I see what you're saying, and if they're being paid $40k a year and they are happy and their bosses are happy god bless them all, but i don't seem t them as collegues and i have no sympathy for them if their job goes poof and they are selling shoes.
It's like being a lawyer who doesn't read law revues or a doctor who doesn't read medical journals or keeps updating his skills. I don't want him working on me and i don't see he had a future outside of socialized medicine.
If somebody has the stones to ask for >$100 an hour he better be putting in some effort to bring the best he can to solve his clients' problem.
Employees who only work within minimum job requirements and have no intellectualy curiosity beyond and have jobs that allow that are probably in the right place - and should stay there.
>SNIP
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>>Though it does make you wonder how serious developers are if they are not buying books, subscribing to mags, attending conferences or participating in the on-line stuff. I know a few "developers" in that category and I find it hard to take them seriously and find their skills *really* sub-standard.
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>I agree with Tamar that those who we see here/there aren't even the tip of the iceberg.
>But I write because I think that your characterization is unfair. There are lots of people - developers - who "have a life" outside of their work. There are lots of developers who don't "need" all of the add-ons that we make use of. They are content to dig/try things and learn what works and what doesn't.
>Just as any business has its "driven" folk and their "regular" folk, so our business does too. You can be reasonably certain that those we encounter regualrly on forums or at conferences are the "driven" types.
>Take any industry... let's say banking. There are people in that busines who live and breathe the whole business, buying periodicals and books, attnding conferences and conventions, communication in their own forums, etc. But the vast vast vast amjority of the employess come in at 8 and leave at 5 and don't give the business a single thought in the time between. Now they may not rise to be the president of the bank, but does that make them sub-standard or hard to take seriously?
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>Jim
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>>
>SNIP
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
