Techies Working for Peanuts 718
The San Francisco Chronicle has a story about laid-off techies getting desperate and going to work for, well, nothing. No offense to these people, if you're up against the wall you do whatever you can, but I hope they're aware that most of them are not going to get even the slightest compensation for their time.
I live in one of the major comm hubs of the midwes (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yes, getting India into IT *was* a good idea. (Score:5, Informative)
And you know what? That's okay. Sure, for a brief while software developers were overpaid, and now there's a glut of them. Now things are changing.
What's the effect of all this, on everyone involved? Well, let's see. People in other countries pretty much benefit. US programmers drop down from their bubble-inflated pay. Some of them may be hurt during the adjustment, since they have to compete with a glut of competitors. The average US citizen likely benefits, since his new patterned carpet was fabricated by a machine that was cheap to produce because an Indian coder did all the software work.
So everyone gets trickle-down benefit. Globalization is, in the long run, good for just about everyone.
I'm sure that coders right now that just lost their sweet spot find this not a lot of consolation, but it affects everyone. The next step is using machines to replace fast food workers, and machines with better interfaces to replace phone support and salespeople.
Let me put things into perspective. In pioneer times, the US had a much less globalized environment. The lack of a transportation network meant that each area had to produce its own goods. And that means that things that we take for granted now, like granulated sugar and oranges, were *hideously* expensive. Sure, a lot of people lost in the short term (Peddler Smith, who packed a bunch of granulated sugar on his back, may have some tough competition with the upcoming railroads), but in the long term just about everyone won.
Globalization tends to spread out wealth more evenly, so it's true that some US wealth is going to end up in China or India. But it also tends to vastly increase the wealth of the entire system.
Right now, I can buy a keyboard for $10, and a mouse for $5. Just about anyone can afford a pair. That's thanks to overseas manufacturing of a lot of components -- massive globalization. I can buy almost any fruit I'd like, any time of the year. I can afford foods that used to be only for the seriously wealthy (and of poor quality), like pineapples, mangos, and oranges.
Now, sure, a few things become more expensive for your average guy. Anything based on human labor in the US becomes effectively tougher to get. You might have a tougher time getting someone willing to work as a maid or a chauffeur. But we've been dealing with the loss of this sort of job for centuries now, as the middle class swells up, so that's nothing new.
And what about society producing more goods than it can consume, with all these efficiency improvements, driving people out of work? Well, the US might get more socialized, with more government-subsidized benefits (like Europe). Plus, the human demand for luxury goods appears to be endless, so those with a job end up purchasing more unnecessary-to-survival items that end up employing the others.
Anyway, what the point of all this rambling is, is that moving stuff to India and other countries, opening up competition, reducing barriers to trade, and letting technology replace workers is a good thing in the long run, even if a few people are worse off temporarily.
Re:Yes, getting India into IT *was* a good idea. (Score:3, Interesting)
I managed a testing project for the main Intranet project for a top Fortune company. The project was managed in the US, coded in India and tested in Australia. There were also a lot of Indians working in the Australian centre. I have worked with Indians in the past too, as well as other Asians. They have an incredible aptitude for detail and complexity.
But I have found they lacked the knowledge and background to come to terms with the importance of managing and unifying the overall software architecture. There was little knowledge of programming to standards, managing common libraries, UI consistency, working to business and functional specifications, documentation, etc, etc. And also the business and legal implications of straying from these guidelines. Everyone suffers from these things, but to my mind it doesn't matter what advantages one has, if one does not have the knowledge and skill to implement good SDLC procedures, it handicaps the whole project.
The other thing I noticed is that these developers are willing to work long hours, and they do not seem to get as stressed as those from western cultures, they seem to just thrive on the work.
Right here (Score:3, Insightful)
And this is a temporary situation, brought on by a recession, too many programmers from the dot-com era.
You think there won't be software development work left, because it's all consumed? Get real. Walk into a business, *any* business, and look at the amount of *crap* they waste time doing that could be automated. Same for government agencies. I still don't have good speech recognition or synthesis on my computer. My car doesn't drive itself. I can't check to see how much a Jolly Pirate (kickass franchise, BTW...easily beats Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Doughnuts) doughnut is and where the closest location is by making ten taps or so on my PDA. I can't set up random speakers with a couple mics throughout the house and have the computer tune itself and dynamically generate a house-wide surround sound system, able to make a sound appear to come from anywhere in the house.
Golly gee, there seems to be a *whole freaking lot of programming that hasn't been done yet*! And for the forseeable future, at least twenty years or so, I don't see those getting finished!
You're complaining about not enough jobs. That's because the industry is busy dealing with a change in the market. Sudden changes screw everyone. But as long as there's coding out there that people want and find useful, there's going to be jobs out there as soon a business decides to provide it.
Blame the baby boomers, who threw *way* too much retirement money into various mutual funds and stocks, and then got burned and yanked *everything* out. Don't blame the industry. The industry is fine, and seven years from now, it'll have plenty of work again.
Re:jobs not bombs (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, wartime presidents (as long as they avoid getting their ass kicked) get great ratings, and Bush just found the perfect solution -- a never-ending war that has no well-defined goals, is vaguely military in nature, and lets him accuse just about anyone.
Working for Peanuts (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know what these guys are complaining about anyways.
Re:Working for Peanuts (Score:2)
Everyone knows Lucy and Peppermint Patty is where it's at!
Linus Van Pelt, and I pronounce Linux... (Score:2, Funny)
Working for Peanuts is ok.
Isn't Peanuts where they make that "Linux" kernel?
Oh, that was a different Linus.
