What was your dream growing up before life kicked you in the nuts/vag?

Cad

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Mist_sl said:
I really just wanted to run a gaming store, maybe build some PCs. Maybe get a job in software development if I could find a company doing something I was interested in.
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The jobs that pay well don't do things you're interested in. Thats why they pay well. They do things that bring in money for the company. You can make a killing doing custom software for businesses that need custom software, and have money. See e.g. large company warehouses (business intelligence/warehouse management), factories that need automation and data-management stuff, etc.

Running any kind of brick and mortar gaming store is going to be an exercise in futility...

The other people have the right of it. You do your 9-5 in whatever pays you in order to enable you to have money to do your hobbies. There are very few people in this world who get paid to do their passion. And those people probably aren't happy about it because getting paid to do something makes it into a fucking job rather than something you do for fun.
 
Khane

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It doesn't even really matter if you're interested in it. It will eventually become work.
 
T

Tenks

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Khane_sl said:
That may seem like a blessing but it really isn't. I've been getting paid to basically play video games and post here for the better part of 6 months, I'm starting to lose all ambition AND my skillset because I'm just not doing anything. If this contract ends abruptly I'm going to have to almost completely retrain myself before I feel comfortable interviewing again.

Luckily this contract has also given me a 2-3 year expenses covered savings cushion.
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Yeah I'm pretty light on work right now as well. Though I'm actively pursuing enhancing my skillset while I just have downtime here. I have a little toy MVC Spring4 web app up that backends into a Postgres w/ Hibernate as the ORM. It has Spring Security there to store/hash/retrieve login requests. Users are given a queue into my RabbitMQ server running and can post messages on the queue which are consumed by my Rabbit client and also persisted into Postgres. I really just wanted to learn more about Spring MVC and their RESTful security and a bit about Rabbit.

I'm also actively reading various blogs about CS & Java common interview questions making sure I can refresh a bunch of this knowledge. I'm nervous I may have forgotten some of the fundamental answers since things like OOP/D is just second nature so if someone says "List the 4 OO principals and their applications" or "What Java packages implement the Strategy pattern?" I actually know the responses.

But everyday I wake up wondering if I really need to go in since I know I don't have a ton of work to do. Hopefully that clears up in the next month or so and my project I'm slotted to be on gets green lit.
 
Khane

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I used to play around with various technologies and find new ways of using the things I already had experience with but I have just completely stopped caring at all lately.
 
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Tenks

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Yeah but you've gotta stay current. Dulling your skillset by even 6 months isn't the greatest move. I was actually talking to a co-worker today about how a ton of people around here don't keep current. They've done their C programming for 20 years and refuse to adapt or change or anything. But if they got let go they'd probably have a really tough time finding a new gig since they've got such a deprecated skillset. Its also funny I could have jumped ship here maybe a year ago because I had a really deep understanding of MapReduce over NoSQL data sets and that was hugely in demand. Anymore no one writes vanilla MapReduce they use different frameworks (Spark, specifically) so now even my MapReduce knowledge, which was hot about 12-18 months ago, is a deprecated item on my resume.
 
Khane

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I know all that, which was the original point I was making. I've seriously lost a lot of my ambition.

I tried to get my current company to get me on their MSDN subscriptions so I could get into the Azure Apps stuff (Specifically Logic Apps because that's where Microsoft is shifting focus from my current skillset (BizTalk) to). But that's in limbo and I don't feel like paying for it myself.
 
Cad

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Tenks_sl said:
Yeah but you've gotta stay current. Dulling your skillset by even 6 months isn't the greatest move. I was actually talking to a co-worker today about how a ton of people around here don't keep current. They've done their C programming for 20 years and refuse to adapt or change or anything. But if they got let go they'd probably have a really tough time finding a new gig since they've got such a deprecated skillset. Its also funny I could have jumped ship here maybe a year ago because I had a really deep understanding of MapReduce over NoSQL data sets and that was hugely in demand. Anymore no one writes vanilla MapReduce they use different frameworks (Spark, specifically) so now even my MapReduce knowledge, which was hot about 12-18 months ago, is a deprecated item on my resume.
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If you are selling yourself by "I know X tool" rather than "I can learn any tool and apply my broad intelligence to solve your problems just like I've solved these 35 problems before this" then you're selling yourself short. The idea that your "skills are deprecated" because you don't know the latest buzzword is the wrong way to look at it.

