Atlas Shrugged
"Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting is rewarded."
- Francisco d'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Say it with me, what is hard work rewarded with?
MORE HARD WORK!
My doomy prediction that the days of well-paid / dilettante computer geeks is coming to an end
There is exactly one thing that motivated me to become a Computer Engineer. Money. I looked at the job market as I wrapped up my tryst with high school and saw that it was the relevant field in which I could make good money, and in which I could easily make back the debt I was about to incur by putting myself through college. I could make enough money to do whatever I wanted. Learning some of the skills would be difficult for me, but it was doable. So I did it. And it was indeed difficult.
I have always been goal-oriented.
I have always taken great pride in whatever work I do, no matter how menial.
I like being good at stuff.
My first job that moved me from technical monkey (CompUSA employee, fixer-of-printers at Hill's Pet Nutrition, design of EPA Crystal reports) to technical professional was my IT position at the KU Center for Research. I was an efficient worker and found myself spinning my wheels a lot. One day, I sat down and talked to my dad about my frustration that I was being paid so well and not really earning it. He said, "Kim, you're insurance. You're there for if something goes wrong." I took his words to heart and it brought me some comfort, but deep down, I still felt like I wasn't really earning the money I was making.
The next two jobs were full-time QA positions - 1 at Netopia and 1 at Amazon.com. I pulled my weight at both jobs and while I feel that the salary was both more than I earned and less than some of my male counterparts were making, I was most definitely earning it relative to my peers making similar or greater wages. The harder and better I worked, the more work I was given until I was context-switching so often that I wasn't getting anything done, and having to rapidly learn some very important boundary communication skills. I was also frequently busting my ass on projects that had no tangible outcome or were essentially vaporware projects from the get-go, which severely degraded my morale (maintaining Catalog QA sucked but at least I knew I was responsible for millions of products being listed correctly across our US and international sites on a daily basis so I had a sense of accomplishment with that).
My health deteriorated. I went to Europe for a vacation. I saw a whole different way to live, while at the same time I was beginning to explore Taoism. I decided, Hmm, I think I need to become a contractor - so I can do my highly efficient thing in fits and bursts with attainable goals and fixed end dates and then live on my excess money in the in-between times. That's what I did, and is what I've been doing for the last 5-6 years.
My contracts with MusicNet, Saltmine and Isilon have required various degrees of initial overhead while I came up to speed with the various technologies. Once I had the hang of it, though, I could slam through my tasks at 3-4 times the speed of the average of my peers without a lapse in quality. Gaby at Saltmine was at my level of focus and efficiency. Case at Isilon was heads above me. And most of the Isilon crew is pretty hard core too. But for the most part, I'm a rock star as long as I'm interested in what I'm doing and I understand how to do it. Why am I a rock star? Because it takes very little effort beyond focus, know-how and attention to detail. Easy. Done.
This often leaves me feeling like I make way too much money for what I do. I have always felt grossly overpaid, while at the same time often being underpaid by the industry standard. I have absolutely no complaints about this, of course, and have, I assure you, taken full advantage of it.
At all of my contracts and definitely at my salary positions, most of my immediate peers spend 2-4 hours per day surfing the internet and fucking around. Duri always called this "Presenteeism" - basically face time for a full 8 hours so no one knows that you were able to do your entire job for the day in 4 hours. I've never been willing to engage in Presenteeism. If I'm done with something in 6 hours, I'm done, I'll bill you for that, and then I'm out of there to enjoy my life for which I work.
For a long while, I've watched the software industry get bloated with middle men. The Purple Store is a great example of that - all the products we sold are already available, we're just the middle men who consolidate that availability to a focused target audience. Technically-incompetent (or worse! technically-competent) people are promoted to over-bored middle management who often, unfortunately, lack the technical acumen to make good big picture decisions about technology. (See again the top quote RE punishment vs. reward; if they're technically-competent, we're punishing them with an unfulfilling job, if they're technically-incompetent we're rewarding them with a promotion. wtf.)
