Replying to a message of Bob Klahn to Bob Ackley:

 BA>> Almost *nobody* in the Information Technology
 BA>> field is unionized (one exception being the computer people
 BA>> at the Union Pacific Railroad, they are really railway

 BK>  Ever notice how much contempt IT people are held in?

Uh, no I didn't.  And I worked in the field from 1981 to 2005.

 BK> They really ain't all that bright.

Speak for yourself.

 BK> And they are much overworked, in a great  many cases, for what
 BK> they are paid.

Depends, of course, on the employer.  There used to be a lot of mobility
in the IT field until employers started shipping the jobs to India.

Mutual of Omaha used to hire newly minted programmers by the dozens.
The company's turnover was horrendous, and about 1/4 of their programmers
were in training and not producing much.  It didn't seem to bother them that
their people would get some experience with them and then go someplace else
that paid better.  Of course after a decade or so of this somebody suggested they
pay their IT help a bit more to reduce the turnover; they did and in the
not-very-long
run they started saving money.

First Data Resources in Omaha has always been known as an IT sweatshop.  At
one time they had an employee turnover rate to prove it but I've been out
of that loop
for years and don't know if it's still true.

Level-3 Communications/i-structure/whatever-their-new-name-is in Omaha is also
an IT sweatshop.

There's another outfit in Omaha that periodically (every few years) lays off 100 to
300 programmers.  Can't remember their name, but the last time they did it the
action was referred to as 'culling the herd.'

And, of course, for the past nearly a decade the IT market in Omaha has
been saturated.
There are far more trained, experienced IT people than there are jobs for
them.  Yet the
schools keep turning out programmers by the dozens if not hundreds - into a
nonexistent
job market.


 BK>  Aside from which, IT does little to carry the economy.

Oh, really?  Who do you think keeps the machines running at the big,
middle sized and small businesses in this country?  Who do you think
keeps the Internet running?

Take the IT people out of the equation and the Internet in this country
would shut down and stay down in less than 24 hours.  Not an altogether
bad thing, IMO.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+