Post #105,267
6/7/03 11:12:43 PM
6/7/03 11:14:04 PM
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No time to send you to class, I need the answer NOW!!!
>I still say it is best to hire someone who is willing to learn new things, >and then if you cannot find someone skilled enough, send them to classes. >Classes are an expense and can be written off in taxes, so it is a good >thing. I've seen job descriptions that wanted skills in 20 different areas, >and I only had like 12 or 14 of those skills. That is asking a lot.
Sadly, you're a little detached from reality. Reality today is no training.
Reality in my company is that the CEO calls you into a meeting on Friday afternoon at 3:30pm with 6 pages of handwritten notes on a new feature he wants in his system. He requests that you help someone he's been working with for several hours already (who is foreign and cannot communicate clearly in English) develop a database schema for his 6 pages of handwritten notes before we leave tonight. Luckily, I communicate better with him than the CEO did, so we managed to leave before 7:30pm that night.
On Monday, we'll be required to show the schema to him, and then have a 2 hour meeting to show all the tables and fields to the programmer, who will then have a few days to code and unit test the new feature. It will be in Beta in a week or two and in production in about 6 weeks.
At the same time, he expects me to implement another feature in C/C++ which parses ANSI X12 headers, which will be added to the same release of the product. Again, beta in a week or two, and production in 6 weeks.
Finally, there's my "long term" project, which he's expecting a 250-300 table database schema for this week, based on about 1000 pages of documentation that I got just about 2 weeks ago. That one should be completed by the fall.
Basically, if I had not demonstrated the skills advertised on my resume in the first week or two of the job, I would have been shown the door. Short term focus, very harsh reality.
That's reality. That, and the fact that everyone I know in IT, or any white collar profession I know, who has lost their job in the last 12 months has not found another job.
There is no long term focus. Only what can be accomplished this week, two weeks, or 4 weeks. Something that takes 12 weeks or more is "long term".
Training is but a distant dream, from companies in the 1980's who actually took 6 months or more to develop systems, and cared enough to train and keep them employed into their retirement years.
I would say that if you want long-term, you need to start your own business, or find a profession that will always be in demand, like nursing, grocery, garbage collection, phone company, etc.
Glen
Edited by gdaustin
June 7, 2003, 11:14:04 PM EDT
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Post #105,294
6/8/03 11:01:09 AM
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not phone company, lost 1 mil+ people in last few years
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
"I hit him so hard in the head his dog shat a turd in the shape of Jesus" Leonard Pine
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Post #105,365
6/9/03 10:16:19 AM
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Not nursing
I've got [/me counts on his fingers ...] at least seven friends and relatives who are or were nurses. Aside from the one who is retired, they all wish they could afford to switch to a different profession. All the non-medical duties are being contracted or outsourced, and many the medical duties are being re-classified as non-medical.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #105,444
6/9/03 6:37:54 PM
6/9/03 6:38:51 PM
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Gotta give drugs...
That's the nice thing about nursing. You can reclassify some job responsibilities into "non-nurse" jobs, but there are legal requirements that only nurses may dispense drugs in a hospital. Only nurses can hang IV bags with drugs in them (which are about 1/2 the IV bags these days).
There are other medical procedures that nurses do that are simply too gross to describe here, still require a nurse.
Surgery rooms still require nurses.
And besides, nurses are the "stepping stone" into hospital administration or a low level doctor job, like Nurse Practitioner.
Many insurance plans are even using nurses in telephone screen operations to assist/advise patients, review insurance filings, review applications for insurance, etc. The point is that they want someone familiar enough with medicine and medical procedures to be able to put up a decent argument on a refusal, but they can't afford to pay a doctor to do it.
Nurse is great career. Lots of cool things you can do with it. And, while they may import nurses from other countries, chances are very good that your job will not be exported to India, 'cause the patient is HERE.
As costs pressures mount in the healthcare industry, mainly from employers, I think that nurses will rapid replace family doctors and even PA and nurse practitioners as the "front line" medical interfaces.
Laws will be relaxed, because employers will be passing costs along to patients, and patients will not be able to afford to "go to the doctor" anymore.
Edited by gdaustin
June 9, 2003, 06:38:51 PM EDT
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Post #105,491
6/10/03 7:34:44 AM
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Cyclic behavior
Careers in nursing are cyclic, at least around the Cleveland area.
We have 2 major hospital systems which are involved in the \ufffdHighlander syndrome\ufffd (in the end there can be only one\ufffd.)
They do the major corporation routine of cutting costs by staffing a wing with 2 RNs, a couple LPNs, and a couple aides. They might bump up the head count during the day to accommodate the doctors and to make a slightly better impression on visitors. Mostly for the doctors\ufffd if you are in a position to complain, you shouldn\ufffdt be there.
The nurses get to the point where they won\ufffdt take the abuse and quit en mass, causing a shortage. The hospitals then compete to hire the available nurses offering better wages, hours, and staffing. Nursing becomes a good looking career and the colleges crank them out in quantity again. In a while, the hospital administration notes that with as many nurses around, they can become more efficient in their operation by reducing staff and cutting costs\ufffd
I spent about 6 years in the medical dodge at the end of the 70\ufffds. I dropped out to go to engineering school (Bio-medical Engineering) and on graduation, couldn\ufffdt bring myself to stay in the environment. I haven\ufffdt been back since, but I still have a number of friends who are still in the racket. It appears that the cycles are continuing.
My .02
Hugh who is still scared silly to be in hospital on the wrong side of the ID badge...
