DK One

22nd February 2001

We are the lucky ones..

I was reminded recently of how lucky we are. When I say we, I am referring to those of us that are pretty proficient with computers. We have skills, which are very much sought after in today's job marketplace.

If you read some of the online forums today you may hear people in our industry say things like 'I hated my job so I jacked it in and went to do X at company Y' or 'Its time I moved on, I am not learning anything new here'.

Never before has such an industry existed where the vast majority of us can just pack up and leave our current job in order to look for another. Finding it rarely takes that long as computer skills are universal. If you know Unix then you can probably get by in most of its flavours. If you can use one MFC application you could pretty much navigate the rest.

But its not like that in every industry and it was this I was reminded of recently when someone close to me became faced with the prospect of becoming unemployed due to company politics. Their particular role is as a specialist in a dying service industry. Finding another job will not be that easy.

So here we are administrating servers, updating web sites and coding programs while bad mouthing how boring it can get. But let's just take a moment. Sit back and look around you and smile at the fact that you are part of an industry that is crying out for more people like us. If you are bored then it will not be too hard to find a job somewhere else, or acquire new skills. This realisation cheered me up anyway and made today all that more bearable.

On the Detox front I have been pretty busy this last week as you can see with the continuation of the weekday comic strip. True, it takes maybe 30 minutes to create each strip. The hard part is coming up with an amusing sketch each day. Today I've embarked on the start of a storyline, which will hopefully go some way towards generating some new ideas for the strip and to better introduce each character.

Happy computing!

DK

Previous DK One:
13th February 2001
4th February 2001
23rd January 2001