There are a lot of wackos in men's rights, and it's a shame because there truly are some serious issues with misandry in the family court systems of the US and they are going to go largely mocked and understated because of nutjobs who make the whole thing seem like a joke.
Oh, certainly. I will say that it seems that when there's a genuine story about something that actually happened to someone (I know there was a story in DepthHub a few months ago where a guy was telling his story about the family courts), there's definitely a rallying.
My one statement I'll make with regards to men's rights is that women should be required to register for Selective Service too. There are a lot of wackos in the men's rights movement, but a lot of them do bring up this one issue. Personally, it's a no-brainer, especially since they are now allowing women into various combat roles too.
I've definitely heard a lot of anecdotes about the misandry in the family court system, but that's something that isn't as black and white (though I do feel it should be addressed).
/r/mensrights is full of trolls, which doesn't help, and it also seems to attract lots of "Stormfront" types, but for misogyny instead of Nazism, which certainly doesn't help.
They have lots of posts about how women should need a father's permission for an abortion, for example, which is ludicrously indefensible, and makes the whole place look like a nuthouse.
Then some poor bastard posts about how his wife had a schizophrenic break and took his kids to some other state to live with a crackhead and the courts sided with her the whole way, and the response is generally to blame the guy and assume that he must have done something to deserve the situation or provoke the court decisions when honestly, lots of courts still believe "mom = best custodial parent, period."
I'm pretty sure that's the story I was thinking of. If I remember right, he also tried to get her to pay the child support the courts ordered, and they ended up garnishing his wages for the amount, rather than his ex.
I'm pretty sure that's the story I was thinking of. If I remember right, he also tried to get her to pay the child support the courts ordered, and they ended up garnishing his wages for the amount, rather than his ex.
There are dozens of stories like that. I didn't even know there was a recent one.
My daughter's therapist keeps insisting that my daughter MUST be in contact with her biological mom, who abandoned her 11 years ago and hasn't ever tried to contact her, not even when she's been advised of Sarah's multiple hospitalizations and at least one near-death, except to send a card on her birthday, always with a manifesto inside about how bad her own life is and she's so sorry (nice birthday card, right?) She (the therapist) called my wife "not Sarah's real mom" despite the fact that she has BEEN her mom, in name and in spirit, for 10 years. Sarah's biological mom once asked her, fresh out of the hospital and in chronic pain, to push her car out of a ditch rather than call me and admit that they'd had an accident.
But Sarah needs to be in touch with her biological mom. It's imperative. Why? "Because she's her mom. Oh and blah blah studies [handwaving and not actually producing any relevant studies or even abstracts]."
I mean, I could have just gone to school for Econ and breezed through into a well-paying public policy/economic research job, but no, I decided I wanted to learn about computers. What a non-lazy idiot I was.
To be brutally honest, computers are where the jobs and money is. 6 months ago you made a wise choice.
I mean, I could have just gone to school for Econ and breezed through into a well-paying public policy/economic research job, but no, I decided I wanted to learn about computers. What a non-lazy idiot I was.
To be brutally honest, computers are where the jobs and money is. 6 months ago you made a wise choice.
People keep saying this but I'm not seeing it. IT has been a depressed industry for ten years and it's only recently rebounding even a little.
Maybe if you're talking about hardware engineering or embedded work, but corporate IT is dead, dead, dead.
It depends largely on where you are. The "Tech hubs" (Boston/Cambridge, New York, Chicago, Seattle/Redmond, and the SF Bay) all have really good job outlooks for the next few years in any sort of CS/IT job.
I mean, I could have just gone to school for Econ and breezed through into a well-paying public policy/economic research job, but no, I decided I wanted to learn about computers. What a non-lazy idiot I was.
To be brutally honest, computers are where the jobs and money is. 6 months ago you made a wise choice.
People keep saying this but I'm not seeing it. IT has been a depressed industry for ten years and it's only recently rebounding even a little.
Maybe if you're talking about hardware engineering or embedded work, but corporate IT is dead, dead, dead.
