[TheForge] Re: guardrails and handrails

[Andy Vida]

Charle B Vincent wrote:
> 
> Mike, he was talking about IT workers in the telecom industry.   Trust
> me, there it IS all about the bill.  When I started in the industry
> years ago, it paid OK(on par with engineers), but the real attraction
> was doing really neat shit with neat people - probably same as
> engineering years ago. 

	That's very true.  When we were true R&D people it was a lot
	of fun.  My friend Chuck and I actuially invented much of
	what has become standard software test methodology in the
	late 80s and that was pretty cool.  Now that those methods
	and technologies have essentially converged, the people
	working in them have become commodities, which sucks ass
	not just because one makes 20% of the income one once did,
	but because you are treated as a commodity as well.  Not
	necessarily with any overt contempt, though in some cases
	even that is so, but perhaps even worse you are treated as
	an object, with indifference.  That can ultrasuck.

>  The advent of the late late 90's had us all
> making stupid money, and attracted the crowd for which it is ALL about
> the money.   It transformed the company I am working for from a place
> where I was chastised for working too much unpaid overtime and
> neglecting my family to one where I get text messaged at the hospital
> asking if I am still going to make my billable quota for the week.
> Annual billable hours are targeted at 2000.  That doesn't include
> travel, education or marketing.   The only reason someone would sign up
> for that IS the money, cause no love of doing your job will survive all
> of that.

	This is so very true.  When I came out to Nautilus (the
	marketers of the Bowflex) I worked over 100 hours per
	week, seven days a week, for twelve weeks running.  At
	the end of it, I and the 40 contractors I was in charge 
	of were so burned out we could hardly see straight.  I
	finally told the director of QA that it had to stop, and
	being the right guy that he was, he put us on a limited
	schedule of perhaps only 60 ot 70 hours per week on a
	five day stint.  Even that is a lot of time.  The paychecks
	were great, at least for me as I was hourly and independent
	as opposed to most of the guys that worked for me who were
	on salaries, but $$ is rarely worth the beating you take,
	especially these days when much of the work goes unappreciated,
	though my last gig was great and they loved me and told me so.
	That is somewhat rare these days.

	As to Mike's rant, I think he didn't quite get my statement
	that the single goal restriction of the tool I used was
	stupid, and that things are never quite that simple.  
	Generating a bill should be a goal for most blacksmith
	work, otherwise one will have problems living in this world
	for which money has become the greatest god of them all.
	But there can be, and always are many other goals, depending
	where one sits on the "getting the job done" continuum.  And
	I believe in free aid to folks when circumstances suggest
	it.  I despise the bean counter mentality that imbues one
	with the "nothing goes uncharged for" attitude, especially
	in the important crafts such as smithing.  I call them
	important because they possess a soul that businesses such as
	telecom never have and never will because they are incapable
	of it.  Little old lady comes in with a broken widget and it
	takes all of ten minutes to mend it, I'm not likely to
	charge her anything for it.  Often times being needed by someone
	is better payment than anything else they could offer you.