusive programmers who live in constant fear that their jobs are going to be given to retrained bricklayers from bloody Pakistan, you're headed in the right direction!
Oddly enough, I'm in a position now where I can run screaming from the bloated tech industry, and I'm back in college getting ready for med school.
The only way your idea is not utterly BONKERS is if you want to somehow use your medical skill to get into something like bioinformatics where the money is potentially gigantic for doctors who have technical ability.
Here's what the computer industry is like right now. You have a lot of people who are very experienced and good at what they do. Then you have numerous carpetbagging amateurs who have installed kiddie Linux a few times, are good at bullshit, and have wormed themselves into positions of responsibility. It's almost like a kind of Ponzi scheme.
That's much of the reason why the industry lost a lot of its credibility. That's much of the reason why the industry started asking "Why are we paying this yoyo $120 an hour when Patel in Calcutta says that he can get the job done for rupees on the dollar?"
Look very very carefully at this before you do it. You've got numerous people here-- who should know-- telling you things like "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." This is no joke.
Sorry to rant but I'm sure most of ya all know what I'm talking about;/
TV news crossed the line into deception a long time ago.
The agendas of the corporate monoliths who run the media in the United States are stinking and obvious in every little "human interest" story. It wouldn't matter anyway if the "local stories that aren't" were actually local; the end result is the same.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are making a lot of assumptions here.
The default reply here when anyone criticizes the way US tech workers are treated is some variation of "Well you must be one of those shitty techworkers who got downsized."
The fact of the matter, for me, was this: I was making a very good pile of money in tech jobs with side consulting. Great, fine, I was unaffected by the crash. Except that I'm not going to work in an industry that's proven itself to have extremely low levels of job security. I saw extremely hardworking friends, many PHD'd, get sacked in the last two years due to no action of their own but machinations far above them on the economic food chain. So, I changed careers. I'm not going to work in sweatshop conditions.
I think a lot of technicians spend a lot of time immersed in fantasy worlds like Star Trek and Everquest. I think maybe if they pulled their heads out of the sand, they'd see the real world, and their own situations, in a rather different way. Not just techs, of course... lots of people spend five hours in front of the TV and think it's normal. I'm mentioning that as a possible explanation for the incredible amount of apathy I see from techs about their situations. They don't necessarily like their situations, if they realize what's going on at all, but they feel powerless to change anything. That's bad news.
Lots of techies, a surprising number, are on the right side of the political spectrum. The very idea of any kind of labor organization was abhorrent. I think a lot of this is because until recently we've lived cushy lives.
Now there's a hard-hitting new pimp in town and things aren't quite so nice.
How much more of this FUCKED UP REPUGNANT SHIT is it going to take before people wake up? We're the ones who run the machinery here during this all-important war effort. What are they going to do if we won't work, for free, conscript us?
Uh... Don't answer that.
And they're going to make us wear them, right?
FUCKING AWESOME POST.
Oh, how true that is, kind of a microcosm of mainframes in general...
No joke, I've worked at a company where there were blue-haired old ladies-- former janitors from 30 years ago-- who had established a power base surrounding the AS/400s and wouldn't let it go.
This is one reason why the company was still running Arcnet and GOD AWFUL TERMINAL SOFTWARE IN ALL CAPS in 2001.
This hardware company, 30 years ago, started out in a chicken coop-- and these old ladies had been there since the days of the chicken coop. This is all true and I am not making any of it up!!!
Wow, this is fascinating alright.
Fascinating the same way people crowding hotels dressed in Worf costumes is fascinating.
In other words, this is morbidly fascinating.
It's a pity people can't "wget life."
Right, on CNN every day is April Fools.
The difference is, they don't tell you when they're lying.
Would that have made chicken kiev?
)no offense intended to russian comrades(
Those aren't hits, they're roentgens.
My hair feels funny...
Once again, mad props to crazy Russian girl. Her recklessness is unimaginable.
Yeah, it may send the "wrong" message about trust enforcement priorities.
Their job is to enforce antitrust legislation. To the extent that they have not enforced it upon Microsoft (and numerous other conglomerates) they are not doing their job and are guilty of dereliction of duty.
Are they worried this "wrong message" might get people thinking about what should be done to aggressive monopolies, and get people talking about the fact that pork and kickbacks are now driving policy in the US under the current administration?
A fine that large ain't hay, even for the $loth.
Apparently the slashdot effect is a kind of physics fun he didn't account for...
So this study, doubtless funded with some ungodly amount of money, told them this:
Women have difficulty operating some mechanical devices.
This is news?