If you think a generic tech support gig at a large company is all you're gonna get with a proper IT education, you are the most wrong that has ever been wrong. Throw in a dash of cleverness and a good IT degree can cover a large swath of the highest paying tech jobs in the industry. For an added bonus, throw in some business education and you are pretty much universally applicable to anyone ranging from a web startup to a giant enterprise system.
I mean, I could have just gone to school for Econ and breezed through into a well-paying public policy/economic research job, but no, I decided I wanted to learn about computers. What a non-lazy idiot I was.
To be brutally honest, computers are where the jobs and money is. 6 months ago you made a wise choice.
People keep saying this but I'm not seeing it. IT has been a depressed industry for ten years and it's only recently rebounding even a little.
Maybe if you're talking about hardware engineering or embedded work, but corporate IT is dead, dead, dead.
If you think a generic tech support gig at a large company is all you're gonna get with a proper IT education, you are the most wrong that has ever been wrong. Throw in a dash of cleverness and a good IT degree can cover a large swath of the highest paying tech jobs in the industry. For an added bonus, throw in some business education and you are pretty much universally applicable to anyone ranging from a web startup to a giant enterprise system.
Well, sure, but there are other considerations that should be included in the brochure, such as, if you ever want to put down roots and not travel, or don't want to relocate every 5-10 years, corporate IT/consulting is probably not the way to go. There's opportunity out there for Type As or seriously dedicated people who are obsessively interested in technology, but it's not really a family guy kind of a career unless you want to do the long-suffering-and-understanding-wife thing.
Off shoring is still a big issue in IT even though its starting to rebound as the logistical and cultural issues with the whole thing are finally becoming universally recognized, and layoffs and purges tend to hit IT first because except in the case of hardware/embedded jobs or ISVs, IT is nothing but an expense on every corporate budget matrix.
That said, I'm pulling a comfortable salary with a GED and a bit of self-education, so it's not all bad.
I'm pretty sure you're discounting the ever-present need for local network and system administration, let alone web maintenance, interface/usability design, security analysts, project management, QA, software development, lab technicians, policy analysts, etc.
And that's before you take startups and freelance consultation opportunities into account. Sure, some positions in these fields require off-hours availability, travel, or other considerations that make it hard to raise a family while still working on a career. Considering the increasing ability to work from home for any number of these jobs, as well as the likelihood of still keeping work restrained from 9-5, I don't see how your argument has any validity at all.
As far as offshoring goes, those jobs still tend to be the lowest possible entry level of IT, things that any jerk at a call center with a manual can do. Every company I've spoken to/browsed the careers page for has plenty of opportunities that I could easily pursue post-grad (granted, the RIT IT education tends to spit out grads who already have working experience and good ideas right off the bat, so we're likely the exception). Seriously, I have no idea where you're getting these ideas from, but they're patently false.
Its interesting you guys are bringing this up now. There was a panel at AWA this weekend on the sociology of cosplay with Yaya Han and we talked about this. It seems like at major cons a lot of ladies show up in sexy costumes. Many of them pick a character just because it's sexy (not exactly hard to find sexy characters in the geek world), and the huge annoyance is that they know nothing about the character or source material. Its even worse if they just bought it off the rack and didn't put any effort into it. My opinion (and many others at the panel) is that this is not cool. If you are cosplaying as something, it should be because you have some connection with that character or source other than "its sexy!" Maybe its okay if you normally do legit cosplays and just want a sexy break here and there. :-P Anyway, its annoying to see cons full of people that just think its another Halloween type thing, an excuse to be a slut. I'll be cosplaying as Aela the Huntress from Skyrim at some point, and I hope people don't think I'm just trying to be sexy. I legitimately love her outfit/armor.
/end elite cosplayer rant :-p
Ugh c'mon. Alright, so I really like Garo's costume from the show Garo. Probably the sexiest gold lion armor around. And I like the show. I don't think it's fantastic, but it was good entertainment. At the same time, the character isn't very interesting. I don't even remember his name! Making that costume takes a fuck ton of effort, and doing it well is probably harder than-- well, most other possible costumes. I don't have any connection with the character. The only reason I wanna make this costume is that it's sexy. Does that disqualify the 500 hours I'd have to spend making it? Or here's a better example. Kamen Rider Eternal from the W, A-Z movie. That movie was pretty meh, Eternal was a terrible character, he had like maybe 3 lines, and they were dumb and badly acted. But he looked awesome. Am I not allowed to dress up as him?
