Fixing blame - on the victims !? Plenty of that to spin wheels over I suppose, beginning with - repeatedly voting-in those who continue to loosen oversight on the vast concentrations of wealth that mostly reside at the top of the Corporate hegemon. Surely akin to stroking the belly of a boa who has already swallowed your head?


Obv any serious efforts toward sane "solution" is so entwined in the myth of there beeing a 'Free Market' -- there are no standard recipes, only those hoary slogans to overcome. When someone discovers that 'society-member' is a larger Class than 'bizness board', will be the beginning of *reform of the flight of most-all wealth to the fewer and fewer. Muricans don't like to do stuff like that, though - it requires thought.

* if any more than chicken-feed is still left in general circulation, that is.

[link|http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/29/BUGJR6TNND1.DTL| Dave Murphy] describes here just one symptom of -

WE OWN YOU 105% 24/7 --> (that's Our Mission Statement and it's OK because Everyone is Doing It cha cha cha)

I believe I understand, very approximately How It Is, to keep a tenuous 'position' in a Corp, of late. That is, I don't imagine that posters here (or elsewhere) are making up the reports from the field.

But in '04 Murica not Everyone is, "you poor bastards".
Obviously those on the 'soft' rungs of that Corp ladder are treated differently.

Yes of course, you are expected to "do your job"; but I see from all those reports - that your 'job' has become an open-ended hrs/week or /day affair: in *IT*.

Nobody here has even seriously imagined creating anything like a Professional Org - whether or not the tag Union is attached - so apparently you each (still) prefer to hang separately. Whether the topic is vacation days /year, health care as temp, full-time or contractee, or other bargaining points: There are still no 'standards' for sane treatment of people in your specialty, and it seems unlikely there will be any action to create such. Yet.

I can't guess how most of you manage to swallow the conditions I've heard described, as a regular daily environment. Not only are your bosses regularly functioning well past their level of competence - right out of The Peter Principle - but there appears ingrained.. a 'class distinction':

Quite opposite of being appreciated for the messy arcanery with which you deal, I gather that the general Corp attitude towards IT is somewhat more disdainful than towards, say custodians. I see that attitude as a familiar one - the ignorant enjoying power over 'subordinates' (who, too often: see the inanity of uninformed really Stupid 'plans'. Nobody likes to be Caught Out..)

Clearly, you are not treated as the other "professionals" in our culture. Of course, they have Associations (and a much longer tradition.. like the priests have).

Corp is singularly ungrateful for the work you do, and generally incapable of grasping, thus discriminating the quality of the efforts made. It has to be hard -?- to work amidst institutionalized ingratitude -- and the impossibility of even explaining what you have done, (were there the slightest interest shown).

So to me it seems -- if you are very very good, incredibly fast, ruthless towards many and practically error-free in your operations, you can make some decent money - though never with the slightest security in the long term. Surely you have much less security than in *any* suited-position. (I've always known folks in suit- positions, so I have some basis of comparison with their tales.)

I wonder if any person here, still recommends to ~interested [actual friends] that they go into IT work of any kind [?] (I got no answer that that one, recently at N.A.U. in Flagstaff. Either.)

Could any improvement in Corp 'perception' be imagined, worked towards? With each IT person a Loner, with no organization whatsoever? I'd guess: not. No squeaky wheel / no oil.

Maybe the vast inequities of Murican bizness compensation are unassailable just now, amidst all the noise of current wars and general financial decline - but I can't think of another job description guaranteed to produce as sucky a working environment as IT. Not one, from janitor on. OK - maybe in a Tyson chicken factory.. (IT folk must have had the world's very first beepers.)

Long term.. I hope that each of you can find a lateral arabesque to {Something}, because the difficulties inherent in s/ware, hardware are great teachers of problem solving generally. This has got to be useful in countless tasks - only the marketing need be added. Even if coding is kinda fun. And yes, I do have some experience in the 'fun' of solving techno- style problems. Just not in the current madness. Thank Siva.


(BTW even without children, there are always others dependent - so hardly anyone can afford the luxury of Fuck Off, in the heat of a moment.) In saner times and other fields, though - a succession of insoluble heat-producing moments used to lead to getting out of a chicken outfit.

Are there Only chicken outfits left in Murica? Some believe that the handy rubric of 'globalization' will serve to tighten the screws until everyone is completely Mad, and their children, unsupervised and untaught - shall be the ones to grab the torches and pitchforks. Some think.. nobody has the guts + (extra) sweat available - to "organize" anything.

I guess we'll see.

All I can wish in the circumstances is - LUCK. And, I do.


Ashton