These are just anecdotal observations from my personal experience, but I think all of these things when combined with the recent and ongoing lay-offs in the computer industry, are road markers for the beginning of a normalization in the computer industry which will cause it to be more like other skilled labor positions and no longer dilettante positions for hyper-focused geeks. I actually believe my days of making $65/hour have come to an end. I will be very happy, of course, if I'm wrong about that, but if I'm right, it was fun while it lasted.
It does cause me to ask myself: What would I like to do next? This at less pay, or something else?
Think global, act local: so, given that, how did we get into this economic depression?
As far as the economy as a whole goes, I can't speak to it. I got an F in Economics 101 the first time and a D the second time. It never made a bit of sense to me. I feel very much that the laws of Physics should not break down when it comes to money, and yet they do. You cannot create or destroy matter, but you can create or destroy money. My brain always just freezes right there and that's the end of talking MacroEconomics with me.
However, I love money, I get money, I'm good at money, on an individual level, and even on a small business level. And I want to be a controversial and self-righteous twit and assert that if more people adhered to my core monetary principles, we might not be in this national wreckage:
1. If you are in debt, your top spending priority (after basic cost of living) is paying off your debt. Full-stop.
2. Do not spend beyond your means / Do live within your means.
A. Save up for things and buy them outright instead of charging for them.
B. Only take out loans for things you need or which you feel you can pay off in a reasonable time frame. And as far as houses go, be pragmatic. If you're a single, childless man of 50, now's not the time to take out your first home loan for a 3-bedroom house in spendy Seattle. Rent. Consider housemates. Etc. Yes a house is an investment. And I hate to be a cunt here, and maybe I'm being naive and ignorant while I'm at it, but an investment is a gamble - I'm sure every home owner on my friends list has an opinion about this at the moment. Gambles are not actually guaranteed to be a positive outcome. If there's a positive outcome guaranteed in a gamble, somebody is full of shit. Hedge your bets.
C. Don't file for bankruptcy. You fucked up, you own up. We're lucky in that debt is no longer a criminal offense and we no longer go to debt prison. We should be grateful for that. I can on some level comprehend bankruptcy for businesses, but for individuals? We can't destroy matter, we shouldn't be able to destroy money like that. All this hand-waving and magic words with money has always made me very nervous. I strongly believe in taking responsibility for our own actions, even "unfair" effects of causes like marrying some lying fool who charged up your credit card and disappeared to Guam. I lost more than $15k to Duri that I thought I would see again, and that was a very expense learning lesson, but an important one. I fucked up. (And sure, Duri chose not to keep his promise, but I'm still with the Japanese on this one: Fix the problem, not the blame.) Since Duri created the problem with my sanction and was unwilling to fix it, it was up to me to fix it. I think that's as it should be.
There are so many practical applications to #2 that I could really just kind of rant about this all day and probably manage to offend pretty much everyone on my friends' list at some point, heh. For instance, student loans, right? If you can't afford college, I feel strongly that either you should (1) not go until you can afford it or (2) pick a degree that will enable you to pay off your college debt. If you're taking out student loans to the tune of $20k per school year for your Jewelry-Making degree, I think you're a fucking idiot, and you're going to discover you're really bad with money and always in debt.
What I'm trying to say is... AIG did this, WAMU did that, the government does this ... look at what we're doing. We fucked up. Our entire "Keeping up with the Joneses" mentality has caught up with us, and we're fucked. If everybody is indebted to a bank for their mortgage, then money is a myth. Of course the whole system is going to collapse. The system was a myth, a mutually-agreed upon paradigm of bullshit to begin with. We have no gold standard. We have government-sanctioned bankruptcy. We have credit card offers out the ass.
Due to my ignorance around the 1099 filing, I'm going to be pretty badly in debt for awhile. It bothers me very much, but it will be my top priority to get that paid off and back to having money to exchange for the things I need and want.
In conclusion:
I hate Economics.
I love Money.
I'm probably wrong about some of this due to naivety and ignorance. Feel free to educate me, but if it's about macroeconomics, don't bother. Many a smart person has already tried and failed on that count, and it also happens that I don't care. What I'm interested in is how our daily and lifetime habits with money add up to create this level of crisis. The only question I'm interested in answering on this topic is, What can I do differently?
Love,
-me.
Updated to Add:
Get Back to Work - a TED Talk by Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs courtesy of sarmonster.
