Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations SkipVought on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

dot-com resentment 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

chiph

Programmer
Jun 9, 1999
9,878
0
0
US
Anyone encounter any dot-com resentment since the crash?
Or is it more gloating?

What can be done to minimize either?

Chip H.
 
mmorancbt,

I think there is where a lot of the present resentment in the "IT ranks" comes from. As you experienced in that SAP deployment a lot of "pretenders" were brought in during the 90s. In many cases those with real credentials and experience who could deliver real results easily exposed these Emperors Sans Threads.

Corporate management should have learned their lessons either from failed projects or when their own staff demonstrated what charlatans many of these people were. The problem is that at high levels of management the thought process doesn't work that way. In a sense they are busy worrying that somebody may notice that they have no clothes themselves. When a vendor fails, they may choose to blame the vendor or keep shoveling out cash in the hope their decision to hire the outfit will pan out. If a staffer shows how bad a vendor or consultant is, this is taken as an attack on the decision-maker who hired the guys.

The end result is that those capable in the field have either been ostracised for their "attacks", or lumped in with the incapable with a broad brush as "crummy IT people anyway."

It appears that you have made a strong effort to help IT folk try to learn how to deal better with upper-level business people on their level. Different approaches, a different communication style, and a good deal of "standing in the business person's shoes" is being asked of IT people. I have to believe that those who get good at this will be more successful in negotiating for jobs, raises, the projects they want, and so forth.

But why is so much being asked of relatively low paid technical people and so little being asked of these much better compensated "Captains of Industry?" Many of us in the field never reaped any special rewards during the 90s boom. There were a couple of crunch-times like Y2K and consolidation efforts that resulted in some overtime pay, but I wasn't working with anybody who saw their pay go from $50K to $90K in the 90s.

I feel there was and is an enormous management failing at least here in the U.S. It is time that upper management stopped blaming technical people for their failures. It is also time that they learn some people skills, and realize that few of the staff who toil in their organizations live, work, or think like they do. After all, who is really getting the big bucks and thus the responsibility?

So I think that technical people are tired of being beaten up for the excesses of the .com era. Few of us were part of that anyway, and those of us who were usually weren't the ones making the hiring decisions.

Those closer to the top have their own albatrosses dangling from their necks. Look at Enron and other recent events.

But I don't expect a turnaround from these people. So most of your advice seems highly practical to me. Unfair, but life has never been fair.
 
Yep, the unqualified who were dragged in the door by a relative or a relative's golf buddy are nearly as numerous as the fakers and pretenders.

Yes, I saw a lot of the same thing in the early 80's. At the time, video games were huge, and everyone wanted to write the next "Galaga" or "Pac Man". All these dreamers hit the computer science classes, and landed with a thud, once they discovered that it was hard work, and involved punch cards and 24x80 terminals.

Flash forward to 1998.

The difference was that the tools had improved to where the average Joe off the street could produce a web page that looked pretty decent. Of course, it didn't talk to any sort of back-end database or product fullfillment system...

You can also make comparisons to how Lotus 1-2-3 allowed young finance guys to convince the boss that a leveraged buyout of other companies was a good idea, since they'd pay all that corporate debt back within 2 years. The tools got better, which allowed people (who had no business using them) to get their companies in financial trouble.

Chip H.
 
I had started this thread after overhearing some people talking in the movie theater - one said to another: "I guess all those dot-com slackers will have to get a real job now".

Which kind of cheesed me off.

I had the opportunity to go start a company with some other guys, but I realized that it didn't have any legs - they would be out of money rather quickly. So I turned them down. I was the ant, not the grasshopper.

Chip H.
 
chiph: See, and me being who I am, I probably would have entered the conversation by asking, in a slightly disdainful tone, for further definition of the term "dot com slackers". Then again I am relatively new to the field, so I will probably have to wait about 15 years before anyone would bother considering that I have any skill.

My probalem isn't just the dot com bust and everything that came with that, but more specifically the fact that internally it seems IT people (I really dislike the label IT, but will stick with it to cut down on confusion) look down on recent entrants to the field in the same fashion. Yes I graduated from college relatively recently (1.5 years ago), yes I saw a lot of people that shouldn't have been in the field, but how does this necessarally define me as not up to par in Programming and other related fields?

I did not gradutae at top of my class for the CS program, I didn't have the time, I was doing full time design and development while I was going to school as well as leading unofficial Q and A sessions for the people who were getting the top grades. I graduated with over 10 languages in my repertoire as either things that I had an advanced knowledge of or had spent time at least learning the basic concepts and structure of. Yes I wrote a basic OS that ran on a UNIX platform, yes I wrote my own compiler and lex and etc (two if you count the second one when I used lex and yacc to do a lot of the grunt work for me), yes I build my own computers, run my own home network, am capable of troubleshooting errors from minimal information, keep up to date with current developments, and spend a great deal of time outside of work learning more. Yes I have spent time on both large clusters and CRAY systems. Yes I am in this field because I love it and could not see working in anything else, except maybe cabinetry.

