{"id":424,"date":"2006-11-02T22:45:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-02T22:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2006\/11\/02\/424\/"},"modified":"2006-11-02T22:45:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-02T22:45:00","slug":"424","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=424","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

PROGRAMMER BLUES:<\/span> About 6 years ago, I decided that I\u2019d had enough of trying to save the world. I didn\u2019t get any further with that than becoming a lowly grant writer for a non-profit agency that had seen better days. So I figured it was time to go back to my mathematical and engineering heritage, by becoming a computer programmer. I\u2019d still be lowly, but at least I\u2019d be doing something that I was good at. And maybe I\u2019d get to do an honest day\u2019s work; productivity at the non-profit was pretty much a joke. And maybe I\u2019d also get an honest day\u2019s pay. The pay at the non-profit was so-so (a bit better if you were part of the director\u2019s cult, which I had gotten tired of), but the benefits were pretty bad. So I applied to Chubb\u2019s \u201cTop Gun\u201d program, which was supposedly there to teach you how to program in the modern languages, and then get you a year\u2019s internship with a big company. In return, you agreed to work for peanuts during that internship. If you did a good job, you\u2019d become permanent and make a pretty good buck. Most people from the program supposedly did all right.<\/p>\n

Well, my class finished just in time for the IT (info tech) crash of 2000. I don\u2019t think that half of the class ever got a placement. Only the younger guys made it, what a surprise. Being an older guy, I had to go crawling back to the world of grant writing and management. This time it would be at a government agency, where the pay wasn\u2019t much better, but at least the benefits were decent. (Unfortunately, the \u201chuman atmosphere\u201d isn\u2019t as nice; I do miss the people back at the non-profit). <\/p>\n

But who knows, maybe it was all for the best. Back in the 60\u2019s, 70\u2019s and even most of the 80\u2019s, programming was a pretty cushy job. The pay was decent, the job security was good, the work was fairly interesting, and you didn\u2019t break your behind. By the turn of the century, this had all changed. Today, a programmer obviously faces the constant threat of having his or her job outsourced to India. Job security is nil. In fact, regular jobs with health and pension benefits are becoming scarce; more and more programmers need to get by on a short-term contract basis. This might be interesting for you young dudes in your 20s, but for a foggie like me, it just doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

So I wasn\u2019t too surprised the other day when I saw an article about “code jams”<\/a>, another lovely way that modern business minds exploit the geeks. It\u2019s a growing trend in the computer world today. High Tech company XYZ decides to look for programmers by having a \u201cfun event\u201d. You get to compete for the opportunity to get paid for your programming skills. You get an hour or so to solve a hard coding problem. Maybe 100 people get to compete. Maybe 5 get to stay for pay. As to the rest, well, thanks for whatever you got done during the hour or two you were here. We can probably still use it. <\/p>\n

Yea, the programming world has become a Hobbsian nightmare. Perhaps the beauty and fun and comradeship of programming still exists, but the business world has certainly ravaged whatever economic dignity it once had. Some people will still make money doing it, but they\u2019d better save up, because there is no security, no reasonable guarantee of income next year. For anyone who isn\u2019t interested in living jam to jam, perhaps the best thing is to do what I did (quite inadvertently). I learned how to program, but I also learned how to do other stuff that arguably has some use (and can\u2019t easily be done by someone in Shanghai). I still get to use my programming skills once in a while, whenever I see a need at my job for a customized computer application (I\u2019ve put together a lot of Access databases for myself and various other people at work). <\/p>\n

But, programming is like the icing, not the cake; it\u2019s like the sauce, not the pasta. It\u2019s tasty, but you couldn\u2019t live on it. But it could make you a more valuable employee than if you just did the basic, boring stuff that you were hired for. Yea, the business world still needs men (and women) for all seasons. And programming could be one of those seasons. But the season in which you could make a nice living doing nothing but programming \u2013 that season has become a cold and cruel winter, unfortunately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PROGRAMMER BLUES: About 6 years ago, I decided that I\u2019d had enough of trying to save the world. I didn\u2019t get any further with that than becoming a lowly grant writer for a non-profit agency that had seen better days. So I figured it was time to go back to my mathematical and engineering heritage, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}