New to the support group

"JayJay" wrote in message
...

giggle... I remember being in 5th grade and getting my first pc - Apple
IIe w/ dual floppies. I learned basic or whatever it was called back
then - but it basically was basic.

I've always been a PC person, so if you want to call an Apple a PC, I'll
certainly understand.... : )

Martha

Ignoramus26794 wrote in
:

In article ,
OceanView wrote:
Dally wrote in
:

OceanView wrote:

So enthusiasm has nothing to with it. The job market has
simply vanished.

I agree with this. I sincerely doubt you'll ever get a 90K
job coding Fortran on the 128 Strip. Wang isn't hiring,
Digital isn't hiring... your career went away.

I used to be an Ada programmer for a defense contractor. I
got out in '93 and re-careered into being a CPA.

You're 50, overweight, unemployable, with a social phobia
(does that mean a nasty personality?) and your plan is to keep
doing the same thing over and over again until it starts
working again? I know that's cruelly put, but part of what we
do in this newsgroup is point out that the things that aren't
working for you are precisely the ones that need to be
changed.

Can you name three things you could do differently?

Dally


I'm not "unemployable" as you so tactfully put it. And I'm not
the dinosaur Fortran programmer. (Thanks Christ for that).
I've done Oracle and Access, I can do object modelling, use
cases and most of the modern stuff. I'm a little behind on web
programming, but I can do perl, ASP, Frontpage and so on. I
know you enjoy put-downs and hate being wrong, but in this case
you are. It's simply supply and demand issue, but the demand
is weak and most of the supply is coming from overseas (which
should be illegal, IMO).

I'm working on the overweight issue and making good progress
(235, started at 255), and at 6'3 I don't really have far to
go. I workout 6 days a weak. That's action I' taking and I
don't need to change. I'm not quite 50, but there's not much I
can do about that.

On one point, I agree: the job thing isn't working and I so
despise the industry (which is very youth oriented
anyway--iteresting surverys on realrates.com), I don't want to
work in it anyway. I just need to STOP the BLEEDING so I can
find something else. It's literally impossible to think cleary
when you're losing everything.

Regarging social phobia. You're calling *me* nasty. Read your
posts honey. I'm nasty to people who are nasty with me first.
Here's a challenge for you: Find ONE post of mine where I weas
nast first. I can sae you the time because you won't find one.

BTW, socia-phobia is a very serious, and much more common
condition that you think (listed in the DSM-IV since 1979). I
would not be overweight if I didn't have it. (It's often
confused with post- traumatic-stress-disorder) Visit the
alt.support.social-phobia group if you want to know more, but
I'm guessing you won't. Apparently you aready know everything.

Ho OV, Dally is genuinely trying to be helpful, in a way that
she finds most efficient. She does not get a kick out of
insulting people like certain other posters do. She does possess
what can be called either bluntness, or lack of tact. I have the
same problem. Sometimes people who up here whose main goal is to
build a great framework for denying reality. Then that framework
is questioned, they blow up like I was going to take away their
virginity or something.

If my previous message was not interpreted by you correctly, I
will be clearer. I suggest that you lie on your resume to make
it more appealing. Just make sure that you really have the
skills that you list in your experience. Omit a few past
employers, etc.

I do not lie on my resume because I do not need to, but in
situations like yours, it is quite morally acceptable.

i


Thanks, i. Dally is generally helpful, though there are some
things people don't understand about me and I'm fairly sensitive
about when people trivialize them.

Anyway, I'm *already* lying on my resume, like most people! I'l
have to come up with more creative, desirable lies, or truths
respun!

"That T Woman" wrote in
:


"OceanView" wrote in message
...
"JayJay" wrote in
:


"OceanView" wrote in message
...
(Jayjay) wrote in
:

Have you considered working with your local employment
agencies for a job replacement/retraining in order to find
something new?


That's a thought.

I won't bore you with all the details, but I started on
mainframes in the mid-70's, did "mini's" for a while, Apple
II, PC's yada yada yada. I started in applications, did
systems program for a few years, then systems software, then
sort of full circle back to PC gui-database development. I
figured out once that I've learned more than 50 computer
languages! I've worked on more than 10 different database
systems, let's see if I can remember them (SQL/DS, DB2,
Paradox, Dbase (I,II,II,IV), F-Risk (one that I wrote),
Model204, Oracle, Access, SQL-Server, MySql, and probably a
few can't remember!


Gosh, with a history like that, I can't believe you aren't
into web development in some shop somewhere. Or DB admin.

Is it because of location? would relocating be an option?
Then again, is it also age related - especially with the IT
generation pumping out so many young guns. Even I am feeling
old these days and i'm only 32.

Sherman, set the way-back machine. The year, 1976. What I
started on:

Ok Mr. Peabody. I loved that show - and it was so
educational too!


