I don't think I wasted their time. If they didn't want to respond, they didn't have to. Aside from the fact that I may use their input in my plans, I am not the only one who can benefit from this discussion. I am apparently not the only guy with expatriation on his mind.
If you think you wasted your time, that's your problem. However, you are probably a troll, who would post something nasty no matter what I said.
Furthermore, you demonstrate why I tried to stay vague and general. People like you all over Slashdot are happy to attack details (relevant or otherwise) and ignorantly go off on tangents about which you know little or nothing, while blatantly ignoring or baselessly refuting key issues.
I find many of the replies I've received interesting.
I purposely limited/changed some of my information to try to get more general answers from people than if I had been specific and entirely accurate. For example, I already know what country I'm going to next, but I wanted to see where people thought I ought to go.
I was surprised to see how many guys mentioned working in India. AFAIK foreigners are not allowed to be hired there.
It cracked me up how much people harped on how "crappy" the standard of living is in other countries. The fact is the worst home I ever has was in Pennsylvania, complete with cockroaches, mold, and even sulphur and fecal matter in the water. One guy said that I was "naive"...well, the fact I didn't mention that I have lived in other countries before doesn't mean I didn't.
I also didn't mention that I started working professionally in programming in 1998, after a few years of hobby programming--I'm no spring chicken. I've continued to program as a hobby during my downtime. I signed up with Monster in its first year, and it's never been any help to me.
I didn't mention that I have a son. For me, working isn't all about glamor and a huge $30K salary. (Yes, that is good money for where I live.) It's about making enough money to live on and support him. I'm afraid the local mini-marts don't provide that kind of paycheck.
The one piece of advice I keep getting that seems to ring true is about personal networking...which is why I'm looking forward to relying on nepotism, as soon as I find an influential relative.
(And less relevant, but to be accurate: I have a B.A. in Spanish and a B.S. in Computer Science.)
I don't hold it against anybody who gave me useless advice because I didn't tell them everything about myself. But like I said, I was looking for general answers, and I largely got what I wanted.
Maybe I don't like people as much as you do, but I've always preferred working from home. When I wanted human interaction, I went to the coffee shop.
Furthermore, when I worked in offices, enjoyable human interaction was generally frowned upon. Unpleasant human interaction was expected. I see little to miss from the office.
Regardless of that, I don't care where I have to go to program, since I've been unemployed for a while. Lock me in a closet or sentence me to Dilbertville--I don't have the luxury of worrying about that.
I generally put stuff into whatever cardboard box fits best. Then I stack the boxes on the floor. A big reason for this approach is that, other than a desk and a chair, I have no furniture, whatsoever.
I've seen far-out houses on PBS where walls have drawers buit-in, floors have trap-doors, etc....where you can store everything out of the way as if it wasn't there at all. That's how I would like to store my stuff.
I think a lot of people here are overlooking the purposes of a hacker logo. Apparently a lot of those who posted didn't even bother to read ESR's 2 short pages about the emblem. Here are a few points on some of the goals:
Internet users (hackers included) seem to have a hard time sorting each other into easily-handled categories without plenty of superficial indicators. This logo could be one more indicator. It's eventual misuse wouldn't be as bad as some people think. Besides, there are always poseurs, with or without an emblem.
If hackers ever hope to gain ground in the PR war against the press and 1337 H4xz0|2 script-kiddies, they're going to need to present some image of cohesion, a sort of united front. It doesn't even matter if the image is shallow when where talking about PR.
Note that ESR explicitly states that the point of displaying the logo is not to say, "I am a hacker" but to say that you associate yourself with hacker culture. Kinda like how you can wear a pink triangle T-shirt with the word "Ally" on it if your not gay but like to show support.
As for non-conforming non-joiners being able to agree to have one logo or one anything, it's not hard at all. Just take a look at the Church of the SubGenius. You don't have to take my word for it, ask the creator of Slackware, Patrick Volkerding.
All in all, I like the idea and the logo. I suggest to those who don't like it that they simply not use it and not make a fuss about it, so that they won't ruin it for the guys like ESR who are trying to accomplish some great (seemingly quixotic to many) goals for hackerdom.
I have a homebrew router/firewall made of a 486/SX with an old version of Coyote Linux. The funny thing is that it used to be the family computer back in the 90s.
