Pathetic Pilot Salaries

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:04:29 +0000 (UTC), Paul Tomblin wrote:
In a previous article, "William W. Plummer" said:
user wrote:

snip
Personally, I prefer working in IT, where the surest way to get
a huge pay increase is simply to threaten to quit. ;-)

Threatening to quit works until you are about 35 years old. Maybe a bit
longer if you walk on water. But later in life you can expect to be
pushed out in favor of younger, technology-current engineers.

There is no hard and fast rule that says you can't stay technology-current
as you age. I started off doing FORTRAN on mainframes, went to C and
Unix, then C++ and Unix, and here I am at 44 doing Java on Linux, making
50% more than I was making when I was 35. And every step up the ladder
was done by identifying what I wanted to do next and teaching myself.


Unfortunately, that's unusual. My experience is that most developers
stop learning at about age 30. From that point on, they stagnate and
die. I can't count the number of times I've interviewed people,
asked them to tell me about an article/book/etc discussing current
technology and IT issues.... and find they haven't cracked a book
since college.

What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up. Although I
have a nagging suspicion that my next "technology" will be "how to manage
a team of programmers in India to make sure that what they produce isn't a
giant cluster **** like every other outsourcing project I've seen".


Oh, but it worked so WELL at GC.....

- Rich

"user" wrote in message

Unfortunately, that's unusual. My experience is that most developers
stop learning at about age 30. From that point on, they stagnate and
die. I can't count the number of times I've interviewed people,
asked them to tell me about an article/book/etc discussing current
technology and IT issues.... and find they haven't cracked a book
since college.

Hehe. I didn't go BACK to college (to learn Cisco CCNA and brush up on
UNIX, and commercial flight school) until I was 35.

-c

May I suggest that you take your hiring blinders off?

I didn't even BECOME a developer until I was 38.

I didn't even finish junior college (I got hired after 1-1/2 years)

I am a damned good developer - MS Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, MS Visual
InterDev, NT/2000 Server, TCP/IP, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP. And I taught
myself all of these. I read a couple of chapters in a book on TCP/IP, and
another couple of chapters in a book on DNS. Otherwise, I learned it all
from MS helpfiles and MSDN.

I "skim" a few articles and magazines to find out what the new technologies
are, but I usually learn them without the aid of books are courses.

So, while I'm learning new technologies by non-traditional means, you are
interviewing people in a traditional, hidebound manner.

So who's out of step with current technologies and methodologies?




"user" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:04:29 +0000 (UTC), Paul Tomblin
wrote:
In a previous article, "William W. Plummer"
said:
user wrote:

snip
Personally, I prefer working in IT, where the surest way to get
a huge pay increase is simply to threaten to quit. ;-)

Threatening to quit works until you are about 35 years old. Maybe a bit
longer if you walk on water. But later in life you can expect to be
pushed out in favor of younger, technology-current engineers.

There is no hard and fast rule that says you can't stay
technology-current
as you age. I started off doing FORTRAN on mainframes, went to C and
Unix, then C++ and Unix, and here I am at 44 doing Java on Linux, making
50% more than I was making when I was 35. And every step up the ladder
was done by identifying what I wanted to do next and teaching myself.


Unfortunately, that's unusual. My experience is that most developers
stop learning at about age 30. From that point on, they stagnate and
die. I can't count the number of times I've interviewed people,
asked them to tell me about an article/book/etc discussing current
technology and IT issues.... and find they haven't cracked a book
since college.

What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up. Although
I
have a nagging suspicion that my next "technology" will be "how to
manage
a team of programmers in India to make sure that what they produce isn't
a
giant cluster **** like every other outsourcing project I've seen".


Oh, but it worked so WELL at GC.....

- Rich

"Paul Tomblin" wrote in message news:cgnf1d$js6

Although I have a nagging suspicion that my next "technology" will be
"how to manage
a team of programmers in India to make sure that what they produce isn't a
giant cluster **** like every other outsourcing project I've seen".

*sigh* Truth right there. :
-c

Amen to to that. I myself got out of IT because of the "sweat shop'
atmosphere it has turned out to be. I moved from the big city to a
small town with a NICE airport but little activity.

Switching gears at 35 is a 50/50 proposition, I cerainly woudn't
recommend it to someone who was sane and wanted to make a really
good living... Right now, as long as I can make enough money for
my plane and hangar rent I'm happy.

) "What me worry?"

There is no hard and fast rule that says you can't stay technology-current
as you age. I started off doing FORTRAN on mainframes, went to C and
Unix, then C++ and Unix, and here I am at 44 doing Java on Linux, making
50% more than I was making when I was 35. And every step up the ladder
was done by identifying what I wanted to do next and teaching myself.

Amen.
I've gone from 8051 assembly to C++ on VxWorks and Unix.
Back to HW design, then FPGAs, and back again.


What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up. Although I
have a nagging suspicion that my next "technology" will be "how to manage
a team of programmers in India to make sure that what they produce isn't a
giant cluster **** like every other outsourcing project I've seen".

That's pretty much where I see my career going, too!

Adam

Paul Tomblin wrote:

What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up.

Yep, you've done things the right way so far. I missed the step over to C++ and
sidestepped to writing requirements. Wrong move, but the job market's picking up
there again. Pick up PERL while you're at it. For some reason, that's hot now.

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.

G.R. Patterson III wrote:

Paul Tomblin wrote:

What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up.


Yep, you've done things the right way so far. I missed the step over to C++ and
sidestepped to writing requirements. Wrong move, but the job market's picking up
there again. Pick up PERL while you're at it. For some reason, that's hot now.

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.
I worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory a long time ago. It was strongly
oriented toward hardware devices, circuits, radars, etc. Software
engineers were second class citizens. My boss used to snarl, "If you
can program a computer, you'll never have to work for a living."

In a previous article, "G.R. Patterson III" said:
Paul Tomblin wrote:
What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up.

Yep, you've done things the right way so far. I missed the step over to C++ and
sidestepped to writing requirements. Wrong move, but the job market's picking up
there again. Pick up PERL while you're at it. For some reason, that's hot now.

navaid.com is writen in perl. Even though I've used it for a pretty major
chunk of code like that, I still think of it as a toy language. My next
personal project will probably be in Python.

--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
When the revolution comes, we'll need a longer wall.
-- Tom De Mulder

In article , G.R. Patterson III wrote:

Yep, you've done things the right way so far. I missed the step over to C++ and
sidestepped to writing requirements. Wrong move, but the job market's picking up
there again. Pick up PERL while you're at it. For some reason, that's hot now.

I began learning Perl about 4 years ago (like a pilot's license,
learning the basics of a given language is a 'license to learn', so I've
never stopped learning it).

It's one of the most fun languages I've used. I find it very expressive
and natural to write - I don't find it clumsy like many scripting
languages.

(Actually, on my next CV (US readers: s/CV/resume/) I'm going to put
INTERCAL in the list of languages and see if the interviewer picks it up
:-))

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"