Ok, "connection with the character" is bad wording on my part. Cosplay is also about construction and appreciation of the craft. You can have a "connection" with a character just by the way they look, what they're wearing, etc. Costumes that take a fuck ton of effort and creativity and are obvious they weren't just bought off the rack* show that the cosplayer has appreciation for the craft. The fact that you even know the source material (from real experience I'm assuming, not just Google searching) is saying something. It is totally legit to appreciate a sexy costume for its construction and aesthetic. I have totally played games, watched movies, etc. and saw outfits that would be awesome to do without caring about the character. The distinction is between that and purely "Oooh I'm sexy look at me!"
We were complaining about the girls (and guys!) who's thought process is "Oh look there's this ...'cosplay'... thing where its totally excusable for me to be a slut and get attention!! I can do this several times a year instead of just on Halloween!" Maybe they ask a nerd friend to suggest a sexy character/entity, or maybe they search "sexy anime" or whatever on Google, who knows.
Hard thing is there's no way to know 100% sure if the slutty lady you're seeing walking around is one of those types, unless you ask why they're there and why they picked that outfit, did they put actual thought into it, etc. That's why its annoying for serious cosplayers (those that love the craft and whatnot) who want to actually do something sexy and get mistaken for the random slutty girls. Yaya Han has the body to do super sexy stuff so she does it all the time, but her costumes are all exquisitely crafted and perfect.
Anyway I'm not saying they should be banned, because you know, its 'Merica. But I guess the biggest gripe is that its hard to do a sexy character and be taken seriously because of all the slutty-girl-Halloween-whatever types ruining it for us. Hopefully that makes more sense.
*Disclaimer: It is totally OKAY to cosplay with pre-made costumes! Its just that when its a super slutty pre-made costume, intentions become questionable.
Low-level IT means grunt end-user support and a soul-crushing job.
Real IT means you also know how to program, script, administer systems, set up databases, design networks, troubleshoot routing problems, etc... Look for production, operations, network, or database related jobs.
There is big money in real IT. But, you need all of the skills to back it up.
Low-level IT means grunt end-user support and a soul-crushing job.
Real IT means you also know how to program, script, administer systems, set up databases, design networks, troubleshoot routing problems, etc... Look for production, operations, network, or database related jobs.
There is big money in real IT. But, you need all of the skills to back it up.
Skills that some bullshit 2-year community college "IT" degree won't get you. It's not easy to get there, but the idea that it's impossible to be successful in IT and still be a "family man" is absolutely ludicrous.
I think I hear a bit of a dick measuring contest coming on, but let's try this conversation anyway... :-)
I can program, script, administer servers and labs (I solely administered a test lab with 7 environments for 5 years, and automated much of the backup/restore/build/rebuild/compile activity within it back before things like WebNM or automated source repositories were really available or mature), I fall down a bit on networking and sniffing but I can speak the lingo.
I've found IT to be a pretty unstable career path with a lot of potential for layoff and a lot of trouble being hired once laid off, and my peers/colleagues have had similar experiences. Maybe it's regional, but you'd think the Northeast would be ripe for this stuff. After all, I was able to pull down nearly six figures with a GED just by learning Perl and SQL.
The fact is that IT is the first to fall under the axe unless shipping software is your primary business, so you've got to be a salesman in that you have to sell yourself to employers fairly frequently. My current gig is going on 9 years but there's a dearth out there of places to move to if it dries up suddenly, and there's always the possibility that it will.
It's also possible to be so overqualified that nobody will touch you, because even if they don't assume that your salary requirements are out of their budget (whether they are or aren't) they WILL assume that you are only taking a job as a gap filler if it's not the best job ever (and it almost never is.)
There are also LONG dry spells where IT jobs just evaporate and there's nothing to be found. Everything's taken, there are no new startups, no new offices being opened, and support jobs are in Bangalore. That has happened 3 times in my region of the country since I started in IT.
