Why cant hackers do something worthwhile and trash Al Qaeda web servers and the servers that provide hosting for host them?

I wish you the best. I hope to be able to weather the "rain" for a while using my savings and hopefully smaller contracts as an "umbrella" but certainly would also consider any good employer looking to hire locally as well!

I was thinking that this thread has definitely touched a nerve. Maybe even multiple nerves! :-)

"but they want you as theirs, not shared" I think that says it all. I dont want to be "theirs" anymore. I did that. I've been there. I put in my time. I worked those long nights and weekends without pay. Starting in the early 80's and worked my butt off 50, 60 hours a week for a "salary w/benefits" job and got laid off at the hint of lower profits, numerous times. I heard all the BS that a captive employer can tell me. 60-85K sounds nice but when you take out the unpaid OT, the fact that you really can not go on vacation because when you DO take a few days off you come back to find out there's a ton of work on your desk and/or you get an attitude for taking time off, the pagers going off in the middle of the night, the weekends, etc - its just not worth it. The salary is ultimately reduced to a $35K job and my fiance makes more than that as a secretary with NO pressure. She leaves her job at 5pm and on the weekends never once thinks about it. Now, some will say that self-employed contract worker types put in 60+ hours a week and cant take vacation either. This is only partially true. While I work my butt off, still, and probably more so than when I worked "captive" employment, the rewards far outweigh the negatives. First, I bill for every 15 minutes of my time. Second, I get to shape the project, speak to VPs and CEOs, interface with CIOs - directly.. Not through some layer of management that doesnt care or know squat. I get to develop the product and deliver it myself. I also control my own schedule. If I want a 2 week period off then I build it in. If I want 5 or 6 weeks off then I build it in. I know this isnt for a lot of folks. Its not simple but it is damn rewarding to earn 6-figures and to have earned it all on my own. No recruiters, no large company giving me a desk and priorities that shift from hour to hour. I am definitely in a drought at this point and living off of savings right now. I might consider captive employment for the time being but I recently turned down a position at 90K because they not only wanted me to rewrite the entire internal system but they wanted me to train the only other developer there on new technologies, hardware + software, mentor him, work very closely with marketing and sales to the point where I would go out on new sales calls - so that I would be available on the spot to determine if the delivery of the product was technically achievable (the product IS data, itself).. Apparently sales and marketing were/are wasting a lot of money over-prom

Read your blog entry from Apr 29th as well... I agree. But maybe Craig's List isnt the best place to look for contract work? Think about the audience that uses it - they want to spend as little as possible and really dont care about quality or properly developed applications. I say we all Unionize! There will never be another unpaid minute of OT and when corporate America tries to outsource, we sue. Just like the plumber's union did when they tried to build a sky-scraper in Philadelphia WITHOUT PIPES! The result? The developer HAD TO put the pipes in even if they use flush-less toilets "just in case". I used to be so against that method of strong-arming but not its hitting me in the wallet, on the dinner table and in the gas tank as well. A software developer's union!

I have to agree. But, you have to consider this much: the software developer that KNOWS the underlying hardware (as well as the business stuff too) is going to be the one who comes out smelling like a rose. That is, if outsourcing doesnt choke us all first. While it may be true that they dont teach carpenters how to make tools anymore, those who know how the tools are made and the history of the tools themselves, are at an advantage... Some of the best carpenters were able to devise their own tools because they knew tool-making as well as carpentry.

Maybe thats part of my own downfall. I still would rather, and do, use text editors and develop from scratch, if at all possible. I just cant stand these RAD IDE's and this drag-drop approach to development. Dont even get me going on "agile".

25 years of development and, not only head-down/hands-on development, but business experience (across hospitality, accounting, financial, utilities, medical and machinery to name a few). I can read and understand a balance sheet and speak business as well as developer talk in one breath. I would consider myself a true hybrid. Yet, most dont care and the ones that do are waning quickly. But if you say that there are a large number of organizations beginning to reject outsourcing then who am I to deny it? I am hoping to come into contact with some of these companies soon. I hope the turn-around happens before I decide to go back to a trade school and learn how to wire electric into homes or build houses so that when the next housing boom happens, I am ready! Right now they're asking me to slash my rates or else they go to India, China, Vietnam even Lithuania!! And by slash rates I mean from $100/hr to less than $30, some even less than $20. After I take out healthcare, mortgage, car(gas), food and simple business expenses (software, internet, etc), there is nothing left from $25/hr. Nothing. Its crazy. Its backwards AND upside-down all at once.