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Post #105,500
6/10/03 9:31:09 AM
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You'd be surprised (or maybe not)
You can reclassify some job responsibilities into "non-nurse" jobs, but there are legal requirements that only nurses may dispense drugs in a hospital. How does the law define "dispense"? I used to work at a drug store. Only the pharmacist was allowed to assemble the prescriptions, but he then gave them to me to give to the customer. Can a nurse "dispense" the drugs to a nurses aide who then "delivers" it to the patient? Wouldn't surprise me if some places are trying this out until someone takes it to court. Surgery rooms still require nurses. But not as many as they used to. There have been cases documented where representatives from medical equipment suppliers were in the operating room running a new tool, demonstrating its function. None of the hospital staff though to ask if the representative (read that: salesperson) was a doctor. They weren't. In short, I don't trust hospitals not to stretch every definition until a court orders them to stop. BTW I can verify what Hugh said about the local conditions. My mother-in-law is a retired chief curgical nurse. Part of the reason she retired when she did is that the full-time staff kept getting longer hours and more call, while hired guns were brought in at twice the price to fill in the gaps. Within two months of her retirement, the headhunters were calling trying to get her to go back to her old hospital as a contractor. ===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #105,521
6/10/03 12:15:44 PM
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Re: You'd be surprised (or maybe not)
Can a nurse "dispense" the drugs to a nurses aide who then "delivers" it to the patient? Wouldn't surprise me if some places are trying this out until someone takes it to court. They don't have to take it to court. It's standard practice now. The floor RN is responsible for checking out the meds, and gives it to LPNs to deliver. I think that RNs are still supposed to start IVs but LPNs can inject into the installed line. I spent about 4 years total in working in the operating room as an OR tech. This is the equivalent of a scrub nurse and equipment handler. No formal training. They just required a RN in the room to sign off on the paperwork. I also spent a couple years effectively running an electro-physiology lab for ophthalmology. It was easier to teach me the anatomy and physiology than it was to teach a nurse the electronics. I did the setup, tests, and initial analysis. I just needed a doctor to sign off on the results. I am SO glad to be out of that environment.
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Post #105,550
6/10/03 2:00:00 PM
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See what happens when I try to imagine a worst-case?
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #106,825
6/21/03 4:53:58 PM
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Counter-example - I have a sister who likes nursing
OTOH she is an ER nurse in a remote area. So a lot of her work is stuff which really requires a lot of skill, and given the size of community, she knows a lot of the people that she helps.
But she doesn't claim that it is an easy job. Just that she likes what she does.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #106,982
6/23/03 12:32:20 PM
6/23/03 12:33:04 PM
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I have a friend who likes it too
She has been a pediatric nurse, an ER nurse and some kind of surgery aid. Works at 2 major hospitals at a time, plus smething on the side. She says she enjoys the challenges.
--
Less Is More. In my book, About Face, I introduce over 50 powerful design axioms. This is one of them.
--Alan Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
Edited by Arkadiy
June 23, 2003, 12:33:04 PM EDT
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Post #106,997
6/23/03 1:25:55 PM
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My wife likes Nursing
she is a LPN and works 12 to 16 hour days at a Nursing home. She says I wouldn't be able to handle their work, but she likes it. She has been there for about 15 years now and it has been stable for her.
I may not be able to work the long hours, handle the smells, or be able to work fast enough to get most things done.
"I wonder how much of this BS Corporations will continue to shallow before they start looking into alternatives to Microsoft software?" -[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=106839|Orion]
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Post #105,903
6/12/03 8:50:59 PM
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Someone always has it worse
than can be imagined. Lucky you, 6 pages of hand written notes. With the law firm, I usually got table scaps from the meetings I was not invited to but impact my work anyway. As in a few paragraphs, about half a page of written notes and a few diagrams. The written notes being the bullet points from someone's Powerpoint slideshow, that I was not given the graphs and pictures to. Then the people I am to get more information from do not return phone calls or email, and when they do, leave incomplete answers or vauge descriptions which make no sense, and when I ask more questions,. they get offended and tell my boss and gets me into trouble with a "Communication Problem". So this leaves me doing a lot of guesswork, doing the work without the information provided and hope that it does what they want it to do. I felt like a mushroom, kept in the dark and fed manure. In the last job I had, it was a small business. No notes at all, nothing written down on paper, just do it, we'll tell you if it is not what we want. No programming guidelines, no naming conventions, no documentation, no source code comments, just a lot of spaghetti code, an Access database (Needs SQL Server conversion), most of the code in Excel VBA format (needs to be converted to VB 6.0), and a coworker who is constantly calling me names instead of helping me learn how the programs are supposed to work. I was given 3 months to convert the database, roll out a few programs, and help teach two coworkers how to run a SQL Server database. The database and programs were 80% done, and the two coworkers had learned SQL Server enough to support it. Then I got let go. It was major stress for me, I was almost going to finish it before the deadline, despite being forced to rewrite code after my coworker got upset that I used Execute on all my ADO objects instead of Open, and she had me change them all to Open, etc. Apparently my programming stlye was different from hers, and it made her very upset and she costantly called me names because of it. But in both cases, they were not good places for me to be working in. I'll be better off working in a more structured environment with cooperative people who actually care about helping others and working as a team to get things done.
I would say that if you want long-term, you need to start your own business, or find a profession that will always be in demand, like nursing, grocery, garbage collection, phone company, etc.
I started my own business, it is more like a hobby and I put a lot of money into the business and got nothing back. Nursing, my wife is a nurse, unless you are very quick and skilled, you get let go, they have it almost as bad as the IT industry. H1B Visa Nurses, downsizing, strict policies, etc. Grocery, well I'd have to join a union and then wait for them to get me into a local Grocery store. Garbage Collection, not with my allergies. Phone Company, I tried that but they want me to take a lot of tests, I didn't take their tests so they didn't want to talk to me anymore. I freeze up on tests, I have test anxiety.
"If you're going to cheat, cheat fair. If there's anything I hate it's a crooked crook!" -Moe Howard
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