Depressing... (Score:5, Interesting)
If experienced people are having to work for nothing, what hope is there for a recent grad? Any advice?
Re:Depressing... (Score:5, Funny)
Practice in front of a mirror:
"Do you want fries with that?"
Don't be depressed. They don't want experience. (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't want 15+ years experience in 5 different platforms, 8 languages, database design, applications, systems analysis, or training and documentation backgrounds.
They aren't looking for programmers who understand business requirements, or who have full life-cycle experience with real-world applications.
They want youth, to be ground-up and spit out in 10 years.
Yes, I am bitter. I am a damn good programmer. But I'm 37, with no degree, and a mortgage and family to look out for.
Even short-term contracts are impossible to find these days.
I am starting to take some vo-tech courses. I'm thinking welding might be a good career move. Programming and UNIX administration is a field for the young.
Re:Don't be depressed. They don't want experience. (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, no.
They want techies fresh out of college, willing to go anywhere, work for any wage, any hours, and who have at least 10 years of experience with the specific hardware and software that they're using. They want people who have 10 years of C# experience and 15 years of Java experience (that those languages haven't even been around that long is irrelevant).
They want it all, and in this very down tech economy they can get away with demanding it.
This is why techies fresh out of college are having just as much of a problem finding work as experienced people. Companies want the impossible, and are just as happy to ask for it, since doing so only works in their favor -- people are eventually willing to work for free for them, so why not?
And that's only the beginning. You think things are bad now? You haven't seen anything yet.
We're headed for a real depression on the scale of the Great Depression, people, and I don't think anything's going to pull us out of it in the near future. It's going to happen because the only major things on the horizon to invest in (biotech and medical) are either highly regulated (and thus have the same future that personal aviation has had) or are morally ambiguous at best, and thus something companies won't touch here in the U.S. due to the political repercussions. Much safer for them to conduct such research and development outside the U.S.
Re:Depressing... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Depressing... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Depressing... (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, please make sure you have at least some form of a clue before you start teaching others.
Back in high school, I took some CS classes at my local community college to start building up credits to transfer later. There's nothing more disgusting than watching a teacher giving wrong information in a technical class. I'd regularly get into arguments with him in class for up to 10 minutes about how "No, see the little ampersand? You're making a pointer to a POINTER, and reading something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT INTO IT!"
Hopefully someone who actually has gotten a degree in CS would do a little better, but after dealing with most of my classmates, I can't say I have too much faith.
Re:Depressing... (Score:2, Funny)
Those who think in binary, and those who don't.
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Thank you,...I'll be here all week. Try the veal
Re:Not to criticize you in particular (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree, but unfortunately, in my case, he was at fault.
He would never try compiling any of his pre-done-up code examples, so they were riddled with syntax errors (which newbie coders don't need to be exposed to, since they were already confused enough)
He'd have an example dealing with a data structure that was a "person" consisting of a first name, last name, and student ID. And then halfway through the code, he'd stop using person.studentid, and instead start using person.salary for no apparent reason.
When someone couldn't quite grasp converting numbers between various bases, instead of trying to explain it, he'd just throw more examples at them & get increasingly aggressive and demeaning when it didn't magically clarify itself for them.
So I'll fully agree, there are plenty of times where people are just nitpicking (like at conferences, when during a presentation, someone will stop the speaker to point out that they have a typo on their slides, and it should've been a period, not a comma at the end of that sentance), and I wish that were the case, but no such luck for me.
teaching ability helps a lot too (Score:4, Insightful)
No need to do that at MIT or Stanford; your local community college can teach you that just as well. Real-world experience is always valuable too, of course, but the only way to get it is to teach people in the real world :-)
Remember the worst teachers you had in college? Besides the grad student who didn't speak English, there was that old guy who droned on and on and rambled without getting to the point, and the guy who discovered halfway through the semester that the class had only gotten through a third of the programming projects he'd planned for the semester, so he'd have to double your workload for the second half? All of them were nice people I'd studied under, one was a co-worker teaching a night course, and the last one really was a good teached but I had to drop a humanities elective to be able to finish his course instead. You could be one of them, or you could be a much better teacher than that.
Re:Depressing... (Score:3, Funny)
"what version of windows are you using?"
"its a dell."
Re:Depressing... (Score:5, Funny)
"what version of windows are you using?"
"its a dell."
My all-time fave is:
"Ok, you're gonna have to get out your Windows CD."
"Where would I find that?"
[long pause] "...you're asking me where you'd find your Windows CD?"
[No hint of anger or sarcasm] "Yes."
Re:Depressing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depressing... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know a ton more about IT and business than MOST CS grads with less experience (and some that have more experience). However, no degree and 8 yrs experience won't get a fair shake against a degree and 3 years of exp.
Re:I have to disagree! (Score:3, Insightful)
Too many in this area anyhow
I DO have 8 years of network/support experience, a CCNA, 4-5 UNIX and Linux experience but won't be granted an interview for this job which is for a Solaris/Linux sysadmin position.
I know that is just one example, but I know it happens more often than not.
Re:Depressing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. How about remembering that you aren't going to college to be trained for a job. You are going there to learn something and perhaps broaden your knowledge in many subject areas, hopefully making you a bit of a better person.
I never could figure out people who go to college expecting to be trained for a certain job. If you want that, go to a trade school.
I graduated with a degree in Aerospace just as the Clinton administration took over. Military cuts == bye bye aerospace (although, in hindsight, if I'd focused on rockets and satellites instead of aircraft, the communications industry today really kept aerospace jobs around). But IT jobs are easy to come by, less stressful, and pay much better than anything an entry level engineer could hope for, so it's all good.
Programming is something you should do to support your real job. Get over it.