Why is that? Because some developer in India told ME to stop whining the other day. This is how he put it: "An average developer in India earns the equivalent of $1000 USD a month, gross pay. If you want to match or beat that then I would be willing to bet you'd get the contracts in America. Otherwise, you simply wont". So....... thats what we're being reduced to people. We're being reduced to $12,000 a year employees. People in WALMART make about that. Mc Donalds. Borders. And they dont have 1/10th of the pressure. So, yea, I too am looking for a new career. This one has been pulled from under my feet.

You know what all that is? Outsourcing. Those are the outsourcing people asking everyone else for help, and we fools supply them with answers while we site idle because companies would rather pay someone in India or China 1/4 the pay to do what we used to do, correctly and accurately. Why do we do this? I have no idea. Would you see an attorney give another attorney the answers to legal issues prior to going to court? No. On a similar note, would you ever see an attorney (or plumber, electrician, construction people, you name the trade) anything for their clients WITHOUT pay (or for much less pay?) No way. We, developers, are the only fools that have allowed this to happen to our profession/trade. We worked for hundreds of hours of OT without (much) pay if any at all, and for what? To eventually be outsourced AND, oh yea "you will train your replacement in Bombay or you dont get any of your 4 month severence package".. We deserve what has happened. We allowed it to.

"If you don't share the same goal, you're gonna sit there with "strangers" and feel a stranger yourself." Nah.. I was more concerned for my bottom-line (and theirs too) in the lease costs of the building. If it costs me $2000/mth to lease 2000 sq/ft and then add high-speed Internet, electricity, water, etc then 10 people in 10 offices with a common area would be a far smaller cost for all of us. Who cares of I shares their specific goals. The general goal is to work and get paid and get more work and get paid and, eventually, retire. Another "goal" to share would be the costs, they can come and go as they please - they are their own boss. We all win. The clients win. We all have offices, doors, its quiet AND there is a common area where we could discuss, share, maybe even exchange work and clients = more business opportunities. Attorney's do this all the time. They arent in any way associated with each other yet they share the same office space and they respect each other's privacy and yet they still maintain a professional environment for their customers. I have seen other professionals do the same: plumbers, doctors, dentists.. Why not software developers? We're professionals and we should be acting more like the plumbers, dentists, attorneys, doctors out there. Ever notice that those people dont usually speak with you for more than 5 minutes without requiring you to come to their office so they can charge you? Never understood why so many programmer give away their hard work. Anyhow, not sure where you get communism from. No one is hording the clients and the work and rationing it out to the developers in the shared office area. Its capitalism at its core. Like I wrote above, you and I (for example) might know of work that our respective clients need and refer one another and generate even more work. Nothing wrong with that. I dont know about anyone else but I am in it to earn money and retire wealthy and relax in my old age. The only way to get there is to work, work hard, care about yourself FIRST and earn money for your work. Maybe those independent contractors out there that are lonely could look into getting a dog. I hear they are great company! :-)

:-D Lonely? Not at all. Telephone, email, conference calls/meetings... all of the normal disruptions are still there however its easier to control those disruptions. No one generally barges into my house and asks me questions when I am deep into development or, worse, debugging. If I go to work at an office, after the 45-60 minute (on good days) commute where people are cutting me off and tailgating me all the way in and then have to fight for parking and then its the walk to the building in what could be rain, wind, heat, snow, etc, by the time I get there I am mentally destroyed. Anything creative is already sucked out of me by 8:30am. Working from home I just get up, shower, walk over to the PC and begin working. I turn off the phone until around lunch time. Its a highly disruptive device. I dont turn on chat, hardly ever - another disruptive thing. I dont generally look at email, it leads to what is usually a chain of events that stops me from being productive. I enjoy the teamwork environment of working in an office but honestly I havent experienced that since the early 1990s. Something changed. Either its US, the people, or its the companies themselves at a higher level. Everyone is out for themselves, disruptions and distractions plague the offices I've been in since the early 1990s and since leaving the commute/job for a self-employed job I feel much more creative and productive than ever. I can work at night, weekends, get up at 4am and work if I want to - whenever. I know what has to be done and when it needs to be done and when left alone I work incredibly well. I decided to go it alone when I finally realized that the company itself doesnt care one bit about me. All they care about is their bottom line. I realized this when I was actually told by a large bank that they'd rather pay 3 people in India what they pay me and would rather me collect unemployment from them because there is an end-point to that unemployment and then their financial responsibility to me is over. The do not care about people who work for them, no matter what they say. I may sound cynical but I've been around the block for quite some time. I have been working, professionally, since before the PC was around. I should have gone on my own a LONG time ago. They'd rather ship buggy products from shoddy designs than do it properly in and organized fashion and its generally because of what the "stockholders" will do. Well, I am invested in me, myself and did I say me? :-) I really dont care about