The Wall Street Journal recently published their 2010 survey findings on the best and worst careers, based around factors like income, outlook, environment, etc. As usual, software engineering ranks near the top of the field, though, for the rest of this post to make sense, you’d have to ignore “Web Developer” at #15 -I’m guessing HTML monkeys – and whatever the hell “Computer Programmer” is down at #34.
Now that I think about it, I’ve been pretty lucky to pick a career that seems to have an insatiable demand for a work force, in a place that not only fosters talented software people but also encourages entrepreneurship. That is, there’s always someone with an idea with a need for an engineer for implementation; the demand drives up wages and perks, with an unfortunate downside in jacking up living costs and, well, Californian taxes. The net result is that a “high-tech” job here in the Bay Area pays 60% more than one elsewhere, with cost of living expenses to match.
Having a household pet is akin to having a baby without the DNA connection: they’re messy and needy and hungry, crash around the house, and wake up when you sleep. For three weeks, though, I was catsitting for my vacationing uncle, so I guess it can be practice for the real thing (baby, not a litter of cats).
The cat is Tabby: a chubby, unusually timid (even for a cat) animal who specializes in hiding in dark corners. I had looked after him once prior, and back then he found in the laundry room and a niche behind the microwave to be his shrines of solitude. New place, new comfort zones; after locking him for a day inside my current laundry room (), we fished him out of the corner and into the bottom of the couch. Once we grabbed him from that hiding spot, he went crawling under the bed.
Oh boy. I feel another productivity rant coming on. Reader beware.
It’s pretty hard to be productive – trying to maximize the amount of work done in a minimal amount of time requires serious discipline, process, and fairly in-depth knowledge of all the moving parts (including, in a lot of cases, people). Though, there is a sweet solace which comes from the extra time saved and accompanying relaxation.
So why don’t more people try it?
Hitting on six years removed from my college graduation, I still find myself fighting for a precious table seat with SFSU students at the local Borders. Though I’m really just here to leech their wifi while sipping on an iced tea, Sui’s the one reviewing notes for her board exam. Due to the supposedly insufficient lighting at my place (I totally spent time trying to fix this), we’ve hopped from cafe to library within a 15-mile radius for four straight days searching for quiet, wifi-enabled places of study.
Call me old-fashioned, lazy, and easily-distracted; I don’t get the appeal of seeking out a crowded public area for study or work.
Literacy used to be a big deal. That is, not illiteracy; I’m talking about the number of people who could not read or write in the general populous. Nowadays, this problem has largely been eradicated from 1st and 2nd world countries, though admittedly it’s still an issue in the 3rd world.
It’s not just about reading a newspaper or writing a report, but more on the quality of said literature. So much of “knowledge work” present in current jobs require some degree of writing, that schools have continued to emphasize the skill, testing it with the likes of essay questions in entrance exams (i.e., SAT’s and GRE’s). And they barely started teaching us how to type properly 15 years ago, though I’d imagine general computer skills and speed typing ought to be a part of the core curriculum by now.
Can we get some love for programming too?
Everybody likes traveling. It’s just the universal hobby everyone is supposed to have. There’s something amorphously sexy and chic about visiting exotic locales, interacting with indigenous populations, and marveling at local landmarks which appeal to our general well-being and happiness.
I guess I slept in the day they taught us why traveling is awesome. For me, most of the time traveling is an exhausting, expensive ordeal in pale comparison to, well, travelers’ descriptions.
Ok, that’s not quite fair; there’s quite a few types of travel most of us undertake, with varied amounts of crappiness. Going from the worst to the best type, then:
