What the hell do I do with this information?
 

Those of you who've been paying attention know that I work in the IT racket.

Those of you who've been paying especially close attention know that I'm looking for different employment. I'm having trouble finding a good job though. Maybe 30% of what I see falls into two categories: "running the help desk" kind of jobs--I've been there and done that and they always pay less than I get now--or jobs that want obscenely more experience than I have--say, CTO at a Fortune 500 outfit. Oh, what about the other 70%? I don't even bother reading them, because they're programming jobs.

You see, I am not a programmer. I've never studied it. I'm not good at it. I don't know good technique. (What I do have experience of is running a network with a gaggle of database, web, email, etc. servers, and figuring out what solutions will actually meet the business requirements.)

Well, OK, I'm not a "programmer"... but I know snippets of code here and there. I can do little stand-alone junk projects, like do the backend of a simple web form to let somebody change their password on a directory server, or create a bunch of accounts given an input file with people's names, or search a file of fortune cookies. (I did that one for the Cellar back in the day.) These things are useful to be sure, but they don't make me a software developer, just as the fact that I can plug a DVD player into a TV doesn't make me a video producer.

But then I read this. (It was on digg, so it might be overloaded.)

Is it really this bad? If it is, maybe I should brush up my chops and consider some development jobs. (Of course I have a complete lack of experience...)

In response to things like this, employers are writing insane specifications, like this one I received from a headhunter today:

- Must be mod/CGI Perl. experience not straight Perl.
- Minimum of four (4) years experience with Object Oriented Perl Programming, EMB Perl, Perl DBI, Mod_Perl
- Five years total experience with programming
- Experience with Object-oriented application design and architectures
- Solid knowledge and/or experience with CGI
- Knowledge and use of DBD/DBI
- Author a Perl program and/or install a Perl Module
- Solid understanding and practical experience with Oracle, SQL, SOAP, XML
- Practical experience with requirements gathering, interaction with business users
- Practical experience with UML
- Background in Unix
- Solid understating of Shared Libraries and how they apply to Perl
- Experience with Oracle

Those are the minimum requirements and don't bother applying for anything unless you can at least describe the technologies they mention.

I have never seen a mainstream job ad mention programming *ability* in 20 years. They just mention platforms and if you don't have them you are irrelevant.

Good, good question, my friend.

My philosopher/elocutionist suit is at the cleaners just now, so I'll have to beg you to try to hang on through some unfiltered free association--- [launch]

30% is helpdesk and 70% is programming ?? you're not reading between the lines or enough papers/job websites/etc. You're working one of those beyond the 100% jobs you pigeonholed. Not all IT racket jobs are helpdesk or programmer period.

A better question is, and I'm stone cold serious here, what the heck do you want to do? I'm guessing get paid, enjoy the people the mission and the technology you're working with, not have to travel too far (or maybe a lot of travel... whatever). But my point is find, define the what you want, *then* and only then, go looking for jobs being advertised (not to derail myself here, but that's the thinnest weakest f*ckin pool there is to fish in.. seriously, but that's another thread), now that you've outlined what you dig doing, go find some lead that has good potential to deliver those quality of life aspects. Here's where you have to trust me.. the technology, the pay, will follow. Honest.

The whole job posting job searching dance is more like a mating ritual than anything else. The employer has needs and the employer has wants. Some of each of those categories are known and advertised, but almost by definition, some are unknown and if they're listed, they're done so with a less than complete knowledge of what is behind what they've asked for or why it's important or how to evaluate it.

SD, you have chops, I know, I am in much the same position, and my skillz, wide and shallow though they may be, represent an intimidating ocean of knowledge of unknown depth and breadth to many of the people involved in making the hiring decision. You're like the elephant to those blind men--some see your programming words on the resume and call you a programmer. Some see the titles and call you a manager. Some see the hardware words and call you a technician. Good grief.

Undertoad has nailed it (natch) again. The requirements are often insane. "Throw that in there, I read it on the news the other day." You're valuable *because* your knowledge is hard won and not common. **YOU** use it every day and that familiarity can (and perhaps has bred) breed contempt. Don't buy into that, please.

I'm a generalist, you sound kind of like that too. If I'm mischaracterizing you and your experience, please accept my apology, I intend no offense. But that's still very valuable. To somebody. That's the kicker, of course.

And most valuable to the organization that whose understanding of what the heck they need is the thinnest. How can you count on them to accurately portray those needs in an ad? If they could freakin understand it enough to advertise for it, they'd already have somebody that could be doing the job!

Now, employers are not all idiots, we both know that. But please please please don't get hung up on the job descriptions. God, if ever there was a real world example of the proverb "Don't judge a book by its cover", job hunting (and job filling) based on the advertisment and the resume would be it.

That ad? It's like that come hither eye batting look them womenfolk break out (sometimes :) ). It's just a start, an opening gambit. Look at your own resume. Is that you? If it is, then it's too long by 100 pages for its intended purpose. You're not your resume any more than the job is the ad. It is just a worm on a hook.

