I have been working on personal projects for two weeks now, while at work, and I can't stop doing it. My stuff is so much more interesting. But my projects aren't sellable.

Should I just find a new job? Are there any jobs out there that require a middling C#/Java/XML/SQL/anyScriptingLanguage programmer with great communication skills and the ability to learn anything in a week?

In the Chicago area?

I have the sneaky suspicion that I'm already in the best job I'll ever get and that thought is so depressing I could shoot myself in the head.

Welcoem to my life.

Get used to where you are. EVERY decent programmer can "learn anything in a week" and most of us have great communication skills. There is NO market right now anywhere but in India.

Godspeed.

Off to buy a gun now...

Change professions. Go start a business. Learn a musical instrument. Walk in the park. Just do something creative.

muppet writes his book. Maybe you can write one too.

...but I love programming.

So start a programming company. Just realize that doing so is only about 20% programming.

Also...ask yourself if you really do like programming, if you hate your job so much.

I think it is just time for me to prove that I really do know more than my masters.

Somehow I've got to start my own software company.

I'm just too good not to do it.

I have looked at Joel's product and I know I can do way better.

I don't have Joel's "ex-Microsoftee" mystique, however.

So you'll have to put more effort into marketing.

Or, I'm guessing, Joel's writing skills. I have an idea for a software product that I'm seriously considering going around and getting funding for. Too bad I'm not much of a programmer.

Or you could create

fuckinSlaVIX

Or get a real Master.

I can write, thank you.

Definitely don't listen to muppet. He appears to have an over inflated sense of his own programming abilities and since he hasn't risen above code slave then _clearly_ it can't be done.

The most straightforeword advice is I can give is find people who do what you want to do, then find from them what it takes to get there. Oh yes, and be prepared to work your ass off.

Nothing's over-inflated here. Programming is a dead end career in the current market. That's just the facts, ma'am. You can eek out a living and eventually even own your own shrinkwrap software company, sure, but yours will be a tenuous and barely held position. Personally I wouldn't go in for all that stress.

programming is just not the best field for building a life on right now. Not as your primary breadwinner.

Muppet's right, eeking out a living is for mice not men. Be a rat instead - use your wide knowledge of industry acronyms to secure a position as a placement consultant.

Who moved my cheese?

"programming is just not the best field for building a life on right now"

If you are really good, you could build a life out of programming.

I am not really good.

Muppet:

That is the fun of it. What sane person would work 90hours week, make half as much as the guys who wear suits staring at a computer screen, fixing somebodies crap code on a crap application that you hate working on and then going home, working on your own cool application so that in 10 years you can open source it.

>> Who moved my cheese? <<

As much as I hated that damned book, right now it's sage advice for the OP.

Programming is a dead end career? This is a fact? Please do enlighten us to where we can find a citation for this fact. Of course you know its not a fact at all. There are tons of great places to work (Google, MS, Apple, SAS for example), are these jobs really impossible to get?

muppet, you are at best projecting your own fears, or at worse you are trying to give him the same sense of hopelessness about his career as you have for your own. There are tons of really good jobs, but the catch is you have to really good at your job. And that takes work and dedication. Find someone who's made it and ask them.

Part of the problem, and it is only a part is that there is a dislocation between what managers of IT departments consider worth working on or viable to work on and what is actually possible today that is both cost effective and which is creative for the people working there.

All too often the sludgy procedures for getting things done get in the way of just doing it but then the people employed are rarely experienced in or self disciplined enough to just get it done without also risking mayhem.

In the meantime the users are stuck with rotting tools and get told by their support people that that is just the way it is.

"There are tons of great places to work (Google, MS, Apple, SAS for example), are these jobs really impossible to get?"

No, there are a bare handful of really neato jobs and then there are thousands of guys out of work whose jobs have gone to India or elsewhere or disappeared altogether to budget constraints. You're living in a typical capitalistic fantasy world.

