Tony, As usual, you make some good points, however, I have a little different viewpoint. For the past 20 years I have worked for several "mom and pop" companies. These companies have refused to provide training for their employees including me and are very slow to adopt new developments in this business.
I get reasons like, "for what I'm paying you, you should already know ever thing", "when so and so got back from training, they told me 'I know enough to get started, but I'm no expert', so no more training." (I guess the boss thinks a few days in class make you an expert!), "I'll send you when we get a customer to buy the xyz product" and several more I can't remember at the moment. Once, I was charged with supporting a customer with a new product and I was "allowed" to attend the same 3 day FREE training as the customer!! The customer had a couple of programmers that dug into it and within a couple of DAYS they knew more about it than I did, but I was still supposed to act like I knew what I was doing! Very frustrating. Any kind of Pick related training is always "somewhere else" and when the employer won't pay for you to go, what do you do? I understand it costs a lot but not being properly trained costs too. It seems a lot of employers want someone with specific experience instead of looking at your potential and ambition. Regards, Don Robinson From: Tony Gravagno <3xk547...@sneakemail.com> To: u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org Sent: Thursday, November 1, 2012 7:25 PM Subject: Re: [U2] Another job ad written by people who have no clue In the mainstream, it's generally understood that one must be in a constant learning cycle, or skills get outdated in a matter of 6-18 months. So .NET people need to understand the difference between WebForms and MVC, and adapt to generics, lambdas, and dynamic types. Java people need to adjust to changes in frameworks, networking, security, and XML parsing. PHP people need to understand competing frameworks as well as balance their server-side skills with JavaScript and related client frameworks. Any browser developer needs to shift with browser changes, now HTML5, CSS3, etc. And some of us need to do all of the above and then some. But what changes in the Pick world? Not much. And how do a lot of Pick people respond to that? By not feeling a need to do anything but R83-compatible BASIC. There are a lot of jobs out there for developers of new UI's for existing MV apps, but few people available who can satisfy the demand. And yet Pick people have had nearly two decades to improve their skills. Every developer here should be qualified for the job associated with this thread, because that ad looks pretty much like any other ad in this industry these days. I'm not trying to paint every Pickie as a dinosaur or a laggard - far from it. I'm just saying there are too many people who still only know BASIC while there have been any number of opportunities to move beyond that. And there are any number of examples of people in the mainstream who are in a constant mode of adaptation to prove that this is not only possible but the established norm. We are where we are in the Pick industry because Pick people generally become complacent in the belief that they are already using the best database in the world, so they don't need to learn anything else. That's just wrong at so many levels. That cripples the industry, making it more difficult for VARs to sell their software and for the DBMS providers to continue investing in this niche market. And let's face it, the additional problem that many here face is that the developer base is now aging, and it's difficult to start from scratch and jump on Mr Toad's Wild Technology Ride. We just can't do that anymore - myself included. What this means is that many people need to recognize their own limitations, and transition their approach to finding employment and consulting gigs. Position as a manager rather than as a programmer. Profile your skills as a problem solver who can get qualified people to write code, rather than competing with a million people who can write code but can't solve real world business problems. Sell your understanding of business rules, because this is an area where you excel compared to all of those people who can write code but have no idea what to write. T > From: John Lorentz > >David Jordan wrote: > > you have to change the way you get the job interview. > > Only works if there are jobs available. > > In Portland, the long list of what people are looking for in skills when > hiring does not include "Pick" (or other varieties). And "years of > experience in the field" plus "knowledge of xxx" (say, "PHP") does not > equal "five years of experience in PHP specifically using tools x and y" > in their equation, and you don't get past the initial screening. > > So I scramble to get what I can. Right now, I'm working QA on a > contract and haven't had a chance for a permanent job for seven years > now. _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
