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Many people (not nearly all) on HN seem to live in some sort of bubble, where all they have to do to find another job is open up their email and carefully selec
by phaus 13y ago
Many people (not nearly all) on HN seem to live in some sort of bubble, where all they have to do to find another job is open up their email and carefully select the best option out of dozens of recruiting emails from the nation's largest companies.
Finding a job isn't easy for everyone. One thing that often accompanies technical ability is a distinct lack of social skills. Other people just suck at writing resumes and no matter how many peers and professionals review their resumes, they just don't seem to work. Some people excel in both areas yet have disproportionate amounts of bad luck.
I spent close to a decade in the military in an industry closely related to IT. I had also been playing around with computers for almost two decades. When I got out of the military I lived close to DC, the largest market for government contractors. I had a clearance, an outstanding performance record and an abundance of relevant experience. I started working on my resume a year from the time I was getting out of the military, and started applying for jobs almost immediately. My problem wasn't that I failed during interviews, I just simply couldn't get an interview to save my life. Throughout this entire time, I kept having professionals and friends alike review my resume. I still couldn't find a job in the one part of the world where it should be easy to find a government job.
Eventually I moved to a new location, taking the first shitty job that was offered to me, working for a government agency. That job eventually fell through, but I now hold a position at a similar agency. Before I found the job, I was days away from running out of the money that I had saved up while I was still in the military. When I started at my second civilian position, I was once again days away from running out of money. If I lost this job, I'd probably be completely fucked. I have a wife and children, so I don't really have the option to live on a friend's sofa eating ramen noodles every day, so I have to work.
That's not to say I'm unhappy, I just find it laughable how often people act like changing jobs is such a trivial affair on HN.
As far as the moral implications go, I believe in the underlying mission of my organization (which is not the NSA). I don't always believe in the higher-level policies or the programs that they implement to achieve those goals, but I feel that we should strive to change those things through the political process, even though its broken.
Hell, it's not like anyone should be surprised at everything that got leaked, I've been reading in the news for over a year that the NSA has been building one of the world's largest data centers in Utah. The suspected purpose has always been claimed to be the warehousing of American communications, yet suddenly everyone decides to pay attention.
It's also important to note that there is a distinct difference between responsible disclosure and delivering sensitive information to Assange/China/Russia/etc.
- serf 13y agoThe idea of considering your job trivial is a benefit, and computer development has the succinct ability to share efforts amongst a huge area of disciplines, and thus it is that a hackers career is largely 'hot-swappable' around the world. I'm the son of a man who stayed at an engineering job for 25 years. This is his largest regret, as it pigeon-holed him into the mentality that he was incapable of applying his vast talents elsewhere in the engineering field. As such, the company that he pledged allegiance to made every effort to keep his pay and benefits below the industry standard, and this was made possible by the environment he hired himself into initially. Computer development is one of the few jobs that you can seriously apply yourself at no matter where you are in the world. Why not take advantage of that fact? Responsibilities are another problem. It's a personal issue if you've decided to burden yourself financially with children, a mate, and things that are generally seen as the normal routine of adulthood, but that, like I said, is a personal issue that must be dealt with on a person to person basis. As for those with technical ability being more likely to also have social problems -- how is limiting the exposure to interviews and social interactions exactly going to help improve the individual we're talking about? It's important to be flexible. To defend a position by saying that person X is deficient too much in this way to have the means to get job Y so he must do job Z is a recipe for disaster. Social interactions are practiced, and the assertion that we should dissuade those that lack in experience from practice is wrong, in my opinion. Of course , there are legitimate roadblocks in social psychology that could prevent them from landing a job with no fault of the person, but if they got that initial job it means someone saw something in them that they related to value, and if that happens once it can happen again for them. No reason to think that anyone, ever, is stuck.
- phaus 13y ago>As for those with technical ability being more likely to also have social problems -- how is limiting the exposure to interviews and social interactions exactly going to help improve the individual we're talking about? It's important to be flexible. To defend a position by saying that person X is deficient too much in this way to have the means to get job Y so he must do job Z is a recipe for disaster. Social interactions are practiced, and the assertion that we should dissuade those that lack in experience from practice is wrong, in my opinion. I never suggested not trying or giving up. I was simply relating that for such people its often extremely difficult to find a job. The fact that I keep trying is the only reason I'm not living in my car right now.