>>>>>>>>>I hear you. On The Other Hand, I wonder if technology has actually put more people out of work entirely - other jobs always seem to appear.....
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Net/net i think it's about a wash , but entire job classes have vanished while some have been created.
>>>>>>>When someone first talked to me about programming as a career, I thought he was suggesting that I work in TV.
>>>>>>>There were no programmers then so that was a brand new classification.
>>>>>>>On the other hand, does anyone remember telephone operators or typists? There were zillions of them.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I think a lot of them retrained as Fuller Brush Men (FB Persons?) or door to door Encyclopedia salesmen.
>>>>>
>>>>>That's better than the reverse. I once worked on a project which was started by a door to door door salesman. What a mess!
>>>>
>>>><g> What's worse is when you get called in to "just make a few little changes" to an app that is a hot mess and then find out the door to door salesman that wrote it got promoted and is now the guy you are working for who has sensitive feelings and great pride in his app <s>
>>>
>>>Oh! Have I been there!! Most recent such adventure: the owner told me when I was allowed to take notes! I threw my pencil on the floor at the jerk's feet. He was too stupid to realize that taking notes can aid mental recall of items to cover when we were allowed to speak. Just before that glorious "job" I took a project where I was answering questions about said project on one of these boards. Every suggestion I gave was resisted, until the owner made them try it. Every time (6 out of 6) the suggestion proved correct. So I got a call and an offer. When I got there, the owner did not back me up against the existing terribly outdated practices. I can go on and on about such things. You must have heard about my discovering the use of a public variable would have made a system cause patient deaths?
>>
>>And then were told is was a small price to pay for the convenience of a public variable <s>
>>
>>One of my favorite potential ( a potential I never fulfilled ) client from hell was the Dr. who wanted me to write a medical app and said " I could do it myself but I just don't have the time."
>>
>
>I have been told that by two different clients. I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.

I wasn't. As Whil used to always say - Better to pass on a client and be sorry than take a client and be sorry.