Just before 9/11 I took a job at IBM as a consultant. Consultants make more money than employees, but they don’t have any job security. I did well and was acting team leader. Then the project ended. I have worked on various consulting gigs ever since, each time taking less money because of a poor job market. Outsourcing and the collapse of Dot-Com has cut away at my earning power.

Where I work now, I am still probably the highest paid person in may department, including the boss. However, the job market is picking up and one by one all the employees are finding new jobs. I have been assigned the task of doing technical interviews for perspective new employees.

The jobs that are available pay from $55K to 65K depending on experience. Someone with a degree and some good Computer Science credits, minimal experience, a good attitude, and the ability to answer a few simple technical questions about Java can get hired. This is almost an entry level position. I would be willing to accept anyone who shows technical ability, can speak well, and smiles in the interview. I have interviewed 15 people so far and I have just 2 people that I might hire if we can’t find anyone better. There are half a dozen openings, and soon more.

I find it unbelievable that I can’t find talented people willing to work for, what I consider, decent (not great) money. When I look for a job, people scoff at the amount of money that I want and always try to offer me less. From the resumes that I get and the people that I interview, I think that I may be worth more than I thought. I am at least twice as good as the people that I am interviewing. No brag, just fact. I am going to start looking again.

The last time I went on interviews, everyone wanted a Java technology called Struts. Struts is a way of programming by configuration. Every year upper management will come up with a new method getting rid of those pesky expensive programmers. I have heard all kinds of new technologies that promise systems that program themselves over the last 30 years. The truth is that you have to think a certain way to understand how a program works. Just like a novelist has to have a novel mindset or a plumber has to have a plumbing mindset. It is not the lines of code or the number of screens that matters, it is the logical flow and that is the constant, no matter what methodology or language is used. Five years ago it was Rational Rose, now it is struts, next year there will be some other attempt to avoid paying programmers high salary and it will be a total failure.

I have used Struts and I am still a programmer. Struts is more work than it is worth in most cases. Follow Thoreau and “simplify!”; follow Strunk and “Omit Needless Words!”. I will write another system using Struts in the next month, then, I’ll put it on my resume. I need to get a more challenging job. Perhaps the challenge on the next job will be to educate management on the merits of Occam’s Razor. If I ever get a tattoo it will be the words “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem” or “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”.