Former Dot-Com Workers Crowd Homeless Shelters 499
An anonymous submitter sent in this AP article - Former Dot-Com Workers Crowd Homeless Shelters. This article has inspired huge threads on two mailing lists I subscribe to, people coming out of the woodwork saying that they too were laid off/fired/quit many months ago and haven't been able to find jobs. Is the job market really that bad?
They bought $40K SUVs and $500K homes. Dumb. (Score:2)
They were complete frauds. They weren't really worth $100K. But the dotcom market was expanding so fast, that anyone who read "Java for Dummies" was hired with a huge salary to make lots of meaningless, slick powerpoint presentations.
Now the shakeout is on. Those with real skills (strong C/C++ skills, network admining) will survive. The overpaid will experience severe withdrawal. Those who saved will settle and survive at a lower (more realistic) pay level for their skills. The ones who bought the $40K Ford Excursions and owing $3200/month for their half a million dollar home, and were so 31337 that they 0wn3d your asses, will be slammed hard into the ground of reality. For these idiots, I will not feel sorry.
c'mmon, 4.2% unemployment is not that bad. In my country, unemployment is around 10%.
"Employment figures" like this are meaningless unless "average pay" is stated right along side it. e.g., 10,000 cut defense industry jobs with high pay in the 80s are not "made up for" in the 90s by creating 100,000 jobs in the service industries. Percentage of people employed is only half of what matters.
Re:Intern Market (Score:2)
Congratulations, you're obviously in good shape. You're attending CMU, one of the best computer science schools in the country. You've interned for some of the most famous software companies in the world. You're obviously one of the brightest students out there, and your future is just as bright as you are.
But one thing I don't understand about bright people: they never seem to realize how bright they are and the perks that come with their intelligence. You'd think that, being bright, they would be able to figure this out. Maybe you haven't taken stats 101 at university yet?
Your personal experience in job market is just a piece of anecdotal evidence. It means nothing to the rest of the world. Not everyone has a CMU education, not everyone gets a job at Microsoft (only about 2% of people who apply to Microsoft actually get hired [ucdavis.edu]), and there are a lot of people out there who simply aren't as eligible as you are and aren't having the same success in the job market. That doesn't mean they don't exist, or that unemployment isn't a problem.
Again, I congratulate you on the success you have achieved already. You no doubt have a highly productive career developing software ahead of you. But you aren't being productive when you argue ridiculous propositions like "I have a job, therefore the job market isn't a problem".
Soft Skills no longer needed (Score:5)
I think people assume that dot-commers were techies - most weren't. I think a lot don't have well-defined skills and are generalists - which is hard to sell to employers these days.
Only the "cookbook dotcom'ers" were laid off. (Score:5)
As the veteran hacker (12 years) at my company, I've been tossed too many of these techno-wannabees to train. They are clueless. They ask me why I don't rewrite the Perl form processor in Java. When I ask them why I should do that, they say "Because Java is better." That's it. No qualification beyond that. Geez.
I call these people "buzzword employees". All they do is spew buzzwords to try and look 31337 and all they do is fuck everything up. It's like high tech Boomhauer CB lingo. "Yeah man, we gotta ODBC the IIS enterprise with the Sequel (SQL) Server and ramp up the TPS count and interface it all to the Excel Template for report generation for the CIO, I tell you whut."
Yeah sure, you go whip up some powerpoint slides, while I ignore you and keep the system up running normally, just as it has been. I will not upgrade my system just to make it buzzword compliant.
Well, not the shakeout is in full swing and these cookbook guys are the first to get the boot. Good riddance, I say. They were never really useful to begin with. Hope they got a Starbucks on skid row.
Many of the comments here are absurd... (Score:5)
"Good people don't get layed off" This is one of the most absurd generalisations floating around. People need to get a clue about how layoffs work. The people making the decisions about layoffs don't know shit about how good people are. All they see are numbers next to names and a burn-rate they have to go below. These guys can't pronounce half the stuff on the resumes of their technical staff, much less judge their competence.
"I saw the dot-com bust coming long before anyone else and the dotcommers are getting what they deserve" This is classic I-told-you-so-syndrome that pops up in all facets of life, whether you're talking about the dot-com bust or telling someone how you alone predicted the Rams would win the 1999 Superbowl before anyone else. The fact is that most dot-com worker saw a chance to do something they loved, in an atmosphere they enjoyed with an opportunity to make tons of money. Some jealous-folk wipe a bit of sweat from the brow in reassurance when these young people did not end up as successful as the hype of a few years ago was leading the public to believe. Using other people's misfortune for self-justification only shows how pathetic YOU are.
"Layed off workers living in San Jose should work at McDonald's to make ends meet" Trust me, if you're working at McDonald's in Silicon Valley, you'd still be in a homeless shelter, believe that. Your time is much better spent looking for a decent job either in Silicon Valley or somewhere else.
This post isn't meant to crap on ALL the comments here. Many of the comments are obviously spoken by those who've gone through layoffs or at least have true familiarity with them. Yes, there are people out there who turn down decent jobs just because they aren't paying their overpriced salaries of a year ago. And yes, people who only know HTML are in trouble while the market for C++/Java programmers is still pretty solid. But unfortunately the legitimate commentary is in the extreme minority.
Go ahead. Laugh while you can. (Score:5)
Those of you doing this chortling obviously haven't actually been looking for work.
Things changed, changed badly, in the past three or four months. The job market right now is TERRIBLE, at least for Internet-related jobs. I'm a Solaris admin with 6 years experience in Solaris and >10 years total in various flavors of UNIX, and I can't find a position. (A highly skilled sysadmin, mind you, with great professional references. I'm no experience-poor hobbyist calling himself a sysadmin or a clueless tech-wannabe with a padded resume.) I stopped looking for something specific to my skill set weeks ago, and am now looking for ANYthing, even a LAN job. And still nothing. The recruiters don't call you back. Resumes are thrown in the circular bin. That flood of calls that always used to follow posting your resume on any job board has been conspicuously absent.
Hiring freezes are everywhere. Companies that aren't in hiring freezes seem to be looking for Supermen-- sysadmins and programmers that can fill the shoes of five people, simultaneously. Some of the job descriptions I've seen are INSANE. Positions for senior-level sysadmins that are also senior-level network engineers while also being Oracle DBAs with certification! I have to assume this has something with the downturn... knowledge-poor management assuming they can combine positions and Save Bundles Of Cash[TM].
It's bad, people. Pay attention. This could be you next.
The lesson I learned from this? I still don't have a job, but I know that as SOON as I can, I'm going to acquire expertise in a UNIX other than Solaris or Linux, and in a context other than the Internet. I just hope I get a chance to do so. (That's not intended as a slam against either... it's just that there seem to be a lot more jobs for the other flavors than those two.)
And I'm getting OUT of this goddess-forsaken, PHB-ridden industry [heavycat.com] as soon as I can.
Re:Only the "cookbook dotcom'ers" were laid off. (Score:5)
Silicon Valley (Score:2)
This appears to me to be like many of the mini-recessions that have hit specialized industry centers over the years. A decade or so ago, many areas of Michigan got hit as sales of American cars slowed. Sometimes, it just takes a restructuring of an industry, such as when textile mills on the east coast grew by an order of magnitude and moved away from the rivers that had been their main source of power until electricity came into widespread use.
Other than that, I think I have to follow the opinion of others posting here -- lots of people don't have the skills they say they do, only have a very narrow skill set, or just don't want to lower their standard of living by getting a cheaper car or smaller apartment.
--
Intern Market (Score:2)
Overall, no matter what job market there has been, finding an internship has been damn easy for me. Here's what I think really helped me get those internships:
Find a job you're interested in. Sounds pretty easy, and it was for me - I'm interested in pretty much everything in computer science. However, I think this is the most critical thing to do, because of the next reason:
Know what you're talking about. This sounds pretty obvious at first glance. However, there are a lot of idiots out there that have no clue what the fuck they are talking about. If you followed my first piece of advice, then you have a better chance of having this part taken care of. Also, if you are interested in the job, and know what you're talking about, this really tends to come out during interviews.
Have a good resume. Well, this seems to be less important to me, but you should have a resume that's easily readable and gets straight to the damn point. HR people don't need your life story, but they need more than your last job and why you quit. I personally have had internships in the past, which have been pretty good for dressing up my resume. If you're looking for your first one, then highlight the best stuff you've done - contests you've done, community work you've done (at school or whatever), etc. Independent projects (ahem, open source projects) are especially good.
Go for it. I personally hate online job applications. The reason is that I feel my resume just gets lost in the sea of crap. I don't mean to sound better than everyone else, but that's the way I feel when I compare my skillz against other people applying to the same job. Find a way to make your resume stand out. Send it to a friend at the company, or if it's a startup, have the audacity to send it to one of the founders - I think they get a kick out of that.
Bleh, that's all I can say. I've interned for MetaCreations (graphics software), Akamai, and now I'm interning for Microsoft (hey - I couldn't pass up Xbox, would you?).
Also, I had three internship offers this year, so I don't see where all this "crappy job market" stuff is coming from. I think that all the idiots are being filtered out, for the most part.
Re:Tech vs. the Establishment (Score:2)
From now on, "techies" who work in software should be called "software engineers". "techies" who work in hardware should be called "hardware engineers".
Re:Tech vs. the Establishment (Score:2)
Re:Many of the comments here are absurd... (Score:2)
Trust me, if you're working at McDonald's in Silicon Valley, you'd still be in a homeless shelter, believe that. Your time is much better spent looking for a decent job either in Silicon Valley or somewhere else.
I agree, this should be revised to "move to somewhere with a sane cost of living and work at McDonald's to make ends meet." I have a friend who's doing just that in Houston, working fast-food to pay for an $800/month 3-room apartment.
Sure, it's not high-class living, but it's not a homeless shelter either. And jobs in fast food are really damn easy to find.
Re:$600?? (Score:2)
-delirium
Re:$600?? (correction) (Score:2)
Re:Several things... (Score:2)
Yeah, I read Future Shock too and even got fired up about that. Then I did it some. I've had several careers and done well in them. I've made some mistakes along the way but I never deserved to be laid off. I picked myself up, dusted myself off and got back on the horse. I think I might be able to do it one more time but I don't think I can do it 3 more times. Why? Each time took alot outta me. I'm not getting any younger and neither are you. Since I became a developer, I work longer hours than I did as an engineer. Retraining sounds good in the saying but when you go do it, it gets old fast and employers will not hire you on the basis of having taken refresher courses. They want actual work experience. I have done what you describe twice. You're right. It CAN be done. But the cost deserves discussion. I will contend that most people I have worked with over the last 25 years could not have done what I have done to stay afloat in some kind of technical field. They were forced out into non-technical jobs paying much less. So I'm not saying your way won't work. It did work for me. I'm saying it is not a viable approach for many if not most people who find themselves in similar circumstances. They will not land on both feet and start running. They will fall flat on their faces and get hurt. Is that how it ought to be? 15 years ago, I would have said yes. Today, I'm not so sure.