You seem like a smart guy and you can pick up and use whatever the latest shit is and use it. What you bring to a job is your problem solving skills and talent, not knowledge of MapReduce or whatever.
 
Khane

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I think he's referring more to me not even using my current skillset and losing it over time because of how fast moving software development tends to be. I'm doing maybe 5 hours of work a week and most of that is maintenance.
 
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Tenks

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Cad_sl said:
If you are selling yourself by "I know X tool" rather than "I can learn any tool and apply my broad intelligence to solve your problems just like I've solved these 35 problems before this" then you're selling yourself short. The idea that your "skills are deprecated" because you don't know the latest buzzword is the wrong way to look at it.

You seem like a smart guy and you can pick up and use whatever the latest shit is and use it. What you bring to a job is your problem solving skills and talent, not knowledge of MapReduce or whatever.
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The easiest way to jump around is if you do know the latest buzzword. I'd be nervous about a company who would be hammering me hard on the ins and outs of a framework when they should be more concerned with the applicant being able to pick up and learn new concepts. But if a company is absolutely desperate for someone to crank over a BigData dataset and need someone to hit the ground running writing their jobs and it says you have a year writing MapReduce on my resume they'll pay out for you.

MapReduce is also a bit different than saying you know a framework since a ton of that BigData concepts require a completely different way of approaching and tackling a problem. So it does take a bit of time and a bit of trial & error until you get it right.
 
Phazael

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Yeah also in tech there are companies that refuse to stay current and need people with knowledge of the obsolete shit. Usually the guys who know that shit are untouchable because no one else wants to learn it or is too young. I knew a couple Novell specialists who made pretty good bank for a long time that way, back in the day. And, yeah, ultimately learning a new language or platform is not a big deal, especially in the age of Google. Its more about being able to have the critical thinking skills to ask the right questions and do the right research that comes mainly from experience or talent. Too many idiots out there who learn the newest thing, but don't have one iota of problem solving ability that get hired and end up shitting the bed in the IT field.

Anyhow, OT:
I wanted to be a composer or music teacher, but you basically have to be born rich to do that. So after years of fucking around and wasted schooling, I ended up getting into IT which was my hobby growing up. Now music is my hobby, which was my intended career. Funny how life works out like that. But I am happily married and doing well enough that I don't let my career define me in any way, so I can't really complain.
 
Palum

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No, you misunderstand what I'm asking. The plain text of the constitution provides for a postal service and bankruptcy has a specific legal meaning. It can't "go away" without being an unfunded mandate that potentially causes a constitutional crisis or the passage of an amendment. They operate at a loss but that doesn't mean the taxpayer doesn't cover the cost overruns.
 
Furry

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I dreamed I'd be an animal. I think I'm doing about as good as I can.
 
radditsu

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How the fuck do you go broke being the house when gambling? It's fucking easy money for suckers.
 
Mist

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Cad_sl said:
The jobs that pay well don't do things you're interested in. Thats why they pay well. They do things that bring in money for the company. You can make a killing doing custom software for businesses that need custom software, and have money. See e.g. large company warehouses (business intelligence/warehouse management), factories that need automation and data-management stuff, etc.

Running any kind of brick and mortar gaming store is going to be an exercise in futility...

The other people have the right of it. You do your 9-5 in whatever pays you in order to enable you to have money to do your hobbies. There are very few people in this world who get paid to do their passion. And those people probably aren't happy about it because getting paid to do something makes it into a fucking job rather than something you do for fun.
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Well, I don't have a 9-5 right now. I have an 'every night and every weekend, and sometimes 15-18 hour days just for the fuck of it.'
 
Vinen

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Furry_sl said:
I dreamed I'd be an animal. I think I'm doing about as good as I can.
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rrr_img_135930.jpg
 
Khane

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Mist_sl said:
Well, I don't have a 9-5 right now. I have an 'every night and every weekend, and sometimes 15-18 hour days just for the fuck of it.'
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You know that a lot of people here work in IT right? You're so full of shit and you aren't fooling anyone.
 
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