For the last 10 years, I've been an independent consultant. Nothing is better than dictating your own hours and having the time to dedicate to your own pursuits. No committee to steer you, just your gut instincts.
A few months back I decided to throw my resume up on monster and all the other resume related web sites. With this shortage I keep hearing about, I thought I'd have my e-mail door knocked down by offer after offer. I've gotten offers, but not what I had envisioned, every one is for an RPG programming job on AS/400's.
Don't get me wrong, I love what I do but I miss the collaboration of bouncing ideas off of other techies. I've never grown my business to the point of needing to hire other individuals, just wanted to pay the bills and have the time to ride my bike.
What can I attribute to this lack of interest for my resume? Experience: No, I have 20 years on the keyboard. Current skills: No, I can work on many platforms including Windows and Linux. Age: Maybe that's it, I'm in my mid 40's.
Here I am keeping my skill-set up to date, reading 20 plus industry mags a month, teaching myself new tricks everyday, not wanting to get stale, yet I am looked at as an aging codasaurus. I can still sit in front of a screen all day and night on a coding project without thinking about it.
Distractions, I have none. My wife understands my lifestyle, the kids are all grown up, the dogs warm my feet and yet I am viewed as someone who can't hack today's dedicated tech life. What's wrong with this picture?
When I entered this industry, the PC was being born at IBM. I took the initiative to teach myself these new skills, I saw the writing on the wall. Now, all I seem to be good for is coding on machines that I decided to leave behind. I think the AS/400 is a great box but I wanted to expand my horizons beyond just one machine, one operating system and one programming language.
20 years later and all my newfound knowledge seems to be useless in the real world. New age companies want to hire new blood, kids who can code while they sleep. Old company managers look at my age and become protective of their jobs.
The kicker is the want ads, all these new acronyms like HTML, ASP, PHP, XML. They want you to have started to learn them when the standards committee was drafting the proposals. Yes we want you to have 5 years of Perl, was I supposed to have worked along side of Larry Wall?
I would make a very good Q/A engineer, yet the ads for these positions require some formal experience and you must be up to speed on all the latest scripting test tools. The local tech schools aren't teaching this and the software to learn this on your own is rather expensive.
Technical writing, documentation, I should of hung out in Key West with Hemingway and looked over his shoulder while he used RoboHelp. Send us a copy of your work, wouldn't that be like software piracy?
So that leaves me to continue doing what I've been doing for the last decade, supporting my small client base and riding my bike. The job market doesn't want me, it's looking for 20 something males who are uber coders with Spock like powers to suck up years of experience instantly.
Maybe I can talk with Linus and have him vouch for me, yes I was there in the beginning, I can remember version 0.0.1, boy those were the days.
I have one of these machines, many weeks of trying to get things working.
This is what to do:/etc/lilo.conf:
Under the image=/boot section:
I put it under the read-only line, type in vga=792. This places you into framebuffer mode./etc/X11/XF86Config-4
Under the Device section:
ChipId 0x5246
Use 1024x768 x 24 bit color and you'll be fine.
Nice machine, lousy Sony support.
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For the last 10 years, I've been an independent consultant. Nothing is better than dictating your own hours and having the time to dedicate to your own pursuits. No committee to steer you, just your gut instincts.
A few months back I decided to throw my resume up on monster and all the other resume related web sites. With this shortage I keep hearing about, I thought I'd have my e-mail door knocked down by offer after offer. I've gotten offers, but not what I had envisioned, every one is for an RPG programming job on AS/400's.
Don't get me wrong, I love what I do but I miss the collaboration of bouncing ideas off of other techies. I've never grown my business to the point of needing to hire other individuals, just wanted to pay the bills and have the time to ride my bike.
What can I attribute to this lack of interest for my resume?
Experience: No, I have 20 years on the keyboard.
Current skills: No, I can work on many platforms including Windows and Linux.
Age: Maybe that's it, I'm in my mid 40's.
Here I am keeping my skill-set up to date, reading 20 plus industry mags a month, teaching myself new tricks everyday, not wanting to get stale, yet I am looked at as an aging codasaurus. I can still sit in front of a screen all day and night on a coding project without thinking about it.
Distractions, I have none. My wife understands my lifestyle, the kids are all grown up, the dogs warm my feet and yet I am viewed as someone who can't hack today's dedicated tech life. What's wrong with this picture?
When I entered this industry, the PC was being born at IBM. I took the initiative to teach myself these new skills, I saw the writing on the wall. Now, all I seem to be good for is coding on machines that I decided to leave behind. I think the AS/400 is a great box but I wanted to expand my horizons beyond just one machine, one operating system and one programming language.
20 years later and all my newfound knowledge seems to be useless in the real world. New age companies want to hire new blood, kids who can code while they sleep. Old company managers look at my age and become protective of their jobs.
The kicker is the want ads, all these new acronyms like HTML, ASP, PHP, XML. They want you to have started to learn them when the standards committee was drafting the proposals. Yes we want you to have 5 years of Perl, was I supposed to have worked along side of Larry Wall?
I would make a very good Q/A engineer, yet the ads for these positions require some formal experience and you must be up to speed on all the latest scripting test tools. The local tech schools aren't teaching this and the software to learn this on your own is rather expensive.
Technical writing, documentation, I should of hung out in Key West with Hemingway and looked over his shoulder while he used RoboHelp. Send us a copy of your work, wouldn't that be like software piracy?
So that leaves me to continue doing what I've been doing for the last decade, supporting my small client base and riding my bike. The job market doesn't want me, it's looking for 20 something males who are uber coders with Spock like powers to suck up years of experience instantly.
Maybe I can talk with Linus and have him vouch for me, yes I was there in the beginning, I can remember version 0.0.1, boy those were the days.
Sunday, how to read code
I have one of these machines, many weeks of trying to get things working. This is what to do: /etc/lilo.conf:
Under the image=/boot section:
I put it under the read-only line, type in vga=792. This places you into framebuffer mode. /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
Under the Device section:
ChipId 0x5246
Use 1024x768 x 24 bit color and you'll be fine.
Nice machine, lousy Sony support.