There's a clear solution (Score:5)
It's time to resurrect the modern leper colony.
Today, Molokai island [tombarefoot.com] stands as a pristine isle off the coast of Hawaii's main island. Well into the 20th century, people who had contracted Hansen's disease (leprosy) were corralled and left to fend for themselves apart from the rest of civilization. Though the leper colony became obsolete with the advent of modern antibiotics, it remains a powerful idea with a powerful purpose.
Geeks are little different from lepers, when you look at it. Both suffer from an incurable disease (at least in classic times), both are shunned by mainstream society, and both are wont to have random body parts die and fall off. A leper colony for geeks would be the natural and proper solution.
But how to get them there? Unlike in ancient times, we can't just throw them on a boat and leave them off on the shores. We need strong incentives. Part of the job is already done for us: Hawaii's pristine beauty and untrampled (except by zillions of tourists) lands are unparalleled in popularity and acclaim. Advertised as an island getaway, the leper colony could attract a large number of geeks on that fact alone. The rest of the mopping up could be done with promises of excesses of bandwidth and numerous sexually available local fauna.
Once isolated, the geeklepers would live out their natural lives. Since we all know geeks don't have sex, we needn't fear the propagation of their species. After one or two decades, the last remains of an unwashed mass of pimpled sociopaths could be collected and used as compost.
Above all, homeless shelters would again be free to admit truly down-and-out members of society who didn't go to expensive colleges and didn't recently live in the lap of luxury. That is a world worth fighting for.
Rent actually increased since 2000 (Score:2)
Interesting comment about 100 men in the shelter (Score:2)
#1 unless they God forbid want to become engineers they can't live here unless they're married to a male breadwinner who can pay the mortgage and
#2 the wives expect R.E.S.U.L.T.S. Marriage in CA 2001 means wife not having to enlist in the workforce at all.
#3 in order to cut the mustard their wives expect, the male breawinner has to be so competitive as to never get laid off, a kind of super edgy provider.
Re:From what I've seen ... (Score:2)
Re:Tech vs. the Establishment (Score:2)
Anyway, I guess I feel I'm one of the tech people who does have no problem understanding the business. I just find it rather boring and have no interest in doing that sort of work.
But I don't believe that someone who understands the business side is somehow worth more than someone who understand the technical side. They both have different types of domain knowledge and both play an important role for the profitability of the company.
I honestly have no disdain for the work of the business managers. Sometimes I wish they would be more focused. But I certainly do not appreciate disdain being shown towards technical staff such as the above poster mentioned.
Re:Only the "cookbook dotcom'ers" were laid off. (Score:2)
Heh. Welcome to my world.
Wow. 4.2% unemployment rate. (Score:5)
Worse yet they have a screwed up way of measuring unemployment. If you work even 1 hour out of every 3 months you are called employed. Nobody wants to count the way I suggest. I.e. If you earn minimum wage or above you are considered employed.
They are afraid to reveal that more than 1/2 the population is unemployed or at least not earning a living. At my company we have gotten applications from people who graduated university in 1998 and have never had a job.
So next time a valley worker gets laid off just stop whining jump in the car you don't actually own anymore. Draw out all the cash in your account. Dump your most expensive toys in the trunk and start driving. Stop and look for work at every town you come to. Ask about rent and other expenses too. If you find a place where you can hold $1000 per month after paying the basic expenses (Light, Rent, DSL) just settle down.
New York is paying $50,000 per year for veteran schoolteachers. Find out if you can get the government to foot the bill on a teaching degree so you can go get the $35,000 or thereabouts for an entry level classroom victim.
Money isn't everything but when the glamor goes a little of it is all you need. Better yet servicing printing equipment for a small town newspaper or going door to door for a utility company will leave you enough time to write a book, talk to people, perhaps even have sex.
OK. That last one may be wishful thinking.
I guess what I am trying to say is that for an educated man to suffer he must be forced to stay in a place with limited upertunities (like Jamaica with can get only so many visas availeble to our citezens) or he must give up and surender to his circomstances.
compare and contrast (Score:3)
A young relative of mine graduated from a respectable state university three months ago with a BS in Chem and a minor in CS. She moved into my Seattle basement and started sending out resumes for "web designer" jobs. I tactfully cautioned her that the market for such jobs was becoming *very* tough and that she might be better off looking to a chem-related company and work towards her development goals over the next few years.
Over the next few weeks, I became a bit more worried, because of several factors. Foremost, she lacks any experience in the real job market, and thus lacks the basic understanding of how to interview, and how to position herself as a desirable candidate. She's shooting for technical/dev design jobs when she needs to be looking at entry positions. Secondly, like many of her age-mates, she vastly overestimated the depth & value of her technical skills. Since I've done quite a bit of technical interviewing, I gave her my 10-question interview for an entry-level web-app developer. Basic stuff like "What kind of development do you want to do?" and technical zingers (not) like "What does SSL do?" If it has been a real interview, I would have ended it at question 5 in order to save her further humiliation. Finally, her salary expectations are completely unrealistic in the current environment. She's watched her friends with similar skillsets graduate over the past 2 years and walk into $40-70k jobs, so she feels like $40k is a reasonable minimum. This combination frightened me (I want the best for her, but I don't want her living in my basement forever), and I tried to give her some sense of reality. I pointed out that many of her friends in those $40-70k jobs are now unemployed. It didn't take. She continued searching for jobs that don't exist anymore.
Then I got laid off.
My company of 300 people had a major financial fuck-up (we grossly overestimated the target market for a new bet-the-company service and instantly saturated it in 4Q2000), and it finally hit hard with a layoff in April. I doubt the company will survive to see 1Q2002; the CFO has the brainpower of a barnacle and the money should run out sometime around September.
Now my situation is a little different. I have a mixed background (2/3 Tech/Sys+Net + 1/3 Security/InfoMgmt), with 10yrs experience. I don't have an MCSE, CCNA, or any of that crap, but I have experience that I can demonstrate, excellent references, and a heap of work samples. I know my shit, I know how to use it, and I play nice with others.
But I was blindsided by the layoff. That was stupid; it should not have been a surprise that a large number of the senior staff (read: expensive) would be let go. But I learn from my mistakes, and am relatively self-aware. I went home with my two cardboard boxes of personal belongings and worked on the yard for a few days. When the anger had left, I set about looking for a job in a careful and targeted manner. Yeah, most of the wads of cash are gone, but it took me 5 weeks to find a job with a *better* pay+bene package than the dot-bomb that gave me the heave-ho. It could have been worse, I know, but then again I'm not so proud that I wouldn't have taken work as an electrician or similar if nothing turned up.
Three months on, my relative is still looking for a job. She can get a job tomorrow at $25+k working for the state as a Chemist I, but she won't apply for it. She clings to the fiction that the fluffy web-dev Javascript-and-Photoshop jobs she wants are still out there. And she clings to the absurd notion that a just-graduated kid deserves $40-60k+. Shit, I graduated in '91 with a triple major at a US-top-10 private university, but I landed right smack into the Bush Sr. recession. It took me 2 months to land a $20k job. I could have held out for a better job then, but I don't regret taking the one offered for a moment. This isn't some sage BS about how I suffered this way or that -- you just have to take a realistic look at your situation, use your brain, and exercise your best options.
She's got another month, and I'm kicking her out. If the entire US economy were taking a complete shit, instead of a minor dip that's hitting tech kinda hard, maybe I would feel differently. But I have the same sentiment for her as I hold for every other whiner who thinks their trivial grasp of logic and knowledge makes them a technical genius deserving of huge wages. She can go take her unrealistic, job-market-clogging expectations and go live with her parents until she gets a clue. If there are ex-tech-sector workers who would rather go to a homeless shelter than move home or take a job that offends their out-of-balance sensibilities, I only feel sorry for the actual involuntarily homeless folks who have to listen to their whining.
J
Re:compare and contrast (Score:3)
This is precisely my point. There are a lot of people for whom homelessness and poverty are an unavoidable reality. I have a lot of sympathy for them, and I do my part to help on a regular basis. Just a few weeks ago, I assembled and donated half a dozen working computers to a place that provides them to economically disadvantaged families.
What brings out the bile are these displaced tech workers who would rather take food out of the mouths of the *actual* poor rather than move back in with their families or take jobs that provide less than the cushy overblown comfort they're used to. To me, that's someone who is actively doing damage to the community.
If you read the original article, one of the tech workers admitted that he's in the homeless shelter because he doesn't want to worry his mom. That's pathetic. There are *hungry* people out there, and this fool considers his career embarassment to take precedence. Are you defending that?
J
Re:Unemployeed Dot-com employees (Score:2)
I doubt it. Not for the reason most people think either :-)
Oh, I believe there may be more then 4.2% of the population that is untrainable for jobs. I don't believe the unemployment rate counts many of those people. The unemployment rate tracks job seekers, so people who have given up (my wife for example) and aren't looking for work anymore are not counted as unemployed.
A lot of those people are the untrainable, and I believe most active job seekers are trainable (or pre-trained) for something.
Calculating the unemployment statistic this way has its advantages (decent measure of how many people are competing for any given opening), and disadvantages (doesn't show how many people really are out of work).
That's not the same unemployment number that gets published. I got counted as unemployed for a few months because after getting layed off I marched down to the unemployment office and signed up to get my money back (in VA at least the unemployment pay pretty much came out of your paycheck, and you can never get back more then you gave in). I have some friends who are too proud/stupid to do the same, so they aren't unemployed, they just have no job. I also know people who quit work out of disgust and are without jobs, and are not being reported as unemployed (they aren't eligible for unemployment insurance benefits, as the quit).
P.S. yes, I did find another job pretty quick. Actually I had my first offer (no stock, but more cash then my last) within a week or two, but it took three months to find a job I really wanted. I think if you have the same skills it took to get a job in 1992, you can get one again now. Well not quite the same skills (SunOS 4 knolage won't get you anywhere unless you call it Solaris and forget the "1"), but a similar set.