But it can be a tasty looking worm, for both sides. All I'm saying is don't for one second believe that the only two types of jobs are helpdesk and programmer. Not the case, f'realz. And I get the sense you're not even interested in either one of those. Which, mercifully, brings me and you back to my first question.

What do you want to do? Tell us about it.

My damned sinus infection is relapsing, or morphing into something else, so I'll be brief.
I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect. :D I haven't done a count but it seems to me that there are significantly more developer jobs being advertised than non-developer jobs.
CIO at a smaller college. (Possibly a director-level position at a larger university.) A position where I can be a translator between the IT world and the rest of the institution, and make sure the place actually makes good decisions about the technology. A place where I can attract good people to do good work, and not with abominations like that ad.

Some years ago I heard a talk by the CIO of Penn State on the subject of developing the "next generation" of IT leaders in higher ed. And I thought, "Hey, they're doing some cool things. That sounds like a great place to work." So there. If I, or a member of my staff, can ever give a talk somewhere and make somebody in the audience think, "yeah, I wouldn't mind working there," then I will be able to rest easy.

Sounds like System Administry is your thing. Some university's have sys admins for the computer heavy departments like math, physics and computer science. It's not under the jurisdiction of IT (although you do have to work with them at times) and you sound well suited for such a role.

Those programming requirements really irk me. Not everyone who can program should program but that doesn't mean they wouldn't be of value.

I really hate looking for a job.

Supposedly there is a shortage of IT workers, something like 40% of new IT jobs go unfilled each year?

I'm a competent programmer, but I may not know the language they want me to use. It's the programming skill, not a particular language skill-set, that they should hire for.

I have 5+ years of near full-time programming experience (between part-time work and a full-time CS course-load), but I'm seriously going to have to look at entry level jobs.

Since 95%+ of the code I've written is proprietary and I haven't done hobby coding in a long time (since before I started college), I don't really have a portfolio to speak of.

I hope this post is incoherent enough for you...

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print "Fizz" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz". For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print "FizzBuzz".

:eek:

There are people claiming to be programmers that can't instantly solve this in code? The writing it down is the only thing that might take a minute.

I'm going to go slam my head into a wall for a few hours.

I have a 4 year comp sci degree from an excellent northeastern liberal arts college, and one third of an MBA from a major university. I've done mainframe-level systems programming, software engineering on real-time devices, high-level technical support of Unix. I understand every major Internet protocol and many major languages. I can run any Unix or Linux system expertly. I understand almost enough about networking to be a network administrator. I've written entire e-commerce systems for major organizations. In software development I am highly productive. I know Photoshop AND Visio.

I understand the Internet and its culture. I'm practically a net researcher. I can explain what web 2.0 is and why it's important and not a bubble. My website was founded before the web was invented. I've followed all the big trends in usability and design.

In offices I'm always professional and cheerful. A team player who eschews organizational politics. I'm a born communicator; I love to write, especially for the web. Speaking in front of people makes me happy. I've built and managed a team of people successfully. I've worked at both big and small consulting, and at small, medium-sized and large businesses.

I would work for cashews, or peanuts plus equity.

However, there is no call for me. I am unemployable, either full time or as a contractor. I am soon to be weighing my options in convenience store management.

I am a "generalist".

:(

Some people are just very lucky...others work hard
 

Undertoad,

I can attest to you working very hard and practically running businesses for people. I really can. Even though I haven't worked with you in over a decade, I have heard your name, and it's always been in good terms. I have never heard anything bad about you. Yes, I do hear a lot about "unemployables" that manage to keep jobs in this area, and other "unemployables" that are working security. Not information security, but store security as in loss prevention.

I have not heard a bad thing about you at ALL. Considering how many former co-workers I have had and have probably pissed off to no end (I'm admittedly not the easiest person to work with), that's a major accomplishment in my book :).

I'm working in the consulting racket now, however it's a killer. To stay working and in demand with my customers, I sacrifice a lot every day. I also work late at night a lot more than I'd like to doing data conversion and performance tuning.

The managers I work for are notoriously tough and are proud of it. I've worked with them on HR hires. Upper management at my customer sites focuses hires initially on either band-aid solutions to problems, immediate fixes for really big problems, or extremely in-depth knowledge of a certain area. The latter are brought in to fight the fires that come up when systems fail.

The generalists I do work with are either in the Information Security or Microsoft/UNIX/Oracle system administration/interoperability areas with Active Directory. You have no idea how many corporate admins are not educated on interoperability between Exchange and Sendmail (and I know you know the latter 100% better than I do!).

It's not being a generalist...it's knowing how things interoperate and how to lock them down, both of which I KNOW you know :).

Mitch

UT, why not go for the net admin qualifications?

I'm surprised that you aren't desirable to a consulting firm. Maybe not for specifically IT stuff, but for problem solving - that's what a generalist does. You should market yorself as a "project manager". It sounds as though you could easily assemble and manage a team, and complete projects of any sort, not just IT.

I would take a consulting gig again, although I would start gnawing off my foot immediately to be certain I could eventually escape. :D

I keep seeing postings from Cornell for similar gigs. Unfortunately, Pete has been warned that it is not a pleasant place to work.