[wplug] Best mid-life career advice

Bryan J Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org
Wed Sep 5 12:48:26 EDT 2007


Self-motivated, but in "what direction?"

I've seen countless technologists, technicians as well as scientists
motivated only by their own, professional interests,
and not in the greater, capitalist endeavor of their employers.
Now some may argue it is the job of their managers to do that.
But I've also seen a lot of people "create work for themselves."
I.e., the number of IT personnel I've met that lack basic scripting know-
how is not only staggering, but they will gleefully do manual tasks
repeatedly, justifying not only their jobs, but turning around and
complaining they are "over-worked."

And if you can't read into that, understand this is one of
my "pet peeves" as an engineer, especially when comparions are made.
Engineering programs typically include 2 years (4 semesters) of
microeconomics.  At least MIS majors also get that as well,
although I would (arrogantly) argue their risk analysis and other
skills may be analytically deficient in comparison (but I'm biased ;).


--  
Bryan J Smith - mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  
http://thebs413.blogspot.com  
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile  
    

-----Original Message-----
From: Burt E Reany <breany at csc.com>

Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 10:32:11 
To:General user list <wplug at wplug.org>
Subject: Re: [wplug] Best mid-life career advice


Hypothesis:
    Our field tends to attract self-motivated people, who can't believe
that someone is actually paying them to play with their expensive toys. The
degree is only a hunting license for a paycheck; once we get past HR, we
build because WE LOVE IT!!!.


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             Neal Sofge                                                    
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> I think it's the exact opposite, we've pissed away our competitive
> edge.

OK, so why can we continue operating, then?  What's paying the bills?


--
Neal Sofge, Web Technology Analyst
RAND Corporation <http://www.rand.org/>



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