But in the end, in the IT field, anyone with less than 5 to 10 years since school is labelled as anything ranging from incompetent to inexperienced.

So we have the Managers you look down on the IT staff due to the dot com and other 80's and 90's growth and bust issues, but then we have the pre-90's IT people who look down on anyone from during this time. Maybe it's just easier to distrust an entire group than it is to actually evaluate an individuals actual skill level.

And BTW, I have reverse engineered some large programs written in the 80's, and from what I have seen the field had the same issues then with allowing un-qualified people to do work such as development work...nothing like a 10 page chunk of basic code floating around in the middle of the program with no line labels and an if then statement preceding it with conditional gotos, forcing the program to skip the entire aforementioned 10 page section...then again, maybe that heat rate and imminent boiler over-pressure warning wasn't necessary...

-Tarwn

[sub]01010100 01101001 01100101 01110010 01101110 01101111 01101011 00101110 01100011 01101111 01101101 [/sub]
[sup]29 3K 10 3D 3L 3J 3K 10 32 35 10 3E 39 33 35 10 3K 3F 10 38 31 3M 35 10 36 3I 35 35 10 3K 39 3D 35 10 1Q 19[/sup]
Get better results for your questions: faq333-2924
Frequently Asked ASP Questions: faq333-3048
 
dilettante,

I understand your perspective and it is well understood. I don't lay all the blame of the .dotgone era as problems with technologists. I mention in my article that business bought into the hype.

As you have pointed out, executive management should have seen it coming and to be honest, many did. Remember, not all companies or projects failed. Many, however, got "gold rush" fever and ended up with iron pyrite instead.

My admonish now is much more pragmatic and directed to technologists who want to get ahead. Remember, I view this current perspective by business (wary of technology) as a big positive for those who decide to, and work diligently at, becoming business savvy - in thought and speech.

This has always been the growth path for technologists. It has never been to stay a particular type of widget commodity technologists. Remember, in the dawing of the Windows era it was Cobol programmers starting to panic. I explained then, as I do now, that the application development tool you use is just that, a tool.

Don't define yourself by that but by the solutions you create; the innovation you bring to the table; and your solid ability to see the true need and understand the vision of the business/organization for which you work. You are then free to adopt any number of tools, finding the one most appropriate for you.

But to re-iterate. I don't view the current situation as unfair or fair - it simply is what it is. Provide the type of service and perspective I am speaking of, and look for comapnies that value that type of input and you can rapidly advance in your career.

And that is important also. If you work for a company that undervalues people and contribution in general, look elsewhere. Life is short and a significant amount of time is spent working - you might as well like both what you do and the environment in which you do it.

That's all.

Todo esta bien Todo esta divertido
"It's all good It's all fun!" - loose translation

Matthew Moran
 
Hey,

Sorry, I only read the first 10 or so posts but I had to make a comment! About the qualifications: Personally I don't think qualifications mean diddily squat. I have a MCP in Win2k Server. It means nothing. Its a joke. I spent a year and a half building a network from no experience in networking (although I was very knowledgeable about IT in general, e.g. hardware, software, general internet.) After getting this network up and running I decided that I really should get to know the software better and learn more about networks. Went on MCP 5 day course. Complete crap. I can't say I learnt anything new on that course at all. I took the exam and passed. Yet I've working in IT officialy for 1 1/2 years?
Experience and attitude IMHO are much more important that a piece of paper. Exams represent marketing spin posing as technical data.

Steve Hewitt
Systems Manager
 

you can only crash if you are going fast. reminds me of the movie 'colors' and the story the old cop tells sean penn about the bulls...

here goes:

two bulls are sitting up on the top of a hill overlooking a whole herd of cows. the young one tells the older one 'lets run down there and f*** one of them cows...the older one says no...'lets walk down there and f*** them all...

the point being if you think about what you are doing and let everyone else run blindly into the light, you will be able to prosper from the mistakes of others.

the internet is here to stay...perhaps not in its current form. but nonetheless, it's here. just like the telephone. not a fad, not a 'next best thing' either. we just need to understand how to let it mature at it's own pace and be willing to watch. the telephone provided a way for people to connect to eachother across the street or over great distances. it offered interactivity between parties but it's not smart business. it only encourages smart business.

i heard on the news last night that the 'dot coms' are coming back...ebay, yahoo, askjeeves, etc., are on the rise again. and then someone said there will be a 'double bubble' effect. anytime you bank your life on one thing, it will invariably be a dissappointment. not becuase it will fail, but rather the expectations will fail it.

the internet provides a 24-hour face for any business. it provides any small guy the opportunity to market his good at a substantially reduced cost to him, effectively and directly to consumers. but that's all it provides.

you still have real world problems with tangible goods over the internet. shipping, receiving, order taking, complaint management, returns, etc., are all complex issues that 'dotcommers' forgot about. that commercial that has three people excited about their business being on the web and on launch date, 100,000 orders came in. haha. that's funny.

however, if you think about it, you can run a successful operation for a mere fraction of the cost normally associated with a business. $10 for hosting and you learn all the programming yourself...what could be better?

learn the balance.