That may be pretty true, but I think it is more a matter of they can't get better for the money. Fast food service has been crappy for as long as I can remember. That includes a few times of high unemployment. Why? Well I'm guessing that the service can be crappy and the place keeps pulling in money, so enough money is offered only to get a minimum level of service. If they payed enough to get bright cheerful people they would have to pay as much as a real restaurant, which would drive the prices of the "food" up to close to real food, and fewer people would go eat McProtoplasam when they could pay almost the same for real food.
Re:Poor Babies! Savings? Relocation? McDonalds? et (Score:2)
A fine idea. One not followed often enough in the USA (if you believe government statistics almost nobody has more then two months savings, few even have one months!)
A lot of people have friends pretty much only in the same industry (mostly at the same company). Chances are they were mostly all layed off together.
Note that in many places the government handouts came directly out of your pay check (or very close to it), and you can't get out more then you payed in. In fact you can't even get as much as you payed in back (in VA you can get the last 18 months back, then your screwed). Also note that unless you are taking these handouts you aren't unemployed (that is you don't count that was in the government statistics).
Even if you have saved up, it is pretty foolish not to march off and get your handout while looking for work. Or at least it's foolish not to find out for real what is involved. In VA it is about an hour and a half to set it up, and one brief phone call per week (assuming you are approved to do "resume searches").
Or at least not a whole lot over. I beleve my mutt was $130, closer to $200 with shots and all. Much smarter then the (~$300) purebreed I had as a kid too.
Be sure those numbers were calculated the same way. Fifteen of my friends have no jobs. Ten of my friends have no jobs, and are looking. Only four of them are unemployed. How is the 15% number for the french calculated?
Re:Why would "experienced" risk working @ VC start (Score:2)
Wrong.
Worldcom is over ten years old. It is a really big company. It is the number two US long distance carrier. It is not only the largest ISP, but it is larger then the next twelve ISPs combined.
It also layed off a ton of people about three months ago. Nice severance packages though.
The megacorps will not (for the most part) go bust, but they will lay people off as part of their strategy to not go bankrupt.
Polorid is more then ten years old. It may be 100 years old. They announced layoffs last week (I think).
Kodak is over 100 years old. They may not have had layoffs yet (I think they have though), but looking at their annual reports, they will.
Re:From what I've seen ... (Score:2)
When you are asked to do the modification in line the caller isn't going to free a return'ed buffer. In fact it may not look at the return value at all.
How many programs would break if strcat started returning a malloc'ed buffer?
P.S. send me your name, I'll make sure you don't get an interview :-)
(yeah, it was a joke, I expect you would pay more attention during a real interview, plus there are other questions)
Re:Poor Babies! Savings? Relocation? McDonalds? et (Score:2)
Either you are in a bad area for jobs, don't interview well, or arn't as good as you think. Like I said I was unemployed for three months, that was basically through the end of May...
I have about two years income saved. I would like to save enough to live on by the time I reach retirment (I don't think the social security I'm forced to pay will do much for me). My car and my wife's are payed for.
If you aren't interviewing with your coworkers it doesn't sound like it is a job I would be aiming for. If that's the best in the area maybe you should think about moving? If you don't want to move maybe you should think about what it's costing you. I know what my refusal to move costs me (it's humid here, cost of living is high, traffic is bad).
Your writing a reply to someone else. I didn't say move in my last message. Of corse I did in this message...but this would be a planned leaving, not right in the middle of a lease. Later at the end of the lease, or when you get hired some place that will pay the fee to break the lease as part of moving expenses...
Again, even though you clicked "reply to" on my message, you are quoting someone else.
You could sell that car, I use to drive a $700 car, it sucked, but was livable. Today's junk mail shows a used Saturn for $5000, if that is the cheapest car you can find swapping it for your car and $1000 may not be a good idea because you know your car is in pretty good shape, and reapirs should be both rare and free.
Well it would be rather cruel to the rest of the world, plus we can't produce enough oil and other things for domestic use. Plus we make a fair amount of exports that we would lose. Closing the borders would make the current economic downturn look like the golden age, you know back when we all had food...
Or did you mean why can't we just protect jobs in your field, and keep screwing everyone else?
Re:Here come the (resume) liars! (Score:2)
I had three years of experience before entering collage. It may have been mostly CS and QA, but it was still technical.
I've dropped all of my pre-collage experience and some of the stuff from collage in order to keep my resume to two pages. I hadn't realized it would keep me from being falsely branded a liar as well!
Re:From what I've seen ... (Score:2)
No, when I said "one pass" I didn't mean it had to be their loop, calling strlen is "one pass". As far as this question goes yes calling strlen is better then doing it oneself, for pretty much every possible reason (maybe faster, far more readable, and less likely to get the call wrong). However I normally don't count off for doing it with a loop.
If I had asked for it to be as fast as possible, or asked for something where work can be combined with the length calculation, then I might have cared.
I do tend to ask why someone made a choice, and not so much care if they make the same one I do, just if they have a good reason. Well, except if the choice is "mallocing something and not freeing it" or other things that are ever so clearly bugs.
After all surprisingly few people manage to get the bloody thing right. If it works, and doesn't leak memory, the answers to the other questions tend to be more important (esp. the two sort questions, and the trick regex question...).
One of the sort questions is "in any language you like", and the other just requires a description of the algo.
Thanks, it seems to be the only thing I have produced at my new job -- three interviews in my second week.
Nah, I'm more lax on what is correct then you think. Normally I'm pretty happy to get O(...) right. In this case I'm slightly more strict then O(N), I want to see O(2N) -- which I know is technically the same as O(N), but I don't know the right notation.
Re:From what I've seen ... (Score:3)
Depends on how trivial the code should be. "Write a function that reverses a C string in place" should be OK with no references to the man pages, up on a white board. In the past I have asked exactly that question, given the interviewee a xterm with vi or emacs running and let them at it.
On the whiteboard I would forgive simple syntax mistakes and the like. There don't need to be any function calls (a lot of people call strlen, which is fine, but not needed). I'm looking for things like "did you malloc a buffer you don't need, and then forget to free it, or worse yet return it?". If they did the online version, did they test it? With both even and odd length strings? A zero length one? A single byte?
A lot of people who claimed to know C couldn't get the syntax right for the function (given a compiler, I expect one to be able to compile edit compile until you at least get syntactically correct code!).
More people didn't know what "in-place" means (hint, if you aren't sure what you are being asked to code, ask for a clarification).
Still others merely used a poor algo, like malloc'ing a second buffer, copying the string in reverse to that buffer, and then moving it back to the first buffer. Those people are minimally qualified. If they do well on other questions the may still get an offer.
Remarkably few made one pass over the string to find the length, and then a single extra pass to do the reverse. Those are the people I was looking for :-)
The thing to remember when interviewing is any environment you give them will be unfamiliar. They will be under a whole lot of pressure (esp. now, the three people I have interviewed since my multi-month unemployment have received more simpathey from me, but not easier questions). Don't base the whole outcome on a single question.
Seriously don't base it all on a logic puzzle. They may have heard it before. Two flash lights, five people blah blah. Why are manhole covers round? So on... You may end up with a drooling idiot that red the same interviewing books (or logic puzzles...with answers!), or who got asked those same questions last interview and at least was smart enough to find the answers later!
I do show potential maintance programmers a buggy line of code and ask them to spot the bug, or short functions with obvious bugs. But these are clear bugs (like if (a or not a) then x), and not the whole interview.
The job market is great... (Score:2)
- don't really have any marketable skills
- Decided to drop out of college because they thought they could make just as much or more without a degree (sorry, it still matters to any real employer)
- Don't have enough capital to start up their own consulting firm (about 2 to 3 months salary)
- Never really had any talent to begin with and bullshitted their way to their dot com position anyhow.
This isn't to say that there aren't people out there that *are* qualified and still can't find jobs, but in my experience, those are also the same people that can't/won't move from an area with a glut of people that are technically inclined to another area where their skills might be appreciated more (Yes, we know you like the Valley, but bite your lip a little more move to Des Moines, or Cleveland. Give another city a chance).
I am always of the opinion that if your work ethic is good, you have some kind of marketable skill set, you MARKET that skill set properly (no, that does not consist solely of posting your resume on monster and thingamajob) and are willing to be flexible, you can get a decent, well paying and fulfilling job. It's all yours for the taking if you have the desire.
And if for some reason you DO have 2 to 3 months of living expenses in the bank, start your own company. Learn from the mistakes of your other employers and do it better. Realize that their failure could be YOUR ticket to success.
Re:Here's what you do. (Score:2)
Very, very true. Back, before I got a tech job, I was working at a gas station. We had a very intelligent, older gentleman who worked graveyard. Since I worked Graveyard also, I got to know this person fairly well. He used to talk to me about programming mainframes and about operating systems and languages I never heard of (the letters PL/I spring to mind). However, he now has (and still has, I just went there yesterday) a job manning the gas station, being the person behind the counter who handles "10 on pump 5".
He is in a trap. He works graveyard (late at night), so he can't take day classes to become up-to-date on his computer skills. He is from the generation of "keep the same job forever", so it is difficult for him to move to another job. Point of reference: He is the only person who still works at this Gas station who worked there when I worked there, six years ago.
I also met another person, in his 40s, who used to work for EPYX during the video game boom of the 1980s. In 1990 or so, EPYX finally went under, surviving the post-video-game crash for six or seven years, and he lost his job. He never recovered from that to get another technical job. He is, last time I talked to him, a janitor who cleans buses.
However, I do not believe the job market is as bad as some people say it is. I still get "cold calls" from recruiters. A friend of mine recently posted avability at dice.com and received 20 calls. People with solid technical skills are still being hired.
- Sam
Re:Here's what you do. (Score:2)
Some other data points from my circle of friends:
Maybe I just hand around the kind of people who have what it takes to get good jobs.
- Sam
From what I've seen ... (Score:5)
I attend job interviews (as an interviewer) on a semi-regular basis where my role is to ask the technical questions. Out of 10 people I may interview, only 2 or 3 will have any decent knowledge in therr area - the rest really struggle with even basic concepts/situations.
I find it really depressing that there are so many people in the IT industry with useless skill sets or with no in-depth knowledge. And to make it worse, most times they don't even realise (or want to accept) that their skill base is so poor.
From what I have seen, skilled IT people have no problems getting jobs - it's (generally) the unskilled ones who do.
