I have well over a decade in IT. I am working as a BASIS admin right now and hate it. 25x8x367 WORK, not just support, but WORK, is no way to live. And the salaries are nowhere what they claim they are.
I want to return to programming. I know COBOL/DB2 and some ABAP. But I have not touched either in 3 years or so and do not have experience in the few very specific roles being looked for.
I am willing to work even entry level programming jobs to get back in. I have that posted IN my resume.
Yet I can not even get a phone interview.
Because I do not have that 5 year check-box marked off no recruiter of HR person will call me, very few will even return my calls.
It seems that employers would rather go with empty positions than hire someone the only mets 85-90% of the req.
Hot job market?
Not for me it isn't
Maybe being truthful on my resume is the wrong thing to do.
The law prevents certain employee's from willingly working uncompensated overtime.
You can not agree to certain "services" being provided in exchange for employment. (think bill clinton, tip oneill, etc).
Plus, the employer usually has the upper hand in any negotiation. Not always, but more than not. I have been in IT for a while. Unfortunately it is all I know that can earn me more than being a retail clerk will.
Corporations will rape IT orkers for all they can until the law changes.
If you think outsourceing to India is bad, so is never seeing your family.
I am close to going to truck driving scholl. Those guys earn close to what I do per hour, and then get overtime on top. A union truck driver can earn 6 figures for over the road tractor trailer driving.
How many IT folks can say that, outside of the hottest current tech?
Not everyone is willing to go through the crap that having a corporation entails.
In addition, most employer companies will not contract directly, you have to go through another shop, that takes a cut. Nowdays, being independant is far less of an option than it used to be.
The attitude that if you are not willing to jump through all the hoops that the big-business/government coalition puts in your way, you do not deserve to earn a decent wage is just Nietzscheian nonsense.
Everyone should be covered by the same rules. Anything else is just a way for some to cheat others.
The problem is that IT are the only workers, non-professionals in the traditional sense, that are singled out as exempt from overtime, whether straight time or time and a half.
State laws, like Californias, are all based off the Federal law.
This exemption was written into the law way back in the 1970'or 80's at the behest of big corporate consulting firms based in NYC. Priot to that, IT folks were paid hourly just like most other office staff.
This is a matter of basic fairness. Why should IT be singled out for different treatment from all other technical trades?
I have been biatching about this for years. Equal treatment under the law is a Constitutional requirement in the US, and just plain ethical everywhere else.
This is also the reason why most IT offices are 40 hour weeks on paper, but 50-60 hour weeks in actuality.
Salaried folks, like most of I.T., are paid for a job, not by the hour.
But, at least in the US, the 'normal' workweek, as our culture accepts it, is 40 hours. But in I.T. that does not apply, at least not anymore.
The past few years at every job and company I have worked for, and according to all the folks I know working at other companies, has expected a 'normal' workweek to be 45-50 hours as standard, not as the exception.
What that does to your health and life is profound. No time for family, no time for exercise, no time for personal or professional maintenance. You can not go to your kids play while you are babysitting a project in your cube. I do not care what kind of data plan you have for you video cell phone, it's not a substitute.
Now add projects on top of that expected 45-50 hour week, and what is left for anything outside of work? Little or nothing.
The problem is that it is perfectly legal, and that is what most companies use as their litmus test for 'ethical'.
In the US there are two categories of employee. Exempt and non-exempt. This refers to whether they are covered under the Federal wage and hour laws that require payment of overtime wages for any time over 40 hours a week.
Exempt means that you are listed in the law as being exempt from the over-time requirement. Computer programmers/admins, etc are one of the VERY few exempted.
The threshold is low. A little over $11 an hour, if paid on a weekly basis, or a bit less than $30 an hour if paid as salary, and a couple other conditions are met. Conditions tailor made to fit I.T., so they are always met.
