This one time, at band camp, Rick Welykochy wrote: > The more experience and quality service one can bring to a project, > the harder it is to get the job. Or so I am finding. Often companies > opt for the "young" IT person, in an effort to save bucks. With all > due respect to young geeks entering the workforce, there is a place > for experience and wisdom in creating, implementing and deploying > software projects (my specialty). The catch-22 is I don't work for > peanuts. Anymore.
The places that make the "save a few bucks" calculation aren't the kinds of places you'd want to work. It's the kind of short-termism that will mean the projects will be awful. The places you want to apply for use the word "Senior" in the job title. "Senior" doesn't mean old, just experienced. Smart places hire a "Senior" for every few "Junior" positions, so you've got some experienced peppered amongst the naive but keen. And every project needs a bitter old curmudgeon who's been there before, knows why it'll fail and will tell you after the fact that he knew it'd never work all along. If only to make the rest of us feel better about ourselves. > The often touted response to this observation is that I should get > into management. As if that is natural career growth path for someone > talented in software design and development. Nothing of course could > be further from reality. A good geek != a good manager. Heck, I even > eschew project mgmt if I can avoid it. Certainly agree that management isn't always the best place to be for talented geeks. > I find myself losing out out more and more jobs as I get older due > to the almighty dollar and saving thereof. I've lost out on jobs because I've asked for what I'm worth and that's more than they're willing to pay. Though only rarely. I've got picky about which jobs I take. I wouldn't say it's the same thing as losing out to the almighty dollar. -- Rev Simon Rumble <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> www.rumble.net The Tourist Engineer Nerds need vacations too. http://engineer.openguides.org/ "There's no 'I' in 'team'. But then there's no 'I' in 'useless smug colleague', either. And there's four in 'platitude-quoting idiot'. Go figure." - David Brent, "The Office" -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
