Am 21. Dec, 2004 schwätzte Victor Odhner so:
> 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.
The career within a career after a career track, eh? :)
ciao,
der.hans
> 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
>
>
>
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