Silly Valley rents: a factor? (Score:4)
rents in the SF Bay Area? I'm (almost)
willing to bet that no such story is happening
over in Boston, which certainly saw enough
of both the boom and bust, and where
rents are high but not insane.
Re:The Jobs Are There... (Score:2)
It's exactly people with this sort of pompous, bullshit attitude who deserve to be homeless. I worked restaurant and retail sales jobs until I got my first tech job (web design and programming) in 1996, and my salary went up and up until this past year. Since then, I've been through four tech jobs after leaving a stable but relatively low paying job with a public school system to work at Intel, getting laid off there, and then getting laid off by another startup, and finally ending up at a web entertainment company that is actually pulling a modest profit. I never saw the gigantic salaries of the Silicon Valley people -- I was never willing to put up with that lifestyle -- but $65k/yr wasn't too bad for never breaking a sweat or forming a callus and seldom working over 40 hours a week.
In between "real" jobs, I grabbed any temp opportunity I could, and flipped burgers a few times, too. I didn't have any trouble finding "junk" jobs on account of my background -- low-level retail managers expect a high turnover rate anyway, and there's no "couple years" of training involved in working a cash register. I'm still behind on a lot of bills, but not nearly as far as I would have been if I had sat around believing that I was actually worth what I had been paid during the bullshit-fueled internet boom.
The real world isn't Disneyland, no matter how much it might have looked that way to the VC junkies in parts of the tech industry. Reality -- and what is so far a pretty minor downturn -- has come home to roost, and if these cream puffs are throwing up their hands and getting in soup lines because they're too full of shit to wash dishes, I don't want to know what they'll do if the economy goes into a full recession.
--
Mission, full of teachers, cops and now dot.com'rs (Score:3)
Here in Washington State we offer Police Officers in Cali, houses (with local credit union bank loans) and moving expenses to move up here, and live in our smaller cities where they need trained police. Works great, better or same pay and they can now own a house, and afford to have a family.
I havnt been worried about dot com'ers ive been worried about all those people who make the cities run on a daily basis, not being able to ame ends meet. Sounds like a total collapse waiting to happen.
Re:Only the "cookbook dotcom'ers" were laid off. (Score:2)
I'm a Network Engineer/System Administrator/Jack of all Trades with over 15 years of experience. I got cut as a cost cutting move in the first of three (so far) rounds of layoffs. It's taken me all of these past five months to find new work. I start my new job in about a week.
So, don't think it's just the Dot.Com'ers that are getting the axe. Everyday working stiffs are getting cut as well.
Admittedly, things probably wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the market downturn/Dot.Com fallout, but it's still bad. Companies are panicking (sp?) and the suits are cutting experienced tech personnel to reduce overhead. Funny how they never realize that one overpriced VP costs as much as 3-4 skilled techies. Hell, the day before I got the axe, a new VP hopped on the corporate jet and made a flying tour of several of our field offices. I figure that my yearly salary just about covered his expenses for that day.
Keep your heads down, ladies and gentlemen. It ain't over yet. Until the suits realize that technology companies need experienced technology people to operate - and don't need a Second ASSistant Senior VP of Button Counting - things ain't gonna get appreciably better.
Anecdotes VS statistics. (Score:2)
The problem with anecdotal evidence is that nobody believes the problem is widespread. (Like the dust bowl pictures of Okies in Life magazine right next to ads for luxury items.)
Then the problem with statistics is that nobody believes them because they're just faceless numbers.
Having spent the first six months of Y2K in Manhattan ($ all around but none for a job for me,) I was an anecdote. I found something but the burn rate hurt like you can't believe. I can no longer afford to retire for twenty years and I'm living from paycheck to paycheck retiring debt instead.
But now that companies, including the one that hired me, have stopped "wasting money" for head hunter commissions, life for the recently unemployed (some of whom are head-hunters,) has got a lot tougher.
The objective reality is that its chaos out there.
I have house cats with a higher IQ than the most powerful man in the country (USA.)
He's out in Europe making Canada look good, trying to sell a useless pork barrel boondoggle that nobody wants and which utterly fails to address the threat from smaller nations rightfully angry about being so callously abused for their resources.
McVeigh didn't use a missile. He used a truck. Will the missile shield cover the interstate too?
Hurtling to oblivion racing to get there faster than the heat death of the universe.
Re:Unemployeed Dot-com employees (Score:2)
I maintain that the reason for this is that during low unemployment, the better workers have all got jobs, and the job pool has fewer good workers left in it. Therefore the fast food places have to hire the best people they can get, but those aren't as good as the best people available at 5% unemployment.
Further, you can't fire them, because they'll not only be hard to replace, but the pool of replacements mostly consists of people who couldn't get a job.
I'm not the only person who has reached this conclusion:
Here's a link to an audio recording [npr.org] of a National Public Radio "All Things Considered" segment on the subject.
Here's Cnet's Mike Yamamoto [cnet.com] talking about it.
Here's ADT Mag's Charles Trepper [adtmag.com] on the subject.
You'll find that below 3%, it's hard to put ANY warm body into a job, much less find a good employee. Somewhere close to that percentage, you find the people who are pretending to look for a job, so they can collect unemployment assistance, but deliberately sabotaging their interviews or even outright defrauding the system so that they'll never be employed.
Personally, I think they should subtract another 3% from the figures and report 3% unemployment or less as 0% unemployment. They already don't count people who are unemployed and not filing unemployment claims or applying for jobs.
-
Re:Unemployeed Dot-com employees (Score:3)
4.2% is bad, but not for the reason most people think; with only 4.2% unemployment, it's hard for the economy to grow, because most of that 4.2% are the hard-core untrainable.
Go into any American fast-food restaurant or convenience store right now, and it's quite likely that you'll be dealing with idiots who can't even work the cash register without their manager present. If they treat you like crap, they won't get in trouble, because the manager knows he'll have trouble replacing them.
It's a little better at 4.2% than it was at 3.3%, but the principle still holds.
I'm no economist, but I bet the "ideal" unemployment rate is somewhere between 5% and 7%. Remember, 5% unemployment doesn't mean 5% starvation due to months of being out of work; it means 5% are out of a job some time during a given time period. That includes anybody who leaves one job before they find another, and then finds a new job two weeks later that pays more.
I'd further be willing to bet that 3% of the potential job pool are people who couldn't hold a job as a greeter at Wal-mart if it paid $50,000 a year, and that if any one of 'em were taking your order at McDonald's you'd consider physical violence.
-
San Jose up to SF: Dysfunction personified (Score:2)
When I went to visit my grandmother at her nursing home in San Jose I discovered that there was no hotel room available anywhere within an absurd distance. Had I wanted to get a room I would have needed to book months (!!) in advance. Months, long before I had even considered making the trip.
I've been around the world twice, and in all my travels I have never run into such absurdity. No accomodations, at any price.
The result? I spent the day with my grandmother, slept on the couch at the airport's FBO (no camping on the ramp at San Jose International
I am not surprised at the cost of rent, or the other problems (economic and otherwise) afflicting the region. There is a serious supply/demand dysfunction in the silicon valley area, whether it is living accomidations, electricity, hotel rooms, or what have you. While I doubt I could identify all of the causes myself, the pattern was clearly recognizable after being in the region for less than twenty four hours and long before the dot.com bust.
To those living in silicon valley and scratching by desperately looking for work I can only say this: run. Run like the wind and don't look back. Pick any city in the United States, any at all, that is not within 100 miles of silicon valley, and you will find conditions much more suitable to human life. And if you're absolutely in love with the region (having been born in Palo Alto I can sympathise), you can always return again for vacation
Re:price of rent???? (Score:2)
Texas: No income tax. Low sales tax (6.25 + 2 MTA), Low housing (3/2/2 for 100k are common) and I am sorry to say, but Californians have no idea about BBQ.
Pan
Have you ever tried to survive on minimum wage? (Score:2)
Personally, I left full-time employment and started contract-based jobs back when the Y2K "bug" was an issue. It was steady work until right around the 2K turn. Suddenly I found myself without any contract opportunities because everyone had projects "on-hold" until after the turn. Once 2000 came and nothing blewup/melted down, it took a couple months for things to start moving again. So, I was without work for 4 months. Not too long compared to some, I'm sure, but enough to through me behind in finances towards the end of that stretch. I had saved enough to cover short-term breaks between contracts - but apparantly not enough.
Do you think a burger flipping job would have covered even my mortgage alone? If so - you're smoking something seriously illegal (according to Drug War Inc). I spent most of that time searching for a job meeting my income needs. If I had taken "something", yeah I'd have been working, but I wouldn't have had the time to hunt for a "real job".
Not hardly (Score:2)
As for not attempting to find temporary income - Umm... contract work by it's very nature is temporary. I just chose not to waste my time in a minimum wage job rather than meeting daily with recruiters and going on interviews. I must have interviewed for at least 15-20 jobs during that 4 months. I was perfectly qualified for all but a few, and was even the intended hiree for a couple. But lack of movement on the part of the company interviewed at resulted in lots of "we're reevaluating our project plans and resource needs" responses. When I wasn't in an interview, I was preparing for another, or following up on a previous one. This takes quite a bit of time.
Bottom line, a part-time low-wage job may have dragged my savings out a bit more and made things a bit easier, but at the expense of other efforts I had going. Make not mistake, however, it in no way, shape, or form would have sufficiently replaced my needed income levels. THAT is the point I'm making - you cannot expect someone going from 60-80K to drop down to 10-20K and expect them to survive. At least not without losing all they own and... living at a homeless shelter! The entire point of the article
I'd still like to see where (Score:2)
As a child, my father screwed up at work and was fired for allegedly giving company bid info to 2 former co-workers who left to start a competing company. The simple fact that he still spoke to 2 guys he had established friendships with at work was all the grounds his employer had to fire him. Getting another job was impossible, since his reputation was harmed so badly. So he and my mother, along with their 5 children, lost their home and other assets in bankrupcy court. We then moved from the nice middle class neighborhood to the ghetto. We got by, survived as you put it, on Welfare as it existed in 1975 and the few part time jobs he and my mother could get with minimal transportation. I was nine at that time - it took 6 years for my father to clear his name in court and return full time to his chosen field. During that time, I myself was nearly shot in the head by some punk who decided a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed white boy didn't belong on "his" bus on the way home from school. The devastating impacts upon my entire family, not to mention the severe depression experienced by my father, is indescribable. That we all "survived" is in a large part due to the timeframe involved - 1975 to 1981. Given the current social climate, I'd seriously doubt we could have handled the same in todays world.
