On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 12:24:22PM -0700, John Oliver wrote: > On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 08:08:16PM -0700, Todd Walton wrote: > > On 6/2/05, Lan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Experienced only -- sorry to have to say it. > > > > For as long as I can remember, this has always been a problem. > > Everybody wants experience, no one wants to give it. > > Plus, once you get "experience", it ages very, very quickly in the > computer field. For a couple of reasons, even with ten years at this > stuff, I'm about worthless today. I probably couldn't get much more > than an entry-level job unless I lucked into something like my present
I understand what you're saying, but let me (as a person who occasionally hires) give my counter argument. If a person has a real technical background, and not <prejudices follow> just web page design or Visual Basic </prejudices>, then the years of experience in whatever it was will have lots of positive transfer to another technical area. For example, we just started using a new SCM tool and I just became the admin (the trained admin left to move and fall in love :-( ). Because this tool was originally designed for *nix, and because I know SCM, I have very little trouble navigating it, even at the command line. Someone fresh out of CS school would, I fear, be lost, since they seem to teach M$ and skip SCM AFAICT. An example of this was a friend of mine who got a job as a programmer at Logicon (big military contractor) right after getting out of the Navy in the late 60s. He's never programmed before ... not a line ... but he had a knack and he picked it up over the first year. He was there over 30 years before he retired. One day he asked the guy who hired him why he'd taken such a chance on a complete novice. The old boss said, "Steve, we've found it's easier to teach programming to a Navy man than it is to teach the Navy to a programmer." > job. I think, and hope, that I'm in my last computer job... I'm looking > to make a drastic career change and leave all the computer headaches > behind :-) > I hear ya. I have those moments, too. Unfortunately, of all the skills I have, and I have a few, none of the others pay like this. I suppose I could transfer to Marketing; they've already shoved me toward management path over my feeble protests. I've managed, and I'm not really any good at it, and Marketing ... well, they do real stuff I've fond out, but it's just so not _me_! I'd really like to teach, I think, especially abroad. And write, of course. -- Lan Barnes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux Guy, SCM Specialist 858-354-0616 -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
