Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists

philip.greenspun.com ^ | 2003 | Philip Greenspun

[The_Media_never_lie]

How does a BS in Ocean Engineering from Rhode Island sound? I don't want to be sleeping in the street...

Even if you got your BS in Long Island Sound, in this economy you may still be sleeping in the street.

[JoeSchem]

As a BSEE of the University of Washington, I recently got to work as a landscaping digger on my alma mater. I was making $8.63 an hour as a temp, and I only get work about half the time. I was working alongside an illegal immigrant making $13/hr under the table (which is like $18 an hour above the table) and who got hired his first day as a temp (even though that's probably a violation of the rules of his temp agency . . . but he'll never tell!).

Actually, 'working alongside' is a misstatement. They hired me because the weather was really hot and the work was really hard and they couldn't hire an illegal immigrant willing to do it. So basically, at age 47, I was doing the work that illegal immigrants won't do.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

In Business 2.0 is this article:

The Coming Job Boom

Forget those grim unemployment numbers. Demographic forces are about to put a squeeze on the labor supply that will make it feel like 1999 all over again.

I read this article while waiting at my son's dentist office. Out of the Top 10 jobs that will be in demand, 8 of them (if I recall correctly) are in the tech sector.

[AZLiberty]

Philip Greenspun is an interesting case. He hung around MIT for a while and then set up a company call ArsTechnica. He figured out how to develop Web sites using relational databases as back-ends. He wrote a cool book about it, said he didn't want to do business the usual way (i.e., taking venture capital), sold out to Red Hat at the peak of the dot-com bubble, totally pissed off Red Hat, and retired with millions, leaving all his programmers trying to find jobs in "Dot-Com Winter".

He also has a cool Web site, an interesting travelogue Travels with Samantha, an online version of his book Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, and an interesting lawsuit.

[Age of Reason]

Demographic forces are about to put a squeeze on the labor supply that will make it feel like 1999 all over again.

And what demographic force might that be . .

Too many over 50 applicants and not enough young ones?

[Age of Reason]

and retired with millions, leaving all his programmers trying to find jobs in "Dot-Com Winter".

You know, it occurs to me that such success stories must always be a minority of the population.

Because were everyone to be a billionaire--they would all be competing for the same goods, so the price of those goods would rise until no one is rich, even though they're each worth billions.

Now were one to argue that everyone could be be worth billions and still be rich if we lived in a world where the cost of producing goods was so low, that everything is made by self-replicating solar-powered robots for free.

But then, most people would not be able to have more than the next guy, which would make them not "feel" superior.

And so that would be a nightmare world for the majority of the wealthy who seek to accumulate money as means to assuage their feelings of inferiority.

So it would appear that no matter how much we try, money will never really make us happy--only less miserable at best.

[Billthedrill]

Oh, and another thing - us old propeller-heads know stuff the young 'uns will never get to learn. I'm keeping my COBOL skills up to date for Y3K, for example. Gonna be rich.

[Euro-American Scum]

Vijay and Rama find that the teamwork that got them their Harvard PhDs in astrophysics continues to pay off as they work together in the "real world".

Vijay and Rama need to move back to Bangalore. They may end up living in a mud hut, but they'll be on the cutting odge of computing evolution.

[sixmil]

Question for the free-trade/borders types that might read this thread:

Are high wages (excepting doctors, lawyers, stock brokers, and real estate agents, of course) bad for an economy? If so, how can you still call yourself a supply-sider?

[Travis McGee]

Ping

[Travis McGee]

I have to stop spending so much time browsing the listings on Monster.com, careerbuilder.com, dice.com, and the threads at FreeRepublic.com and work on my novel.

Sounds like a plan to me.

[nightdriver]

"Oil platforms in a deepwater environment need enormous amounts of engineering."

Not when the democRATs keep blocking offshore drilling.

[AZLiberty]

Through Google I found a link to the Business 2.0 article that doesn't require a subscription:

The Coming Job Boom.

[snopercod]

I can relate. But you should prepare yourself for more good news.

Once you hit 50, nobody will hire you as an engineer. Your only options will be to go into business for yourself or get out of engineering altogether.

[Dog Gone]

The Gulf of Mexico is a very large place. In addition, other countries don't ban offshore drilling, and those facilities are designed here, not in places like Angola.

[nightdriver]

".....other countries don't ban offshore drilling, and those facilities are designed here, not in places like Angola."

I'm all for it. Hope there is a lot of activity in that area.

[nightdriver]

"Once you hit 50, nobody will hire you as an engineer."

'Fraid you're more right than wrong. Not only won't they hire you, they won't even bother to reply with a decent "get screwed" letter.

[Question_Assumptions]

Greenspun's book definitely contained some good advice (especially considering when it was written) but his attitude and focus on only one best way to do things didn't help. As I explained to a young genius I once worked with, smart people may know more than other people but if they show contempt for those who aren't as smart as they are, those less smart people won't want to deal with them.

[snopercod]

I sent out sixty resumes for engineering jobs last year, and only got ONE rejection note or e-mail. The rest didn't waste a stamp.

I gave up on engineering and am working as an architectural designer now, basically doing stuff I learned in high school drafting. My career has gone full circle.

[stainlessbanner]

might be of interest, sir