Re: [xml-dev] <offtopic>Opinions About Cold Fusion</offtopic>

[Rick Marshall <rjm@zenucom.com>]

Hi Len

Tools are careers - at least today.

So when I go to employ someone (being old fashioned) I look for an 
application developer - figuring that if you know how to build 
applications you can adapt to the tools.

That may be true but the industry (at least here in oz) is based on 
tools. So I'm having extreme difficulty finding people to work for me 
because they want to be "Oracle" programmers or "SAP" programmers or ...

I'm starting to wander if they even see the projects in terms of 
outcomes or just "I spent x years working with product y doing z". ie 
Even the resumes don't reflect completion, only practice. I worked for x 
years on ... rather than I built this and this and this - or the team I 
worked with completed these projects.

The world has changed ...

Rick

PS being true to yourself and your goals is also old school (but I don't 
intend to change either).


Len Bullard wrote:
> I agree with Michael.   Tools is tools.  All stuff really.   The more
> important questions are about the tasks, the customers, and the ability to
> influence directions.
>
> There is a bit of a sea change past a certain age in a career where one
> becomes a beginner again, more interested in the fun and the challenge and
> less the career and advancement.  Once one sees enough and experiences the
> tradeoffs, being comfortable in the skin is the requirement.  
>
> A personal observation so maybe not generalizable, but two things I've noted
> about engineering that are the same as being on stage with a guitar.  At
> some point, it stops being about the crowd and it starts being about having
> fun on stage with your mates.  If you do that the audience has fun; if you
> don't, they don't.  The material you play, the instruments etc, are
> important but the real time event is the fun.  Second, maybe serious but so
> is to never trade on your values.  You won't get those back.  Money will
> come and go, jobs are jobs, customers change, but any time I ever traded on
> my personal values, it was a bad deal.  I don't advise one be too pompous,
> but a genuine reserve of what is personally important makes you much
> stronger and you age better.   The rest is a show, fun and hopefully doing a
> bit of good work, but if you let the crowd pick the material and the set
> list, they will turn what you do into a clown act for their own amusement.
> If you like a clown act, que bueno.  If not, move on.  It's your gig.
>
> BTW, it was a good interview.  Nice people.  Serious work.  Fingers crossed.
>
> len
>
>
> From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@saxonica.com] 
>  
>   
>> As I said in my private post to you, I wouldn't use CF these 
>> days...but I also wouldn't use jsp, ASP.NET (forced by insane 
>> clients with either weapons or platinum...i might)
>>     
>
> I think there's a more interesting question here: should you really decide
> whether or not to take a job based on the tools they are using? I nearly
> refused a job writing database software once when I discovered they were
> coding in Assembler; but it was the most interesting job I ever did until
> Saxon came along, and I became quite a good assembly coder. And there were
> valid reasons why they had made the choice. My point is that the problem
> you're tackling is usually where the job interest comes from, not the tools
> you are using to tackle it. 
>
> Of course, if you think the outfit you're proposing to join have poor
> technical judgement or if you think you won't be able to influence their
> future direction, that's a different question. 
>
> I would even consider coding in C if the problem were interesting enough...
>
>
>
>
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