"this economy" (was Re: [geeks] Ultra 2)

[geeks at sunhelp.org]

~ -----Original Message-----
~ From: Chris Byrne [mailto:chris at chrisbyrne.com]
~ 
~ Well Im in a similar situation. I just turned 25 today, but I 
~ was done with
~ college at the time when most people were just finished with 
~ high school,
~ and was working profitably in the scomputer business from the 
~ age of 14 on.
~ 
~ I'm lucky however in that I look and sound a lot older than I 
~ am, and always
~ have. I've never had a problem commanding an appropriate 
~ salary or wage. I
~ also have two degrees which tends to impress the HR drones. If anyone
~ questions my age I just pull a doogie houser and play up the boy
~ genius/whizkid factor, which once again impresses the HR 
~ drones. Anyone who
~ isnt impressed by that sort of thing probably appreciates my 
~ experience and
~ doesnt care how old I am.

This is a big relief for me to hear. When I was coming up in the industry
there was NO WORK for anyone over 40. It was well known that once you hit 40
you were viewed as inflexible, untrainable and full of strange mainframey
ideas. Now that I'm a few months from 40 I've been crapping pineapples. It
happened to my brother. He was a software engineer writing O/S's for Data
General and after 40 yrs old he got dumped and had to fight to get/keep any
jobs after that.

Now that we've grown beyond the idea that the PC will rule the world and
that mainframes/mini's are "old and rusty" we can value experience. Words
like uptime, availability, TCO and scaleability are back in our language.

I have frequently had to teach datacom/networking (btw, two different
things) to network admins. I start with synchronous bit-oriented protocols,
character protocols, multipoint circuits, the serial handshake lines, etc. I
then go through connetion-oriented and connectionless protocols, error
detection/correction, sliding window protocols, etc. THEN I get to the
7-layer model. Everyone stares at me like I'm from another planet until they
see how everything we do now is built on what we did then. Many young (born
in an ISP NOC) networkers think that anything before Novell Netware is
irrelavent. Experience counts, I think.