Anarchogeek

Radical techies and jobs

Chuck0 has been bemoaning his underemployed state for a while. Perhaps it is because when he applies for a job, folks google his name. Sometimes I have the fear that the same thing would happen to me, that i perhaps can't get a 'straight' job if i wanted one. Lately i've been working for activist groups, non-profits, and the like. A lot of what i see out there in terms of jobs are like the one currently being advertised from The Rainforest Action Network who are looking for a swiss army knife type be all webmaster. Gaba is applying to work for Planned Parenthood doing tech support. It doesn't use her programming skills, but they are a good organization and it's not a life-eating-full-time job.

Chuck just asked what tech skills are needed to get a job today for activist techies. In someways i feel this is not quite the right question. The work gaba and I did on Asterisk for the RNC infoline used a set of technologies we'd never heard of before starting the project. We were fluent with scripting languages, linux, and how to learn about free software platforms. But i had never even heard of Asterisk until the day we arrived. The ability to learn, and innovate, and adapt i think are the most important things. The problem is those things don't show up in a resume or interview.

When i was in India hiring people to work at partecs i saw a lot of resumes and spent many days interviewing people. The thing that struck me most was two fold. One that people's formal education showed mostly their ability to get a formal education. Some of them came out of it in such a way that they investigated and explored things, other came out of it knowing how to do cookie cutter projects. Others clearly knew how to learn and teach themselves.

The most striking thing was the two people we hired who i thought showed the most initiative and ability to get stuff done, didn't work out. They clashed with a corporate culture which had different values. The best techies didn't make the best employees. That's probably true of myself too. My work is much better when i'm inspired by a project and self-driven to make it happen. Getting orders and doing something i'm told to do never seems to work for me.

It would be easier if i could do what i was told, but then life would be less interesting. I count myself as extremely lucky that i'm able to do the work i do, get paid for it sometimes, and have the freedom to follow my heart. I know most techies didn't hear about the tech bomb and respond by saying, "well i guess i'll just spend a while hanging out with south american anarchists instead of coming back and looking for work." If i had a mortgage payment, or kids, then i couldn't have done that.

Having a 9 to 5 job is like living life on fast forward. The world just rushes by.

On the other hand, that could be just me. Gaba feels that to not have a job she is sitting in waiting, not getting anything done. There is no one right answer. In Uruguay everybody talks a lot about jobs. Who has one, who is looking for one, who is about to loose one, and everybody not quite getting paid enough to live on. The economic crisis transformed jobs and money in to a central topic of people's lives.

In the US it doesn't seem like that same kind of real economic crisis has transformed the lives of the techies. But maybe i've just been an expat too long to really know.

Posted by rabble at September 15, 2004 07:00 PM | TrackBack