[ale] OT: Sun Treasoning

[Robert Heaven]

Fulton is correct... This recession is no different than the one we 
(older guys) experienced in the mid 1980's. During the late 70's and 
early 80's, I was a software developer doing real-time software in 
assembly language. (pre-C days) And, I was the hottest thing on the 
market and could name my own price. (and I did several times)

That was before the economic downturn, and the IBM dumping of the PC's. 
I got caught in those layoffs and spent 5 months unemployed in 1986 and 
another 7 months unemployed in 1987. (two different periods) I 
eventually wound up having to take a job in Technical Sales Support just 
to pay the bills. Needless to say, I never did get to go back into 
software development, (too many changes in programming languages, etc.) 
but I have made it back into unix sysadmin and application support and 
spend allot of time writing perl scripts. (and loving it) The moral of 
the story is, your life will change from time to time. Just go with the 
flow and try to stay alive.

To understand these economic cycles, you have to understand taxes. huh?

Yes, taxes... Every market segment (across all industries) has cycles 
and these cycles are (primarily) based on the 7 year tax write-off. 
(actually this varies from 5 to 10 years depending on the equipment) 
When a company buys a piece of equipment, they will write that cost off 
their taxes over the average 7 year period. When you're working for an 
equipment vendor (which is where most software developers work) and 
you're selling in a saturated market (i.e., no new customers), once 
you've sold to a particular customer, they will not replace that 
equipment until they have completely written that off thier taxes.

During the period of 1995 to 2000, almost every company in the world 
grossly over-spent on computer equipment and software in anticipation of 
Y2K. Consequently, in 2000 they all stopped spending and the lay-offs began.

So, if you can survive (physically) and keep up your skill sets for 
another 2-3 years, you should start seeing an upturn in the IT industry. 
Remember, the IT industry is NOT going away (like the steel industry) 
because 99% of all industries and businesses are now critically 
dependant on computers to conduct their day-to-day business. The job 
descriptions will change from time to time but, the needs of the 
customer will always be there.

-Robert

Fulton Green wrote:
> Did anyone happen to catch the Slashdot interview with the semi-famous Linux
> kernel hacker Moshe Bar? One of the questions that came up was why, in
> spite of having a Ph. D. in computer science and notoriety in the open-
> source world, he was pursuing a law degree. His response was, basically,
> that he feared a point where several years from now he would get laid off
> and be unable to find another suitable job in technology. The same person
> asked him if he was going for a technology-related legal specialty, and he
> responded that was actually going to pursue mergers/acquisitions, which he
> said required more social networking than book smarts.
> 
> I guess the point I'm making is that in a recession, there wind up being a
> LOT of great people on the bench. Our country's future in technology could
> very well depend on whether or not and just how quickly these people can
> forgive the general economic climate that seems to continually discriminate
> against them in the name of the bottom line. In other words, are we going
> to see loads of people exiting technical jobs for more people-oriented
> positions, a la Moshe Bar? Or are these folks in it for the long-haul? One
> thing is certain: the market will eventually bounce back. Perhaps not to
> the dot-com bubble high, but it will be back.
> 
> Just my one share of Worldcom stock's worth ...
> 
> On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 03:48:47AM -0700, Bob Evans wrote:
> 
>>shortage. Hell, read this list. There are plenty of
>>smart programmers in the greater Atlanta area who are
>>on the bench. They can't get hired. Don't blame the
>>victims. It just doesn't make sense to me to allow
> 
> 
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