These laws were passed way over a decade ago at the behest of I.T. consulting firms based in NYC, like Anderson and Computer Horizons. I had a link, now defunct, listing the sponsors of the bill, some well known, and all considered 'friends of the working man'. Maybe, but certainly not the working nerd. (Even at the Federal level it appears, the hatred of geeks and nerds that starts in High School and extends to college, never ends)
If not for these laws, I.T. would be paid hourly just like any other skilled trade. And skilled trade it is. I know many, many programmers, sys admins, DBA's, analysts, project manager, and the like that never received a college degree of any sort. They all learned on the job or went to one of the many computer trade schools, Like Chubb, ITT, etc, that now are all but gone.
There is nothing in the law that FORBIDS paying overtime wages, either straight time of time and a half. But because it is permitted, companies will use it as an excuse to not pay it. The same as they would do to any factory worker or skilled trade like a plumber or electrician or auto mechanic.
In other words, it may be legal, but that does not make it ethical.
Remove the law exempting us from overtime and you would see a huge change in I.T.. Some bad, temporarily at least, most good. Like not wasting our time with crap assignments and ill planned work at all hours of the day and night. Maybe starting to actually think through projects instead of planning them about as well as Little Rascals productions with Spanky as the PM and Darla as the Lead. But that is another thread.
When my pay is ethical, I'll worry about the rest
on
When Ethics and IT Collide
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I have an ethics problem every time I get a paycheck for 40 hours of work when I actually worked 60.
Using company systems for your own needs? heck, the company is alreaady getting 40 grand worth of free overtime. Is that ethical?
If I own a multi-family house or small apartment building, could I get a T1 line, or faster, installed and share it out to the tennants? And how would that impact throughput?
How would that comepare to typical 1.5 down cable service?
I am thinking if a landlord were to do that and tack it onto the cost of rent, or tennants/owners in a co-op or condo did this as well, not necessarily just your typical land-lord/tennant situation.
You sir, are specifically listed in the exempt from overtime statutes in the federal code, as am I.
They can work our asses until we quit or die from stress and not pay a penny in overtime, extra salary, benefits or anything.
So far as HR goes we are just that, Human RESOURCES. THINGS, piles of coal to be burned until we are used up, with nothing but dust left to sweep out the door.
Hiring quality will never happen until IT people are paid hourly, with overtime protections.
And that will happen when the average coder is getting somewhere around minimum wage. The big consulting companies, and companies with big IT departments pay too much to politicians to allow that to happen.
"They made a model teleportation system. Why do models get special treatment? I can undestand their being able to deduct makeup as a business expense, but why do they get a teleportation system first?"
Because there is such demand for their "services", on an hourly basis, that they have a special need for fast transportation.
If someone has the genes for osteoporosis, early heart attacks, predisposition for cancer, why not let insurance companies charge more? They charge more if you live in high crime areas, high storm areas, etc.
That would be an incentive for those with these predispositions to engage in preventative treatment to get lower rates. But since most of these predispositions show increase along the lines of 10-40% of things that themselves are of minor risk, I doubt most would cause big increases in rates, though some would.
I would rather pay less if I do not pose those risks than pay for someone with a higher risk of some expensive condition. Especially if that someone is at risk for diabetes, hypertension, heart attack and obesity, yet still buys every meal at McDonald's. Those clueless dummies need to pay more for insurance, not be subsidized by the rest of us.
Municipal WiFi is essentially a call for government owned communications networks.
This has been done in the past many times. Think of all the phone systems in eastern Europe, China and elsewhere. With all the restrictions on their use and supervision and censorship it allows.
Look at what is happening in China, Turkey and elsewhere with govt. owned networks.
And people want that here in the US? Do you really think politicians will keep their hands off? Think Bush, Pelosi, Chicagos Daley or any of them woule refuse the ability to monitor what their opponent send and receive?
How badly would San Francisco want to block sites like the NRA? How badly would Salt Lake City want to ban access to the ACLU? How about Kansas and pro-evolution sites?
If they own the network, they make the rules, just like the FCC can for broadcasts over the public airwaves.
If you want a free internet, as in freedom to see and publish what you want, you should be adamantly AGAINST government ownership of networks, and FOR as many competing open to the public private networks as possible, in all the various variations, whether Starbucks-like paid access, Panera like free access, or any other variation you can think of.