My buddy has an IBM 8088 complete with original monitor and 10kg keyboard. 10MB HDD, 640K RAM...w00t! (I had the same model, but threw it out because it was too heavy to lug around.) He also has a 5&1/4" FDD in his new box.
I'd be willing to work for 3rd world wages and live there, as long as I didn't have to worry about my American college loans. I got suckered into getting a CS degree because that supposedly would get me a job (since knowledge and experience weren't enough). Oh well, I was naive, and I'm paying for it. Of course, I could return the favor to coporate America by moving to the 3rd world and forgetting about my loans, but something tells me a lot of people think that would be wrong.
Gee, if the RIAA prevails, I guess we'll have to shut down all major highways, because they allow people to transport stolen goods across state and national borders. Or am I making a ridiculous analogy?
I don't entirely agree with the naysayers that point to the fact that just one gene usually doesn't control an entire feature. However, even if a gene exists to permit speech, there's still something missing from dogs and chimps: the proper vocal apparatus. A chimp has a larynx similar to that of a human infant, which allows them to breathe and swallow at the same time. This larynx design, however, interferes with speech.
Being optimistic, maybe a little gene therapy and a little surgery could get chimps to talk like humans. Ethical issues aside, I'd be interested in what they would have to say. Their conversation couldn't be worse than that of most humans.
I've learned to program a computer without a computer, so I'm used to writing code on paper. However, I run into the problem of misspellings or sloppy on tests, for which I lose points. This is where it isn't very realistic, because in the Real World, a compiler or ocular debugging will often spot this problems.
It's also silly in a general sense, in that in the Real World, you usually do have reference manuals and F1 to help you out. Of course, this ends up leading to the monotonous cheating debates.
I didn't post this to be a sob story; I posted it as an example of a techie who can't get a tech job. I don't think I got treated any more unfairly than most of you.
I can tell by many of the responses that most of you live in cities. I live in rural Pennsylvania. (That's why I said $30,000 isn't bad.)
People have weirded out on me about getting a Spanish degree for years. I won't bother going into how that happened, and it's fairly irrelevant. The point was, back in the day, I (like many others) didn't need a degree to get a job. Furthermore, for some time, I made more than I needed, so I wasn't worried about having a family. I made all these decisions before everything went to hell. My other reasons are personal and irrelevant. In any case, scolding me for not being able to tell the future is silly.
I lost my wife because she was immigrating as my wife (as opposed to as a student). Thanks to some laws passed a couple of years ago, you have to meet certain income requirements, which the available local jobs could not meet. Sure, you might want to call me stupid for not learning this until too late, but like I said, these laws are quite new, and neither I nor any of my friends had heard of them. We got and immigration lawyer, but that didn't help much. These are details, and tangental to the topic. The point here is that if I could have found and maintained a job like a couple that I had had before, we would have our own apartment in the States by now.
Some of you have mentioned that even the degreed guys aren't getting hired. I know. I've thought about this myself. However, I distinctly remember that when the headhunters turned cold on me, the specific pretext they kept using was that I didn't have a degree. That's why I'm giving it a shot, taking it a step at a time.
Lastly, it's funny, but it is next to impossible to test out of the classes I'm taking, mainly for administrative reasons. You can laugh at me for going to such a lame school (I've been laughing myself for a long time), but I'm here for strictly financial reasons. And speaking of college, I have to get back to class. Thanks for your input.
Before the bubble burst, I had a measly B.A. in Spanish, but I still got hired at startups for various jobs, mostly web-oriented stuff like search engines. I made as much as $650/wk for a short while, which ain't too shabby for where I live.
Since the bubble burst, I'd got a non-technical temp job at the county tax office. When I got laid off from that job a friend got me hired at a convenience store, where I do 9-hour shifts with no lunch break for $5.50/hr. I've lost my wife and son because I am unable to support them on a near-minimum-wage part-time job. I'm living with my parents because I can't even afford to support myself. Oh, yeah, and I have about $20,000 of college loan debt to pay off.
So, I've decided to use up my remaining financial aid (even though it will add to my debt) to return to college for a B.S. in Computer Science. I'm hardly learning anything, since I already learned plenty on the job. (Unfortunately, my university does not count life experience for college credit.) Some professors have even told me that I am capable of teaching their classes, but that won't get me out of the credit requirements.
