Price of our hobby

From: sjm <sethm_at_loomcom.com>
Date: Thu Jun 29 16:54:36 2000

On Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 10:15:47AM -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>
> > Employers will look at WHEN you graduated form high school, and WHEN you
> > graduated from college, and if it's not the standard interval, they'll
> > wonder why. They'll wonder why, and hire someone else about whom they have
> > no questions to wonder about. They'll wonder whether you were in prison or
> > in rehab. They'll wonder why you were different from the norm.
>
> That's such an old-school frame of mind, Dick. The world doesn't work
> like that anymore. Old style thinking like that went out of fashion with
> the 80s.
>
> This is the year 2000. Dinosaurs are extinct.

I have to agree. As one who was VERY recently in the job market
(as a Java programmer), I was stunned by how much has changed
since I entered the working world. Basically, if you're warm,
don't drool, and know how to pronounce "Serializable", you will
be accepted graciously somewhere -- probably not at your dream
job, and definitely not at as high a salary as someone who knows
how describe the difference between a static inner class and an
anonymous inner class, but you'll at least get a decent entry-level
software development job somewhere, making good money. People are
DESPERATE for manpower.

You can wear jeans to your interview. You can have long hair.
You can (as I did) drop out of college without fear of retribution.
You can (as I did) have majored in something completely unrelated
to computers. You don't even need references, really -- especially
since a lot of companies are afraid to give references anymore
(there have been lawsuits. If you give a good reference for a bad
employee, the company that hired him might sue you. If you give
a bad reference, regardless of whether the employee is good or
bad, the employee might sue you. Sigh.) As long as you actually
know what you're doing, you'll get a job. If you follow through,
do your job well and demonstrate that you're intelligent, you'll
work your way up to a senior level position in five years. Yes,
five years is "Senior" here. It's really that scary.

I don't suspect it'll stay this way forever, of course, but
for now it's frighteningly simple to get into a computer job in
Silicon Valley. I don't know how it is elsewhere in the country,
but I suspect it's at least similar.

> Sellam

-Seth
Received on Thu Jun 29 2000 - 16:54:36 BST