This guy actually wrote: "Virtualization and consolidation of servers will work against this trend, though, and it's difficult to predict what will happen"
Instead of just taking the current trend, projecting it into the future as an infinite progression, therefore concluding that the human race will end sometime near the end of the 21st century?
I think this guys just destroyed any career as a media pundit he may have been planning.
Better start checking out some of those Medical Billing or "Massage Therapy" classes that have taken over at former computer-tech trade schools.
for all the times the users, who used to be the popular kids in school, gave us wedgies and snapped towels at our butts in the locker rooms or beat us up behind the school. Now the jocks are all sales people and managers, and the cheerleaders that dissed us are 'executive assistants' with rug burns on their knees.
Now it is our turn. But they still win in the end, by segregating IT departments into separate buildings from the rest of the business whenever possible, if not keeping them in separate states.
So yes, we are rude and crabby. It keeps us from going all Milton on them. They should be grateful for small favors.
Considering that the couple of folks that tried to clone the AppleII way back when were mercilessly hunted down and killed, (legalistically speaking), by Apple, and the short time Apple tried to license out their OS to clone makers was such a miserable failure due to their overly restrictive terms and high fees, I think my opinion is an honest one, not a troll.
Contrast to IBM and M$, who let the IBM PC clones freak flags fly, welcoming any and all third party developers and apps.
The attempt to quash my opinion by modding it down just validates it.
...perhaps a non-fascist technology company that embraces third party developers and applications, rather than a company that engages in propritary pogroms against any and all that think they can add to the glory that is Apple?
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why you have
development -> testing -> live
Bureaucracy doesn't create quality, testing does.
That is provided 'test' is not spelled 'prod'
I have well over a decade in IT. I am working as a BASIS admin right now and hate it. 25x8x367 WORK, not just support, but WORK, is no way to live. And the salaries are nowhere what they claim they are.
I want to return to programming. I know COBOL/DB2 and some ABAP. But I have not touched either in 3 years or so and do not have experience in the few very specific roles being looked for.
I am willing to work even entry level programming jobs to get back in. I have that posted IN my resume.
Yet I can not even get a phone interview.
Because I do not have that 5 year check-box marked off no recruiter of HR person will call me, very few will even return my calls.
It seems that employers would rather go with empty positions than hire someone the only mets 85-90% of the req.
Hot job market?
Not for me it isn't
Maybe being truthful on my resume is the wrong thing to do.
No, you are not.
The law prevents certain employee's from willingly working uncompensated overtime.
You can not agree to certain "services" being provided in exchange for employment. (think bill clinton, tip oneill, etc).
Plus, the employer usually has the upper hand in any negotiation. Not always, but more than not. I have been in IT for a while. Unfortunately it is all I know that can earn me more than being a retail clerk will.
Corporations will rape IT orkers for all they can until the law changes.
If you think outsourceing to India is bad, so is never seeing your family.
I am close to going to truck driving scholl. Those guys earn close to what I do per hour, and then get overtime on top. A union truck driver can earn 6 figures for over the road tractor trailer driving.
How many IT folks can say that, outside of the hottest current tech?
You make twice as much as he made?
Did you figure inflation on that?
I'll bet you make the same or less than he did if you figure that out.
50 grand now is probably worth about 30 grand 20 years ago.
Not everyone is willing to go through the crap that having a corporation entails.
In addition, most employer companies will not contract directly, you have to go through another shop, that takes a cut. Nowdays, being independant is far less of an option than it used to be.
The attitude that if you are not willing to jump through all the hoops that the big-business/government coalition puts in your way, you do not deserve to earn a decent wage is just Nietzscheian nonsense.
Everyone should be covered by the same rules. Anything else is just a way for some to cheat others.
The problem is that IT are the only workers, non-professionals in the traditional sense, that are singled out as exempt from overtime, whether straight time or time and a half.
State laws, like Californias, are all based off the Federal law.
This exemption was written into the law way back in the 1970'or 80's at the behest of big corporate consulting firms based in NYC. Priot to that, IT folks were paid hourly just like most other office staff.
This is a matter of basic fairness. Why should IT be singled out for different treatment from all other technical trades?
