General

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

malgratloprekindle — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:33:47 GMT

Stranger:
Remember that in a recession the problem is not only high labor wages, but also a misallocation of capital. If there is no capital for you to work with, you won't be able to find any job as an engineer. You can't employ an engineer unless he has machines to work with.

This is why the capital liquidation process is so important, and it must come before the labor liquidation process.

True, but it still doesn't hurt to try...I've been prospects are fair for Engineers (extremely good for Software Engineers and Environmental Engineers). Actually, depending on what I do (analyze, design, management) I wouldn't need capital as much as the folks in testing. That being said, if the government would stay the fuck out of science funding, crowding out private funding and abolish regulation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_PVI6V6o-4 explains the myth of science as a public good), I'm sure me and LadyAttis would have a much easier time finding work in our fields.

It would help if the government would just stay out and let the goddamn recession run its course...

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

banned — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:14:02 GMT

Well, I want to work in the hardware industry rather than the software industry, so I probably won't have the problem of needing to have experience in multiple languages, even though they're not too dificult to learn. But computer hardware seems to change more quickly than software does. I may end up changing my major on down the line to be an electrical engineer or something, but last I heard, that industry wasn't doing very well either.

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

Stranger — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:56:51 GMT

fsk:
I prefer to avoid lying. Sometimes, an honest and competent person reads my resume, and they appreciate that I'm not a liar like everyone else.

It's not really lying if you believe that these requirements are an error. Then you are correcting their error.

Perhaps instead of saying that you have experience in a field, say you have equivalent experience.

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

fsk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:30:17 GMT

I noticed this thread on Joel on Software, where someone explains this problem in more detail.

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

fsk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:36:31 GMT

Learning new languages as you go is pretty easy. If that's true, then why are employers demanding unreasonable amounts of previous experience?

I prefer to avoid lying. Sometimes, an honest and competent person reads my resume, and they appreciate that I'm not a liar like everyone else.

Most of the custodians of the hiring process are in HR or headhunters, who have zero technical knowledge. They merely do keyword screening.

In order to get a job at a gaming company, there's still the usual "prior experience required" problem. Unless I already have a bestselling shareware title or iPhone app, it's almost impossible to get a paid job. Plus, most of the gaming jobs are outside of NYC, and I can't move for a job right now. Further, a lot of gaming jobs are very long hours for low hourly rates. There are plenty of recent college graduates eager to work on games, because they think it's cool.

I've considered working on self-publishing a game. I'd have the same problem as self-publishing my blog. I'd need a lot of users before I would make a decent rate.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that working as a slave software engineer is a dead-end job. I'm looking into other things, but that will take awhile. Bootstrapping a business is *VERY HARD*.

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

Nitroadict — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:06:58 GMT

fsk:

Stranger:

Why don't you lie about your experience?

I've seriously considered that. Basically, I don't want to work for an idiot.

If everyone else on the job market is lying on their resumes, then I'm at a competitive disadvantage for being honest. That's a symptom of a non-free market.

You'd be surprised how many people have advised me "You should lie about your experience. Everyone else is doing it!" Doesn't that make the job search process an elaborate charade, selecting the most skilled liars instead of the best workers?

Not necesarily. If you intend on learning what they're hiring you as you go along, I hardly see how it would be dishonest if the market is as harsh as you describe it.

Have you considered finding some work with a video game company (assuming you aren't already)? The industry is usually recession "proof" & I've seen plenty of openings at places like EA, Bethesda Softworks, etc.

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

fsk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:11:50 GMT

Stranger:

Why don't you lie about your experience?

I've seriously considered that. Basically, I don't want to work for an idiot.

If everyone else on the job market is lying on their resumes, then I'm at a competitive disadvantage for being honest. That's a symptom of a non-free market.

You'd be surprised how many people have advised me "You should lie about your experience. Everyone else is doing it!" Doesn't that make the job search process an elaborate charade, selecting the most skilled liars instead of the best workers?

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

Stranger — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:02:10 GMT

fsk:
The biggest problem with working as a computer engineer is "skills churn". I have lots of experience in C/C++. Most employers are looking for C#/.NET now. My experience in C/C++ has a market value of zero, although I believe that the real value of my experience is very high. To get a job as a C# software engineer, I'm basically starting over at square one with zero experience.

