Re: Interactive vs. Batch -- MIDRANGE-L

This all sounds so strange to me.  Your company *begged* your programmers to
get certified?!?!?  And offered to pay for it and pay bonuses?  What kind of
company do you work for?  (And where?)  Any who are these companies that
regularly send employees to COMMON?  How do you get to Utopia?

To be fair, in the six months I've been at Handleman, they are doing a LOT of
things right.  My request to attend COMMON was turned down this time because
it wasn't in the budget, so I've made certain that it gets considered for the
upcoming year's budget.  Maybe the fall COMMON.  But there are a lot of
opportunities for cross training here.  I'm hoping to develop some serious
data comm skills through a so-called mentoring program.  Also, possibilities
exist for Oracle and Unix training.  We've got a mainframer jumping into the
AS/400 area.

Prior to Handleman, I spent the bulk of my career employed by contractor /
consultant houses working for hundreds of clients.  While I enjoyed the
different environments, change of pace, one very distinct disadvantage to this
career path is the lack of opportunity for training.  Even so, many of the
client-employed programmers I worked with never had these opportunities,
either.  Just luck of the draw?  I figured it was just "business as usual".
Maybe the geographic area I'm in?

Dan Bale
IT - AS/400
Handleman Company
248-362-4400  Ext. 4952
D.Bale@Handleman.com
  Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
  (Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)

-------------------------- Original Message --------------------------
Booth - you won't find those same MCSE's (Microsoft Certified...) at any
user group either. The books & certification is how a pc jockey can spend
a few months & a few thousand and boost their annual pay $10k (or more).
3 years ago I worked with 15 other AS400 pgmrs. We begged them to get
certified. We bought books, training cds, had evening studies, even paid a
bonus when they passed - Only 3 or 4 were interested. How do you light a
fire under a 10-15-20 year application pgmr? You'd think it was a union
job! (with apologies to any members). And you know what? There are many
AS400
certifications worth having for your career, just like MCSE. And I think
many that have them are doing very well.
Current customer-2 as400 pgmrs, 2 net techs. 400 pgmrs maintaining
ancient code. Going nowhere fast. Network guys learned linux & w2k &
frontpage on their own after hours, and now building the corp intranet.
jim
<snip>
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