|
Quote: Over the years, have seen a range of people from excellent-researcher-but-poor-teacher to excellent-teacher-but-poor-researcher.
It is surprising how often that correlates. It seems the required, and sometimes natural, skills don't often coincide in the same person. You can have one or the other but not both.
I quit being a professor about 32 years ago and got a proper development job. Back then the bachelors degree syllabus I was teaching was mandated by the national education board and was heavily biased towards the "History of Computing" and knowing things like the read and write speeds of tapes and those newfangled discs (we still spelled it with a "c" in England back then - "disk" was an American spelling and therefore frowned upon!) and it didn't change much from year to year despite the leaps and bounds in computer technology during that time. I just got bored out of my brains going over the same (useless) stuff for three years running! Hopefully that has improved.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
|
|
|
|
|
I didn't do it, but one of my best friend was a QA Engineer for over 10 years, but dropped the job and opened a bakery of bread without yeast...
He is in the business for 13 years now and looks very happy...
And my father too...He was a chemical expert in various hospitals for over 35 years and then became a 'housekeeper' for local school...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
modified 10-Jun-15 6:03am.
|
|
|
|
|
My dad left teaching to do property maintenance after 25 years. He said teaching wasn't about teaching kids any more, but was just all paperwork and he didn't like that. He's never been happier.
|
|
|
|
|
He done it twice  ?
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
|
|
|
|
|
Heh for some reason when I clicked post it didn't post, then it did 
modified 10-Jun-15 6:23am.
|
|
|
|
|
The hamsters probably (or do you have parkinson?)...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
|
|
|
|
|
Possibly 
|
|
|
|
|
Chances are it was picked up by the automated spam system for some reason. These go to moderation instead of being published immediately, and stay there until someone notices and says "this isn't spam" - at which point it is published.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
|
|
|
|
|
There could do with being some sort of notification when you post that that is what is happening, I posted three times thinking something was broken last week then they all turned up.
And yes, I know this is the wrong place to post this.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
|
|
|
|
|
Not sure about that: if there was, then it lets the spammers know what's happening and that they need to fine tune their posts until they aren't caught.
It works as is, with not too many false positives - and it certainly has dramatically reduced the amount of spam we get here! 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
|
|
|
|
|
I was on a path to being a career soldier, but got out, went back to school, the rest is history. So yes, I have done a "reset" on a career.
|
|
|
|
|
My brother was a financial adviser (seller) with many different companies in the UK for over 10 years, it was results driven, high pressure, then he got made redundant a couple of years ago.
He now works for a company that installs and maintains those little machines that give toys or sweets either out of a slot or with a grabber that you find in pubs and supermarkets (in the UK at least).
He drives around the country in a van, installing them and ding simple maintenance or swapping when they are broken.
He has never been happier in his work and the party bags at his kids' birthday parties are awesome.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
|
|
|
|
|
I used to be a World Conquering Super Villain, but switched to development due to the high cost of shark food, and the wear and tear on white cats.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
|
|
|
|
|
Before you switched did you get find a way to get freakin laser beams on their heads? 
Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians.
Help end the violence EAT BACON
|
|
|
|
|
Be no point in feeding them if they didn't!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
|
|
|
|
|
Yes - I spent one year working shifting boxes in a warehouse in the early part of my IT career.
This was purely on the basis of not having a good work balance at the time, spending hours and hours coding and not much else - I wanted to do something physical and the company I worked for paid all staff equally so I was not taking a pay cut.
It was the right choice - I had a year of heavy physical work(I was less tired in the evening than when I was at a desk) and I also got an appreciation of how uninteresting that type of work was, eventually returning back into the IT team.
Sure if you want a 'career' doing this sort of thing is probably frowned upon - however I have no desire to be in management or have a 'career'...
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
modified 10-Jun-15 8:02am.
|
|
|
|
|
You should read my bio - I drifted quite heavily in my early 20s. Not included in the bio was a year's stint as a treasury analyst in a building society. I hated that, though learning about the various financial instruments was interesting. Without it I wouldn't have really got into programming as a career - part of it was sys admin on the treasury systems plus I automated several processes with script - something I could point to in later interviews.
|
|
|
|
|
In real life I was a research chemist - w/PhD from a rather prestigious institution, at that.
In part my reset (as you put it) evolved as I moved towards modeling chemical systems on the computer followed by trying to see if the models worked in real life (amazingly, they did). Automated instrumentation, too, as I was too lazy to sit and run it by hand all day (and the computer did a better job).
Finally, I decided to relocate - got a break to be hired as a programmer - a good thing as no major chemical industry exists in the area and CP is now suffering the consequences.
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
|
|
|
|
|
I'm in the process of getting a counseling certificate (I really don't want to do the BA/MA route) in psychology so in 3-5 years I'm hoping that counseling / life coaching can be my main revenue source and programming is just something I do for fun on the side. I'm also learning to play the lyre[^], it would be really fun to do so professionally, though the demand of course is limited.
[rant] And if you ask why, well, I'm actually getting pretty jaded at dealing with other people's sh*t code, which just seems to be everywhere. And I'm tired of dealing with ever-changing half-assed technology stacks.[/rant]
Then again, as I tell my girlfriend, doing counseling is really the same thing. Different software, same sh*t.
Marc
|
|
|
|
|
Musician, hard work, little money, people with ego issues, got nowhere... Printer, monotonous dirty work. Went to tech school then worked in electronics for 14 years. I was pretty good at it but it got boring when I became a lead tech that ended up doing more paperwork and swapping boards, component level troubleshooting takes too long they said, took all the fun out of problem solving. Started programming to automate product testing and service inventory tracking. Went back to school for computer repair and networking but still found programming more interesting.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
|
|
|
|
|
I spent 10 hard years in the corrugated fiberboard shipping container (cardboard box) industry as a press operator before going back to school. Fun times!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
|
|
|
|
|
I graduated with a degree in Marine Science and began working for a scuba diving facility which I eventually bought from my boss when he retired. I spent about 20 years in that business. Being self taught for the most part I didn't go directly into software development. I was working for an environmental company and wrote programs on my own to make my life easier on the job. This caught there attention and they moved me to database manager/software developer which I have been doing for the last 15 years.
|
|
|
|
|
Well it's not a software career, it was hardware but I code so:
For 10 or so years I worked in Orange County California at various upscale firms in the engineering departments as a test engineer.
The closest I ever came to having to interact with normals was when someone from the sales division would invade the engineering lab.
Reset 1993
When it looked to my techie wife and I as if California was going to go to the dogs or worse we bugged out to the woods in the high Rockies (9800 ft) that is Summit County Colorado among the moose elk n' bear.
We started a Network and PC support shop to support ourselves and keep from having to stock the shelves at the local grocery store. There is no place to be properly compensated here for your talents so autonomy of eeking out a living here along with the Elk, Moose and Bear must suffice. My wife and I run this shop and she runs interference so I don't alienate the whole normal customer base. 
I am trying to code myself to better income and I have high speed internet, statics for my servers and y'all to amuse me so it's all good.
Oh, and So. Cal did go to the dogs.
modified 10-Jun-15 17:57pm.
|
|
|
|
|
|
This article is nothing more but a distraction...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
,