I get talked to like I am in idiot. Eight and one half years in the software business and I get no respect. When I started this profession, one only had to mention the letter C and allot of assumptions were made about you. The letter C commanded respect. The hiring manager knew that anyone surviving the learning curve of such an unfriendly language could easily pick up on anything else that they needed to know. Unfortunately this logical assumption is no longer made by the hiring party.
Recently I have found myself wandering the crowded streets of Job Search Alley. I actually technically still have not been released from my current employment but with each day I inch closer to the inevitable. In a pre-layoff panic I have begun my foray into the insecure twisted little world that is the Information Technology industry. I have submitted the obligatory lengthy online resumes with Monster.com and ComputerJobs.com and am dealing with the sporadic interest of various employment agencies. So far I have suffered through one in person interview and three phone screenings. I am actually waiting on my fourth phone interview as I write this rant.
I am beginning to get a feel for what kind of person the IT industry is hot for and it is not me. They are looking for the elusive, Hollywood stereotyped super-geek; someone that stays up all night setting up IP spoofing on his Linux box, laughs while he is reading technical papers, and lives for his 24/7 on call pager to go off. Here is a sampling of some of the questions I have been asked:
“Given (String a = b + (“car”);), what does the call stack look like ?”
The correct answer: Who gives a fuck?
“What is your favorite thing about the new Java 1.5?”
The correct answer: It makes me feel fresh.
“What should be added to the servlet spec?”
The correct answer: A little more rum and a lot less Coke.
The truth is that over the years I have learned that being a programmer is more about being able to find out how to do something, than how to remember to do something. As a matter of fact, many languages when coded in IDE’s (like WORD for programming languages), have a feature that not only reveals all the methods on an object but the parameters as well. In fact the power of modern programming languages is that you do not have to be computer science nerds to build powerful applications. Kernigan and Ritchie invented the C language because Assembly language was so verbose and syntactically complex that the programmer lost focus on the problem at hand and worried about memory locations. Stroustrup invented C++, to further the effort started in C and created objects to wrap functionality that was not important to the task at hand. These guys knew what being a programmer really meant. It meant being able to apply logic and the tools at hand to solve problems and anything outside of that was just proprietary syntax and methodology. Even software architects immersed in object oriented design and analysis base their objects on the logical organization of things. Languages, databases and other tools are required to build the car but those skills can be acquired or enhanced as needed. What is really important is that the programmer knows how to follow the plan to build the car. If a new wrench or screw driver is needed to assemble the carburetor, he either researches the tools or takes advice from a fellow mechanic. Anyone that says he knows how to use every tool in the tool box is either full of shit or trying to sell you something. There are several good programmers out there looking for jobs in an industry that does not have the sense to appreciate them. I had forgotten what a vicious insecure little world development can be and the skies appear to have darkened... and I thought landscaping was bad.
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2 comments:
There's certain things I've learned out through the years about programming.
1) always program for the next guy, because you only write it once, but it's maintained over and over.
2) it's not what you know, it's what you're able to find out.
I don't want someone working for me who hoards up all kinds of useless knowledge about callstacks. I want a NORMAL person, who is able to find out the callstack info when needed, but spends his time worrying about more useful things.
Companies do themselves a disservice when they put these geekheads out there for the public to interact with. They need to decide if they really want to hire someone, or if they just want to give their geeky employees a chance to berate someone before going home to play dungeons and dragons in their mom's basement.
Yes I know those insiped little dwebs, didn't Saturday Night live have a character called "Your Office Computer Guy".I am Constantly amazed by the stories you all recount of the daily humiliations handed out by incompetent bosses and their posturing feckless toadies.When the factory ships the wrong material, when half the crew shows up late, when a fence company defaults on $15000 worth of nets, I remind myself that it could be worse,..I could be enduring the shit that they sweep out on the better employes like you guys.
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