Backup Career Plan
Yesterday I had a worrying phone call from Paul The Plasterer. He was due here to finish off some bits from the work he did last week. It turns out that working here has finished him off and his future as a plasterer is in doubt.
He was hoping an injection of cortisone would have sorted his tennis elbow out, but now has to wait for Friday to see what the physio has to say. This is obviously worrying for him, but also for me, as I now have to find another plasterer at short notice. Not as easy as it might sound.
Apparently Paul's plan, should the worst happen, is to return to his previous career as a lorry driver. This got me thinking what my plan might be should I need a new career for whatever reason — loss of all fingers, memory loss etc.While I think I'd enjoy lots of the trades — electrican, plasterer, plumber, Jake-of-all-trades — I've come to enjoy the remuneration of a career in IT. Luckily for us there's little that can happen which would mean the end of our careers. Saying that though it's always worth having a backup plan.
What's your backup plan?
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Well, I hope to get on Dragons Den one day with a mind-blowing invention - if only I could find one ! Truth is, we'd had a very good decade with notes, and the present/future requirements are java/ eclipse/ jboss / tomcat. The ONLY threat, is economic stagnation and outsourcing (china, india), but as projects get more complex, local knowledge becomes increasingly important - we can't export culture per se ! I've heard many a story about people getting burnt and switching careers only to regret the lack of funds after 4 or 5 years.
Given the amount of money in the trades, a plumber/decorator/handyman would seem to be the best way forward, however given the influx of foreign workers this could be a bad move.
Totally agree with the comments about the threats to Notes development, however we have spent 9 months trying to recruit a couple of high level Notes Developers in Chennai (India) and have failed to find any that come even close to the spec we are looking for. They all seem to have a good ground but Lotusscript, at least from those we have interviewed, does not seem to be a strong point, unsurprisingly the Web skills, HTML, Java/Javascript are well covered.
@gaz,
I applied for Dragon's Den with an idea. Got rejcted though. They thought I was taking the mickey when they saw my name.
In fact my idea was based around a Domino implementation of a website. It would take about 2/3 months to actually write if I had a team of about 3/4 developers - but it's something that would be useful to about 80% of all UK businesses.
As somebody who has never worked outside of the IT industry (I started at age 12, now aged 38) I would be at a real loss.
I've always fancied doing kinetic art. The sort of art which moves. Balls running around tracks. Either automated or via human interaction. Perhaps something with coathangers... after all those buggers seem to be breeding in my wardrobes. (^_^)
I think one of the worst things that could happen to a developer would be to go blind. However I would be interested to know if anyone has met a blind developer.
Dan. I've never met them, so I'm not sure, but I've seen the work of developers who I can only assume must be blind.
Dan,
In a land far far away (Norwich) at an insurance giant in that city (can you guess?) in 1991, one of my jobs was to support a mainframe development team - who had a partially sighted analyst/programmer. No problem - they had a braille reader attached to their workstation, and a keyboard embossed with braille characters.
I have, therefore, met and worked wth a blind developer. 80x25 character based admittedly.
I hate to think what happened when that team eventually adopted Notes as their document repository system.
Dan
I recalled seeing a website some time ago by a bloke who was blind and deaf. Light on layout and graphics as you would expect, but had content relevant to people with similar circumstances.
If I became blind, my backup plan is to be Project Manager. At least this is how it works in my company.
.:.. ...:.: :.::`:.` My backup plan? Whenever I go to a Home Depot or just about anywhere, I always get asked questions from people thinking that I work at the place. The odd part is that I give them the correct answer as I usually know where the items are. So I figure that I'll go and work at Home Depot if I'm looking to keep busy. That forklift could be a problem if I'm blind. Hmmm I guess the paint section would be out too.
I have a recomendation for your friend who has tennis elbow (tendonitis) . I too suffered from cronic tendonitis from lifting weights and, after years of suffering, was ready to get a cortison shot. Then I stumbled across an over-the-counter miracle cure. It's called colloidal. You can get it online or in most health stores. It's simply a bunch of trace minerals in a liquid. I was taking it for general health and found that after a week of taking it my tendonitis went a way. Now it's gone for good.