Re:Depressing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, right... thats the ideal but in practice we all know thats not the way things go down. i graduated with a B.S. in biomedical engineering... after all the engineering courses (fluids, thermo, mechanics, etc) all the required math courses (one class shy of a minor!!!), all the required technical electives and required, non-substitutable "core" classes (which were a joke), I ended up with 4 free elective classes. (How do you expect to broaden your knowledge in many subject areas in 12 credit hours worth of work?)
And really, thats the way engineering is. If you had a different experience then you probably didn't get as thorough education in engineering as I did.
I never could figure out people who go to college expecting to be trained for a certain job. If you want that, go to a trade school.
for all intents and purposes, the college of engineering IS a trade school.
But IT jobs are easy to come by, less stressful, and pay much better than anything an entry level engineer could hope for, so it's all good.
IT jobs Less Stressful? Obviously you've never worked one. I've worked as a Mechanical Engineer and also as a C programmer. I'll consider that comment of yours as pure Flamebait.
Programming is something you should do to support your real job. Get over it.
Quality software is what drives the economy of the world, from banking to travel to communications and beyond. You sound so bitter because maybe you went in to the wrong field perhaps?
Re:Depressing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, and we all know how much world class software has been written by accountants, HR and marketing people. And how many VB jockeys even know who Donald Knuth is. Spare me.
Re:Depressing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, Initially I agreed with your comment but then I realized that actually may be the direction we are heading, in that programming will become a part of what you but all you do.
Especially if you are programming to do things, then just like in the academic field where physics, biologists, chemists are expected to know how to program because that is where a lot of research is being done, I think likewise in the healthfield you are getting more doctors how are designing the medical software because they know what is needed to get things done and not have it mediated by a programming team that has not a clue on the real intent of the product code.
Anyway, thanks for the interesting post and hope to hear some replies
Re:Depressing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, that's why we work reeeal close with the doctors -- keep one down the hall who can tell us when he wants something done different, and several more elsewhere on staff. The programming team doesn't do all that much "mediating" when our customer is right there providing instant feedback on how we propose to implement the features (and UI) he requests.
Having a team of competant programmers who act at a doctor's direction is much more effective than trying to expect reliable, scalable, secure software to be created by someone whose years of training and experience have been in a completely different field. I'd no sooner take over my CEO's place as an emergency room physician or our CMO's former job as a GP than see either of them try to write code. Large-scale software design, like medicine, requires specialisation and experience; trying to write or design software without the programmers is every bit as bad an idea as trying to perform surgery without the surgeons.
Yep, I have advice. . ! (Score:3, Informative)
I'm serious. I have a Chinese friend who reports that the pay over there for Westerners is extremely high, while living costs are almost nothing. The country is throwing billions of dollars trying to ramp up for the new century. --And to host the next Olympics, don't forget. If you're white and you know technology, then you have a job and you'll make a mint. The governments of the West prefer not to advertise this to their citizens for obvious reasons, but the word is real. You want to live well and make a stellar living? Then pack your bags. China is the new America.
-Fantastic Lad
Re:Yep, I have advice. . ! (Score:3, Informative)
Really?
http://iso.hrichina.org/iso/ [hrichina.org]
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/hr_facts.html [christusrex.org]
http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/nasia/china/ [derechos.org]
http://www.hrw.org/asia/china.php [hrw.org]
Or you could listen to the Chinese government propaganda...
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/zhuanti/Zhuanti
Re:Yep, I have advice. . ! (Score:3, Informative)
Any company that has been around for more than a couple of years has a large local staff, even of technical people. Upper management may be foreign, but that's maybe 1 position in 20. Getting that position is also extremely tough - even in 99, at the height of the tech boom in the US, you would find highly skilled foreigners in China working for only equity. We're talking about ivy league grads with years of work experience. The best way to get an upper management position was either to get transfered over from headquarters (i.e. home country of multinational) or to be best drinking buddies with the local General Manager.
This of course does not take into account the difficulties of legally acquiring a work permit in China, finding affordable housing, etc.
Working in China is quite an experience and I would recommend it for the adventurous. But don't expect to make a bundle of money or get a cushy job. I'm not sure such a position exists anywhere in the world anymore.
Re:Depressing... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you find yourself earning shitloads of money in a too-good-to-be-true hyped up area of business (can you say dot-com?), it's possible that it really is too good to be true. Try saving a little bit of your insane salary for when the bubble bursts.
Re:Depressing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps Canada really has stayed above water compared the US? Or are our degrees considered less commonplace?
It's not depressing at all! (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, skills alone do not get jobs. It's all about personality, especially in today's business climate.
If you're a frosty sub-zero sort, you're going to be sailing down Shit's Creek with a turd for a paddle, even if you have that MCSE and PhD. Smile a lot, be genuine, and you're going to go much further than the typical money-hungry graduate.
Remember, smaller companies are all about personality, and you're probably going to be dealing with someone who owns the company, or at least makes a whole ton of decisions. Love these people and win their respect, and you'll get a job.
Kissing ass is not the solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have met many hard faced and ignorant, yet powerful, people. You wouldn't believe how the icy exteriors of many of these people can be broken with genuine smiles, using their name properly, and thoughtfulness.
There are always going to be tough cookies, but no man is an island. Every man can be won over somehow. But it's not about 'kissing ass.'
The first rule to all of this is to love different people and their quirks, both good and bad. I love meeting new people. Perhaps I'm rare? I'm an extroverted geek. Meeting new people gives me a real buzz.
This means I don't 'kiss ass'. When I say I'm happy to meet someone, I mean it. If being happy to meet people means you have to kiss ass, you have deeper personal issues than employment to worry about.