Bottom line - It's not easy to make that kind of drop and emotionally hold together. It's not easy to find affordable housing on such low wages. It's not easy to obtain government assistance if you're not a minority (should have seen what I went through getting financial aid for college - "what do you mean your parents aren't contributing, you're white?" - YES I WAS actually asked that!).
The story all this was posted under was that out of work techies were flooding homeless shelters. That would be the case whether they had a job flipping burgers, or cleaning bed-pans - there is NO available housing in most of the places these people are located. The point I was making was that it is not a simple matter of taking a minimum wage job - that cuts into the time available to run around interviewing for a real replacement. There are many factors involved in each individual case - lumping it all together and calling these unemployed people lazy for not taking shit work is ludicrous.
Or St. Louis... (Score:2)
Um...MOVE! (Score:2)
They're not married, dont' have kids in school or a house or anything else to tie them down. There is no sane reason any one of these morons should be staying in a homeless shelter taking up space and food that a truly needy person could use.
News flash: its an expensive city, and there are about a million other people with your exact qualifications looking for the same jobs in that city. All the companies in that city are not hiring for those jobs because they are the ones who laid you off in the first place!
I know that folks in NYC and Silicon Valley can be myopic about the world, but to stick around in a homeless shelter when plenty of other cities and states are still desperate for tech workers is sheer lunacy.
This is like guys who actually get upset because they cant pick up a girl at a strip club. No kidding, did it occur to you that a thousand guys a day ask that girl for her number? Why don't you TRY SOMEWHERE ELSE where the odds are a little better?
---------------------------------------------
Re:Unemployeed Dot-com employees (Score:2)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Go ahead. Laugh while you can. (Score:2)
I appluad you for your ability to make that work. I know that I never could. OTOH, my retirement is vested, and I saved for retirement. When the stock market recovers, I may retire. (Well, I plan to work 1 day per week, average, but I don't intend to need to.)
It's also true that I picked a fortunate time to be born. See how wise I am! And isn't everyone who was so silly as to be born later stupid.
P.S.: About your guarantee: What does it cost, and how reliable is it? And to whom is it available? You needn't answer me, but please consider the answers carefully. The passengers on the plane do not even meet the pilot. But somehow they must be able to trust him.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:The clueless are unemployed.. not the skilled (Score:2)
It's been broken for a long time, and nobody's wanted to fix it, because it's always to the benefit of whoever's in charge. It makes things sound better than they are, or in good times, it gives an excuse to make things worse.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Waaaaaaaaaa! (Score:2)
b) Moving removes any benefit to the resumes that you already have out
c) Moving disrupts any networking you are doing
d) Moving doesn't free you of the obligation to pay off your lease, etc.
Don't assume that everyone is in your situation. (And even if they were, I would consider your response quite impolite. Traumatized people are not at their best, and take longer to come to the best decisions. A bit of patience costs nothing.)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:It's bad but not because of lack of work . . . (Score:2)
But I sure don't think much that's printable about them. And I'm quite looking forwards to retirement. And nobody yet knows it. I'll give sufficient notice, as I intend to leave with a clean rep. I expect that if I need a reference for some reason, that I'll be able to get one (not certain...my current boss may also retire). But I'll believe most things said about the stupidity of the decisions that bosses make, and their unwillingness to be guided by experts away from disaster. And their unwillingness to accept responsibility for their own decisions.
But guess what? Have you looked in a mirror recently. That's a description of people, not of any particular sub-category of people. People believe what they believe, and it's quite hard for mere facts to persuade them. People claim credit when things work out well, and try to duck responsibility when they don't. All people that I've had a chance to examine have these characteristics. Bosses aren't anything special.
Another characteristic that people have is a desire to blame the victim. It somebody is out of work, then it must be his fault. If it's random chance (or some close relative) then it might happen to me, and that's too scarey. So if I can make it his fault then I won't need to worry about it. So this is basically a way to feel safe in a dangerous world.
Don't expect people to behave differently. Some will, but not many, and even those will need to constantly work at it.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Wow. 4.2% unemployment rate. (Score:2)
I have no idea whether the real unemployment is 6% or 60%. All that I know is that it's guaranteed by the govt. to be higher than 4.2%.
P.S.: My comment "Nobody outside the government
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Solaris is for VCs. Try learning about business. (Score:2)
> expertise in a UNIX other than Solaris or Linux,
> and in a context other than the Internet.
Quite right. Solaris was used in the dot-com boom because VCs felt that it covered their asses. It had nothing to do with technical strength and everything to do with "Nobody ever got reamed out by their investors for using Solaris". When you hear how it cost "donthaveabusinessmodel.com" $10m to set up their web servers and store application, that's because the VCs and their lackeys spec'd Solaris, Oracle, and some nice expensive old-school brand-name non-commodity Unix hardware. Woulda cost $25K max if it had been done in any non-dot-com business.
In the real world, there are many businesses that turn over billions of dollars annually, have heavy-duty information processing requirements, yet run entirely on Windows LANs, for example. These aren't Fortune 500 companies, they're just medium-sized. The problem is that dot-coms tried to emulate the Amazon "instant-Fortune-500" model, which ended up with the ridiculous scenario of little companies with 50 people acting as though they were General Electric. "Do you think we need an HP Superdome, or will a farm of Sun Starfires do the trick?" Business sense didn't go out the window - it was never there to begin with.
My advice to people in this market is to learn a bit about business yourself (read the Wall Street Journal or The Economist or something) and make your own, realistic assessment of the business that's hiring you. How do they make their money? Who are their customers? How are they going to survive the next economic downturn? Also, try to determine what value you're adding to the business. Being a kick-ass sysadmin means nothing if you're administering machines that aren't necessary in the first place.
Many people tend to accept jobs with a charming but foolish degree of trust. They trust that the company really needs them and that they're not being hired due to some political whim. They trust that the company isn't going to go out of business within the next 12 months ("Surely they would warn me?") Trusting your employer to know what's best for you, or even for themselves, is a 1950's hangover from when IBM employees all got together every morning in their suits with mandatory white shirts to sing inspirational company songs. Get with it, people! You're an independent economic entity and the only person responsible for your economic survival is YOU! If you take a job at a doomed company, you have nobody to blame but yourself!
Re:The Jobs Are There... (Score:2)
Hunting for a job is itself a full time job, especially as bad as the market is right now. Even headhunters are losing their jobs.
If you do have to go to work in some job that pays very little, the problem with that is that it takes so many hours at the job just to make enough money to pay the rent and buy some food, that there is no time left to do job hunting for a real job for which your technical skills apply. When you do get an interview (and remember, count on at least 20 interviews on average before you get an offer) you have to take time off work, you lose some of the precious pay, and you risk losing that job as well. Do that 10 times and you can count on being back on the street.
You say the jobs are there... no, these are "junk" jobs. In fact, getting such jobs isn't even that easy. The managers will know you're not the kind of person to stick around for a couple years to make the training worth while. The "real" jobs ... are just not there right now, unless you know one of the fad skills which are in overdemand, like Java.
Reality is, a lot of the techies are not needing to support families. So they can at least go work on hunting for a real job ... while living in the shelter.
Re:IT worker shortage! (Score:2)
I don't believe it was. Perhaps they evetually came to realize that the supposed IT worker shortage was a big fraud manufacturered to force techies to accept lower pay.
But wait ... if the pay was so high, doesn't that mean their were more jobs and fewer people, like ECON 101 taught us? Not really. There were a number of issues that tipped the scales to make the appearance of higher demand ... when in fact even during the peak, lots of techies had trouble finding work. One problem was that the suits jumped into the Internet mess so fast, they had no time to learn enough to even figure out who was smart and who wasn't. The very recruiting process they loved so much was falling apart because not enough non-techies knew enough of the new technical stuff to understand the techies to figure out who to hire. Then the bigger companies couldn't attract people with stock options very well. Sure they had stock options available, but those companies were too big (diluted with assets) to ever have spectacular growth.
The job market was just totally distorted, and is in shambles now as a result. The cause? Mismanagement on an enourmous scale caused by the rush of the ignorant to buy into the Internet craze.
Re:Poor Babies! Savings? Relocation? McDonalds? et (Score:2)
The unemployment rate is NOT 3.2%. During the first year of the Clinton administration, the government changed the formula for how they determine unemployment. Essentially it comes down to measuring people only if they specifically seek government assistance of some kind as a result of unemployment, and only if they do so within 6 months of being let go. And when their unemployment benefits run out (about 3 years now I think), they not only no longer get anything, they don't get counted any more, either.
Unemployment is really closer to 6% or 7% right now, and upwards of 30% in some technical fields like Internet, E-commerce, and Telecom. Need to verify this? Go to the retail/consumer stores like Sears or Walmart or Best Buy and ask the managers how their sales have been doing the past year.
Re:The clueless are unemployed.. not the skilled (Score:2)
When a whole company goes under, as many have done, those who are let go happen to be everyone. It doesn't matter if you are clueless or a genius. And in big companies, the same thing also happened on a project basis. The decisions of who to let go had almost nothing to do with whether you were clueless or a genius. If you were on a project that got scrapped, then you got the pink slip. It's easy for a company to do this because it's perfectly defensible. If they had instead shuffled people around to try to keep the geniuses, that means they would have had to let some clueless go in continuing projects. And that would have opened them to legal liabilities because quite often people sue over these matters. The people who were let go were the ones specifically associated with a job that was eliminated.
By the way, the unemployment rate here in the US is figured on the basis of how many people are eligible for and seek government assistance, not how many people would take a job if there was one. This was done by the Clinton administration to prop up labor unions and help them bargain for higher pay.
Re:The Jobs Are There... (Score:2)
Obviously you are the clueless one. You missed the quotes around the term "junk". That means that's the common phraseology used.
I never said there was a couple years of training involved. There is some, and it varies by job. There are jobs even better than cash register, but they need a week or two of "training" which means they are non-productive until the training period is over, and it costs the employer money. The "year or two" is how long the management hopes the employee will stay on. If they are sure the candidate will be leaving as soon as the tech jobs pick up again, and another candidate perceives this job as a good career for the next 5 to 10 years, guess which one the smart employer will hire. I've been on both sides of employing, and I know how it works. And back when employers were not afraid to tell candidates why they were not chosen (back before all the lawsuit threats) some of the things I heard frequently are "overqualified" and "this would not challenge you enough" and "you'll be bored here". Good hiring managers know how to measure people (though I suspect a lot of that didn't happen during the peak of the crazy dot-compensation-extreme days).
