There's
ALOT of people acheing over being unable to find work. Many of
them are my friends and former professional colleagues. The most valuable
lesson learned from the whole tech bubble is developing a realistic,
grounded sense of self and where you fit into the world around you. I feel
confident and comfortable about feeding myself and being happy, only because
I adjusted my intellectual expectations and financial expectations downward
to me more realistic, more fulfilling and more balanced.
I was an "IT Cowboy" if there ever was one. I dropped ouf of college in 1992
and worked in academic research. First doing kernel internals in Mach and
IRIX. From there, I got really interested in distributed computing and made
a jump into industry where I got deeply involved with OSF/DCE. I eventually
ported the DCE to Linux as a personal challenge. Some people used it, the
technology was largely ignored. Purely from that initiative, I was offered
a job in industry for a company that nearly exclusively hired MS/PhD level
grads in their engineering organization. During the web years, I was designing and coding with CORBA in C++ and
Java. I got burned out from
getting obsessed about too many deeply abstract problems that werent
connected with "reality" - that was the essence of the Internet bubble.
I never felt "left behind" when this all came down because in many ways I
exited IT on my own terms for reasons other than being layedoff. I never
chased success. I did chase interesting problems and other people who met
me liked me enough to invite me to work with them. Thats how I remained an
IT Cowboy. You can find remnants of me out there still, in the DCE, Kerberos, AFS, Linux and FreeBSD archives. My "Frontier Days" were spectacular years personally, I will never regret being able to work and play out there. I dont regret whats happened today. Largely today's
work environment is devoid of the personalities and collegiality that
existed back then. For that reason, being "out of the game" is not
viewed as a hardship but more of a blessing.
In 2001, I drastically downsized my life deciding to hold onto my savings
and choose sustaining my life rather than worrying about my "success".
Went back to school, in a year finished my long lost Chemistry degree and
picked up a minor in Physics to boot. Did some hiking. Did alot of thinking.
What I realized WAS just because I was trained, self-educated and self-motivated to solve really complex problems doesnt mean I am obligated
to work at that level of abstraction. Nor does it mean that all the problems
that we envision that can be solved NEED be solved. That is the essence of
downsizing your expectations.
Right now, I'm studying for the
SCJP. It's a great review actually of
stuff I havent touched in two years. After that, I'll do the
SCJD. Why?
To authenticate that I indeed can do that kind of work. After all, alot
of people dont believe what you put on a resume these days. I'm not sure
if I'll be writing any more code in Java, or if I do, that I would necessarily need to apply the level of rigour asked in the exam preparations. But for me, they are authentication of a skillset ontop of
documented experience and what I believe is a great degree. Work wise,
I've accepted a position for $34K/yr doing more sysadmin stuff than
anything else. Why? Because it will let me have a life after work and
pursue other interests where there exist people with some burning passion
and desire. It's that energy that I seek out, not the wave catching and
the thrill of a crazy paycheck.
So the lesson for all of those belly-acheing about your job worries...
DOWNSIZE your expectations. Just because you can do RUP and code exquisitely
deadlock-free concurrent classes and make them interface with legacy systems
using XML/RPC doesnt mean the world needs you to solve those kinds of problems... Go back to school... Get an education in some real world
problem spaces, combine that with your software development background.
Above all, be humble, and be willing to settle for less grandiosity and
less pay and you might begin to feel very connected again when you realize
that you can solve some more important problems for other people.
You fill find there is a fantastically interesting world out there once
you decouple from the introverted intellectual haven of OO design
patterns and modelling strategies. Learn about business, computational finance,
chemistry, physics, molecular biology. See if you can fit into their world
and play with them.
Times change. You must change too. Part of that change includes discovering what you really love to do that CAN be done with other people rather than
fighting yesterdays standards of success and achievement, or chasing the
almighty dollar.
Rock On... Or maybe "Shine on you crazy diamond."
-- Jim Doyle