It's a tough industry to navigate and you have to have a certain personality to keep up with it and not get stressed out. Me? I'm kind of a laid back guy. :-)
Maybe you guys work in larger technology hubs than I do or maybe you've been in the industry a shorter time, but my experience over the past 15 years in the Northeast has been very up and down.
Yeah, you're definitely on a different planet than the rest of us, and that planet is "Not Having A Degree-Land." If your IT job is being cut by managers who don't know better, either you are at the lowest possible rung of the IT ladder, your company is just that shit, or you're shitty at your job. It's bullshit that you need the piece of paper saying you graduated from an accredited program to be successful, but it's seriously like two altogether different worlds.
That, or you're seriously lacking creativity and ignoring a solid 90% of the opportunities ever-present in the industry.
Yeah, you're definitely on a different planet than the rest of us, and that planet is "Not Having A Degree-Land." If your IT job is being cut by managers who don't know better, either you are at the lowest possible rung of the IT ladder, your company is just that shit, or you're shitty at your job. It's bullshit that you need the piece of paper saying you graduated from an accredited program to be successful, but it's seriously like two altogether different worlds.
That, or you're seriously lacking creativity and ignoring a solid 90% of the opportunities ever-present in the industry.
Yeah, you guys enjoy your penis measuring. This entire post is nonsense and flaming.
My 15 years' industry experience isn't just a candle in the wind to your degree, kiddo. I work now in probably the largest corporate IT department in my state, in a hospital where, you know, shit matters in a very real way, and I will tell you, we have far more people with "years of experience" here than we do people with CS degrees.
So, will my lack of a degree sometimes get me bounced from the HR buzzword bingo game? Absolutely!! Is it responsible for the UTTER LACK OF IT JOBS across the region that happens every 3-5 years? No. It has nothing to do with that. None of my qualifications has anything to do with the overall IT market in this region going to shit on a very cyclical, very predictable basis. I know guys who WROTE portions of the Oracle database engine who can't get jobs as DBAs, or data architects, or data warehousing consultants, or anything, during those periods.
Not sure why you feel the need for this pithy bullshit. Young guys doing well never believe that it could ever be, or have been, any other way. It's sort of ridiculous.
I'm not even sure how to fully address your condescending rant, so I guess that's it. You will now most likely dismiss the entirety of this post by labeling it butthurt over being "called out" on my lack of a degree. Feel free.
I'm pretty sure your original claims are leagues different than what your latest post is running with.
Maybe if you're talking about hardware engineering or embedded work, but corporate IT is dead, dead, dead.
"Dead" is drastically different than
the UTTER LACK OF IT JOBS across the region that happens every 3-5 years?
Furthermore, to respond to a point I neglected,
The fact is that IT is the first to fall under the axe unless shipping software is your primary business, so you've got to be a salesman in that you have to sell yourself to employers fairly frequently. My current gig is going on 9 years but there's a dearth out there of places to move to if it dries up suddenly, and there's always the possibility that it will.
This is entirely dependent on the sort of company you're working for, and what you're doing for them. Get a position maintaining the system already in place, and/or making improvements to their infrastructure (and showing results from it), and you're golden. Like Rym said, you need the skills necessary to net you those high-paying IT jobs, one of which is having the charisma and business sense necessary to properly highlight the benefits of your work. Not necessarily an inherent "IT" skill, but certainly incredibly useful in the field. Within some subsets of IT, most notably support-level positions and some facets of development, there is a common trend of stagnation and eventual renewal in the job market. To suggest that "corporate IT is dead/dying" as a whole, though, is an absolutely ludicrous claim.
My 15 years' industry experience isn't just a candle in the wind to your degree, kiddo. I work now in probably the largest corporate IT department in my state, in a hospital where, you know, shit matters in a very real way, and I will tell you, we have far more people with "years of experience" here than we do people with CS degrees.
Oh god. A hospital? No wonder. Hospitals are widely known to have some of the most incompetent IT anywhere.
I know guys who WROTE portions of the Oracle database engine who can't get jobs as DBAs, or data architects, or data warehousing consultants, or anything, during those periods.