Of course, I can't ganantee that it will work for you friend, but it did for me and is worth a try.
I'm probably in the same list as you Jake... Plasterer (albeit slow), electrician, carpenter, mason. I could enjoy being a grounds keeper on a nice estate. Foreign labor would be a killer there as well.
It's a bad legacy we have created... unwilling to work in trades our fathers did because they don't pay as well... but they don't pay as well because the foreign labor comes in and takes the jobs we don't want to do and the do it for less money.
My backup is in progress... I'm slowly migrating from development to project managment. If IT dies for whatever reason after that, I figure I can go be a general contractor and have a bunch of hombre`s working for me building houses.
Well.. I don't really have a backup plan as I have only actually been in the workforce for 9 months. I'm a recent Graduate :^)
My (dream) backup plan is to win the lottery and spend the rest of my life doing things that people with lots of money do..
.. except that will never happen because I am usually to cheap to by a ticket...
Hopefully I will stay at the company I am at for the next 30+ years and work my way up to a manager of some sort.
"except that will never happen because I am usually to cheap to by a ticket"
For "cheap" read "intelligent". Lottery is money down the drain. The odds are waaaay too stacked in favour of the house. Much like gambling. The lottery is the original intelligence tax.
Talking of Fathers' trades - my Father ran his own business selling Fish Pools, plants and breeding fish (mostly Koi Carp). He was so successful that he even sold the fish back to the Japanese. Now my parents have retired and they're now known as SKI's - Spending Kids' Inheritance. Guess I'm going to be working a damn sight longer. (^_^)
@ Dragon
lol! yes.
Inheretance == lotteryticket == social security (US) != reliable retirement planning
Smart money is on living below your means, always, and packing away your IT income to retire on. The mentality of simple survival being acceptable has insulated my nerves against worry on a number of occasions when employment was temporarily suspended... though I do eventually get crabby at the prospect of having to sell someting I am fond of to pay bills (like my apple orchard lot next door -- which is my real retirement plan).
I've been directing some of the retained earnings of my company (which is basically just me) into revenue producing real estate. The plan is to slowly (faster with joint ventures) work our way up the market to the point where we have enough income coming in from real estate that I don't have to work to pay the bills. I'll just do the projects that interest me or that I think will have the most benefit to society.
Alternative carreer choice?
That depends on why I would need to pursue another career. If it's because of the lost use of a limb that prehibits me from using a computer effeciently, then that same disability would limit my choices of other careers also. I am trained in commercial painting and irrigation, but without use of both arms/hands those would probably we out also.
It's a scary thought actually. From extensive use of the mouse I have developed carpal tunnel in my mouse-hand. I often have to baby that hand and use the keyboard more, or mouse with my left hand. This has caused me to think about the matter of not being able to use the computer the same way as I used to. Not fun!
Become a monk. My wife might object, though.
Jake,
I think we all should worry about "backup" plans, even without considering a catastrophe like loss of vision or loss of memory. I think it is difficult for developers to stay at the top of their skills for a long period of time. I am sure that in 10 years time I will have a lot more problems adapting to new technologies, and I am sure my creativity is going to suffer as well.
Plus, don't you get cold chills thinking that someday either Notes or IT in general will die out? As far as I see it there is a lot of work we currently do which is completely unecessary in an optimized world. Think about having to code for different browsers - what a sad waste of human brains... Or take skills necessary as a Notes developer. A lot of the experience is knowing that extra little bit of information which is badly documented, or knowing in which version which method is buggy. In an optimized world, most of the work we do would be a doddle.
Aaah. The world was simpler for our parents. Big fatherly company taking care of you, expanding population, the pill and no AIDS....
While I won't go back into my Home Depot career option just yet, I do however want to pass on a little tidbit that I found while playing with the OpenView command.
Apparently you can specify the UntilKey= parameter with the StartKey= parameter within the OpenView command as well and it works as expected (as if it was a valid parameter for this command) :) . I thought that I would give it a try as I wanted a better incremental search limiting the returned rows only to matches. The ReadViewEntries command had the UntilKey= parameter and I couldn't see why it shouldn't be included in the OpenView command. This undocumented behaviour has my Ajax lookup working great and I don't get the extra unwanted rows.
