Re: Re[2]: The "greying of Common" Is it still true?

It sounds to me, Eric, that you are worth a great deal more to your company
than your company is to you.   It has always been true in this industry that
the only way to get what you are worth is to move around fairly often.  They
won't pay you (or treat you like the professional you are), but they will be
happy to pay the two people it takes to replace you.  It is very stupid
management practice, but it is also most common.  That said, it is still
entirely up to you to further your own education.  You cannot depend on any
employer to even care.

Programmer's who are willing to put in a little extra effort educating
themselves, on their own (and you sound like you are one), are worth three
or four of those that populate most shops who won't even read a tech mag,
much less keep up with newsgroups like this.  So, when you do decide to do
something about your employment, it is entirely reasonable to also negotiate
on such things as COMMON and other educational seminars.  On my last move, I
even negotiated reimbursement on tech mag. subscriptions.  Actually, I think
managers kinda like having such things to negotiate over because they have
more flexibility there than they do on salaries.

----- Original Message -----
From: <eric.delong@pmsi-services.com>
To: <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2000 11:44 AM
Subject: Re[2]: The "greying of Common" Is it still true?


>
>      Pet peeve #10651462
>
>      I fit in the "under 40" category (32 now, 15 yrs in 3x/400), but
>      have never been allowed the opportunity to attend a tech
>      conference, despite numerous requests. Typically, if anyone in the
>      shop is sent for education, it's the "greybeard" who may or may not
>      even be interested in learning new tricks.....
>
>      Our company recently sent one of the pgming managers to tech school
>      (communications) knowing full well that he was preparing to leave
>      the company.  This does not seem practical or cost effective as we
>      still have a lack of expertise that needs to be remedied (again).
>      IMO, too many organizations view tech conferences as a form of paid
>      vacation and are handed out as "rewards" instead of determining
>      where/who has technical interests. You can bet that if given the
>      opportunity, I'd be there. I have nothing against TFM, it's been
>      the best resource I've had access to, but some day I'd just love to
>      try the alternative to hours/weeks of grueling study and/or
>      guesswork (on my own time, usually) to extract the appropriate
>      materials from the books.
>
>      BTW, I view this list as one of the BEST resources available to
>      gain exposure to new techniques. I learn more in a few weeks by
>      reading the mountain of emails than I'd learn in months of
>      self-study.
>
>      JMO,
>      eric.delong@pmsi-services.com


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