I don't mean this as a sexist jab, though I think it's kind of funny. There are just some things that women very often aren't good at. Then again, there are certain things that they are very good at that men aren't. It's all relative.
Let me get this straight...
they're going to draft hackers and put them in charge of military infrastructure.
Wow, that sounds incredibly smart.
Give him an object lesson.
Take him to a UNISYS engineers picnic, with plenty of grizzled, overweight ADA programmers who don't have the social skills of a gila monster.
Explain to him that this is what he is doomed to become unless he does things like comb his hair.
There's something really cyberpunk about this, and not in the glitz-and-glamor Mondo2000 sort of way.
/. article ever.
I think it's the duality between the rusted-out poisonous landscape, the hot motorcycle, and the logo jacket.
Very cool. Best
I've thought this exact thing myself, many times.
You talk to people about it and the response is always something like "Uh, unions bad." This from very intelligent people who are being whipsawed by their corporate masters.
How owuld you go about getting this sort of thing started? I suppose one idea might be to talk to leadership of current unions.
Invented, no. Built and supported yes.
It's not even so much that I'm worried about my own job security as that I'm tired of many things about IS, and job security is certainly one of them.
I kind of gravitated into it, it was awesome for a while, but I'm disgusted with the way US corporations have treated techs, and there is no debating that (not that you tried.)
You're right, med school is not going to be easy >:O
This is just my opinion and all, but I don't think people from the US should have to go to India in order to chase jobs that emigrated from here.
I know that's against the principles of free trade and all, but we invented this technology, we are the ones who built it, we supported it, and now the corporations we built it for are selling our jobs for pennies on the dollar to third world countries.
What I'm doing is changing my field, after around 14 years, because the way technical people in this country have been treated is utterly reprehensible.
Also, of course you're right, and I SHOULD NOT be working in the computer industry. I don't belong there with the 400 pound bearded everquest elf-maidens and the skinny hitler-mustached guys who can only talk about septic tanks and walk around with 10 inch ethernet pigtails hanging out of their flies.
(True stories btw...)
I can't stand it anymore; it seems like a joke to me.
Notice above where I said I was going back to school to train into something totally different.
Yes, you're right, I did get very tired of the environment and the nature of the work. I hope to go into a highly paid field of medicine, and do that while I study other things.
And also, I can tolerate just about anything for the right amount of cash as long as there's some job security. There's no such thing in the computer industry and if you think there is, you're fooling yourself.
You apparently differ; differing opinions make the world go round.
Here's a medical analogy for you.
;/
The situation in the computer industry is like medicine would be as if every kid who had dissected some fetal pigs decided to hang out a shingle and become an obstetrician.
You're looking at replacing a secure, varied and financially extremely rewarding field with a field which is insecure, hypersaturated, and arguably can be done by someone with very little education.
Not only that but IS work lends itself to ruts. Wherever you work, you're going to be learning an API or a network system, and then you're going to be writing for or supporting that API or network, until you get another job, where you could very well be doing exactly the same thing.
If you're interested in spending your time in overcrowded cubicle farms full of stressed, angry, reclusive programmers who live in constant fear that their jobs are going to be given to retrained bricklayers from bloody Pakistan, you're headed in the right direction!
Oddly enough, I'm in a position now where I can run screaming from the bloated tech industry, and I'm back in college getting ready for med school.
The only way your idea is not utterly BONKERS is if you want to somehow use your medical skill to get into something like bioinformatics where the money is potentially gigantic for doctors who have technical ability.
Here's what the computer industry is like right now. You have a lot of people who are very experienced and good at what they do. Then you have numerous carpetbagging amateurs who have installed kiddie Linux a few times, are good at bullshit, and have wormed themselves into positions of responsibility. It's almost like a kind of Ponzi scheme.
That's much of the reason why the industry lost a lot of its credibility. That's much of the reason why the industry started asking "Why are we paying this yoyo $120 an hour when Patel in Calcutta says that he can get the job done for rupees on the dollar?"
Look very very carefully at this before you do it. You've got numerous people here-- who should know-- telling you things like "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." This is no joke.
Sorry to rant but I'm sure most of ya all know what I'm talking about
What was meant by high resolution cameras, back in the 40s?
Maybe digital camera technology was farther advanced than I'd thought.
TV news crossed the line into deception a long time ago.
The agendas of the corporate monoliths who run the media in the United States are stinking and obvious in every little "human interest" story. It wouldn't matter anyway if the "local stories that aren't" were actually local; the end result is the same.
Obviously they are, like duh.
They're counting Everquest and Yahoo Chat, right?