I'm glad for you that you do have at least some other skills, like sales. Most techies would never survive in sales, if they could even land such a job, not even retail sales. To those who can, of course they should.
Re:The Jobs Are There (Score:2)
Last month at the local Internet Society meeting, over 50% of the jobs that hiring managers were seeking to fill were for e-commerce positions involving programming in Java. Java was 3 times in demand as PHP and C++ combined, and nothing else was. Of course that's one small meeting job/forum. And they were all server side jobs. There is apparently nothing going right now for client side Java. Besides, I have all that disabled and I know a lot of other people do, too.
But maybe you're right. I've heard some horror stories with regard to various Java facilities. So maybe those Java jobs that can be gotten will end up being doomed because nothing will end up working and the company will go bust. I think I'm still glad I didn't get into Java.
Re:Poor Babies! Savings? Relocation? McDonalds? et (Score:2)
I didn't say it was proof. The whole process is very empirical anyway. The point is that there are more people out of jobs than the unemployment figures tell about. If you want to know how many, you have to find a way to measure them somewhere. The drop in consumer demand is one possible way to do that. But also beware of the shift. For example the demand for essentials like housing, food, and soap (well maybe not soap for some) will remain up or at least not drop as much, while the demand for optional and luxury goods will drop a lot. Just watch the figures on the financial web sites and see what is going on. It's not pretty, but at least it kinda looks like it has begun to level out. But you can be sure (well, I sure hope so, anyway) that it won't be as crazy as before.
Re:The Jobs Are There... (Score:2)
I'm not sure what numbers you're looking at. For some jobs like McDonalds, sure, I can see 100% in many places. But there are lots of stores I go to frequently and the same people have been there for years. At the local electronics store (not Radio Shack), half the people working there last month were there 7 years ago when I first went to the place. Maybe the other half does turn over entirely in a year, but there is a solid core staff there. I sure hope they get paid well (but somehow, I doubt it).
Re:The Jobs Are There... (Score:2)
So what makes you think I am in California? I am not.
So what makes you think I live in a homeless shelter? I do not.
So what makes you think I am whining about my situation? I have not.
So what makes you think I am not in the midwest? Actually, I'm not, I'm in Texas, the state that sells power to California.
So what makes you think I'm unemployed? Well, maybe technically. But I do have 2 part time contracts and am building my own business. I don't need that job at McDonalds. If I took it, I'd be depriving you.
Re:The Jobs Are There... (Score:2)
I don't think those companies want the high turnover. So they're sure to be using the risk of leaving soon factor at a higher weight when making the decision to hire someone. I know I would. It's the non-techies that in general will make the better employees in those jobs. Good workers are hard to find (at least legal ones), and when you have a choice in hiring, you choose the better ones for what the job is. And it ain't flipping CPU chips at McD's.
Re:IT worker shortage! (Score:2)
Of course I don't want the US technology industry to be hurt. And you make a good argument for why we should bring in H1B's. But given the fact that there were quite many very experienced technical people looking for working during even the peak, tells me that the difficulty in finding good people was not as a result of there being a lack of numbers. There were likely other factors such as not wanting to spend the time working within a rather bad system we have of actually finding people, as well as people just plain not willing to relocate to places like California, which perhaps did deplete its resources (we know they tend to deplete other things like electric generating capacity).
I got a few job enticements to go to California for pay as high as $275k/yr. I'm glad I didn't waste my time with that. They sure seemed too good to be true. I bet those are the places that failed first.
Re:The clueless are unemployed.. not the skilled (Score:2)
People who truly have given up, and don't want to be employed anymore, of course should not be counted. But those who decline to seek government assistance, perhaps because they are smart enough to have savings to live on, or can go back home to live with the parents, or even did grab a part time job dumping fries into a vat or stocking the shelves at the supermarket, should be counted. But they are not the way the system works.
The tweak that was made a few years ago did change the unemployment rate result about 3 to 4 percent. The political analysis of the time primarily focused on it being a means to let labor unions bargain from a stronger position. Face it, lower unemployment figures do drive up wages and salaries. That's not necessarily a bad thing for "the people", but the less accurate the measurement is, the less stable the economy will be because other measurements will be more inconsistent depending on whether they work with, or work around, the unemployment figures. For example, consumer buying went down right after the unemployment went down, which is an inconsistency that can destabilize things.
What we need are accurate figures that correctly categorize how many people are in each of the various groups of unemployment (even if living off smartly retained savings) or underemployment (i.e. working to pay the rent but not in their proper career path).
Re:IT worker shortage! (Score:2)
Why do you classify these jobs (web design and system administration) as not ...jobs which require more skills.? Is it because you see them being mostly currently filled by people with lower skill levels? Just what job functions do you see as ...jobs which require more skills.?
IMHO, you'd be insane to start a CPU design company, and possibly even a software company, even here in the US ... unless you're going for a small niche that won't attract the Intel's, AMD's, Transmeta's, IBM's, Oracles, Microsoft's, of the world to compete head on against whatever you come up with.
I'd agree about keeping the skilled workers here. And there are certainly advantages for us to bring the skilled foreign workers here (though in reality I've found quite many of them less skilled than out of work people here, because the foreign workers are also known to be good brown nosers, and unlikely to sue for anything). But let's get people back into the workforce here, and get those w/o jobs who want them employed. People*time is a resource we are currently wasting. And that includes web designers and system administrators (and there are some out there who are exceptionally skilled in their field).
Re:The clueless are unemployed.. not the skilled (Score:2)
I do attack the methodology. Just not here because the topic here is not about the methodology. Here, people have used those false numbers as if they were truthful, and I don't accept that.
Re:It is really that bad (Score:5)
Sorry, I can't moderate and post the same thread. Besides, you're at 4 as of when I'm replying. That and I didn't get any points today, anyway :-)
One of the problems in the technical fields is that there has been a huge influx of new products, tools, languages, features, and systems to learn. Then businesses end up making (usually stupid, and often horrendously assinine) decisions about which of these things to commit themselves to, then when they look for a techie, they demand only someone who has precisely that set of skills. If one skill is missing they can't "hit the ground running". And if they have excess skills, they are "too expensive". This greatly complicated the effort to find technical talent. For every 100,000 people out there with hireable technical talent, maybe 5 to 10 actually were exactly what they were looking for (because they were so picky about an exact match) and of course they were not in the local city.
Move to INDY (Score:2)
--
Re:Only the "cookbook dotcom'ers" were laid off. (Score:3)
Yesssss, you see, it's just that, hmm, we're, ummm, putting new, ummm, coversheets on the, ummm, TPS reports now.
--
Not necessarily true (Score:2)
Only the cookbook dotcomers are being laid off right now.
At the beginning of the downturn, that was true. But it's not the case anymore. I have three friends out there who are out of work right now. One of them is a Solaris/AIX admin with about ten years of experience, and he's *really* sharp. The other two are very good DBA's, one with about 9 years and the other with something like 20. They're having trouble even getting interviews. It's just plain bloody over there right now. Noone is safe. I'm personally thanking my lucky stars that I fled to the east coast about two months ago, and am happily employed here. (That Solaris/AIX admin I mentioned worked for the same company I did, and was laid off just a couple weeks after I left along with dozens of others.)
But as for everything you said about techno-wannabies, rock on my brother.
Regards,
Yes (Score:2)
Waste of time too. TOTAL waste of time to try and have a job in an industry where all the technical decisions are made by non-technical people for all the wrong reasons.
So you get a job in the "IT" industry? What have you got? A flimsy promise that there'll be a paycheck for a while? Other than that its "one week of bad economic rumors and you're out on your resume." Bah. Forget it. Let 'em figure out how to develop their own n-tier databases with MS Project.
Ironic too, we just published an article [heavycat.com] on this:
http://www.heavycat.com/cattracks/ (in case the link doesn't work)
Well.. (Score:2)
I mean, what do you expect? You have silicon valley, a huge influx of people move in to work because of the boom, and then things return to normal.. what do you expect is going to happen?
People with solid skills will find work. People without them will be in the same position they were in before this all happened in the first place.
Folks..let's not forget it's a job 'market'.. and (Score:2)
I said much the same thing as you 8 years ago or so.. 'aww but look at my mad unix skills! I know tcp/ip inside out! I want the lead job'.. well, tough.. the guy who's 10 years older with a few more years experience actually doing the job gets that spot, and that's how it is. Why?
Sysadmin is more than the hardware, and the technology.. it's keeping it all together, management skills, doing the job. It's just *assumed* that you know the technical details.
This is not new to any profession either.. what do people think, you leave University and go straight to the top? Not likely.
Now, I'm not saying I didn't bitch and complain too.. but now, after a few years of working perhaps not the greatest jobs, I managed to get to the point where I actually can apply for high level positions and get interviews. I can attack the Sr. Admin position for some company with serious intent.
Re:Bad? That's an understatement. (Score:2)
Did you do no job research before you did Comp. Sci? There is nothing in your local town.. was there during the big boom?
Do you think that Yahoo, Microsft, etc are going to answer calls from the tens of thousands of applicants they get each week?
Do you have relevant job experience, or are you green? Are you trying to be a programmer, or an administrator, or what?
Not to offend, but.. (Score:2)
Sure, a few might. Most won't.
You get an entry-level job, and work your way up. I don't mean necessarily at the same company, but if you do grunt low-level admin work somewhere for a year, your odds are a lot better for getting that mid-level admin job the next year.. and so on and so forth. Within a few short years, you can command (if you are any good) top level admin positions wherever you want.
Re:From what I've seen ... (Score:3)
Unemployeed Dot-com employees (Score:5)
I find it hard to believe someone that used to earn around 100k is now homeless.
Don't you have any savings?
And what are they doing in the sillicon-valley anyway? Move to somewhere else, find a decent job, if you where good enough to earn 100k, you're good enough to do lot of other jobs - c'mmon, 4.2% unemployment is not that bad. In my country, unemployment is around 10%.
So don't work in what you used to do - find some other job
Several things... (Score:3)
The days of employment-for-life are over in the post-industrial economy. It's simply a fact that everyone in the first-world countries will very likely pursue multiple careers within their lifetime (as an aside, this is why continuing to learn throughout one's life is healthy and good). There are some exceptions to this, of course - some academic, science, clergy, military, and bureaucratic careers come to mind - but even many of these aren't forever, or change a lot over time. But, for most of us, we'll change careers two to five times during the course of our lives, and we'll like the changes.