I searched around to see if this has been previously documented, but all UntilKey= parameters refer to the ReadViewEntries command.
Now off to Home Depot... (you just can't have enough 18V cordless tools) :)
My backup career plan is 'revolutionary guerillero' in some african or south american country where the shiny climate will be good for my poor health. Also this will be a rare opportunity for becoming a charismatic visionary leader admired by multitudes (which is not exactly the case of my current position as an IT project leader). Another possibility is religious guru but I've heard they sometimes have concerns with the tax departments.
@re: blind developers.
Back in 97 at Stafforshire University UK we had a lecturer who started a module called "groupware" for a semester. He was born-blind but hold a PHD in Computing.
The down side is that he tried to give a practical class in addition to the lecture where students would put their hands on a application called "Notes", the result was that knowing Notes from a work experience the year before I offered to spend a few hours with him to describe him the screen and dialog box that I was seeing but he missed sinc his books translated in Braille and vocal synthetiser did not mention.
I ended up to write my first piece of training and it was a great experience to work closely with a blind person in a field I could have never imagine to be compatible : IT.
A few years later I saw my lecturer name as being one of the first blind holding a CLP certif.
I always fancied being a porn star, myself..
Re: porn star
It appears I am! I took part in the London World Naked Bike Ride earlier this year & was rather surprised to be told that a video of this was being sold on some porn site. Ha! One of my teenage fantasies achieved!
As an insurance, I have ever thought of buying flats, and living with their rents. This is what people do in Turkey.
Taking into account my parents and in-laws' inheritance, to preserve my standarts of living, I have to buy 2 flats more, than it is OK.
By the way four of them are fine, and I want them to live happily and healty for years. :-) As for myself it won't be easy to buy these two flats.
Then, as without a job, life will be boring, I want to translate books from English to Turkish. The books I like, not the books the publishers want. Not Dan Brown, but Chuck Palahniuk. :-)
The other version of the story is to own a shop that has rare customers and that sells something rare. I mean the idea of having a shop is not the thing. The idea of waiting for void is the thing. Meanwhile I can be reading books, playing computer games and making programs for my fun. etc.
The idea of being a porn star is also compelling, but it is not like as it seems on TV.
The Dragon's Den is actually not far from the best 'backup plan' you can possibly have. The key is to remove yourself from whatever equation that you use to make money.
Here's a methodolgy:
1) Use your software development skills to create a product that other people/companies want to use.
2) Then, rather than building for a specific company for consultancy money, simply sell a licence to them to use it on an installed or hosted model.
3) Then create a small business around the product that goes out and repeats this process as many times as possible.
4) Now employ some staff to do the selling job for you whilst you continue to develop the product.
5) Then employ some staff to do the development job for you.
6) You are no longer required - go on holiday, do up the house, create a different product with your spare time.
@Dragon Cotterill
I am well aware I will never win.. haha.. My $2 is definately better spent on something else.. The only time I buy a ticket is when its at 50 million.. you know.. just to keep the dream alive.. :^P
@michael - I've used &untilkey= with OpenView for a while, but I can't remember where I read about it (I sure as heck didn't figure it out on my own)
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hi jake and dev friends,
i have worked as an IT contracter in a variety of different roles {not iin order} notes / domino develper,vb developer, web developer, network / project manager, support person, tea maker over the past 20 odd years. however, after the grand old age of 40 you are apparently, according to a number of IT agents... finished! and not able to cut it anymore (they call it not a team fit).
ridiculous i know but true (the last time i tried to get work), athough i am now also a qualified electrician, corgi gas engineer and teacher, i still love writing C# programs and am planning a web site for later this year... i like all aspects of engineering, but love working in IT regardless of the financial rewards. (sometimes $0.00)
my point is, if you are working on a backup plan then make sure you like or even better love your backup plan, as you maybe doing it for a long time....
(this note was written on my pda, please excuse any typos)
best regards
glyn.
p.s jake, i maybe buying a wreck of a house which has been unloved for 20 years ... any nuggets of advice most gratefully received.