...and are now totally getting what they deserve.

Software is eating the world, as the saying goes. Organizations that refuse to invest in building and maintaining software that defines their businesses will simply fail. You can't wish away the incidental complexity of creating software, and it takes YEARS of experience to learn how to minimize the accidental complexity. Until the singularity comes and Skynet puts us all out of our misery; software is here to stay, and only getting bigger.

So: I say, keep your technical skills sharp and go into consulting. Charge lawyers hourly rates (or better) to lean up after these disasters. Between the constant revolving door of developers who only last 5-7 years moving out of the field, and the idiot MBA's who think that this (or offshore outsourcing for mission critical apps, or rapid application development, or whatever other BS comes along) will save them from being responsible: we old programmers are in good demand, doing good business for ourselves, and getting paid relatively well.

Now that he's past 30, I wonder if Zuckerberg will pay attention to it.
http://www.fastcompany.com/303...

They sat on their asses for years and let all the people involved with the Raspberry Pi do the hard work, scrape up the hard money, and NOW they come along and try to co-opt the hardware with their shitware OS to steal mindshare from users of a platform chartered to support low cost, NO STRINGS ATTACHED, hands on learning about computing? Google at least donated a laughable pittance for 1M USD from their coffers (see http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/...) to the foundation. Microsoft isn't donating shit to support the vision, but is rather gleefully SHITTING ON the vision. Their motives are clearly to just spread 'Windows everywhere' like the syphilitic pestilence it is. New CEO or no, it's damage Linux and promote windows while killing the spirit of Open Source and learning that it is. Same old Microsoft. They can't die out fast enough.

I would love to see the Raspberry Pi foundation come out with a 'not recommended' statement on that bullshit.

I don't have one of those fancy ISPs. I have a "media company" that begrudgingly permits me access to the Internet when I'm not consuming their content.

Seriously. Why even bother with the Pacific NW? They should try to pilot that on the Charbucks zombies in dense flyover country. Or the mid-west.

As a monopoly, Microsoft gets to hold the proverbial "gun" to device vendors heads and say, "support our OS on our schedule exactly how we say we'll fucking destroy your market and feed you to your competitors". Thus, Windows drivers get support from device manufacturers. Linux device drivers come from begging, pleading, and sometimes reverse engineering and all volunteer efforts of the open source community. Sometimes this happens despite hostile responses and legal threats from device vendors. My hope is that some day Linux will get to wield that gun...

Got it. You had me worried there:)

Sorry. Misread your statement. Guess I was just in so much shock from the notion of anyone actively using EJBs for anything.

It's fucking 2014. Any organization that hasn't migrated services away from EJBs must be incubating a pathetic, toxic excuse of a development environment. That job would have happily dragged your programming skills down to its level of crap and then beaten your professional passion to death. EJBs are enterprise shit-ware designed around 1999's technological constraints paired with Suns consulting/sales driven ideas about how to make money. Don't touch them. Let them die.

"Normal" jobs are gone. It's all about Bullshit Jobs now (see http://strikemag.org/bullshit-... ). The combination of unchecked greed of the ruling class, the pace of technological innovation, and placation of the peasant masses by shit like "hiding in the basement playing WoW" is resulting in a structural social REMOVAL of what we've been sold as the path to the American dream. The american peasant class (e.g. the 99%) has been systematically screwed for over a 1/3 of a century now. And hardly any of us are paying attention to it...

That is all...

Familiar with the Dreyfus model of skills acquisition?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Sure you are. It goes like this: Want to be an expert? First you need to to be proficient. Want to be proficient? First you need to have been competent. Want to be competent? First you need to have been an advanced beginner? Want to be an advanced beginner? First you'll need to be a novice. Want to be a novice? Great! Just get started learning by following the rules and doing what people around you do. Experience will let you unwind the stack.

Every profession maps to this. It's a type of career ladder. And what do H1-B's do? They seriously knock out the chances of getting a position on the lower rungs of the ladder. H1-B aren't taking me and other Gen-Xers jobs, they're taking the millennial's jobs. And the Baby Boomers who pissed & shit in the punch bowl that used to hold the American dream don't care enough to do anything about it. They started setting the tone for all this bullshit over 10 years ago and just like everything else, now we're left holding the bag.

Fuck class warfare. I think there's some serious generational knuckle dusting that needs to be applied to those in power in BOTH political parties regarding what's happened on their watch to whole notion of careers they've been selling to the rest of us.

Most of the Slashdot crowd will give you Microsoft in that statement, but generally disagree on the other three. Sarcasm score == 0.

Now you have n! problems as a developer.

$0.05 worth of free advice to anyone out there:
#1 - _NEVER_ do software development for a large company as an employee. There's too much bullshit, politics, and brain dead process to get anything done. Also, you're nothing but a replaceable part. Go small to mid size, or (better yet) be a contractor. Which brings me to my second point:

#2 - _NEVER_ do software development where your efforts do not generate revenue unless you're taking the job to try and learn something. If the project/organization/whatever isn't making a profit off of every line of code you write, GTFO. Otherwise, you are simply an expense to be fucking MBA'd and "managed" as opposed to a source of revenue. When those goddamned suits look at you, make sure they smile and see dollar signs & black ink.

#3 - Contracting let's you violate rule #1 & #2 for fun and profit. BDC's (Big Dumb Companies) are so fucked up, most competent hands-on developers don't want to touch them with a 10 foot pole. That's where contractors & contracting firms come in. When you're not an employee of BDC, Inc. you get to go work for HotShit consultants LLC. When some project is fucked and some idiot CIOs neck is on the line he'll shell out a metric ass-load of cash to get it fixed. Enter you and your friends as HotShit LLC to come in and do the dirty work. Since you work for HotShit LLC, you're of course not a direct employee of BDC Inc. (or directly involved with the politics and BS thereof ) which fixes rule #1 and most importantly, as a consultant you're putting money in the pocket of HotShit LLC thus fixing rule #2 at the same time. Fun. Profit.