RE: It's election time for COMMON again. He's baaaaaaaaaaack.

I had a double major in Business & Economics. Thanks to summer jobs, I also
had an Operating Engineers union card and a commercial driver's license. I
compared the offers I was getting (1972) to what I could make in
construction, and it was no contest. I made as much in a week as my
classmates were getting per month. For almost two years after college, I ran
a dozer in the good weather and an 18 wheeler in the wintertime and on rainy
days. I quit driving in February of '74 when the teamsters were on strike
for a while. They were hanging bricks from the bridges and shooting at the
independents. Scary time to be on the road.

I got into IT that fall when my dad started a software company after
retiring from the construction business. He asked me if I wanted to learn to
be a programmer. Since I had a year's worth of income saved up, I gave it a
shot, and haven't looked back, although I remain a member of the operators
union in case I ever get fed up with IT.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dan
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 5:39 PM
To: Non-Technical Discussion about the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: It's election time for COMMON again. He's baaaaaaaaaaack.

On 7/27/07, Paul Nelson <nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Those kids should get a degree in a business related field, and then go
into
IT if they are so inclined. It's a whole lot easier to teach an accountant
to program than it is to teach a computer science grad how to prepare a
balance sheet or to perform a physical inventory the right way.

It wasn't by design, but I graduated with two majors, Business Management
and Data Processing. (Should have received dual degrees, but they changed
the rules on that mid-stream.) The dual majors have helped me land job
offers.

My eldest had expressed a passing interest in programming, but I've laid it
on the line for him: Coders and bit-twiddlers are extremely expendable.
Only those who work their way up to the analysis, project leadership, etc.
roles (the point being that they learn and understand the business, and what
makes it tick), these are the "business world computer geeks" who have the
best chance of avoiding the opportunity to train an offshore worker.

- Dan