Re: -I- Greetings...

Nathan Dykman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Puma" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
>> Of course you may have to move to India or China to find a job with the
>> current over-seas-sourcing of jobs in the computer field.
>> http://www.msnbc.com/news/947478.asp?cp1=1
> I'm actually coming around the idea that we need a IT union. And H1-B
> reform. And so on. I do believe in free markets, but I'm not sure that means
> the free exchange of labor and jobs.

because labor and jobs aren't part of the market.  ;)

i think a union would be a pretty bad idea for IT.  you don't really need 
it to be paid decently with benefits, and it could have the unpleasant 
side effect of making software even shittier.  let's face it, there are 
enough jerkoffs who don't really know what they're doing in this field, 
just faking it.  how many times have you seen programs in use that are 
just ridiculously inefficient and hard to use [1]?  do we want the wankers 
who design that shit to have better job security?  if you're good, you 
don't need the union for that job security.  yeah, IT is being paid a bit 
less these days in general, but it's not a sweatshop.  unions aren't 
typically useful for professionals, and even when it comes to blue collar 
workers, sometimes they just suck dues out of the members without doing 
squat for them [2].  there are good unions and bad ones, and you'd likely 
end up with a bad one given the situation, plus you'd have one more hunk 
o'cash being sucked out of your paycheck.

[1] jason had hernia surgery a few weeks ago, and the hospital's software 
was *hideous*.  they needed to get some information, so they called me, 
and first thing apologized that it would take a long time because of 
their new software.  so i'd answer one question, the woman would enter 
the data in, and have to wait for a new screen for the next question, 
which took a minimum of 30 seconds after each question.  she at one point 
wanted his company's snail mail address, and while i looked it up she 
went to the next screen--and couldn't later go back to fill that in.  she 
insisted she couldn't finish it out and start over so we had to make sure 
we had that information on us when we came in for the actual surgery.  
what a waste of time.

[2] i got kicked out of the grocery union years ago because i refused to 
pay dues to a union that forced me to go to boring meetings and let the 
company routinely violate our contract.  they would actually try to shut 
me up in meetings when i brought up contract violations.  you can imagine 
how well that worked.

Aimee the Magdalene

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