Why don't you lie about your experience?

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

fsk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:49:43 GMT

banned:

Is the computer job market really bad? I'm working on a Computer Engineer major, at the moment, and I've looked into internships, but most companies aren't looking for freshmen/sophomore level students.

The computer job market is really bad. I have 10 years of experience and can't get any interviews.

The biggest problem with working as a computer engineer is "skills churn". I have lots of experience in C/C++. Most employers are looking for C#/.NET now. My experience in C/C++ has a market value of zero, although I believe that the real value of my experience is very high. To get a job as a C# software engineer, I'm basically starting over at square one with zero experience.

The problem is not that better programming languages are being invented. That's good. The problem is that employers do a keyword-screening test when hiring. If they want a C# programmer, then experience in other languages has a value of zero.

Another problem is that, in most businesses, software is treated as a cost center and not a profit center. Most corporations have a State-backed monopoly, and can pass the cost of lousy software on to customers as higher prices. Consider the financial industry. Why would a bank need good software, when they get billions of dollars in bailout money?

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

Laughing Man — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:21:04 GMT

Juan:
Hm, for the record, I didn't mean to suggest that men could have babies (...) but that the whole process could be 'outsourced' to a more sophisticated baby incubator of sorts...

An artifical womb could also be the end of abortion [ not that I am against abortion ]

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

Juan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:07:41 GMT

Hm, for the record, I didn't mean to suggest that men could have babies (...) but that the whole process could be 'outsourced' to a more sophisticated baby incubator of sorts...

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

Knight_of_BAAWA — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:46:26 GMT

ladyattis:
I'm stating a woman can only give birth to a baby, where as a man cannot. (Not unless this Universe is a RAH novel... WTF!?!) But that anyone can be a good parent.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

Juan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:20:57 GMT

ladyattis:
Seriously, dude, are you an Asperger's kid? You're becoming too pedantic on the nature of what IDIC means. If you've never watched a single Star Trek film or TV episode then the IDIC analogy will be forever lost on you.

It was. Here's a piece of information. I did watch some Star Trek TV episodes A LOT of years ago and certainly not in English, so your cultural reference was totally lost on me =]. I thought this IDIC thing was something you had made up yourself....

Roddenbury was hinting at that there are many roads to achieving happiness in life, thus many different cultures and civilizations can live together in peace regardless of extreme variations. Thus, why I have no issue with so-called social conservatives as I don't have an issue so-called social liberals.

Well, we are talking past each other a bit, but at the same time we really are not. You seem to assume that social conservatism is the outcome of interaction free from force and fraud. Of course I disagree. Also, social liberals may try to impose a particular 'culture' on unwilling individuals, so the distinction between liberals and conservatives may be blurry.

And, you don't seem to wholly agree with Byzantine, which makes sense IMO, since Byzantine's position doesn't make sense.

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

ladyattis — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:47:42 GMT

Juan:
At some level the brain is just a collection of neurons, but I certainly have no interest in reducing individual minds to neurons firing. I do not deny the existence of 'mind', though I'm willing to deny the existence of 'society' depending on what you mean by that word.

Then don't deny out of hand without knowing what definitions that I may or may not be using. You tend to jump the gun there, dude.

Juan:
There's also Sun's slogan "The net is the computer" ...

This is true due to the fact that abstractions and whole have an epistemological and ontological basis.

Juan:
Also known as "the market" ?

Also known as society. I make no distinction between two folks bitching on the Internet from two people bitching in real life over the particulars of a contract (or a pound of fish).

Juan:
Well, but it's not as if in the past an 'infinite' number of combinations was tried. There are not 'infinite' combinations available either.

Seriously, dude, are you an Asperger's kid? You're becoming too pedantic on the nature of what IDIC means. If you've never watched a single Star Trek film or TV episode then the IDIC analogy will be forever lost on you. Or how Gene Roddenbury meant by it. To expand IDIC as a 'philosophy', Roddenbury was hinting at that there are many roads to achieving happiness in life, thus many different cultures and civilizations can live together in peace regardless of extreme variations. Thus, why I have no issue with so-called social conservatives as I don't have an issue so-called social liberals.

Re: My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

Juan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:47:02 GMT

Do you mind describing 'your' system instead of making meaningless assertions ?