Well, duh. Just because you wrote the code behind the database engine doesn't mean you actually know enough about the overall system to be useful as a DBA or whatever. I used to work at NetApp and worked on the code for their file system. That doesn't make me qualified to be a NetApp administrator though. I knew enough to get a basic system up and running to test the code I worked on, but if you needed anything really complicated, I'd need to spend quite a bit of time studying the various manuals and stuff (along with probably some trial and error) to do so. I'm sure it's pretty much the same for those Oracle developers you mentioned.
Oh, and I'm not one of these "young guys doing well." While I do consider myself someone who is doing fairly well, I have 12 years of industry experience here -- not much less than your 15 years.
I'm hiring talented corporate IT professionals to design a Beowulf-based architecture to manage bioinformatics related to the length and girth of my peens, both IRL- and E-.
Relative to when I entered corporate IT, in the mid 90s, when you could walk into a recruiting office and say "HTML" and walk out with a 45K/year job, it's pretty damn dead.
I'm currently maintaining 4 systems that literally NO ONE in the organization knows anything about, and two that are shared with only one other person and literally run ALL of the materials logistics for 4 hospitals. If they decide to migrate to a new ERP system, they'll need me for the data and workflow conversions but may or may not decide to retain me. This will have only a little to do with how good I am at my job and much more to do with whether they can hire a young expert in the new system for half my salary since my experience will be seen as outdated and on legacy systems regardless of any training I might receive. This is just how it goes around here. My CIO has changed 3 times since I've been here, there's no investment in me or any of my colleagues as fixtures of the company.
I'm guessing you're probably in your early to mid twenties and haven't hit the ageism wall that exists in IT yet. I know Rym is a bit older, but he lives in a metro area where the culture is a bit different.
Furthermore, everything you've mentioned as "experiences in IT" or "I have friends who have..." are talking about development. Oracle DB development, working with SQL, equating IT education with CS degrees, all hinting towards system/software development - a field that, yes, is often plagued by outsourcing and consultation. Considering the absolute boom in the industry for networking infrastructure or web design/development work (among other fields), I'm pretty dang sure your field of view is limited by the small subset of IT that you've had experience with.
Oh god. A hospital? No wonder. Hospitals are widely known to have some of the most incompetent IT anywhere."
Our hospital has won awards for the well above average utilization of IT resources here. We are a regional model for "Wired"-ness. I agree that there are some serious shithole hospital IT departments. My wife's hospital has the worst IT staff I have ever seen, spoken to, or heard of.
Furthermore, everything you've mentioned as "experiences in IT" or "I have friends who have..." are talking about development. Oracle DB development, working with SQL, equating IT education with CS degrees, all hinting towards system/software development - a field that, yes, is often plagued by outsourcing and consultation. Considering the absolute boom in the industry for networking infrastructure or web design/development work (among other fields), I'm pretty dang sure your field of view is limited by the small subset of IT that you've had experience with.
Most of my work is in maintenance and in house development. Sure, it's not the best end of the stick, but it's not like my skills aren't relevant elsewhere. Most of my comments have been regarding the regional market as a whole.
Oh god. A hospital? No wonder. Hospitals are widely known to have some of the most incompetent IT anywhere."
Our hospital has won awards for the well above average utilization of IT resources here. We are a regional model for "Wired"-ness. I agree that there are some serious shithole hospital IT departments. My wife's hospital has the worst IT staff I have ever seen, spoken to, or heard of.
Well, there are exceptions, of course. However, I have a very good friend who works at one of the largest hospitals in the country and from what he told me about their IT habits, it's a wonder they aren't sued for HIPAA violations every day.
Oh god. A hospital? No wonder. Hospitals are widely known to have some of the most incompetent IT anywhere."
Our hospital has won awards for the well above average utilization of IT resources here. We are a regional model for "Wired"-ness. I agree that there are some serious shithole hospital IT departments. My wife's hospital has the worst IT staff I have ever seen, spoken to, or heard of.
Well, there are exceptions, of course. However, I have a very good friend who works at one of the largest hospitals in the country and from what he told me about their IT habits, it's a wonder they aren't sued for HIPAA violations every day.
We're somewhat rabid about HIPAA here, but I still have reported a number of concerns.
There ARE some glaring issues with IT here that I won't detail extensively but it's not quite Keystone Kops.
A good friend of mine died today. The other Luke. Pretty devastated.