I'm planning to get my B.S. in Spring 2003, and hopefully by 2004 I'll be seriously working and living with my wife and son again...but who knows. I don't want to get optimistic.
By the way, I'm not alone in my neck of the woods. My best friend is in a similar situation. He has 12 years of programming and network administration experience. However, he has no degree, so nobody even wants to interview him. He's pushing 30 and has just entered college as a freshman.
Before last year, I could find work without a degree. However, I found that since October 2000, nobody even wants to interview me. So, I'm back in college for a BS of CS. The fastest I could possibly complete it would be in 2 years, but since I'm trying to work at the same time, it will take me 3. C'est la vie.
I have a friend who has 12 years of experience but no degree. He's now in college, too. Good luck to ya.
Why don't we shut down every ISP in the U.S.? After all, by today's definition of "terrorist", which includes 12-year-olds who send malformed ping packets, every ISP has been used by terrorists.
And while we're at it, let's turn Boston into a penal colony. Where do you think the IRA gets their money from?
I don't see going from an art to a science as a step forward. Actually, I see it as a way to severely limit a field as creative as software development. I was trained to see programming as an art. Code is poetry that instructs a computer to do something.
Regardless of that point, the idea of having to get a license really pisses me off. I used to be employable without a college degree. Since last fall nobody will even interview me. Now I'm wasting two years and thousands of dollars in a small university where I'm learning next to nothing, just so I can get a damn B.S. so someone might hire me. I don't want anybondy telling me when I graduate in 2003 that I have to spend two more years to get some license.
I used to work for a company whose star product was an AI-drive porn-filtering web proxy. Our biggest prospective clients were the governments of China and Saudi Arabia. They didn't want just a porn filter, though; they wanted to block plenty of religious and political sites, too. Fortunately, the filtering software never even worked in the first place.
I sometimes dream of mixing languages to get the best from each. However, wherever I work, the boss tends to pick out everything for me, which usually means VB on a completely Microsoft platform.
Maybe I was just lucky, but I sent an old mini-tower wrapped in clothes in a cardboard box from Mexico City to Pennsylvania via FedEx. Nothing was seriously damaged. The faceplate seemed to have been forcibly removed, though, probably by the nice folks at Customs, looking for drugs or a bomb.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think I wasted their time. If they didn't want to respond, they didn't have to. Aside from the fact that I may use their input in my plans, I am not the only one who can benefit from this discussion. I am apparently not the only guy with expatriation on his mind.
If you think you wasted your time, that's your problem. However, you are probably a troll, who would post something nasty no matter what I said.
Furthermore, you demonstrate why I tried to stay vague and general. People like you all over Slashdot are happy to attack details (relevant or otherwise) and ignorantly go off on tangents about which you know little or nothing, while blatantly ignoring or baselessly refuting key issues.
I find many of the replies I've received interesting.
I purposely limited/changed some of my information to try to get more general answers from people than if I had been specific and entirely accurate. For example, I already know what country I'm going to next, but I wanted to see where people thought I ought to go.
I was surprised to see how many guys mentioned working in India. AFAIK foreigners are not allowed to be hired there.
It cracked me up how much people harped on how "crappy" the standard of living is in other countries. The fact is the worst home I ever has was in Pennsylvania, complete with cockroaches, mold, and even sulphur and fecal matter in the water. One guy said that I was "naive"...well, the fact I didn't mention that I have lived in other countries before doesn't mean I didn't.
I also didn't mention that I started working professionally in programming in 1998, after a few years of hobby programming--I'm no spring chicken. I've continued to program as a hobby during my downtime. I signed up with Monster in its first year, and it's never been any help to me.
I didn't mention that I have a son. For me, working isn't all about glamor and a huge $30K salary. (Yes, that is good money for where I live.) It's about making enough money to live on and support him. I'm afraid the local mini-marts don't provide that kind of paycheck.
The one piece of advice I keep getting that seems to ring true is about personal networking...which is why I'm looking forward to relying on nepotism, as soon as I find an influential relative.
(And less relevant, but to be accurate: I have a B.A. in Spanish and a B.S. in Computer Science.)