- g
 
I tend to agree, certifications anymore have become the
scourge of our industry. I was talking to a friend of
mine today, and he feels the same way (you spend endless
hours studying, working, etc, just to get a piece of
paper which MAY or MAY NOT be worth anything to a
potential employer).

I've also reached the conclusion that if employers can't
read a person's resume and see progressively responsible
work experience listed (and understanding it), I really
wouldn't want to work there :)
 
This article was on slashdot:

Below is an excerpt that I thought was pertinent to this discussion. Btw, I used to work at a CRM software company that made IP based call centers (one of the "formerly hot software products").
-Venkman

------------
But some analysts say the industry's problems go deeper. Customers already have all the technology products they need and software makers haven't come up with innovative new products to spur buying. Indeed, many are fed up after being aggressively sold complex systems that cost millions to install and did not deliver.

"There's a lot of backlash," said First Albany analyst Mark Murphy. As a result, sales of former "hot" software products, like those that automate human resources, accounting, call centers, and online purchasing have shrunk.
 
ITAA.org has revised job outlook for 2003 as soft (aka, no growth at all when downsizing is taken into effect).

A article in the Seattle Times:


where the AAUW (American Assoc. of Univ. Women) are complaining about the lack of women in I.T. as system analysts, software designers, and engineers.

Articles in news.com over india's software woes as demand for product softens (gee, has the bubble over there started to deflate)?

Now, all this aside, I suspect programming jobs will shift from innovation to maint. cycles, and this will turn the programming side of the house into doing less research and development.

Any comments?
 
Those are probably the only dotComs that are worth a damn.

I do like the point spewn makes in his/her post. I stuck with my current employer through out the entire boom, running on year 7 next month. Came to them when the whole thing started to go silly as worthless company after another with only a kewl web page to show for the investment started to go up left and right here in CA. After reading some of these posts, my field of education doesn’t even hold a candle to AIXSPadmin or Cajun, I just settled for a two year degree, and none of it ever involved Unix in any fashion. Yea, I had to program, found it simple, but didn’t like it to much. Mostly got frustrated because I could not afford any type of computer while I was in school, so I had to use class mates systems or school systems for my homework. . Found out at the end of half my classes that most of the students just copied my programs. So more than half of my graduating class for the two year program didn’t know what an IF THEN statement would do in a program, let alone how to rewrite an EXE file to a COM file. Yet they still got higher paying jobs at those dotJokes. I liked networking, but didn’t want to be stuck in a cubicle or work with just the same network day in and day out. I wanted to move around with having to do contract work or look for a job all the time. So after just a couple of bounces I found were I am at now. Mostly did work for law firms, but had on occasion did work for some of those dotCons. I annoyed the hell out of me to hear these guys boast about how high they pay checks were and how little work they actually did. I would end up training them on how to administer their server, and still return to fix every little issue that would come up. I just had to bite my tong, cause the less they did, the more work I got, the better my company did. It just amazed me at how little these people knew about their network and how it interfaced with the Internet. Some even thought a firewall would be a bad thing because when ever they set one up, it would block all web traffic. I wanted to go work for one of those companies and make that kick but salary and get that kick butt stock option package. But was just unsure of a real future in it.

Sigh

Thank fully I never left for the illusion of money. I still have a decently paying job doing exactly what I like to do. Designing, building, and maintaining various networks for various companies. Just sucks that I am forced to get certifications, because to the consulting world, certifications are important marketing tools, and they bring partnership perks from the various software publishers.


Provogeek

Saving the world, one network at a time
[rofl][rofl]
 
<<Anyone encounter any dot-com resentment since the crash?>>

Seems to me that non-tech people are letting Web sites become more and more a part of their lives (as opposed to resenting them).

Seems like there is more resentment for some possibly corrupt companies and their business practices.

Best regards,
J. Paul Schmidt - Freelance ASP Web Developer
- Creating &quot;dynamic&quot; Web pages that read and write from databases...
 
Not really, I know a few people from dot-com/bomb, and they tell me privately how they wished they had never gotten into this field in the first place (shrug)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top