- Francisco d'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Say it with me, what is hard work rewarded with?
MORE HARD WORK!
My doomy prediction that the days of well-paid / dilettante computer geeks is coming to an end
There is exactly one thing that motivated me to become a Computer Engineer. Money. I looked at the job market as I wrapped up my tryst with high school and saw that it was the relevant field in which I could make good money, and in which I could easily make back the debt I was about to incur by putting myself through college. I could make enough money to do whatever I wanted. Learning some of the skills would be difficult for me, but it was doable. So I did it. And it was indeed difficult.
I have always been goal-oriented.
I have always taken great pride in whatever work I do, no matter how menial.
I like being good at stuff.
My first job that moved me from technical monkey (CompUSA employee, fixer-of-printers at Hill's Pet Nutrition, design of EPA Crystal reports) to technical professional was my IT position at the KU Center for Research. I was an efficient worker and found myself spinning my wheels a lot. One day, I sat down and talked to my dad about my frustration that I was being paid so well and not really earning it. He said, "Kim, you're insurance. You're there for if something goes wrong." I took his words to heart and it brought me some comfort, but deep down, I still felt like I wasn't really earning the money I was making.
The next two jobs were full-time QA positions - 1 at Netopia and 1 at Amazon.com. I pulled my weight at both jobs and while I feel that the salary was both more than I earned and less than some of my male counterparts were making, I was most definitely earning it relative to my peers making similar or greater wages. The harder and better I worked, the more work I was given until I was context-switching so often that I wasn't getting anything done, and having to rapidly learn some very important boundary communication skills. I was also frequently busting my ass on projects that had no tangible outcome or were essentially vaporware projects from the get-go, which severely degraded my morale (maintaining Catalog QA sucked but at least I knew I was responsible for millions of products being listed correctly across our US and international sites on a daily basis so I had a sense of accomplishment with that).
My health deteriorated. I went to Europe for a vacation. I saw a whole different way to live, while at the same time I was beginning to explore Taoism. I decided, Hmm, I think I need to become a contractor - so I can do my highly efficient thing in fits and bursts with attainable goals and fixed end dates and then live on my excess money in the in-between times. That's what I did, and is what I've been doing for the last 5-6 years.
My contracts with MusicNet, Saltmine and Isilon have required various degrees of initial overhead while I came up to speed with the various technologies. Once I had the hang of it, though, I could slam through my tasks at 3-4 times the speed of the average of my peers without a lapse in quality. Gaby at Saltmine was at my level of focus and efficiency. Case at Isilon was heads above me. And most of the Isilon crew is pretty hard core too. But for the most part, I'm a rock star as long as I'm interested in what I'm doing and I understand how to do it. Why am I a rock star? Because it takes very little effort beyond focus, know-how and attention to detail. Easy. Done.
This often leaves me feeling like I make way too much money for what I do. I have always felt grossly overpaid, while at the same time often being underpaid by the industry standard. I have absolutely no complaints about this, of course, and have, I assure you, taken full advantage of it.
At all of my contracts and definitely at my salary positions, most of my immediate peers spend 2-4 hours per day surfing the internet and fucking around. Duri always called this "Presenteeism" - basically face time for a full 8 hours so no one knows that you were able to do your entire job for the day in 4 hours. I've never been willing to engage in Presenteeism. If I'm done with something in 6 hours, I'm done, I'll bill you for that, and then I'm out of there to enjoy my life for which I work.
For a long while, I've watched the software industry get bloated with middle men. The Purple Store is a great example of that - all the products we sold are already available, we're just the middle men who consolidate that availability to a focused target audience. Technically-incompetent (or worse! technically-competent) people are promoted to over-bored middle management who often, unfortunately, lack the technical acumen to make good big picture decisions about technology. (See again the top quote RE punishment vs. reward; if they're technically-competent, we're punishing them with an unfulfilling job, if they're technically-incompetent we're rewarding them with a promotion. wtf.)
These are just anecdotal observations from my personal experience, but I think all of these things when combined with the recent and ongoing lay-offs in the computer industry, are road markers for the beginning of a normalization in the computer industry which will cause it to be more like other skilled labor positions and no longer dilettante positions for hyper-focused geeks. I actually believe my days of making $65/hour have come to an end. I will be very happy, of course, if I'm wrong about that, but if I'm right, it was fun while it lasted.
