Experience a liability ?

[David Abramowitz]

It depends. I can still remember going through six months of applications, and interviews before I landed my very first IT spot. Not having any experience was quite a liability. Today there are many companies who consider all IT personnel as a liability because IT is a cost center on the books. It follows suit that to many of these firms, a body is a body is a body. Those asking the cheapest price will be more welcome than those who by nature of their experience deserve more. This is particularly acute in recessionary times. On the brighter side, there are still many firms that recognize the value that experience brings. A smarter exec knows that a good IT will save bucks. The corolary is that inexperience will spend more time, and create more mistakes. All of the above is in the most general of terms. There are many shades of grey here. I urge you not be discouraged, and keep on truckin' Dave

[Guest.Visitor]

IMHO: Experience CAN AND WILL BE a liability ONLY if you allow yourself to become complacent and do not keep your skill set up to date. ILE, JAVA, Visual RPG, HTML(try it with rpg, you will be surprised), and yes VB(yuck, I know) are all things that you as a developer MUST have to compete with these dime a dozen Win NT/y2k pukes! I had to take a 5K a year pay cut to land a better job with a future. You may have to too. It's not that bad, considering the alternatives. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, stop trying to learn new development skill sets. You never know when it will come in handy! I tried out JAVA, HTML and Visual RPG(no, not ASNA's but IBM's) and, thought that I would never use either skill set. Boy was I wrong!!!! Bentley Pearson (+16) Genesis Expert Ssytems, Inc WWW.GenesisExpert.com

[Guest.Visitor]

IMHO: Experience CAN AND WILL BE a liability ONLY if you allow yourself to become complacent and do not keep your skill set up to date. ILE, JAVA, Visual RPG, HTML(try it with rpg, you will be surprised), and yes VB(yuck, I know) are all things that you as a developer MUST have to compete with these dime a dozen Win NT/y2k pukes! I had to take a 5K a year pay cut to land a better job with a future. You may have to too. It's not that bad, considering the alternatives. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, stop trying to learn new development skill sets. You never know when it will come in handy! I tried out JAVA, HTML and Visual RPG(no, not ASNA's but IBM's) and, thought that I would never use either skill set. Boy was I wrong!!!! Bentley Pearson (+16) Genesis Expert Sytems, Inc WWW.GenesisExpert.com

[Guest.Visitor]

David C, It sounds like those companies are only focused on the cost of acquistion of the programs you develop. They must also be aware of the cost of ownership of those same programs. In the long run, an experienced programmer will save a company time and money because of proper coding techniques, unit/system testing, cursor sensitive help screens, performance considerations, record locking management, object security, documentation, code readability and clonability, etc... Chris Ringer (+14 years in IT)

[frankgw@adelphia.net]

"Has anyone else noticed that having more than 5 years of experience in the field of programming is becoming a liability?" ------------------------------------------------------ Yeah! After 37 years, I decided to switch to management. I think it was that infamous hamburger ad that pushed me over the edge. Frank Whittemore Just an old mainframer caught in the web (40+ years in IT or whatever they decide to call it this decade) P.S. Be smart. Let the young guys/gals do that dirty programming work...

[Guest.Visitor]

Over the past 45 years in DP I haven't encountered any +5 problems. Or, maybe I'm not very sensitive to such things. bobh

[michaelr@railcarmgt.com]

I should consider myself fortunate, we have a small shop with usually six to eight developers. I think the rookie in the group only has about twelve years experience. I have sixteen years experience. This is one of the reasons for our success. We have a small group of people with years of experience always willing to learn new things and never afraid to attempt any task. With our current small group, we get far more accomplished each year than places I've worked that had thirty or more developers. It is nice working in a group where you can really have confidence in all of your co-workers.

[dchristie]

Has anyone else noticed that having more than 5 years of experience in the field of programming is becoming a liability? 5 years seems to be the magic number. Any more and we are over priced and obsolete. Maybe just a sign of the times, but I get the feeling that anyone with 5+ years programming should consider another career in IT. Thanks Dave (14+ years)

[Guest.Visitor]

I can affirm that small is better; my boss at BMI said, when sending me to a meeting, "If there's more that 4-5 people in the room, don't take off your coat; just come on back!" bobh