Thanks, Hans.
Ahh, the life of a corporate geek! It's been crazy and
interesting and rough and rewarding. If I had it to
do over again, I'd do it over again. Oh wait, I AM
doing it over again.
der.hans wrote:
> just in time for the holidays...
> It's a good reminder to take time to enjoy friends and family.
>
> <http://www.marius.org/2004/12/21/we_are_it.html>
Right. The fact is that, if you let "them" do it to you,
then you're just doing it to yourself. You have choices.
Have fun with the technology. Work your buns off.
And after your 45-60 hours, GO HOME and have a life.
I worked some strange hours over the past 35 years, but
enjoyed the flexibility to run home and deal with a
family emergency, or put in some of those crazy hours
at home, cat-napping on the floor near my own computer and
refrigerator instead of taking a sleeping bag to work.
It balanced out pretty well.
We raised five kids, all comfortable with technology
including one successful ubergeek, and I was there to
sing to them, go to church with them, take them camping,
attend their school activities, fix their broken toys,
listen in on their role playing games and watch them
build their Magic decks. (In fact, during my laid-off
stage I even got to help build the event registration
system for The Best Four Days in Gaming, that was an
interesting geek family connection!)
My wife and I put the family first, and the IT business
paid me well enough that she could stay home when they
were small. She was brilliant with money, and we have
lived within our means. She got a new job just before
I was laid off, and we survived.
Today we all have to work to pay for a tax-hungry government,
feeding retiring boomers and trying to keep up with exploding
medical costs because everybody insists on having every booboo
kissed and made better instead of just kicking the bucket like
any self-respecting sick person. Ah, the good old days.
But the mortgage for our five-bedroom lower-middle-class home
is way less than our kids are paying now for their lousy
apartments, and it's almost paid off (gloat!). These are
the *real* economic problems of our age. The way companies
treat their IT employees hasn't changed all that much.
"... and we are the ones who had to stand by and listen
to your 'voice of experience' while we watched you make
fatal decisions."
That remains the toughest part for me. The MBAs reduce
everything to numbers, and then forget what the numbers
represent. While I long for a computer without hardware,
they actually seem to think they can have a company
with "virtual people". But we knew that 40 years ago.
How did those wall posters go ... "We, the unwilling,
led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the
ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so
little, we are now qualified to do anything with
nothing, indefinitely ...".
Management has gotten worse in some ways, better in others,
but in our business it was the geeks who were disloyal
first. They found out they could abandon a job every two
years and get a 25% increase, while the companies were
still doing the cradle-to-grave thing. I just needed to
point that out for the record ... it wasn't the MBAs who
invented the throw-away relationship. (Other industries
were harder on their workers of course; one locomotive
shop in Baltimore routinely laid everyone off before the
holidays so they wouldn't need to pay for time off.)
"We sat in the sales presentations with you, horrified as
we listened to you sell a customer on a technology you did
not understand, and we knew could not be delivered at the
price you promised." Yup, that still goes on. I see
grandiose future plans that depend on a complex,
sophisticated software base, but those who created it and
many of the people who know that software have been laid
off or have quit in disgust, so who will do the development?
But the pedulum swings, sometimes with a syncopated rythm,
and every once in a while you see them do something right.
I know a sysadmin who was hired by a technology company to
work for *marketing*, to *test* the product with different
vendors' equipment, to sit in with the partners, to tell the
marketeers what they could actually deliver! So there is
some sanity out there. Sanity is a choice, and occasionally
we do choose it.
"... change us from employees to contractors - ... giving
you the freedom to drop us the instant you felt we weren’t
needed. No one was laid off - contractors were just 'not
renewed'."
OK, I had a funny experience in that regard. I was working
as a contractor, and they hired a bunch of contractors
as direct employees. Three months later, in early December,
they marched these guys out the door on a moment's notice ...
those who had cast their lots with the company. Me? I was
a contractor, so I got a 30-day notice. My consulting
company found a new gig for me, through January, while I
continued to put in some evening hours for the client, and
then they negotiated me back in without missing a beat,
the client never even changed my password. The "permanent"
employees were still gone. Consulting has its benefits.
"We send out resumes ... unemployment runs out ... we apply
everywhere, to do anything, but to no avail. We are
overqualified for anything else, and we are unable to work
in the field we love. Hard-working professionals with
college degrees and decades of experience are stocking
shelves and serving drinks."
Well, yes. That's a contradiction, neh? We are overqualified
for anything else, BUT we stock shelves and serving drinks.
Well, that's something else, and we're qualified, right?
I was a great materials handler in 2002 -- the oldest guy
in the shop, and they're saying hey Vic, slow down you'll
kill yourself. It was fun. Of course the part about getting
$8 an hour wasn't fun. The only thing that hurts is that we
got used to being paid to play with cool stuff, and now we
have to work for a living!!!! Actually, I learned a lot
while I was working as a receptionist, dragging boxes around
a warehouse, driving a truck, processing deeds, and doing
data entry. I shoulda done all that stuff first, but I went
from college right into the desk jobs.
I went back to the company that laid me off, and did data
entry partly using software I'd helped to develop. Oh, so
*that's* what it's for. I worked my way back up on the
business side, which gave me a lot better perspective on
what it was all about. I helped find solutions to problems,
and they started to recognize my efforts. Now I'm being
taken care of pretty well, back to my old job title, and I
have a more realistic idea of how to serve the company,
the customer and society in general. Oh, and I'm back to
the flexible hours. ;-) But I'm preparing some other
options, in case things should get crazy again.
Like my drill instructor Tito Labra used to say in army
basic (1965), "hang in there soldier, it's good training."
Life sucks, but that's part of the curriculum. We're here
to learn, so we should pity those poor MBAs who never do.
Like the Man said, "pray for those who spitefully use
you and persecute you."
I'm so wordy, but of course Hans already said it all:
> It's a good reminder to take time to enjoy friends and family.
Merry Christmas to all, or your choice of Happy Holidays ...
Vic
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list -
PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
(text/plain)