Lots of programmers who are REALLY REALLY good at what they do aren't going to find dream jobs even if they work REALLY REALLY hard. That's life. That's supply and demand. There's not much demand for our services, except in a few elite corners of the industry. That's not exactly a wide open field.


moron.

Maybe if you add a few more "REALLY"s your point will be true, but last I check strongly asserting something doesn't make it true. As it stands now all I see is you projecting your own failures onto others. Taking your career advice is like taking diet advice from Louie Anderson.

OK, ronk. I'm sorry for vehemently believing what I say. Apparently that somehow invalidates it in your strange little universe.

The fact is that the only jobs available are exceptional jobs for "exceptional" (read: lucky) people. You've said as much yourself, just with different spin. Do you honestly believe that only the top 5% of programmers deserve a job in programming?

Demand for programmers is down, period. There's no rational way to argue against this. "But, Google!" is not a valid argument. That's like arguing that there is no sun by saying "But! Nighttime!"

Great this is what one of my Math profs used to call "Proof by Repeated Assertion and Vehement Belief".

Anecdotally, I personally do not know any programmers that are currently unemployed. I do know a few who are bored as shit in their current jobs and looking for new challenges. Unfortunately their current jobs were acquired at the height of the boom and their salary expectations are out of line at the momment.

jacco -

Go do a Monster search for programming jobs. Now seperate them by language. Now find ones that pay more than $40K.

How many have you got left within reasonable distance? My guess is about 4, and I'll bet that 3 of them are fake jobs put up by recruiters building their portfolio of resumes.

Sometimes things are stated something loudly and vehemently because they're true. IMAGINE.

muppet:

Don't know what back water township you live in, but with 20 miles of my house, I know of 5 companies that want to hire programmers -- albeit at lower salaries than the boom which is hardly a shock. When I say lower salaries I mean 60-70K instead of 100K. This is a reasonable living wage where I live but programmers have adjusted their lifestyles to their boom salaries and cannot/will not scale back to a normal wage. This feeling of entitlement to a huge salary is the problem, not the lack of jobs.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs033.htm

Your repeated assertions have been slammed with hard data. Please do tell our advice-seeking OP programmer what industry he should move into.

BTW Monster? Who in the hell gets a job through monster? This is why everyone talks about personal networks/contacts.

Jacco -

I'd be happy with 60K, which I'm not clearing right now. I can't clear 60K anywhere in Connecticut. Not a chance. No one is hiring.

Yes, I could move to Colorado or Nevada or even Ohio, but that's a slightly unrealistic expectation.

To retstate my original point: Programming is not a field to base a life on right now. Unless your idea of a life is moving 900+ miles every few years as trends shift from region to region.

"The fact is that the only jobs available are exceptional jobs for "exceptional" (read: lucky) people. You've said as much yourself, just with different spin. Do you honestly believe that only the top 5% of programmers deserve a job in programming? "

Yes, I honestly do believe that only the top 5% deserve a job. I said it didn't I? Oh wait, I didn't say that, I said nothing of the kind. It sounds like you have no real arguments to support your position, so you warp and fabricate others arguments into something that is more wrong than your own arguments, then you can claim righteous victory. Fun!

But muppet, you chose to live in Connecticut where presumably the cost of living is lower, etc. You don't want to relocate, fine. You are know one data point. To generalize from your Conn. experience to the whole country is not valid.

Jacco -

The same situation is more prevalent than not. That's how I can generalize to "the whole country". There are pockets in the US where IT is doing moderately well, but they are few and far between, and not in the realistic reach of most programmers. And, what happens when those pockets move?

Not a stable field to build a life around. I'm sorry that admitting such a thing would cause your world to crumble.

Muppet:

Trust me, it would take a lot more than your bullshit to crumble my world. I'm only pointing out that your doom saying view is not shared by all IT workers and may be colored by your limited experiences.

i gotta go with mup on this one...

very few decent programming jobs available near where i live (toronto - a big metropolitan city)...

its just not considered a high skilled job anymore. maybe 'cause there's just too many of us...