IBM 370-145:
Size: about 9 refrigerators
Cost: $2.1 million
Memory: 256k (yes, k), 200k added at $500,000 (another 2
fridges) 5 disk drives, capacity 230 meg each (5 washing
machines) Input: IBM 2501 Hollorith Card reader (80 column
punch cards) Output: IBM 1403 printer, 3 pages per minute
(on a good day) Tape drives: 2
Monitors/workstations: 0 (real programmers don't need
monitors) OS: IBM OS/VS1, 5 partitions




I've a little Web stuff, but basically I've become an old fart
and I don't want to start-over yet again--doing the same basic
thing (if/then/else). If I have to do that, and apparently I
do, I want to do something totally new, like lion-taming!

I mad a promise to myself about 15 years ago that I would NOT
be writing if/then/else for a living when I'm 50. I may be
saying "want fries with that?" though.

You've probably got me blocked but I have one more suggestion.
You mentioned being rejected by three temp agencies. Did they
straight out tell you that they couldn't use you or say they'd
call you if anything came up? It's been my experience working as
a temp that you have to bug the bejesus out of some of them
before they put you on their list of folks that they actually
call. Here Snelling is bad about having a few favorites who get
all the assignments. I would call them everyday and ask "Are
there any assignments I could do?" I finally got to where I was
a favorite. Make sure that they know that you'd take typist and
filing assignments or general clerical too.

Btw, don't consider moving to Santa Fe, NM. DH wanted to get a
job teaching there at the Indian School (that's unpc but that's
what they call it) and after pricing the housing, rentals and
for sale, decided we couldn't afford to live there on anything
less than $100,000 a year!

Tonia





Thanks, I'll have to bug them. They tell me to check in once a
week, but say they don't have anything. Frankly, I ahte doing
that, but I'll do what I have to. Thanks for tip on Santa Fe. I'm
beginning to think all the major US cities are becoming too
expensive to live in.

Ignoramus26794 wrote in
:

Times have changed a lot, but three years ago I was getting 3-5
calls per week when I wasn't looking, so my resume can't be
*that* bad. I've actually rewritten it twice in the last year
and often rewrite pieces of it on the fly for particular jobs.
Same result.

can you post it, sans your name and employers names?

i

I've pretty much decided to scrap it and look for something else. I
had an actual phone interview on Friday. Thirty seconds into it I
knew that once again, they wanted sombody current on the technology
of the week. I've just had enough. And as if I needed more
reasons, read on. Note my double asterisks**

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Outsourcing white-collar jobs to low-wage
countries such as India and China has thrown some Americans out of
work, but a new report predicts that the trend will ultimately
lower inflation, create jobs and boost productivity in the United
States.


The Information Technology Association of America, in a survey set
for release Tuesday, acknowledges that the migration of tech jobs
to low-paid foreigners has eliminated 104,000 American jobs so far,
nearly 3 percent of the positions in the U.S. tech industry.

**Software engineers have been particularly hard hit. Researchers
at Global Insight Inc., which prepared the report for the ITAA,
predicted that demand for U.S. software engineers would shrink
through 2008.

But ITAA leaders emphasized that outsourcing has damaged the job
market far less than the dot-com meltdown of early 2000, when
Internet startups, telecom companies and other companies eliminated
as many as 268,000 positions.**

"The myth is that we've started this long decline into the midnight
of the technology work force," ITAA president Harris Miller said.
"This report shows that, assuming the recovery continues, the
number of IT jobs will actually increase."

Indian programmers earn roughly one-sixth the $60,000 U.S. average,
and Chinese engineers earn even less.

Outsourcing dramatically reduces labor costs, allowing companies to
sell goods ranging from software to tax-preparation services at
lower costs or higher profit margins. Greater profits theoretically
allow companies to buy new equipment, build laboratories and
conduct scientific experiments -- even in expensive Silicon Valley
and other U.S. tech hubs.

Savings from outsourcing allowed companies to create 90,000 new
jobs in 2003, with more than one in 10 of them in Silicon Valley or
elsewhere in California, researchers said. The report predicts that
in 2008, outsourcing will create 317,000 jobs -- 34,000 in
California.

Companies spent $10 billion last year to outsource jobs ranging
from medical transcription to nanotechnology research. The ITAA
predicted the companies would spend $31 billion in 2008.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry introduced economic
proposals Friday that he said would reduce the sting for outsourced
workers. More than two dozen states are considering bans on
outsourcing government contracts.

Such legislation would be "protectionist" and "unwise," according
to the ITAA, whose 500 members include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-
Packard Corp. and Amazon.com.

But Cynthia Kroll, senior regional economist at the University of
California, Berkeley, said policy makers can't afford to ignore
outsourcing.

"If R&D is coming out of India, will the next wave of growth bypass
us entirely?" Kroll asked. "We need to pay attention to what India
and China and these other countries are doing to get these new
rounds of investment."