I wont mince words. You are utterly screwed. (Score:3, Insightful)
The majority of people I know in the business (many of whom have over a decade of experience, several of whom are MIT) have been out of work for over a year, with no sign of future prospects. I myself am looking at the end of my latest project with no prospects for the coming year.
Almost all of the CS kids I know who graduated in spring 2002 are still not employed in their field. It's no surprise, with the job market saturated with seasoned professionals who are willing to work as cheap as summer interns once did.
The H1-B visa quota insures whatever work isn't getting jobbed out to India is getting done by Indians here working for "fair market wages" that are usually around $15-$25 an hour.
At various times in the last 2 years, tens of thousands of engineers were hitting the job market a week. This has ebbed and flowed, but basically the bloodletting appears to be continuing unabated, and with the non-response to the corporate scandals we've had from Bush, together with the coming war and the outrageous consolidation that's continuing to occur in various industries, I cannot realistically expect it to get better within the next year or two - in fact, the smart money is on it getting worse.
I'm sorry kid. It may seem bad, but look on the bright side; at least you don't have a house/family/dog to support. Imagine what it's like for the old timers - people are losing everything.
Re:Depressing... (Score:5, Funny)
Porn.
Find a cute girl and use your computer skills to build and maintain a website for her. No matter how bad things get, people still jack off.
We've got it bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you could be an Indian tech support worker or programmer working for a few dollars an hour.
Hey, better yet, you could be an Indian with NO tech skills whatsoever, doing menial labor for barely enough money to survive. And maybe not even that much.
This also applies to any third world country. Yes, we're going through what we consider a rough time, but I'll take our rough times over third-world rough times any day of the week, thanks.
I misread that for a second... (Score:3, Funny)
Job Security (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Job Security (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Job Security (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that system administration, unlike most kinds of software development, is becoming a trade. Think plumbing, or HVAC technician. Every company has servers these days (and if they don't, they will soon), and every company needs people to manage them. Just like every company has a Facilities department.
The problem with the whole "learn computers, always be employed" idea is that it doesn't specify that you're supposed to learn the boring parts of computers--the parts that are most like being a plumber or an HVAC repair technician.
I'll bet you the guy working on better cash register algorithms for NCR has pretty good job security. I'll also bet he doesn't get rockstar pay or benefits, or as much "excitement" as the guys on the dev team for Loudclowns [loudcloud.com].
Cash register algorithms for NCR (Score:3, Interesting)
These days, a cash register is a PC with some non-standard peripherals, like a cash drawer and a weird keyboard, which is networked to a server in the back room. Seven years ago, for reasons I didn't understand, the cash register part of the company did hardware development, but the software was mostly done by third parties. Some registers ran on Unix, some ran on OS/2, some ran on proprietary OSs, a few were running DOS or Win3.x, and all of them had various issues with their programming interfaces and toolkits, and the backroom servers might be Unix but often were still IBM. The networking was often an IBM retail-oriented twisted-pair network that did longer distances but slower speeds than 10baseT.
And no, the hardware developers didn't get rockstar pay, they got stuff 1970s-big-stuffy-dull-corporation pay and benefits. Some of the sales people got rockstar pay, in good years.
In the old days. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
It turns out Granny knew something about sucking eggs. Go figure.
KFG
Re:Job Security (Score:3, Interesting)
Charity? (Score:5, Insightful)
heh. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:heh. (Score:5, Funny)
whoa, you guys are getting peanuts? (Score:5, Funny)
Working for stock options? (Score:3, Insightful)
The value of stocks seem to have no logical basis anymore. Remember the big IPOs when most rational people were thinking "How can a company that gives away its product make money?" while watching stock values rise to $280 a share? Add to that so many daytraders that the fluctuating prices mean absolutely nothing.
On top of that you have well-paid economists that can only explain the past and not the future and you have a self-feeding network of greed.
There's an episode of The Nature of Things about statistics. Someone from the Toronto Star did an experiment a few years back where she threw darts at a stock listing in order to choose investments. She outperformed a pool of 10 investors 2 years in a row. Obviously you'd have to do it over a longer time, but I think it's amusing how little a difference there is between chance and skill in the world of investing.
Statistics? (Score:2)
If you want to know how to invest (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone that is investing solely in the Stock Market gets what they deserve. There are simple rules to becoming financially secure.
1: Insurance is the most important purchase you make. (If you get lucky enough to make a few million and then a tragedy strikes all your work is for nothing.)
2: Chose a good career. You can be a success in anything but some fields are easier than others.
3: Save a % of your income always. Living below your means allows you to keep your head above water when the chips are down.
4: Invest in a home (mortgage) before the market. It gives people without their own business one of the few tax write offs, and you're accruing equity instead of throwing money away on rent. (My house was purchased via FHA loan with $2000 down and I got lucky and bought from a buyer that was willing to accept paying closing costs to sell the house at their asking price, which saved $4000+)
5: Don't trust others to invest your money, do your own research and diversify (not stock diversification but REAL diversification, stocks, bonds, T-Bills, CD's, Real-Estate, Tangable Assets (Gold),
If people took 1/2 the care in researching their investments as they do in buying a car, house, dvd player,
6: Don't follow what the street says, if you did you were buying RHAT at 230 and Global Crossing at 180. When things seem crazy they probably are.
7: Continue to learn through out your career. You never know where you might end up. You don't want to be the 50 year old that everyone at work is suggesting the book "Who moved my cheese" for light reading.
8: Don't try to hit a home run with your investments. Sometimes several base hits gets you more runs. (Take the sure thing, instead of the high risk/high reward).
