Abandon ship!

The 90s were a time of joy for computer geeks. We had it all. There were companies beating down our doors to hire us for unusually large sums of money. Ahh those were the days...

Today it does not seem to be nearly as easy to jump from one company to the next. That was how we got raises in the 90's! Now I've stayed with a company that irritates me to no end for much longer than I would like because there are few who are hiring. But these people annoy me. They are outdated dinosaurs at a dead end job.

I wore my company's shirt on halloween and told people I was dressed as a primate!

So over the last couple of weeks I have put my resume out there. There may be a couple of bites. These are looking promising and I may jump ship. This of course would bring new meaning to an otherwise tired life. I hate searching for work, yet I hate staying worse.

What are your stories?

I graduated from the University of Montana College of Technology in Missoula, Montana. My degree was in Networking, but I never found a job. Part of the reason was lack of jobs in Missoula, part was fear, and part was lack of qualifications or experience. The main issue was fear; I didn't think I could do any of the jobs available. Now I work at Taco Treat.

When I was first introduced to computers I wanted to make them work. I wanted to program. I spent ten years of my life just surviving before I went back to school. Now I am educating myself by learning to program. Unfortunately I may never have a bachelors and w/o that finding a job may be that much more difficult.

I no longer care about my future career posibilities as much as I care about learning to be a better programmer. For me entertainment is learning more than it is playing Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. I have a voracious hunger to know everything I can about programming. I want to build professional applications even if I am not a professional.

Well that is the lighter side of my story, but there is also a dark side that I will not burdon you with or embarrass myself with.

Echo FYB.

Looking to move on.

But for every job here there is 100s of applicants and a very small market.

Had enough of looking at trains. Waiting until I go on holidays in Dec. Will visit my sister in Thailand in Jan. Then see if I want to do something else.

I have too much experience for most jobs not enough for the senior positions (as 10+ years of my experience is in hardware not programming)

Here a graduate in programming is being offered $25 -35K. For perspective the average wage is $45K. A garbageman makes $40K.

Have to content myself with developing that GPS tracking device.

Or time to use my UK passport..........

I graduated last May from Berry College in Rome, Georgia with a Computer Science and a Mathematics degree. My degree was something of a mismatch since Berry is a liberal arts college. Despite my incessent procrastination, I managed to find a software developer job during my senior year. I turned down a couple of higher-paying offers since being close to family is important to me. It's been six months, and I've gotten a raise, an office, and promoted to head of the department. I have the option to work from home at my convienence as long as there isn't a development meeting that I need to attend.

I got lucky.

Quote:

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Here a graduate in programming is being offered $25 -35K. For perspective the average wage is $45K. A garbageman makes $40K.

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Wow that doesn't sound too good...Where do you live? I'm beginning to think about what I want to do for a career more seriously now, and I like programming, but from what I've heard, doing it professionally is a lot less fun and good jobs are harder to find "these days". An any case, I hope I can find something that I like to do, that has pays fairly well...Well I still have time, so maybe I'll discover something I like as much as programming and can get a degree from there.

Wow... those wages make me wonder if I should continue pursuing a job as a programmer. Good thing I haven't graduated from high school yet...

>.Wow that doesn't sound too good...Where do you live?

Western Australia.

ah, that's why. In the US, programmers can certainly make more than garbage men. ;)

Wow, pianorain you went to Berry College? So did my brother, maybe you know him, his name is Jason Yelton and graduated in 2000, majored in history and was big in track and cross country.

Out of high school I started attending community college and working at Target as a stocker. A friend of my dad's said they were hiring where he worked with a starting pay of $7/hr (I was making $5.20/hr at Target). The job was data entry and I had never owned a computer in my life and had only played with one a few times in high school, although I did have considerable interest in them since I was a child. This job allowed me to buy my first computer and I started teaching myself C++. About 1 to 2 years later the personnel lady at work told the owner of the company (it's a small company) about me because he was looking for someone to be his right hand man and to eventually replace him (maybe) so they doubled my salary and gave me my own office (which I'm sitting in right now)... I'm still in community college, but transferring to a university next semester and I've received 2 other offers for jobs, but I'll probably be here for the long run. I mean I have to show some appreciation for the owners who would give the inexperienced know-nothing I was a huge chance and now that it's helped me further myself, I'm not going to use it against them for a few more bucks... It's a good thing I didn't leave too; I may have lost my job in the downward spiral of the industry the past few years...

I went to uni and did Systems Engineering which was more of an Engineering degree than CS related. We did, however, do a fair bit of programming and I found I really enjoyed it (I hadn't really been exposed to computers before uni). I was extremely eager to get a career as a programmer. Now I am doing some travelling for a year (In Canada right now, from England originally) but I am keeping an eye on the job markets back home so I can get the application process started towards the end of my travels. To be honest it just seems to me that if you aren't proficient and experienced (often highly) in a dozen different languages and APIs then you really don't have much of a chance because, for every job that's going there are plenty of people out there who are.

Fortunately my degree is in engineering so I have that to fall back on.

Info about a position I may take:

-Military Contractor
-simulators and weaponry control systems
-Unix/Linux and X
-a lot of C/C++
-some Ada
-vim (oooohh fun, although I'm learning it and it isn't that bad after all)

I don't want to say the company name just yet. Trying to minimize the impact of things not working out. :)

What do you think?

edit: By the way, I'm a Win32 guy for the last few years. This'll be a big (but exciting) change.

Ooh sounds interesting to me. If you don't mind me asking, what degree(s) do you have?

Liberal Arts Assoc.
Computer Science Bach.

progress..... Interviewed on Friday. Very positive. I'm 90% sure that they're going to make an offer. My environment might not be as open so there's no guarantee I'll be able to hang around on cboard much. But then I'll be coding more Ada anyway. The word is 7 to 10 days for an offer letter.

edit:
Anyone know of an Ada forum similar to this one? Not that I want to leave cboard, but it may be more appropriate for me to spend my time elsewhere.

I did some looking around for you, but didn't come up with much. Hope this helps, and good luck with the job offer.

Comp.lang.Ada

Ada 95 Index

yeah, I've not been a big fan of newsgroups lately. I don't know why. For some reason I just stopped using them oh... 5 years ago or so. That's probably my answer though.