I've had over a dozen jobs so far. Some of the earlier ones weren't paid, or paid rather little (how'd you like to make $1.25/hour for a 12-hour harvest shift on a ranch, then have them deduct 25 cents per hour for your room & board? I rode my motorcycle 300 miles each way to take that job for a couple of months when I was 17... it was the best summer job I could find at the time, and I even went back the next year - to drive a forklift. I learned some things there, saw a culture previously foreign to me, and had interesting times. Some friends found the Peace Corps of value for similar reasons).
OK - here's my jobs list, in chronological order: paper boy (afternoon), paper boy (morning), HS projectionist (carbon arcs!), HS radio announcer and disc-jockey, summer field-hand, commercial announcer, materials handling office-manager / salesman / driver, coffee shop short-order cook, data-processing operator (tape-ape), DP night manager, H200 assembly and COBOL programmer, DEC TOPS-10 computer operator, DOS/VS computer operator, DP supervisor, COBOL Programmer trainee (twice, let's not get into that), network install manager, network support manager and programmer, OS/VS1 systems programmer, MVS systems programmer (three different companies), Big-8 IT senior consultant, Big-5 IT manager, IT consultant for a small private firm, and now an IT management consultant for a large multi-national firm). It's not just a single career, is the point (though I'll admit it's been IT focused for quite a while, and is likely to remain so - but not in the same position for longer than a couple years at a time).
I was laid off once, and I've been fired a couple of times too. Some suck-ass managers can't handle honest communications, so what else can I say? (With few exceptions, don't trust an IT tech manager who's never been fired - (s)he's more politician than honest, won't work with you when you're right; (s)he will likely stab you in the back at the first opportunity that may present itself. Ah, here's another juicy topic - IT politics rears its ugly head.)
Early in one's career it's easy to find the next job. That's all it is, then - a next position - and all you need are the technical skills on your resume and showing up (clean, rested, and well-dressed) to convince the hiring manager and her technical interviewer that you've got the chops and want to work for them. However, as your career evolves (and one hopes it will) other factors beyond mere technical skills start to become increasingly more and more important for finding that next right position: things like appropriate presentation and personal style, smooth people skills, fitting into a company culture and ecology, good communication and negotiation skills, management judgement, thinking on your feet, and coolness under fire. These factors all become more important in your job as you (and your pay scale) rise in IT management. No dot-com buzzword lamers need apply.
Losing a job unexpectedly is emotionally devastating. Personally, I'm not sure I'd keep a position where my next task would be to tell people they were simply being laid-off. I guess it would depend upon how well it was going to be done and what accommodations the company would make available to them. (Working through the process of shedding an obviously bad employee is another matter though, as they will get ample warnings to shape up or ship out in that process.) Still, it's a hard thing to lose a job. I believe it's harder on most men than most women, because many guys tend to define themselves through their work, whereas most women are a little more balanced about working to live rather than living to work, in my experience.
Losing a job is a high stress event in anyone's life. It ranks right up there with a death in one's own family, or a divorce. As such, it's not something one just deals with rationally at first - or even for some period of time. (This might go a way to understanding why a few former dot-com staffers are now staying in homeless shelters in the Bay Area.) The process of dealing with the loss of a job is a lot like the one that is inevitable for any other major loss - impending divorce, death of a spouse or child, even the imminent prospect of one's own death. It's the progression through denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and finally, acceptance. I've been through it, have you? If you have, it wasn't very much fun at the time, was it? Like those other major life changing events, it's a time to draw close one's supports, find a way to get through the darkness, and seek another path to peace with what is, and go on to what's next, whatever that may be. (I lost both parents to cancer in the late '70s - it took years, a failed marriage, and a good friend, for my grief.)
However, when one gets laid off - you're supposed to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and then get back in the race. Yeah, I know it's not much fun at the time, but that's the only way you're going to find your next position, so you might as well get with the program. There are more free or low-cost job finding resources out there now than ever in the entire history of this planet. Want to work in Saudi Arabia? You can find that job today! Like the idea of Las Vegas? There are all kinds of IT jobs seeking your skills there. South Florida, Manhattan, Chicago - same thing there. If you're presently unemployed and willing to relocate and make a new life, there are lots of jobs available. And we haven't scratched the surface of all the independent contracting yet. There's work out there, just waiting for your shining self and skills. If you need a job, go out and get one real soon, or quit your snivelin'.
Bringing Technology to the Poor (Score:5)
--
The clueless are unemployed.. not the skilled (Score:4)
Heh, if you're living in a homeless shelter, then that should be a big, red, blinking sign that your life is not on track and you're not following a sustainable path for employment in the future. Learn how to do something else. Go back to school. Assess what you're trying to do with your life. I think anyone paying $3 grand US a month for rent in Cali is insane. Move somewhere else. Reality-check time.
Nobody - but nobody - that I know who legitimately understands technology, has good qualifications, and most importantly, can do something besides useless "process meetings" and powerpoint slides - is worried about getting a job, or keeping a job. I still get cold calls, and a quick scan of monster.ca lists loads of jobs in technology. This is in CANADA! Our unemployement rate is more like ~8-10%, and in my area (Atlantic Canada) it's more like ~20%. Most americans need to contend with a rate below 5%!
Mind you, I did my time in the trenches, I produce product to deadlines, and I understand what I do. I have a Engineering degree, not a CS degree. I might have done CS, but there were way to many of those cookbook .com'ers in CS when I looked at it - people wanting to program for the money, not because it was what they were good at. That devalues the degree in the workplace. I suspect it's these people that are screwed.
Those who can do things will never have a problem finding work. If you can't do anything, then you're in big trouble - and you should be.
Another few words of wisdom are to make sure you have at least a few month's bills worth of cash in the bank. If you don't, then you're spending too much money. Having debt is one thing (ah, I love my student loans..), as long as you're able to service that debt through a dry spell.
Re:Go ahead. Laugh while you can. (Score:4)
I played that game for the past couple of years - being a PHB-enabler. Things like:
- working 80+ hrs/week (no weekend free-time either) to restructure the god-awful business plan written by clowns so the PHBs could get that critical $50 mil to keep *their* business alive.
- fighting millions tossed at worthless vendors [lucent.com] for every little PHB fantasy, like a $2.5 million "system to automatically download call records from a switch and change their format so it can go into the billing system" - that I replaced with a $2,000 Linux box, ftp and grep, only to see the stuff bought anyways and put on my budget while the PHB got a free trip to Disney on the vendor's [lucent.com] behalf (never mind that theirs never did work despite several visits by just-out-of-college $225/hour techs).
- solving PHB-induced crisis after crisis with no fanfare, often using my own funds, contacts, whatever, only to prove to the PHBs that their incompetence has no consequence
Imagine their horror during layoffs when I walked over to a fully functional company I own that afternoon (hey, I saw the writing on the wall a half-year in advance).
I'd swear, they were mad at not getting the satisfaction of my agony. Somehow, they feel the need for people like us to suffer so they can rationalize that they're somehow of value.
It's time to destroy the PHBs. Withdraw your expertise. Don't give them your minds. Don't enable their parasitism. Brilliant tech people are a direct threat - we represent intelligence and reason. Don't underestimate or think for a second that they aren't threatened by us and seek our destruction.
Instead, be accountable for yourself - either contracting, consulting or building your own company with other competent people. Work only with other competents; don't enable or empower these parasites. It's time to slay the PHB culture.
*scoove*
Click here [aynrand.org] for a guaranteed cure for unemployment
Tech vs. the Establishment (Score:5)
This seems to be the tip of the iceberg in a major anti-tech backlash - probably consistent with the "irrational exhuberance" against solid techs in the stock market.
I've been dealing with private company funding (yea, nice timing, eh?) and have had to deal with a consistent thread: technical people are making too much money.
Mind you, I'm paying a CCIE and RF expert $75K, a CTO $85K and the CEO is still under $100K - for a growing startup with good performance and a team with exceptional industry experience (these people are starters as well - commandos who build, operate and manage with solid backgrounds doing this before). These wages, which would be considered poverty levels in the tech industry a year ago, are only marginally balanced to the recepients by their equity.
Yet I'm hearing frequent whines from prospective individual investors about "how horribly overpaid the technical people are" by an alleged factor of double (this coming in many cases from old money, and Wharten MBA grads, mind you!). There's also the frequent reference to how technical people really shouldn't have equity stakes, since they "don't understand the business the way an MBA would."
Suggested retail price for techies?
CCIE: $45K
Wireless Engineer: $30K
Network Operations Staff: $6/hr
In other words, the establishment is having its counter-revolution and working with great vigor to counteract the impact technology has had in creating new wealth (and disrupting the social order).
*scoove*
Re:Unemployeed Dot-com employees (Score:3)
Don't you have any savings?
While the salaries were a little high at the time, humans tend to match their spending to the earnings. I've done it, I used to get along with $500 a month to live on (student loans) for quite a while. Now I make a lot more yet I am still broke. Not that I am complaining, I consider myself lucky to have experienced life like that; I know what life could be like again, and if so, would know what to do.
Just as a comment, if people are really at the end of all resources, why don't they join the Army or Navy? They almost never turn down anybody and I'm sure they have technical positions waiting. I know the Navy would just love to know what a BSOD means.
Ozwald
It's bad but not because of lack of work . . . (Score:3)
I have applied for many jobs for which I'm incredibly well qualified, and been turned down for various reasons. Many times they won't hire someone with my qualifications even at entry-level salaries because they believe I'll hop to the next available job when the market picks up.
Other times I can't get someone on their end that can even understand my thrice-simplified, dubmed-down resume, since during the beginning of the .com squeeze last year most companies replaced techies in the hiring chain with marketroids and suits, because they thought MBAs would be more concerned with the flow of money into their coffers and less concerned with the needs of the other technies.
And don't even try recruiters right now. Get a clueless recruiter talking to the clueless people on the hiring end, and you're better off walking door-to-door in the more developed areas of town. Even the best recruiters I can find have a hard time understanding my resume, which most techies and even non-technies from other fields have told me is very easy to understand. Filter job-search language through three levels of uneducated indirection and the childhood game of Telephone takes on an entirely new meaning.
But I've seen things pick up significantly in the last month or so, only if you have _real_ skills to offer. I think many companies over-compensated and realized that technical position != .COM position, and many companies have struggled to fill the _truly_ skilled positions since December or January. If you see the same company posting the same job again and again, they could just be trolling to build their resume files, or they could really be desperate! Go seek them out at their headquarters and demand to see someone on the hiring side, and ask if their position is for real, and ask for something reasonably but substantially more than they initially want to pay, and you might get a reasonably mellow job with a good salary even now.