Juste mon deux francs.
Java programming for $5.75/hour (Score:2)
As for working for free, I've been doing it as the lead programmer for this company [dnsart.com] that I started with my friends four years ago. I do it because its fun, not because I think that the stock will ever be worth anything. We are too kind hearted to charge for our software.
Product Managers ARE NOT TECHIES !!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
foot in the door (Score:5, Interesting)
about 3 months later they hired him.
his work ethic got noticed, and a several people figured out he was too valuable to let go.
My opinion? I know a lot of techs with good work ethics...and I think that some of the managers now had a name and a face and they only had good things to say about him.
when a slot came open....instead of interviewing hundreds of hungry techs...they hired him.
Re:foot in the door (Score:3, Interesting)
Minimum wage. It's not just a good idea. It's the law.
Re:foot in the door (Score:3, Informative)
It is perfectly legal to provide your services for free, be it to an individual or to a company. It is illegal for a company to pay you less than minimum wage if you are employeed by them, but you are free to give them help just because you want to.
Check the law books.
Re:foot in the door (Score:3, Interesting)
Screw the government (Score:4, Insightful)
Miles Locker, attorney for the California labor commissioner, said it's against the state labor code for employers to offer stock options as compensation if they're not paying workers at least the minimum wage. All workers in California must be paid at least $6.75 an hour, plus any applicable overtime. He said it doesn't matter if the worker has agreed to work for less.
This is why I hate government interference in the economy. I once worked for a company and developed their product for free, in exchange for future consideration. This was probably illegal in California, but OH MY GOD I did it anyway. It eventually turned into a full-time employment and a really sweet royalty agreement.
If I had followed my oh-so-compassionate government and not allowed myself to be "exploited", I wouldn't have earned a pretty good pile of money.
Obviously that's not the norm and not what the minimum wage is intended for, but "unintended consequences" are what happen when the government screws with things. Of course, let's not even get into how many poor people are locked out of any job at all because of minimum wage...
Re:Screw the government (Score:5, Insightful)
All governments regulate the economy to some degree. The only question is how much. "Free market" vs. "government interference" is a false dichotomy, a Randoid fantasy.
Exactly. Minimum wage laws exist for a reason. Read some history and see what working conditions were like before we had minimum wage and other labor laws. You may disagree with exactly how those laws operate, but we need them or something very like them to prevent some truly horrible abuses.
Been paying attention to the news lately? What happens when the government doesn't screw with things isn't so hot either. Private industry's track record in foreseeing unintended consequences is just as lousy as government's, perhaps more so.
I've heard this before, and given how low minimum wage is (much, much lower in real dollars than when the law was first enacted) I have to say I'm skeptical. Evidence, please.
Re:Screw the government (Score:3, Insightful)
I've heard this before, and given how low minimum wage is (much, much lower in real dollars than when the law was first enacted) I have to say I'm skeptical. Evidence, please.
Example? Guess why there are no ushers in movie theatres anymore, nor anyone washing your windows at gas stations. Teenagers used to do those jobs for low wages. But who is going to hire people for those jobs for minimum wage, plus unemployment insurance, plus matched social security?
Re:Screw the government (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you say "part-time job"? Apparently not.
You don't see ushers because there has been a change in attitude where companies no longer give a damn about their customers... If having one less usher will improve the bottom line, then he's gone.
Hey, it would be trivial for theatres to clean up between shows, but that would cost $1 more per hour so that's out of the question... Meanwhile companies wonder why they are loosing so much business, and respond to that lost business by making the situation even worse.
Re:Screw the government (Score:5, Insightful)
You are overstating it. Before the advent of the Federal Reserve, eventual move to a baseless currency and the adoption of a debt-based economy, things were pretty good. Jefferson had this shit nailed two hundred years ago:
"...we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt...If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people...must come to labor 16 hours in the 24, give the earnings of 15 of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the 16th being insufficient to afford us bread,...We have no time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves, to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers. Our land holders, too...retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury...this is the tendency of all human governments."
"A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering...And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in it's train, wretchedness and oppression."
"The bold efforts that the present bank has made to control the government and the distress it has wantonly caused, are but premonitions of the fate which awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it...If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system there would be a revolution before morning."
But what did our founders know? Society was different then. Bullshit. Human nature, especially as concerns power and greed, is ever the same.
Re:Screw the government (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, the gold standard combined with no way of controlling the monetary base was pretty swell. Deflation, depression, and massive unemployment in the 1890s comes to mind when thinking of problems that a baseless currency and a strong federal reserve would have mitigated. To be fair, the Great Depression of the 20th century is an example of regulation gone wrong, but just about everything we do now in terms of regulation is done to correct mistakes of the past.
People may complain about the minimum wage and government regulation of the banking systems, but these regulations don't come out of nowhere. Large scale exploitation of workers, runs on banks, bad-debt banking crises...all of these things happen with unregulated financial systems. It just takes a quick look at our history or the current state of other economies to tell us that.
But what did our founders know? Society was different then. Bullshit. Human nature, especially as concerns power and greed, is ever the same.
Bullshit to that. Human nature and greed are certainly the same as they were when Jefferson wrote those words (God knows he was right about just about everything else), but our economy and industries are far different. Complex international lending institutions, insurance companies, securities exchange, and manufacturing were all in their infancy (at best) 200 years ago. Society was different back then. It is because, as you point out, of the fact that human nature hasn't changed that modern economies need government oversight to prevent dangerous system-wide failures.
As for a debt-based economy, there are some good arguments in favor of a constantly balanced budget, but the ability to run deficits and surpluses depending on the state of the economy would do a lot for California and several other states right now. Perpetual debt is bad, but without the option of temporary debt, I would argue that any large economy would grind to a halt.