It does cause me to ask myself: What would I like to do next? This at less pay, or something else?
Think global, act local: so, given that, how did we get into this economic depression?
As far as the economy as a whole goes, I can't speak to it. I got an F in Economics 101 the first time and a D the second time. It never made a bit of sense to me. I feel very much that the laws of Physics should not break down when it comes to money, and yet they do. You cannot create or destroy matter, but you can create or destroy money. My brain always just freezes right there and that's the end of talking MacroEconomics with me.
However, I love money, I get money, I'm good at money, on an individual level, and even on a small business level. And I want to be a controversial and self-righteous twit and assert that if more people adhered to my core monetary principles, we might not be in this national wreckage:
1. If you are in debt, your top spending priority (after basic cost of living) is paying off your debt. Full-stop.
2. Do not spend beyond your means / Do live within your means.
A. Save up for things and buy them outright instead of charging for them.
B. Only take out loans for things you need or which you feel you can pay off in a reasonable time frame. And as far as houses go, be pragmatic. If you're a single, childless man of 50, now's not the time to take out your first home loan for a 3-bedroom house in spendy Seattle. Rent. Consider housemates. Etc. Yes a house is an investment. And I hate to be a cunt here, and maybe I'm being naive and ignorant while I'm at it, but an investment is a gamble - I'm sure every home owner on my friends list has an opinion about this at the moment. Gambles are not actually guaranteed to be a positive outcome. If there's a positive outcome guaranteed in a gamble, somebody is full of shit. Hedge your bets.
C. Don't file for bankruptcy. You fucked up, you own up. We're lucky in that debt is no longer a criminal offense and we no longer go to debt prison. We should be grateful for that. I can on some level comprehend bankruptcy for businesses, but for individuals? We can't destroy matter, we shouldn't be able to destroy money like that. All this hand-waving and magic words with money has always made me very nervous. I strongly believe in taking responsibility for our own actions, even "unfair" effects of causes like marrying some lying fool who charged up your credit card and disappeared to Guam. I lost more than $15k to Duri that I thought I would see again, and that was a very expense learning lesson, but an important one. I fucked up. (And sure, Duri chose not to keep his promise, but I'm still with the Japanese on this one: Fix the problem, not the blame.) Since Duri created the problem with my sanction and was unwilling to fix it, it was up to me to fix it. I think that's as it should be.
There are so many practical applications to #2 that I could really just kind of rant about this all day and probably manage to offend pretty much everyone on my friends' list at some point, heh. For instance, student loans, right? If you can't afford college, I feel strongly that either you should (1) not go until you can afford it or (2) pick a degree that will enable you to pay off your college debt. If you're taking out student loans to the tune of $20k per school year for your Jewelry-Making degree, I think you're a fucking idiot, and you're going to discover you're really bad with money and always in debt.
What I'm trying to say is... AIG did this, WAMU did that, the government does this ... look at what we're doing. We fucked up. Our entire "Keeping up with the Joneses" mentality has caught up with us, and we're fucked. If everybody is indebted to a bank for their mortgage, then money is a myth. Of course the whole system is going to collapse. The system was a myth, a mutually-agreed upon paradigm of bullshit to begin with. We have no gold standard. We have government-sanctioned bankruptcy. We have credit card offers out the ass.
Due to my ignorance around the 1099 filing, I'm going to be pretty badly in debt for awhile. It bothers me very much, but it will be my top priority to get that paid off and back to having money to exchange for the things I need and want.
In conclusion:
I hate Economics.
I love Money.
I'm probably wrong about some of this due to naivety and ignorance. Feel free to educate me, but if it's about macroeconomics, don't bother. Many a smart person has already tried and failed on that count, and it also happens that I don't care. What I'm interested in is how our daily and lifetime habits with money add up to create this level of crisis. The only question I'm interested in answering on this topic is, What can I do differently?
Love,
-me.
Updated to Add:
Get Back to Work - a TED Talk by Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs courtesy of sarmonster.