A few years ago a juggler I knew a bit, but not that well, died, and it was really moving to read through all the comments on his Facebook page. Luke died today, and this time it's really heartbreaking to read all the comments and dedications and memories and photos that are pouring in. If you look at hisFacebook page, you can see just how much he was loved, and also how much of a legend he was in the juggling world.
We were two jugglers called Luke, both turned professional, both had a German girlfriend, both moved to Germany to live and work, both performed with our partners, both split up with our partners, both were regular guests at conventions, both helped each other out with organizing shows and were the most regular show hosts at the EJC, and earlier this year he also moved to Berlin. Needless to say, many people got us confused. He would sign off as "The Real Luke" and I would call him "Luke A" to my "Luke B". But, as I said on Facebook, there was only ever one Luke.
Comments
I've definitely heard a lot of anecdotes about the misandry in the family court system, but that's something that isn't as black and white (though I do feel it should be addressed).
They have lots of posts about how women should need a father's permission for an abortion, for example, which is ludicrously indefensible, and makes the whole place look like a nuthouse.
Then some poor bastard posts about how his wife had a schizophrenic break and took his kids to some other state to live with a crackhead and the courts sided with her the whole way, and the response is generally to blame the guy and assume that he must have done something to deserve the situation or provoke the court decisions when honestly, lots of courts still believe "mom = best custodial parent, period."
But Sarah needs to be in touch with her biological mom. It's imperative. Why? "Because she's her mom. Oh and blah blah studies [handwaving and not actually producing any relevant studies or even abstracts]."
/rant
Maybe if you're talking about hardware engineering or embedded work, but corporate IT is dead, dead, dead.
Off shoring is still a big issue in IT even though its starting to rebound as the logistical and cultural issues with the whole thing are finally becoming universally recognized, and layoffs and purges tend to hit IT first because except in the case of hardware/embedded jobs or ISVs, IT is nothing but an expense on every corporate budget matrix.
That said, I'm pulling a comfortable salary with a GED and a bit of self-education, so it's not all bad.
And that's before you take startups and freelance consultation opportunities into account. Sure, some positions in these fields require off-hours availability, travel, or other considerations that make it hard to raise a family while still working on a career. Considering the increasing ability to work from home for any number of these jobs, as well as the likelihood of still keeping work restrained from 9-5, I don't see how your argument has any validity at all.
As far as offshoring goes, those jobs still tend to be the lowest possible entry level of IT, things that any jerk at a call center with a manual can do. Every company I've spoken to/browsed the careers page for has plenty of opportunities that I could easily pursue post-grad (granted, the RIT IT education tends to spit out grads who already have working experience and good ideas right off the bat, so we're likely the exception). Seriously, I have no idea where you're getting these ideas from, but they're patently false.
We were complaining about the girls (and guys!) who's thought process is "Oh look there's this ...'cosplay'... thing where its totally excusable for me to be a slut and get attention!! I can do this several times a year instead of just on Halloween!" Maybe they ask a nerd friend to suggest a sexy character/entity, or maybe they search "sexy anime" or whatever on Google, who knows.
Hard thing is there's no way to know 100% sure if the slutty lady you're seeing walking around is one of those types, unless you ask why they're there and why they picked that outfit, did they put actual thought into it, etc. That's why its annoying for serious cosplayers (those that love the craft and whatnot) who want to actually do something sexy and get mistaken for the random slutty girls. Yaya Han has the body to do super sexy stuff so she does it all the time, but her costumes are all exquisitely crafted and perfect.
Anyway I'm not saying they should be banned, because you know, its 'Merica. But I guess the biggest gripe is that its hard to do a sexy character and be taken seriously because of all the slutty-girl-Halloween-whatever types ruining it for us. Hopefully that makes more sense.
*Disclaimer: It is totally OKAY to cosplay with pre-made costumes! Its just that when its a super slutty pre-made costume, intentions become questionable.
Real IT means you also know how to program, script, administer systems, set up databases, design networks, troubleshoot routing problems, etc... Look for production, operations, network, or database related jobs.
There is big money in real IT. But, you need all of the skills to back it up.