Re:Screw the government (Score:3, Insightful)
What's that? Over 30 state bankruptcies in 200 years? Having half the world granted to them by papal decree and then having to surrender it due to lack of funds? Hey, if we can't pay our bills, the only thing to do is get more gold...
The gold standard suffers from the exact same inflationary problems as fiat money. If the government needs more gold, they'll just dig it up, like Spain did. And remember, gold-extraction technology is much more advanced now. Besides which, gold is completely unregulatable - if gold is money people are gonna dig it up on their own accord (unless you plan on shooting prospectors).
The US, and most of the world, was officially or not, off the gold standard by the 1930's. In the US, the myth of a gold standard applied until 1972, at which point there wasn't enough available gold in the world to properly represent the US economy, so the fiction was dropped.
Since 1935 or so (when the gold standard was mostly dropped), the world economy has grown more than it did in the preceding 1000 years. Having the money supply being restricted artificially by the availability of a particualr metal is like trying to swim wearing cement shoes.
Tim
Re:Screw the government (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe you're right
StarTux
Makes sense to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
5 Years ago I helped start a small IT consultancy company. I learned tons of stuff, not just IT skills, but things about how companies work, what is actually involved in setting one up, legal issues, finance matters, marketing, etc. etc. Looking back, I would say that experience has been invaluable to me, so much that I'd say it may be worth quitting a paying job for, in some cases.
Then again, do take a good hard look at those stock options and make sure you'll hit big if the company does take off. You are working for free to build a company, with part of the risk of things not working out falling on your shoulders. But... if it does work out, you should then reap part of the (substantial) rewards as well.
Simple way to keep up to date (Score:4, Interesting)
This is pathetic. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is pathetic. (Score:2)
It's better than sitting on their asses collecting unemployment, isn't it?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of my friends have done this (Score:3, Insightful)
Another friend of mine worked on the project writing the technical side of the business plan. She didn't seriously expect it to turn into money, and she'd have dropped it in a minute if a paying job came along, but it gave her a 3-month job entry on her resume as well. I don't know if she called it a contract or a limited partnership or what.
Bad idea - why not go it alone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Employers will be reluctant to spend money on good staff when they can already get it for free.
Why not simply develop your own idea? Maybe it'll work and maybe you'll get rich in the process. If not, what have you lost?
You still have all the benefits of practising and improving your art, maybe learning new, more marketable skills in the process.
Re:Bad idea - why not go it alone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, my core competency is software design and development, so I do think there would be a benefit for me to join an existing company (for equity) where there are people with complementary skills, particularly in the business and sales areas. If I tried to do these other things myself, I probably wouldn't do as good of a job as others. The critical factor, however, is that even though I wouldn't do as good of a job at these other things, I would probably do a good enough job. The tradeoff is between having a small piece of a larger pie (when working with others who are better at selling, etc) or having the entirety of a smaller pie (when working alone). Say that a company were offering me 10% equity (which is unusually high from what I've seen) to work for them - do I really think that by working with others the product would be 900% more successful or that if I were to start my own company I would do 90% worse job at the non-technical aspects of things? The answer has always been "no" for me so far. Everybody should ask this question when considering equity as a substantial form of compensation and adjust the numbers accordingly.
Would someone please read the article? (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly things are a bit tough out there, no doubt about that. Still, I think that if anyone's in a tight spot right now their time is better spent in hitting the classifieds and the help-wanted ads, instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for themselves.
I've been doing contract programming for, oh, about ten years now. A little less than a year ago I went back "on the beach." Rather than wringing my hands out, and sharing my sad life's story to anyone who'd care to listen, I diligently looked for work, while at the same time I was studying up and brushing up my skills. I literally went to work each day: got up, went through all the job websites to see what came up overnight, then hitting the man pages, and studying until breaking for lunch. After lunch, another go at the job boards, to see what the pimps uploaded in the morning, then going back to the books until the significant-other finished work and came home.
Because of that, I picked up a number of good skills before I found a new gig, in early fall; and the stuff that I learned by then is precisely why my current contract just got renewed this week.
This may not be what people might want to hear, but if you have a good head on your shoulders, buck up, hang on, and don't settle for some cheap job that pays a half of what it should be paying. There's no doubt that companies these days are taking advantage of the soft economy, and using that to get geeks for pennies. I've witnessed this first hand, for almost a year now.
See here: folks need to understand that companies won't stop abusing geeks as long as the geeks permit themselves to be abused. Fsck them. There were plenty of low paying gigs that I could've taken earlier this summer. But I waited until I found a reasonable gig, at a reasonable pay. And if I didn't? If I took the low-paying jobs that all the headhunters/pimps were calling me about, then now, at the end of the year, I'd end up with the same pile of cash, but instead of picking up new skills over the summer, I would've wasted it in another windowlesss office, for toiling away for chump chnage.
Of course, a lot of advanced planning is required before you can afford to be on the beach for a prolonged period of time, without much of a lifestyle change. You have to be thinking ahead all the time; if when life was good you should still live a modest lifestyle, and hoard as much cash as you can, instead of blowing it away, living high on the hog. But that's another rant...
