Price of our hobby

On Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 10:15:47AM -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote: I have to agree. As one who was VERY recently in the job market (as a Java programmer), I was stunned by how much has changed since I entered the working world. Basically, if you're warm, don't drool, and know how to pronounce "Serializable", you will be accepted graciously somewhere -- probably not at your dream job, and definitely not at as high a salary as someone who knows how describe the difference between a static inner class and an anonymous inner class, but you'll at least get a decent entry-level software development job somewhere, making good money. People are DESPERATE for manpower. You can wear jeans to your interview. You can have long hair. You can (as I did) drop out of college without fear of retribution. You can (as I did) have majored in something completely unrelated to computers. You don't even need references, really -- especially since a lot of companies are afraid to give references anymore (there have been lawsuits. If you give a good reference for a bad employee, the company that hired him might sue you. If you give a bad reference, regardless of whether the employee is good or bad, the employee might sue you. Sigh.) As long as you actually know what you're doing, you'll get a job. If you follow through, do your job well and demonstrate that you're intelligent, you'll work your way up to a senior level position in five years. Yes, five years is "Senior" here. It's really that scary. I don't suspect it'll stay this way forever, of course, but for now it's frighteningly simple to get into a computer job in Silicon Valley. I don't know how it is elsewhere in the country, but I suspect it's at least similar. -Seth