Old Weird Ward
Unless otherwise noted, that which is posted here is opinion, which is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. If you don't like my opinions, go somewhere else. Nobody is forcing you to actually read this drivel.
The presumption exists that you can read at all.
That may be a large assumption.
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Thursday, January 08, 2004
- - - - - More on The Great Job Search - - - - -
In yesterday's post, I noted that John Dominick (site HERE) has been RIFfed (post HERE) out of his job. Consequently, he's back at ye olde Job Search, AKA Major PITA.
There are two things that are hobbling both of us in the current search for a full-time permanent job, I think.
One is age vs experience. In the IT business, if you're over 30 and you're not a manager, you get these odd looks - "What's wrong with this guy? He's got all this experience, and this set of skills, and he's not a manager?" Well, both of us would rather do the job than talk/meet about the job>. Makes us weird, I guess. But 90% of the satisfaction is diving into the problem and poking and prodding until it's fixed. Hard to do that as a "manager" whose "management duties" consist of meetings, meetings, and more meetings.
Two is the changing economy and the nature of work in the IT field. Many major companies are shipping their first-line and second-line support jobs overseas, to places like India and China. I have a prediction about that. Eventually, due to cultural differences, those jobs are going to come back to the US. An IT Support person in India is not going to "get" some of the background stuff that a customer in the States is going to take for granted. And some of the folks here in the States have been complaining, loudly, that the support person at the end of the phone line just doesn't "get it" when trying to describe and resolve the problem. And there's been a bunch of complaints about the accents.
Think I'm blowing smoke? Dell Computer, for one, is already pulling some of their support functions back home, due to LOUD complaints from their corporate customers. I predict the language and cultural aspects will accellerate this process. Let's face it - American computer users like to talk to someone that sounds like them when trying to fix the computer problem that's stopping their work in it's tracks.
Notice that I haven't said anything about money?
Money IS important. It's also almost secondary. I didn't get into this field to get rich. Infrastructure people hardly ever get rich, whether you're working on the roads, or building buildings, or twirling wrenches on cars. I've talked to many of the people that do those jobs, at some length. Folks that have been in those jobs for more than a year have a deep-seated connection to the job. It's grabbed them, right in the spot that says "Aha! THIS is the job for me!"
And so it is for me - I just get so much satisfaction out of making a computer and it's software do what the user wants it to do, that I don't want to do anything else. An operating system problem? The word processor won't? The spread sheet is wrinkled? Can't connect to the Internet any more? I don't care what it is, I want to fix it. The server isn't there? Need to know how many people didn't log in yesterday? Cool! I'll build a software tool for you! Your browser can see this site, but can't see that one? Let me at that sucker, dude, and I won't drool on the keyboard too much!
I suspect that John feels the same way. We love the job, and that's why we desperately want to do this. Plus, sometimes they let us play with some really neat toys.
- - - - - Iraq and WMDs - - - - -
Interesting story in the Washington Times (HERE).
After reading the story, I'm reminded of what Intelligence guys have said, over and over again: We don't KNOW, for sure, what they have or had in early 2003. We do KNOW that at one time, Saddam had WMDs, and we KNOW that he didn't hesitate to use them against external enemies (Iran), and against his own people.
Given the actions of September 11th, 2001, and the documented assistance and sanctuary given to terrorists by Iraq, and Saddam Hussein's track record, AND that he deliberately tried (and succeeded!) to make us think that he still had the WMDs, the invasion of Iraq is perfectly justifiable.
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