We all work for peanuts (Score:2)
(5dx9-10h) Be sure to include all office hours
(.5 - 1.5h) plus commuting time
(5dx1-3h off hours research time at home
(~4-8h) weekend time on pet projects to keep skills sharp
~57.5-77.5 Total hours per week.
expect about 48 work weeks (2wk vaca,1 wk sick, 1wk holidays)
hours worked = 2760-3720 hours/yr
Figure over your career you will go from 32K-120K
A nice average of 76K/yr
Leaves you in the hourly rate of $27.50 - $20.43
Yup you are screwed.
another unpaid Internship (Score:5, Insightful)
Stock options only? Considering the life expectancy of some of the Dot-coms out there, you'd be better off working at Taco Bell. Yes, fast food is a job, but it's painful to do with a degree under your belt (I'd expect more liberal arts majors to be doing that). "Hello, tech support desk" becomes "you want any hot sauce with those burritos?" How awful.
I'm not a tech for a living; strictly a hobbyist. My day job required me to work an slave-labor internship... 100+ hours per week... but even THAT was paid. You can't pay the rent with stock options.
I don't see how the companies that are employing these folks are getting away with this kind of thing. Whether you agree with it or not, there is a minimum-wage.
Alternatives also (Score:3, Interesting)
I got laid a bit before Thanksgiving, the market is soft, etc, etc. While I get serious about the job hunt (and have rested enough to recover from just plain burnout on my part), I've done a bunch of "free" work for interesting places.
It's not benefiting corporations, but helping wire up a community center, getting a box read as a firewall and one ready as a mailserver/file server/web server so that they can teach kids computers and how to build web pages is kinda rewarding.
Do I expect another volunteer to mention me to their company when they have a need? I wouldn't turn it down, but it's not WHY I started.
Am I learning new skills? Not from this, but I'm doing some stuff in that playground that I've wanted to learn (playing with AFS and LDAP and such).
Fill your time as you want, gain new skills.
I'm not too hyped about doing real work for no real compensation (I have plenty of single ply stock options and they chafe - I much prefer the two ply stock options).
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
All is not lost though, as many of those who previously spent their day deep fryin' hash browns and pulling milk-shakes are having to instead make do finding work as computer programmers or systems administrator, earning as little as USD 100,000 per year.
The BigMac(TM) bubble has burst, and Fast Food industry analysts predict a year of consolidation before a potential BigMac(TM) revival in 2004. Until then, workers highly trained in deep fat fryers and express lane tills will just have to live as best they can on the salaries of dot com techies.
Business should make money from customers... (Score:3, Informative)
They call a company that makes money off investors a scam. A company that makes money for investors by selling something to customers a business.
I don't like the idea of working for a company that will pay me if they get funded... I'd rather work (especially if I'm not being paid) for a company that will pay if we get orders from customers. Businesses should seek to generate INCOME not INVESTMENT. Investors should put their money into companies that can MAKE MONEY. So what about R/D or new concepts? Sometimes they pay off... but most have a 10% chance of surviving the first year.
Brings the value down (Score:2, Insightful)
Misread (Score:2)
Maybe it's just me but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Stock options only? (Score:2)
If I was on benefits would I risk it? No...Not in my opinion. Most people will end up losing more than they gain and some companies will even be closed due to being sued out of existance...
How do I keep up skills? Like everyone has always done, be a typical techie and play and learn technology.
On another note, since when has a marketing type been considered a techie geek?
StarTux
'highly skilled' is a highly subjective term (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're a programmer or other skilled person who can truly create something, do this if you find something you love, but don't do grunt work. Expand yourself. My first hobby -- network security -- turned into my full time job. My hobbies during that job have again become my work. I've cultivated a new set of hobbies, specifically with an eye on turning them into my full time work intentionally. Having had it happen many times, I'm determined to direct it a bit more the next time.
Good luck to those workers. I hope it works out. But the companies have a bunch of free labor, and you often get what you pay for.
It's a hard life. (Score:4, Insightful)
Boo hoo.
A Challenge (Score:3, Interesting)
Companies posting job offers in Silicon Valley are getting THOUSANDS of resumes. So give people a break about finding a job, please. It ain't gonna happen. Even Starbucks isn't hiring.
In fact, if you live in a town where a Starbucks is hiring, please post that.
Re:A Challenge (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Omaha, NE, about 800,000 people in the metro area. Granted, we have a higher than average tech/telecom industry than most cities this size, but it's not too hard to find a job. I had my last day on one job of 4 years on a friday this august and started my new job on a monday. I spent about 5 weeks job hunting. I still get offers for jobs almost 5 months later.
You may only make $50k a year, but $200,000 buys a really nice house and $800 buys a really nice apartment. I live in a 3br 2500sq foot apt that takes up a whole floor, 2 blocks from a medical center so my neighbors are doctors and med students, and we (2 roommates and I) pay $1000 a month. Starter houses and not as nice 2 br apts are about $125k and $500/mo respecivly. You won't need to pack heat to make it from your car to your door either.
It's time to cut your losses and say you're willing to relocate.
hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
2 years ago 95% of the people on slashdot were CONVINCED that they would never worry about work, since they were just so amazingly skilled that they could always get a job. Unemployment was for those other people, those liberal arts majors and all the people that made fun of them in high school and aren't we showing them since we're all rich and will stay that way. Oh, guess we won't.
A Better Idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you have to work for free, do it for yourself and start a project. At least you won't be deluding yourself into thinking your getting money when you're not.
You'll be able to work on exactly what you want to work on, and all the fruits of your labor will be yours in the end, even if it has no dollar value. You can sell your project if anyone will buy it, or you can give it away under the GPL and get karma++.
The job gap! (Score:4, Insightful)
Although the parallels aren't exact, I think of it as selling a home. A just-on-the-market home is going to look far more appealing than one that has become a stale property. Everyone wonders, "what is wrong with this that it hasn't sold?"
