Hi Tom,

Thanx for the reply.

As for being in the industry under our own free will, indeed. I'm getting out, so are a great number of my old partners in crime. We're all tired of the stress, the death-march projects, the bad managers, the hyped up tools, the wild expectations, the egos, the politics and the insane pace of the industry at large. From what I can observe, if people are over 40 & have been in software/systems for more than 15 years, they're seriously working on getting out.

It's weird hearing other people I've known for years saying the same thing that I've been saying privately, that they're fed up, they'd rather do anything else for half the pay than suffer in software development or systems administration. The most disturbing observation of all that seems to be popping up: The industry's become totally cut-throat.

In the past few years I've worked my way into DB admin on clustered systems (Un*x) & I have seen a lot of abuse heaped upon others by avaricious and ambitious management teams who wouldn't give it a second's thought to blame-storm and lie to save their own asses. It used to be a consultant could speak out and be listened to. Rather than lose my self-respect or ruin the rest of my life for the sake of a lousy gig I've had to suffer the consequences of speaking out against bad project management.

A very experienced DBA I know said this: "The last thing I'm going to be thinking of when I'm lying on the sidewalk dying of a heart attack is how I could have put in more overtime."

Best regards,
/lee