[CLUE-Talk] The Microsoft penalty that isn't - Tech News - CNET.com

[Jed S. Baer]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2002 12:37:23 -0600 (MDT)
"Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier" <jbrockmeier at earthlink.net> wrote:

> I can't say that I agree entirely with this. For one thing, people are
> increasingly pigeonholed. I'm currenly looking for a full-time job.
> I'm going to have a devil of a time finding a good job because I'm
> a generalist, not a specialist. Without sounding immodest, I think I'd
> be a great person to have at any small company - I can admin servers,
> write press releases or produce marketing materials, I've been a
> manager for several years, done product purchasing and negotiation
> and production in radio and television - just to name a few. But since I
> haven't chosen to overspecialize, I don't fit any headhunter profiles.
> If I look for a job as a journalist, most publications will assume I'm
> not really a journalist because my professional experience has largely
> been writing about computers. If I apply for an admin job, companies
> will look at my resume and say "oh, but you're a writer."
> 
> Not to mention that the ability to adapt and learn is no longer valued.
> Most companies want to hire someone who has done the same task over
> and over again, if you haven't done job X for ten years, they don't
> want to talk to you.

Actually, I'm generally seeing less pigeonholing in the various ads that
come through. More often, I see employers wanting somebody who knows
almost everything under the sun. I've seen ads for Oracle DBAs which also
call for VB, Java, ASP, MS Office, MS Access, Modeling and PL/SQL. I often
see SQL-Server in the list. Oh, and a salary that would almost not have
gotten you an entry-level Oracle DBA 2 years ago. What's happening is many
companies are doing significant belt-tightening, so they want one person
who can wear many hats - oh, and 24/7 on-call too. I've seen quite a few
DBA/Sysadmin jobs, and often see NT server thrown in along with one or
more flavors of Unix. This doesn't completely bode well for generalists
such as you and I, unless we happen to have the right mix. It actually
seems like employers are looking for "uber" specialists.

The main areas I see as being "pigeonholes" really aren't. Oracle
Financials (or other applications), PeopleSoft, SAP, SAS - these all
actually require multiple expertise, in addition to knowing the
application engine and database structure. Another one is data warehousing
- again, (to be really good at it) you need to be multi-disciplined.

However, you've hit the OJT issue pretty squarely. Many employers aren't
even looking at non-buzzword-compliant resumes. And given the long list of
buzzwords they're looking for, it's pretty tough. AT&T and Level3 have
taken it so far as to require all contract recruiters to submit candidates
via a web-based profiling engine. I've had one interview recently where
the manager seemed truly interested in how well/quickly I could pick up
new technologies.

I could rant on and on, but I won't. One thing comes to mind though. At
the last CLUE meeting, Crawford asked how many people used Linux at work.
Several hands went up. Perhaps all those folks could post the name of
their employers? Might be useful info for those of us looking for work.

Later,
jed

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