There are some interesting parallels to this and what happened when the domestic oil market bottomed out... was that early 80s? Lots of unemployed oil workers (yes, even technical types). They eventually shifted into sales or other things. Here, I think they're trying to ride it out. I don't think it is going to make for a good recovery (pent-up worker demand for jobs).
are 'real' techies out of work? (Score:4, Interesting)
- novice graphic designers (2 yrs exp). Most of them working some totally unrelated field then saw the dot-com boom, went for a quick diploma, and joined the 'hi-tech' companies
- marketting types..
- 'irritable' programmers, who think all programming is pressing that button in Visual Studio IDE. These are again the 'quick-buck' types, who doesn't know what a 'stack' is..
All my friends who are real techies (programmers / engineers / sys admins) are still employed. Sure they don't get 20% raises these days. But they still have a job.
This just my observation, I am NOT saying who ever doesn't have a job is not a real techie. What do other slashdotters think?
please no flames.
This is illegal! (Score:3, Informative)
You cannot agree to be an independant contractor and then behave like an employee. If it quacks like a duck, it's a duck in this case. If you behave like an employee (go to work at the hours they appoint, use their equipment and not yours, etc.) they cannot file a 1099 form and say that makes you a contractor... it just means they've filled out the wrong form.
Not a techie (Score:5, Informative)
Remember the person who called you 3 times a day to wholly change the design of the product you and your team were developing?
Remember the person who came to work at 10 and whose job seemed to consist largely of kibbutzing?
Remember the person who promised the client the world and told you it needed to be done in 2 weeks, without being able to understand the architecture overhaul that would be necessary to implement the changes?
Remember the person who asked you, the Sr. Developer, why their email wasn't working (assuming you could and would fix it as a top priority)?
I'm sure there are lots of real techies struggling to get by these days. In fact, I know some of them. Let's hear more about these people. That would be more relevant.
But I'm tired of hearing the sob stories of non-technical "soft-skilled" people who fanned the flames of the nascent Internet boom by helping to hype products and ideas that weren't tangible, pulling down 6-figure salaries for spouting off ideas with no grounding in technical realities, and then blaming the technical folks when things didn't materialize (because they couldn't).
Re:poor guys (Score:2)
Stand your ground. (Score:3, Insightful)
Stand your ground. Make it clear to your boss that you won't do it, and why you won't do it. Don't be a jerk about it, but be firm.
Yes, it sounds like a recipe for getting shit-canned, but if you're a good employee you'll stick around.
I've had my current job for almost three years now, and have never worked a single hour of unpaid OT, and anytime anyone asks I make very sure to tell them why.
Most of my co-workers do, but I don't feel bad for "not doing it" while they're "stuck" doing it, I feel bad for them not standing up for themselves as professionals.
Just because almost no-one stands their ground doesn't mean that it can't be done.
'Scuse me? (Score:5, Insightful)
'Scuse me? I hate to tell you this, but after over a year of unemployment, I, and hundreds of thousands like me, exist REALLY uncomfortably close to the "brink of destruction".
I've maxed my CC's, run out of savings (including 401k), and would presently starve to death if my SO decided to throw me out.
And I've always managed my money rather well, not buying too many frivolous things, avoiding spending more than I have like the plague (my one exception, buying a new car when my last one died. But a "commuting" car, by no means a luxury toy). But a total of around $10k to last 14 months now, good luck. I suspect many geeks (who have a stereotype/reputation for buying *lots* of expensive toys and holding pretty decent sized debts) have it a lot worse than I do.
And it has nothing to do with "wanting" to work, or only the "bad" geeks not having jobs... I have qualifications and experience that hiring managers used to *dream* of. And yeah, for the first three months, I only applied for "sweet" jobs. Then "anything involving computers". Six months ago I started getting sick of hearing the word "overqualified". Lately I've taken to simply "forgetting" the fact that I went to college for applications, and get a much better callback rate, but the number of unemployed (in general, not just tech) means anything I apply for, even flipping burgers, I have to compete with literally hundreds of others to get noticed.
Not a pretty situation, for a lot of people. I don't "whine" about it much, but *DON'T* try to trivialize the problem.
And, think the US has economic problems now? Wait another year. If the tech market doesn't start picking up, a lot (more) of us will end up declaring bankruptcy. What effect do you suppose that would have, half a million geeks, each owing as much as a quarter million dollars (typical house, or a really nice car and lots of toys), all defaulting on their debts?
Re:'Scuse me? (Score:3, Interesting)
The only benefit was I cranked out a lot of good opensource code while unemployed and learned some new geek skills.
Now that I'm working again I'm paranoid to the extreme. I'm working on starting a couple unrelated small businesses. I still do freelance geek stuff but am also doing non-geek stuff to keep me from being so reliant on a single market.
The concept of being overqualified IMO is something that should be legally removed from job applicant considerations. You should not be able to turn down someone because you think their over qualified or just don't understand most of what is in their job history. An intelligent experienced worker has as much right to work at Burger King as a pimple faced virgin teenager. Just think American Beauty every time you're turned down for such a job.
Re:'Scuse me? (Score:3, Funny)
You have a ridiculous cooling system on that, I would imagine.
Re:highly skilled!?!?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to work in Engineering. I was the sysadmin in the VMS Development Group, amoung other positions. I moved to marketing because I was annoyed with the way things were done.
Needless to say, I found out it was alot more difficult than I thought. It's not a hard/fast science like coding. THAT'S was makes it difficult.
Don't knock someone elses job unless you have walked in their shoes.
FWIW, I've been out of work since Aug 01. I went back to school full-time till my son was born, now I'm a stay at home Dad till things pick up.
I used to work as a marketing engineer at Alpha Processor Inc/API NetWorks.