I don't hold it against anybody who gave me useless advice because I didn't tell them everything about myself. But like I said, I was looking for general answers, and I largely got what I wanted.
Thanks for your comments.
Maybe I don't like people as much as you do, but I've always preferred working from home. When I wanted human interaction, I went to the coffee shop.
Furthermore, when I worked in offices, enjoyable human interaction was generally frowned upon. Unpleasant human interaction was expected. I see little to miss from the office.
Regardless of that, I don't care where I have to go to program, since I've been unemployed for a while. Lock me in a closet or sentence me to Dilbertville--I don't have the luxury of worrying about that.
I generally put stuff into whatever cardboard box fits best. Then I stack the boxes on the floor. A big reason for this approach is that, other than a desk and a chair, I have no furniture, whatsoever.
I've seen far-out houses on PBS where walls have drawers buit-in, floors have trap-doors, etc....where you can store everything out of the way as if it wasn't there at all. That's how I would like to store my stuff.
I think a lot of people here are overlooking the purposes of a hacker logo. Apparently a lot of those who posted didn't even bother to read ESR's 2 short pages about the emblem. Here are a few points on some of the goals:
All in all, I like the idea and the logo. I suggest to those who don't like it that they simply not use it and not make a fuss about it, so that they won't ruin it for the guys like ESR who are trying to accomplish some great (seemingly quixotic to many) goals for hackerdom.
Searchdot doesn't seem to be harmful, but it's damn annoying.
I have a homebrew router/firewall made of a 486/SX with an old version of Coyote Linux. The funny thing is that it used to be the family computer back in the 90s.
My buddy has an IBM 8088 complete with original monitor and 10kg keyboard. 10MB HDD, 640K RAM...w00t! (I had the same model, but threw it out because it was too heavy to lug around.) He also has a 5&1/4" FDD in his new box.
I'd be willing to work for 3rd world wages and live there, as long as I didn't have to worry about my American college loans. I got suckered into getting a CS degree because that supposedly would get me a job (since knowledge and experience weren't enough). Oh well, I was naive, and I'm paying for it. Of course, I could return the favor to coporate America by moving to the 3rd world and forgetting about my loans, but something tells me a lot of people think that would be wrong.
Gee, if the RIAA prevails, I guess we'll have to shut down all major highways, because they allow people to transport stolen goods across state and national borders. Or am I making a ridiculous analogy?
I don't entirely agree with the naysayers that point to the fact that just one gene usually doesn't control an entire feature. However, even if a gene exists to permit speech, there's still something missing from dogs and chimps: the proper vocal apparatus. A chimp has a larynx similar to that of a human infant, which allows them to breathe and swallow at the same time. This larynx design, however, interferes with speech.
Being optimistic, maybe a little gene therapy and a little surgery could get chimps to talk like humans. Ethical issues aside, I'd be interested in what they would have to say. Their conversation couldn't be worse than that of most humans.
Here's why idiots by expensive Dells:
TV: Dude! You're getting a Dell!
Home viewer: Must...get...Dell...
Whatever happened to the Balkan analogy?
I've learned to program a computer without a computer, so I'm used to writing code on paper. However, I run into the problem of misspellings or sloppy on tests, for which I lose points. This is where it isn't very realistic, because in the Real World, a compiler or ocular debugging will often spot this problems.
It's also silly in a general sense, in that in the Real World, you usually do have reference manuals and F1 to help you out. Of course, this ends up leading to the monotonous cheating debates.
Wow...I wasn't expecting so much of a response.
I didn't post this to be a sob story; I posted it as an example of a techie who can't get a tech job. I don't think I got treated any more unfairly than most of you.
I can tell by many of the responses that most of you live in cities. I live in rural Pennsylvania. (That's why I said $30,000 isn't bad.)
People have weirded out on me about getting a Spanish degree for years. I won't bother going into how that happened, and it's fairly irrelevant. The point was, back in the day, I (like many others) didn't need a degree to get a job. Furthermore, for some time, I made more than I needed, so I wasn't worried about having a family. I made all these decisions before everything went to hell. My other reasons are personal and irrelevant. In any case, scolding me for not being able to tell the future is silly.