I can program, script, administer servers and labs (I solely administered a test lab with 7 environments for 5 years, and automated much of the backup/restore/build/rebuild/compile activity within it back before things like WebNM or automated source repositories were really available or mature), I fall down a bit on networking and sniffing but I can speak the lingo.
I've found IT to be a pretty unstable career path with a lot of potential for layoff and a lot of trouble being hired once laid off, and my peers/colleagues have had similar experiences. Maybe it's regional, but you'd think the Northeast would be ripe for this stuff. After all, I was able to pull down nearly six figures with a GED just by learning Perl and SQL.
The fact is that IT is the first to fall under the axe unless shipping software is your primary business, so you've got to be a salesman in that you have to sell yourself to employers fairly frequently. My current gig is going on 9 years but there's a dearth out there of places to move to if it dries up suddenly, and there's always the possibility that it will.
It's also possible to be so overqualified that nobody will touch you, because even if they don't assume that your salary requirements are out of their budget (whether they are or aren't) they WILL assume that you are only taking a job as a gap filler if it's not the best job ever (and it almost never is.)
There are also LONG dry spells where IT jobs just evaporate and there's nothing to be found. Everything's taken, there are no new startups, no new offices being opened, and support jobs are in Bangalore. That has happened 3 times in my region of the country since I started in IT.
It's a tough industry to navigate and you have to have a certain personality to keep up with it and not get stressed out. Me? I'm kind of a laid back guy. :-)
Maybe you guys work in larger technology hubs than I do or maybe you've been in the industry a shorter time, but my experience over the past 15 years in the Northeast has been very up and down.
That, or you're seriously lacking creativity and ignoring a solid 90% of the opportunities ever-present in the industry.
My 15 years' industry experience isn't just a candle in the wind to your degree, kiddo. I work now in probably the largest corporate IT department in my state, in a hospital where, you know, shit matters in a very real way, and I will tell you, we have far more people with "years of experience" here than we do people with CS degrees.
So, will my lack of a degree sometimes get me bounced from the HR buzzword bingo game? Absolutely!! Is it responsible for the UTTER LACK OF IT JOBS across the region that happens every 3-5 years? No. It has nothing to do with that. None of my qualifications has anything to do with the overall IT market in this region going to shit on a very cyclical, very predictable basis. I know guys who WROTE portions of the Oracle database engine who can't get jobs as DBAs, or data architects, or data warehousing consultants, or anything, during those periods.
Not sure why you feel the need for this pithy bullshit. Young guys doing well never believe that it could ever be, or have been, any other way. It's sort of ridiculous.
I'm not even sure how to fully address your condescending rant, so I guess that's it. You will now most likely dismiss the entirety of this post by labeling it butthurt over being "called out" on my lack of a degree. Feel free.
Oh, and I'm not one of these "young guys doing well." While I do consider myself someone who is doing fairly well, I have 12 years of industry experience here -- not much less than your 15 years.
I'm currently maintaining 4 systems that literally NO ONE in the organization knows anything about, and two that are shared with only one other person and literally run ALL of the materials logistics for 4 hospitals. If they decide to migrate to a new ERP system, they'll need me for the data and workflow conversions but may or may not decide to retain me. This will have only a little to do with how good I am at my job and much more to do with whether they can hire a young expert in the new system for half my salary since my experience will be seen as outdated and on legacy systems regardless of any training I might receive. This is just how it goes around here. My CIO has changed 3 times since I've been here, there's no investment in me or any of my colleagues as fixtures of the company.
I'm guessing you're probably in your early to mid twenties and haven't hit the ageism wall that exists in IT yet. I know Rym is a bit older, but he lives in a metro area where the culture is a bit different.
There ARE some glaring issues with IT here that I won't detail extensively but it's not quite Keystone Kops.
We were two jugglers called Luke, both turned professional, both had a German girlfriend, both moved to Germany to live and work, both performed with our partners, both split up with our partners, both were regular guests at conventions, both helped each other out with organizing shows and were the most regular show hosts at the EJC, and earlier this year he also moved to Berlin. Needless to say, many people got us confused. He would sign off as "The Real Luke" and I would call him "Luke A" to my "Luke B". But, as I said on Facebook, there was only ever one Luke.