>>Resorting to ridicule when logic fails?
>
>I call it heavy, heavy sarcasm.
>
>>But, since you asked:
>>http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/vol1no2/computers.htm
>>"The dirty laundry of the software business is that it is an industry built on breaking the backs of a disposable youth. Fresh graduates of top programs like UT's computer science programs are practically guaranteed jobs... at least for a while. Graduates of other schools without such a high pedigree may not find themselves so lucky. And placement gets harder the older you get. According to a National Science Foundation survey after 20 years, only 19% of programmers are still in the profession. By comparison, the corresponding figure for civil engineers is 52%. "
>
>Amazing how so many of us here on the UT have managed to make a living. Peope in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, etc. Whil Hentzen, Steven Black, Doug Hennig, Tamar Granor? Somehow, I think they are managing to scrape by.

Exceptions don't make the rule. I am, by more than 10 years, the oldest programmer here. In looking around the city and state I rarely see other coders as old as I am.

>
>>It has more interesting info... especially about programming sweatshops.
>>"Another nasty trend is that of permatemping software employees. Microsoft now employs more contract programmers than employees, and these contracors are provided no benefits, no job security, none of the fabled stock options, and now, after a Microsoft-endorsed amendment of Washington state labor law, no time and a half for overtime. One programmer wrote the Washington state labor commission in protest: "I've worked as a computer systems professional all of my adult life. I have never done anything else. In recent years, I have had the opportunity to contract for several major companies (the largest and most well-known) in the area... My only protection against routine 90-hour workweeks was my overtime rate; in some cases it meant the difference between going home at all some nights...We are already exploited and worked extreme limits; denying overtime pay for overtime work would lead us into a modern factory sweatshop, something that the Department of Labor and Industries is by law
>>required to protect its workers from suffering."
>
>Does this guy want some cheese with his whine? Give me a break. This guy is being paid mucho dollars, and choosing to work as a contractor. He makes it sound like he has no alternatives!

"He"? That was a summary of research done at the University of Texas Dept of Education. I guess they wanted to know more about what kind of training needs to be done. Market research, if you will. If you saw any 'whining' in the article point it out.


>
>Forget the problem of jobs moving overseas. The biggest problem with this country is that we have become a bunch of whiners!

Ya, and the beatings will continue till moral improves!

If your life was spent in Textiles, steel, consumer electronics or at Enron you will find it hard to 'forget' as you ask "would you like fries with that?". If you are lucky and live to a ripe old age, you will find that as you get older it more difficult to get employment as a coder. As an independent consultant putative clients will view your experience as an expensive impediment. After all, how hard can coding be if Johnny Vunderkind, still a highschool senior, has written us this nifty little VB app and did it for peanuts? Besides, you know too much about management tactics, bennies, worker rights, etc...

>
>Interesting to note that he left out how much money these contractors make. I know someone here in Louisville who worked for MS. He was given the option of contracting or being permanent. He took contracting because the pay was sooooooooo good. This is apparently common as MS.

Just one?


>
>Either way, no one is forcing these people to work for MS. Check out dice.com, monster.com, etc. There are still plenty of jobs out there, despite the recession.

You are missing the point... diliberately? Does dice.com give a breakdown on the average age of programmers that are hired?


>
>>"The unemployment rate, nationally, for programmers in their 50s is 17 %. And this doesn't even touch on those who have already left the field for other (and less green) pastures."
>
>Did the source say why? Maybe, just maybe because they are using tools no longer in demand?

Do you use tools that are no longer in demand? Why would you assume that other don't do the same simply because they can no longer find employement?


>
>>When does the sky fall? When you get older and are not so impressionable.
>
>I am pretty in tune with the face that there are no guarantees in life. You aren't bound by law to work for the same company all your life, just the same as they are not bound to keep you all your life. It's a business arrangement. They don't pay you because they like you, they pay you because you provide a service. And when they stop paying you, you move on. And by the way, there is no Santa Claus. < vbg >

You move on to where? Your too old (read: not so bright any more), too expensive, and you would raise their group health insurance premiums too much.


>
>I may have missed it, but I did not see you address this point:
>
>>>On a further note, since you, Jim, and I are all in the computer field, how many jobs have we cut by producing software that does the work people use to do?

I will address it. People and companies switched to computerized books and paid to have new applications created because of the promise of doing more with the same number of people, or doing the same work with fewer people. The promise of a paperless office also was also part of the Nirvana that the computer promised.

In one contract I had, with a small private college, the President said "I want a lean, mean system." Meaning the ability to do more with fewer people.

In particular, notice that my software, and I think yours may be included, did not discriminate against workers based on their age. And, in 20 years of consulting, I can think of only one location where the number of employees were reduced because of my accounting software: from 5 to 2. In the other contracts employment stayed the same or actually increased. Why the increase?

"Governments and the general public are spending a fortune on computers, but the real potential of the new technology has remain largely unrealized: that's the hard-hitting message of the latest to join others in criticizing the computer. There's a huge gap between what is promised and delivered by computers: seldom-used features, obsolete designs, and difficult learning curves plague the systems."

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:tSnJhMomCmMC:www.crito.uci.edu/itr/publications/pdf/COMPUTERS-BOOSTING-PROD.PDF+computers+help+productivity%3F&hl=en


Twenty four years ago I purchased an Apple computer to solve the problem of classroom cheating. My solution worked because I was technically competent to write it myself. Most teachers were not and are not. Then, I dreamed of how computer assisted education would advance in the next quarter of a century. Five years ago, in a brief return to teaching (another field for which access by older people is difficult), I saw what the passing of 20 years had done for education: NOTHING. Many of the PCs were twenty years old, and the newer machines had nothing on them except Office. Computer curriculums consisted of learning how to use word processors, spreadsheets and presentation software. The aids to learning in the sciences have hardly progressed beyone the point they were at when I left teaching in 1980. Only the most wealthy private schools can afford educational learning systems that are effective. In general, computers in education are a waste except for web research, which is becoming increasingly more difficult as education content is being pulled and trashy storefronts and porn poliferate.