I have been biatching about this for years. Equal treatment under the law is a Constitutional requirement in the US, and just plain ethical everywhere else.
This is also the reason why most IT offices are 40 hour weeks on paper, but 50-60 hour weeks in actuality.
A lot of the responses miss the point.
Salaried folks, like most of I.T., are paid for a job, not by the hour.
But, at least in the US, the 'normal' workweek, as our culture accepts it, is 40 hours. But in I.T. that does not apply, at least not anymore.
The past few years at every job and company I have worked for, and according to all the folks I know working at other companies, has expected a 'normal' workweek to be 45-50 hours as standard, not as the exception.
What that does to your health and life is profound. No time for family, no time for exercise, no time for personal or professional maintenance. You can not go to your kids play while you are babysitting a project in your cube. I do not care what kind of data plan you have for you video cell phone, it's not a substitute.
Now add projects on top of that expected 45-50 hour week, and what is left for anything outside of work? Little or nothing.
The problem is that it is perfectly legal, and that is what most companies use as their litmus test for 'ethical'.
In the US there are two categories of employee. Exempt and non-exempt. This refers to whether they are covered under the Federal wage and hour laws that require payment of overtime wages for any time over 40 hours a week.
Exempt means that you are listed in the law as being exempt from the over-time requirement. Computer programmers/admins, etc are one of the VERY few exempted.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm
The threshold is low. A little over $11 an hour, if paid on a weekly basis, or a bit less than $30 an hour if paid as salary, and a couple other conditions are met. Conditions tailor made to fit I.T., so they are always met.
These laws were passed way over a decade ago at the behest of I.T. consulting firms based in NYC, like Anderson and Computer Horizons. I had a link, now defunct, listing the sponsors of the bill, some well known, and all considered 'friends of the working man'. Maybe, but certainly not the working nerd. (Even at the Federal level it appears, the hatred of geeks and nerds that starts in High School and extends to college, never ends)
If not for these laws, I.T. would be paid hourly just like any other skilled trade. And skilled trade it is. I know many, many programmers, sys admins, DBA's, analysts, project manager, and the like that never received a college degree of any sort. They all learned on the job or went to one of the many computer trade schools, Like Chubb, ITT, etc, that now are all but gone.
There is nothing in the law that FORBIDS paying overtime wages, either straight time of time and a half. But because it is permitted, companies will use it as an excuse to not pay it. The same as they would do to any factory worker or skilled trade like a plumber or electrician or auto mechanic.
In other words, it may be legal, but that does not make it ethical.
Remove the law exempting us from overtime and you would see a huge change in I.T.. Some bad, temporarily at least, most good. Like not wasting our time with crap assignments and ill planned work at all hours of the day and night. Maybe starting to actually think through projects instead of planning them about as well as Little Rascals productions with Spanky as the PM and Darla as the Lead. But that is another thread.
I have an ethics problem every time I get a paycheck for 40 hours of work when I actually worked 60.
Using company systems for your own needs? heck, the company is alreaady getting 40 grand worth of free overtime. Is that ethical?
Never mind legal, is is ETHICAL?
Amateurs
So here is a question.
If I own a multi-family house or small apartment building, could I get a T1 line, or faster, installed and share it out to the tennants? And how would that impact throughput?
How would that comepare to typical 1.5 down cable service?
I am thinking if a landlord were to do that and tack it onto the cost of rent, or tennants/owners in a co-op or condo did this as well, not necessarily just your typical land-lord/tennant situation.
Not to a corporation!
You sir, are specifically listed in the exempt from overtime statutes in the federal code, as am I.
They can work our asses until we quit or die from stress and not pay a penny in overtime, extra salary, benefits or anything.
So far as HR goes we are just that, Human RESOURCES. THINGS, piles of coal to be burned until we are used up, with nothing but dust left to sweep out the door.
Hiring quality will never happen until IT people are paid hourly, with overtime protections.
And that will happen when the average coder is getting somewhere around minimum wage.
The big consulting companies, and companies with big IT departments pay too much to politicians to allow that to happen.
