Basically, many of us are labor meat in a mall-shopping culture.
To elucidate:
We "IT" workers are shopped like meat on the hoof at an auction when seeking employment. The employers are only interested in a specific skill set which is 100% directly and immediately
applicable to their problem domain. This, combined with
(A) continued rising unemployment in the tech sector , and
(B) HR databases which are designed to correlate human skill sets with organizational needs, and
(C) the Wal Mart mentality of always shopping for the lowest price
=> results in a "race to the bottom"
Very few IT folks have been successful at "branding" themselves. So unless that
is done, we all appear as generic brand "X" commodities, providing a collectionof features.
Lead developer on 8 Open source Java projects . Whiter Whites, No Phosphates!!!
Sendmail admin and spam filtering expertise .... Ultra Low Carbs, Too!!!
Excellent communications skills (this always appears) .... New Disposable Carton!!!
For any kind of scientist, this industry has gone to hell in a handbasket. The structure set in place disallows
a hiring manager to give a damn if you "really" understand subjects like bottleneck issues, task-swapping problems,
or even the simplest heat disipation-in-a-server-closest problems; let alone actually having any
"communications skills" and the grace to *not* piss off the technophobes.
That's just the way I see it. M
======================== Bob Evans wrote:
My brother, the CPA (geekness runs in the family),recently moved
from the plastic credit business to the healthcarebusiness. I was
floored that he was able to port his basic skillsfrom one industry
to another. In the IT and engineering world suchportability is
rare. The stratefication is stifling. <snip>
I've been programming professionally since '79, on everything from IBM mainframes, to all flavors of UNIX, to PC. The kiss of death for me is: my entire career has been in banking.
When bofa riffed me in 2002, I tried to break out. Got an interview with Schneider Trucking and a couple insurance companies in Greensboro, but actually got a job at a bank. I can't break out.
=====
Bob Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] (read weekly...) alternate [EMAIL PROTECTED] (read daily M-F) 704 562-7166 mobile 704 954-3415 office 704-882-6214 home...last resort, please
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
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