Strange Days

These are strange days.

The pundits and economists claim that the economy is on the rebound. But for those of us down here in the trenches, those of us whore are jobless, with bills to pay and families to feed, there's no economic recovery in sight. The bills are piling up, the job offers aren't materializing, and money is getting harder and harder to come by. All the while, the fat cats in Washington bicker over health care reform while getting nothing done aside from playing the blame game, trying to decide who was responsible for the economic disaster in the first place.

My dad, dead now ten years or more, used to say that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. He was right. Things are no different today than they were ten, twenty, fifty years ago. Politicians, in their luxurious offices, with their limos and travel budgets and vastly superior health care plans, have no real idea what those of us in the trenches are going through on a day by day basis. We have very basic needs. We have to be able to pay the rent. We have to be able to clothe our kids. We have to be able to pay for things like gas, electricity, and hot water. We have to be able to pay for public transportation or gas to get to work every day. We have to be able to afford decent medical care and prescriptions when we need them—which isn't always a planned thing.

But if you're rich, you likely don't even have to think about those things. They're just taken care of. Someone handles all that stuff for you. It's inconsequential, beneath your notice. You might stand there on television and claim to be a man of the people, but after a little while in office with that big salary and all those incredible benefits, your memories of what it was like to be one of us will quickly fade.

But we are your constituents. We're the ones you're supposed to be helping. We're the ones having to decide, day in and day out, what we're going to have to cut out of our lives to be able to afford food or rent. Not because we want to, but because we have to. We make little choices, and lots of them.

We turn off our cell phones because it's not necessary, and the phone service that anchors us to the house through our cable service is cheaper. Sure, we're screwed if we get stuck on the side of the road, but we have to make that choice because we can't afford it.

We choose to give our pets up for adoption, because we can't afford to feed or care for them anymore. Sure, they'll likely be euthanized, because no one else can care for them either. But we do it, because we can't afford it.

We choose to cut our automobile insurance, because we can't afford the egregious rates we're being charged. Sure, we're out a vehicle if something really bad happens. But we do it. And you know why.

We choose to endure pain and suffering without visiting a doctor, or to try alternative therapies which are either ineffective or potentially dangerous, because we can't afford the copays.

We choose to buy cheap, processed foods to feed our families, rather than fresh meat and produce. Sure, it'll have a longer term impact on our overall health. But the price difference makes you wonder if they're trying to discourage you from eating healthy. And we simply can't afford to eat well.

We use up our savings, dive into college funds, remortgage our homes, do anything to survive. We sell our cherished belongings. We move into smaller apartments, crammed with multiple roommates trying to pool their resources against the financial crush. And even then, we struggle.

Those of us who have jobs hold onto them for dear life, afraid of what might happen to us if we lost them. It doesn't matter if we hate the work we're doing, who we're working with, the hours we keep. The world outside that job is far, far worse.

And yet, to hear the news, the economy is in a rebound, and things are looking up. Consumer spending is on the rise. You wouldn't know it at my house, or the homes of any of the people I know. We're all feeling the pinch. And this pinch leaves major bruises that aren't going to heal any time soon.

Washington, and all the local politicians, need to take off their blinders and remember that the world does not live like they do. In the real world, the vast majority of the population is poor, and struggling to survive from one day to the next. Sure, the rich line your pockets. We all know that. But the poor cast the votes. Step out of that bright light that blinds you to the realities of life that every day people face, and look at it with an unfettered vision for once. And then, without just dismissing what you've seen and heard, do something about it.

Stop bickering. Party lines should be irrelevant in this crisis. And it doesn't matter who started it. What matters is what we're going to do about it.

Farewell to Software Development

So here I am, staring at this screen, thinking about what to say. It's been a long time since I blogged. It's been funny, in a way, that my blog was never really very technical. I always blogged about the esoteric aspects of software development. About personal improvement, about striving to become a better software developer, about questioning the status quo, about reevaluating yourself at every step of the way. And now, I find that those words come back to haunt me. But not in any way that I would ever have expected.

I've been unemployed since December 1st. I've been seeking employment since then, and the experience has been eye-opening. In the past, getting work was never difficult. I like to consider myself both a competent developer and a proficient interviewer. In the past, it's never been difficult to find work. Within the first three or four interviews I had an offer on the table--usually several, and I could take my pick from them. But this time, I'm finding myself faced by rejections for reasons that escape me. One company refused to hire me because I hesitated when asked to describe the difference between natural and left joins. They thought a senior level developer should have provided an immediate response, without hesitation. I thought a senior level developer would have thought his answer through, worded his response carefully, and not just blurted out the first thing that leapt to mind. Apparently, it was irrelevant that my answer was correct.

I'm also faced by the prospect that technology is passing me by. This has been a growing concern of mine for years. There's a conundrum we all face when we seek long-term employment with any company. You see, companies seek candidates who want to stay with them for years. The problem is, companies tend to be entrenched in a particular technology stack. They have a vested interest in maintaining whatever software they've developed with that stack, and once you've invested yourself in the maintenance of that software, you're pretty much mired in it for the long haul. Whatever tools and technology were used in its initial development tend to become a ball and chain that anchor you where you are for years at a shot. Technology moves forward, but the product likely does not. And you, as the maintenance developer, stay tethered to that product and its associated technologies as everyone else moves forward.

New technologies emerge all the time. There are so many technologies out there right now that no one could possibly grasp them all, let alone consider himself an expert in them all. And yet, interviewers expect you to have this commanding expertise in such a wide variety of technologies that their expectations can be considered unreasonable. A jack of all trades is master of none. The truth of the matter is that most of us will never learn a new technology until a particular project demands exposure to it. Only then will we learn it. And then, we'll only learn enough of it to get by. Few companies have the budget to send their development staff to seminars or their ilk to receive formal training. Few developers make enough money to seek out and pay for formal training out of pocket. And few companies that provide that training are motivated to lower their prices to make it accessible to dirt-poor developers hungry for the knowledge.

And so it's a vicious cycle. Technology moves forward. Developers are stuck with the old technology, and cling to their jobs because, in this economy, they know it could be really difficult to find new work. Further, they know any new work they find could be worse than the work they're doing now. It's a buyer's market. Wages have declined, benefits are being cut, and the work still has to get done.

Over the last few years, I've been stuck in this vicious cycle. But since December, as I've been interviewing, one thing has started to become increasingly clear to me: software development is leaving me behind.

It doesn't matter how much I love it. It doesn't matter how good I am at it. It doesn't matter how passionate I am about quality, good design, team cohesion, self improvement, or any of those things. What matters is that I am tired of playing this catch-up game, of trying to appease people with unreasonable expectations, of being expected to know everything about everything, and being held accountable when I don't.

I know my limitations. It's time to get out. It's time to leave an industry behind that is full of falsified estimates, rushed deliveries, power grinds to meet deadlines, badly defined requirements, insane amounts of finger pointing, and unreasonable expectations. The days when developing software was fun are long gone. Somewhere along the road, it became work. And for me, that's the day it died.

So I'll turn from that path, now, and find a new path. I'm not sure what it is yet, but with any luck, it will be far less stressful.

To all of you still in the quagmire, I wish you well and good luck. Software can be tons of fun, if you keep it in the proper perspective. Somewhere along the way, I suppose I just lost mine. Try to keep yours. But for me, this is farewell to software development.