[Aside: I'm sure anyone reading this knows me and my background but on the off chance that there's someone reading this who doesn't know me: I graduated from a two-year community college with my AAS in Computer Information systems in 2001 right as most people would say the dot com bust was happening. It felt even worse where I live because there was never a really huge "dot com" boom to begin with. Unfortunately, I never really felt like leaving the area and I didn't feel like it was a smart idea for me to continue with my BS in Computer Science or anything like that since I was already in debt from my first (Mechanical Engineering) major that I didn't like...
Since I graduated, I have never really worked in a full-time, permanent IT related job. I've worked a part-time position doing network upgrades for a few nights after work and I've worked a temporary job doing mainly data entry, application troubleshooting and bug testing on a software package that was being rolled out at the place I was working at the time. (I was making bread in an in-store bakery across the street from where I went to school.)]
Back to the slashdot article, though... As I read through the comments there are some interesting things that I'm glad to be reading now as I'm thinking about a possible "career change" or at the very least a different job. ;)
One of the comments that got me thinking the most was an excerpt from this comment by "raw-sewage":
"What it comes down to for me is the job and environment:
- Are the people with whom I work interesting and friendly?
- Is there plenty of direction and support for newbies?
- Are senior people given authority that is proportional to their responsibilities?
- Is the work interesting? Does it require creativity? Or are the tasks rote and tedious?
- Is the management open to new ideas and different approaches?
Without meeting the above criteria, all the pay and perks in the world aren't going to make someone love their job."
I'm finding these are almost EXACTLY the issues I'm running into within my current job that are making me want to leave.
- The people I work with on a day to day basis are not really interesting or overly friendly. They're (mostly) not bad people. I just don't learn much from them. Aside from a random couple minutes of conversation here and there with people I don't work with on a day-to-day basis it's just the "Hi. Good Morning." in the hall.
- There is very little (or no) training for new people. When someone leaves a position people scramble to try to figure out what they do and attempt to show the replacement what they think they did... or they just say "Do this." and leave you to figure out how.
- No comment on the one about "senior people"... but just know that's it's not a good silence on my part.
- The work that I'm doing is not at all interesting. It's dull and repetitive and the projects that do seem interesting aren't allotted enough time to actually touch.
- The management talks about "new ideas" but the people left to carry the ideas out seem to be doing the same things the same ways and aren't as revolutionary as the people who are talking about the "new ideas".
Overall going by the list outlined by the wise, wise "raw-sewage" my job completely blows... maybe that's why I'm not so happy here. (Oh, that and the fact that my pay completely sucks...)
Are there any companies around here that meet the above criteria that looking to hire an entry-level IT worker with little real world IT experience? I guess the quest continues...
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