So, to turn a phrase: Suffer, code-bitch.
Man, no humor left around here.
Chill, children.
Does this mean Republicans will oppose it?
At the very least they will demand it be kept in a plain brown wrapper behind the counter out of sight....
you can answer two questions correctly:
1) are you female?
and (less importantly),
2) are you hot?
"They made a model teleportation system. Why do models get special treatment? I can undestand their being able to deduct makeup as a business expense, but why do they get a teleportation system first?"
Because there is such demand for their "services", on an hourly basis, that they have a special need for fast transportation.
Don't you read ANYTHING in teh intertubes?
Yes, there were. But when he held up the envelope it was a total bluff. He had nothing in it.
MS likely has as many patent violations in its secret list as McCarthy had Communist names on his.
If someone has the genes for osteoporosis, early heart attacks, predisposition for cancer, why not let insurance companies charge more?
They charge more if you live in high crime areas, high storm areas, etc.
That would be an incentive for those with these predispositions to engage in preventative treatment to get lower rates.
But since most of these predispositions show increase along the lines of 10-40% of things that themselves are of minor risk, I doubt most would cause big increases in rates, though some would.
I would rather pay less if I do not pose those risks than pay for someone with a higher risk of some expensive condition. Especially if that someone is at risk for diabetes, hypertension, heart attack and obesity, yet still buys every meal at McDonald's. Those clueless dummies need to pay more for insurance, not be subsidized by the rest of us.
Municipal WiFi is essentially a call for government owned communications networks.
This has been done in the past many times. Think of all the phone systems in eastern Europe, China and elsewhere. With all the restrictions on their use and supervision and censorship it allows.
Look at what is happening in China, Turkey and elsewhere with govt. owned networks.
And people want that here in the US?
Do you really think politicians will keep their hands off?
Think Bush, Pelosi, Chicagos Daley or any of them woule refuse the ability to monitor what their opponent send and receive?
How badly would San Francisco want to block sites like the NRA?
How badly would Salt Lake City want to ban access to the ACLU?
How about Kansas and pro-evolution sites?
If they own the network, they make the rules, just like the FCC can for broadcasts over the public airwaves.
If you want a free internet, as in freedom to see and publish what you want, you should be adamantly AGAINST government ownership of networks, and FOR as many competing open to the public private networks as possible, in all the various variations, whether Starbucks-like paid access, Panera like free access, or any other variation you can think of.
This guy actually wrote:
"Virtualization and consolidation of servers will work against this trend, though, and it's difficult to predict what will happen"
Instead of just taking the current trend, projecting it into the future as an infinite progression, therefore concluding that the human race will end sometime near the end of the 21st century?
I think this guys just destroyed any career as a media pundit he may have been planning.
Better start checking out some of those Medical Billing or "Massage Therapy" classes that have taken over at former computer-tech trade schools.
Umm, last I understood it, scientists ARE researchers...
what else?
Maybe a giant goatse?
for all the times the users, who used to be the popular kids in school, gave us wedgies and snapped towels at our butts in the locker rooms or beat us up behind the school. Now the jocks are all sales people and managers, and the cheerleaders that dissed us are 'executive assistants' with rug burns on their knees.
Now it is our turn. But they still win in the end, by segregating IT departments into separate buildings from the rest of the business whenever possible, if not keeping them in separate states.
So yes, we are rude and crabby. It keeps us from going all Milton on them. They should be grateful for small favors.
MAN!
I guess the Apple fanboys are out in force early.
Considering that the couple of folks that tried to clone the AppleII way back when were mercilessly hunted down and killed, (legalistically speaking), by Apple, and the short time Apple tried to license out their OS to clone makers was such a miserable failure due to their overly restrictive terms and high fees, I think my opinion is an honest one, not a troll.
Contrast to IBM and M$, who let the IBM PC clones freak flags fly, welcoming any and all third party developers and apps.
The attempt to quash my opinion by modding it down just validates it.
...perhaps a non-fascist technology company that embraces third party developers and applications, rather than a company that engages in propritary pogroms against any and all that think they can add to the glory that is Apple?