I lost my wife because she was immigrating as my wife (as opposed to as a student). Thanks to some laws passed a couple of years ago, you have to meet certain income requirements, which the available local jobs could not meet. Sure, you might want to call me stupid for not learning this until too late, but like I said, these laws are quite new, and neither I nor any of my friends had heard of them. We got and immigration lawyer, but that didn't help much. These are details, and tangental to the topic. The point here is that if I could have found and maintained a job like a couple that I had had before, we would have our own apartment in the States by now.
Some of you have mentioned that even the degreed guys aren't getting hired. I know. I've thought about this myself. However, I distinctly remember that when the headhunters turned cold on me, the specific pretext they kept using was that I didn't have a degree. That's why I'm giving it a shot, taking it a step at a time.
Lastly, it's funny, but it is next to impossible to test out of the classes I'm taking, mainly for administrative reasons. You can laugh at me for going to such a lame school (I've been laughing myself for a long time), but I'm here for strictly financial reasons. And speaking of college, I have to get back to class. Thanks for your input.
Before the bubble burst, I had a measly B.A. in Spanish, but I still got hired at startups for various jobs, mostly web-oriented stuff like search engines. I made as much as $650/wk for a short while, which ain't too shabby for where I live.
Since the bubble burst, I'd got a non-technical temp job at the county tax office. When I got laid off from that job a friend got me hired at a convenience store, where I do 9-hour shifts with no lunch break for $5.50/hr. I've lost my wife and son because I am unable to support them on a near-minimum-wage part-time job. I'm living with my parents because I can't even afford to support myself. Oh, yeah, and I have about $20,000 of college loan debt to pay off.
So, I've decided to use up my remaining financial aid (even though it will add to my debt) to return to college for a B.S. in Computer Science. I'm hardly learning anything, since I already learned plenty on the job. (Unfortunately, my university does not count life experience for college credit.) Some professors have even told me that I am capable of teaching their classes, but that won't get me out of the credit requirements.
I'm planning to get my B.S. in Spring 2003, and hopefully by 2004 I'll be seriously working and living with my wife and son again...but who knows. I don't want to get optimistic.
By the way, I'm not alone in my neck of the woods. My best friend is in a similar situation. He has 12 years of programming and network administration experience. However, he has no degree, so nobody even wants to interview him. He's pushing 30 and has just entered college as a freshman.
Ride the wave of prosperity!
Before last year, I could find work without a degree. However, I found that since October 2000, nobody even wants to interview me. So, I'm back in college for a BS of CS. The fastest I could possibly complete it would be in 2 years, but since I'm trying to work at the same time, it will take me 3. C'est la vie.
I have a friend who has 12 years of experience but no degree. He's now in college, too. Good luck to ya.
Why don't we shut down every ISP in the U.S.? After all, by today's definition of "terrorist", which includes 12-year-olds who send malformed ping packets, every ISP has been used by terrorists.
And while we're at it, let's turn Boston into a penal colony. Where do you think the IRA gets their money from?
I don't see going from an art to a science as a step forward. Actually, I see it as a way to severely limit a field as creative as software development. I was trained to see programming as an art. Code is poetry that instructs a computer to do something.
Regardless of that point, the idea of having to get a license really pisses me off. I used to be employable without a college degree. Since last fall nobody will even interview me. Now I'm wasting two years and thousands of dollars in a small university where I'm learning next to nothing, just so I can get a damn B.S. so someone might hire me. I don't want anybondy telling me when I graduate in 2003 that I have to spend two more years to get some license.
I used to work for a company whose star product was an AI-drive porn-filtering web proxy. Our biggest prospective clients were the governments of China and Saudi Arabia. They didn't want just a porn filter, though; they wanted to block plenty of religious and political sites, too. Fortunately, the filtering software never even worked in the first place.
I sometimes dream of mixing languages to get the best from each. However, wherever I work, the boss tends to pick out everything for me, which usually means VB on a completely Microsoft platform.
State Farm teaches all their interns JCL. I'm not sure what they use it for.
Maybe I was just lucky, but I sent an old mini-tower wrapped in clothes in a cardboard box from Mexico City to Pennsylvania via FedEx. Nothing was seriously damaged. The faceplate seemed to have been forcibly removed, though, probably by the nice folks at Customs, looking for drugs or a bomb.