Re:Is this the right path to financial freedom? (Score:3)
Second, chances are that the American economy will not collapse, and that the computer industry will not collapse either. The fundamentals are still there, and I think that the industry will continue to be strong, and that the US will be the leader, for the foreseeable future. Even if technology does collapse, your degree will you man you're more qualified for that grocery store clerk job than the average joe on the street.
Poor Babies! Savings? Relocation? McDonalds? etc. (Score:4)
"Top consultants and contractors once named their salaries in the valley. Now, even those who qualify for unemployment benefits soon discover the $40 to $230 weekly check will not cover an apartment here, where rent averages around $1,800 a month."
Which brings up the question:
1. Why didn't they put any money away for a rainy day? If they bought their own hype, expected to live off stock options, and didn't put any savings away, then they deserve to suffer for their own lack of foresight.
2. If it costs so much to live in the valley, why don't they move somewhere else? The saleries may be lower elsewhere, but the cost of living is generally MUCH cheaper. Here in Austin, decent aprtments can be had for $600 or less. And Texas, unlike California, has no state income tax. Nor does it have an artificially induced power-shortage brought about by short-sighted politicians who didn't understand economics and evidently didn't realize that prices can go up as well as down. (Or, like the poor yuppie victims mentioned in the article, that stocprices could go down as well as up.
3. Why aren't they staying with friends or family who are still employed? If they don't have any in the valley, why don't they move away? And this isn't some "if you only walked a mile in their shoes" BS. I spent four years living in someone's living room while I worked temp jobs and paid off credit card debt from my immediate post-college years, when I was making a hell of a lot less than $100,000 a year (try around $20,000 in 1991). Easy? Hell no. But I did it, and I'm currently debt-free. Unless your relations are really strained with friends and family (and there's another sign that something might be wrong with your outlook on life), they can support you during lean times, and expect you to do the same.
4. I've been to the valley twice this year, and I seem to remember a lot of "Help Wanted" signs in McDonalds, Burger Kings, etc. Why aren't they working there? There's nothing wrong with working a lower paying job until something better comes along, and to my mind it's far less injurous to your dignity than mooching off government handouts or the kindness of random strangers.
This story reminds me of that National Pravda Radio story on the woman who got a job with Dell, and then was let go before she ever started working. I felt empathy for her right up to the point where they mentioned she had spent $3000 on a purebreed dog to play in the yard of her custom-built house. Not only did she count her chickens before they were hatched, she spent the money she was going to get from the chickens in advance. If you're going to spend money like an idiot, don't expect any sympathy from those of us who put our money in the bank instead of spending $3000 on a dog. (Here's a tip: You can get a dog that's just as cute and friendly at the SPCA for under $100.)
Look folks, no one is guaranteed a ticket to easy street. No one should be saved from the consequences of their own poor decisions. Yeah, getting laid off sucks, but how you prepare for and respond to those situations is up to YOU. You shouldn't ask society and/or government to bail you out from your own shortsightedness. Thankfully, in a capitalist econonomy, you can generally get as many second or thirtd chances as you're willing to earn. In nature, making mistakes gets you killed.
"3.2 percent unemployment rate"? Poor frigging babies! Go over to France, where they have all sorts of welfare and unemployment benefits. And, directly related to same, unemployment around 15%. That's why high French officials warn other EC countries darkly not to engage in "tax competetion," because they know their creaking, failing socialist economy would inevitably lose jobs and industries to dynamic, nimble economies, like those of the United States. Yes, you're more likely to get laid off here than in Europe, but you're also much more likely to find a higher paying job afterword. The creative distruction and economic dynamism of capitalism offers far more opportunities to rise to the top than tired old socialist economies. That's why people write books with titles like "Thriving on Chaos." Yes, you're more likely to get laid off, but in the long run that's the only way that your children will be able to enjoy better lives than the ones you lead. That's a price worth a few layoffs.
Re:From what I've seen ... (Score:4)
We give them a pretty basic test in their interview (write a function that can do some-trivial-task, taking these inputs and giving this output; you have 30 mins, a pad of paper and a pen. If you get the order of arguments to fgets() the wrong way around, don't worry too much, we look that stuff up as well sometimes, even when we're not under interview pressure) and then talk to them about it afterwards.
The number of people we get in for a C programming job who are totally incompetent is astounding. We weren't really fussy; we _really_ needed someone. But nothing. Just a stream of totally clueless people, claiming to be C coders with 2 or 3 years commercial experience. Some of them couldn't even get a for() loop right, would read 20 bytes into an int using fgets() (why 20? Who knows. It's just a number they picked out of the air) and just have _no_ idea at all.
If you're competent, you can get a job. But most people, in my experience as someone who was looking for just semi-competency in the end, aren't.
Re:Generalists Not Wanted (Score:3)
I don't live gratuitously in Silicon Valley. I live in the city of San Francisco, which is in my native region, and wonderful, culturally. I live in an inexpensive 2 bedroom apartment with a friend, and my share of the rent is $1250. So although I had saved up $5000 over the less than half a year of employment I've had since I graduated from college, it is all long gone.
I get the impression that were I a couple of years older (I am 22), I would not be having this trouble finding work. Although _I_ can think of plenty of types of technical jobs I could and would love to do as a generalist (dept. liason, field engineer, alpha geek, internationalization engineer, etc.), apparently employers do not agree.
Re:Only the "cookbook dotcom'ers" were laid off. (Score:5)
I was one of those "clueless" guys who got an opportunity to join a dotcom in the early days. And no, I didn't know much (liberal arts degree). I didn't run around using buzz words and acting like I knew more than I did. I listened intently when the more knowledgeable ones spoke, and I asked thousands of questions. And yes, I bought books. Lots of them. I installed Linux. I signed up for a night C++ class. I busted my ass.
And you know what. I'm still around. I have no sympathy for the "cookbook" folks as you have described them either. Laziness and pretentiousness should never be tolerated. There were several people let go like you (more technical experience) who I'm sure roll their eyes and complain that I was spared.
Lets just say I'm glad that not every senior dev guy as much of a whiner as you seem to be. Doesn't it say anything about your own skills if none of those people you were given to train amounted to anything?
I agree with your point that there were sevral freeloaders amongst the dotcom ranks, but your vitriolic disdain of everyone with newbie skillz is a bit over the top. Tone it down a notch, eh?
Comin' at ya from TX!
Will code html (Score:3)
http://www.jamesarcher.net/images/willcodehtml.j pg
It is really that bad (Score:5)
In my past dotcom life I was a "product manager." As an unemployed bum, I haven't had but 2 interviews in 4 months of looking. I think that employers are figuring out that "product manager" means "talentless middle-management hack" and they are figuring out how to do without us.
I am not a programmer, but everywhere I look I see job opportunities for them. That part of the job market looks plenty strong to me. But if you don't actually PRODUCE something, god help you! I'll be working at Kinko's soon for 1/3 the salary. The last few months have definitely been a personal low. (Can I get a +1, Pity now?)
this is retarded (Score:5)
I guess it never occurs to people that they might do what college students, recent graduates, and other financially strapped and/or marginally employed people have done since time immemorial: Find a roommate! Sheesh. When I got out of school in the early 90s and went to live in New York City (making a princely $10/hour -- this with significant business and tech experience and a degree from a top-ten university), I had friends who somehow managed to get by on even less than I did. Typically their living situation went something like this: Minuscule two-bedroom apartment with three or four people occupying it. Either there were bunk beds in the bedroom(s), or someone had a bed lofted over the couch in the 80-square-foot living room. Dinner was ramen noodles, the entertainment budget was sufficient to cover maybe two beers a week (though probably not if you bought them at a bar), and there was nothing as extravagant as cable TV.
This does not make for a glamorous life, but then again, it doesn't require much income either. Assuming rent of $2,400 a month, that's $600 divided four ways. You can cover that working at Starbucks: Every time I visit the Bay Area, I laugh when I see the help-wanted signs offering $9+/hour plus tips and benefits and, probably, a handful of stock options! Maybe that's not quite enough because you've still got student loans or something, so you get a second job temping or whatever. Oh, the tragedy.
Basically, I contend that former dot-commers who declare themselves homeless are either (a) unwilling to stoop to a job they consider beneath themselves or (b) unable to throttle back on their consumption. There are homeless people with real problems: They're substance abusers, or mentally disturbed, or illiterate, or single parents with kids. Them I feel sympathy for. These posers who are whining about not being able to find sufficiently cushy jobs, on the other hand, are not about to earn my sympathy.
Generalists Not Wanted (Score:5)
The problem is that I'm simultaneously underqualified and overqualified - I don't have the depth of experience in any one or two skills to make me the "best" candidate for a job with a narrow focus, and all the extras just tell most employers that I'll be looking to leave ASAP, so they'll have to hire someone else anyway (which isn't true in my case, but they don't know that). My last IT job was working technical support for a well-known tax-preparation company's consumer tax software. All my "evaluations" said I was doing well above average, but I was still one of the 98% or so laid off in the middle of April.
And do you know what I'm doing for money now? Any day I don't have an interview (most of them) I'm down at the day labor agency at the crack of dawn; when I'm lucky I get called to work for barely above minimum wage doing semi-skilled construction work.
No, not that bad (Score:4)
There's jobs, but no former CEO would catch himself dead flipping burgers or working retail, even though they're perfectly good jobs for anything. No, its not an IT job or something "high tech", but its a freaking INCOME. Glad my taxes aren't only going towards the guys using the money to buy more drugs, but lazy former suits who would rather not work than work for $5-$8 an hour.
Do you people really belive this drivel? (Score:5)
- A few weak statistics to "back up" their claims.
- A "personal perspective" (interviews with individuals) to show that the statistics are true.
- "Expert" commentary. (Ilene Philipson, the clinical psychologist).
- Overdramatized prose. Like: a surprising number of former high-tech workers are rubbing elbows with society's castaways
Remember how we were being told that there was a terrible shortage of tech workers one or two years ago? Perhaps there was, but I certainly didn't see it. At the last two companies that I've worked for, I spent a significant amount of time interviewing SW-Engineer candidates. Time I should have spent programming. If there was such a shortage, then were did these people come from? (btw, most of them were very qualified)Like most of what you see in the media, this article is partial-truths, rumor-mongering, hype and fiction.