Dave's Blog

Saturday, October 09, 2004 10:15:11 PM

One thing I get to do as a consultant is look at the labor market 
every 90 days.  Sometimes a client is enthusiastic and signs me 
well in advance of the end of a contract.  Often that paper 
doesn't show up before the last two weeks, though, and I begin a 
search for my next client.  This time I was met with a lot of 
enthusiasm, and the general rates have risen about 43% over 
what they were two years ago.  Financial institutions and 
technology startups were avidly interested in bringing in new 
talent.  One technology startup filled its positions in 
less than two weeks, an unusual speed for permanent employees.  
Skills in demand last month included WebSphere and WebLogic, 
clustering, and support.  

WebSphere is a container published by IBM.  WebLogic is a 
competing container published by BEA Systems.  Nobody but 
the people who deal with them know what they are.  Some 
people insist on specific experience, while others are 
willing to allow for a little cross-training.  I was 
recruited into WebSphere administration through a contract that 
drew on my experience with WebLogic.  Today I am more aligned 
with WebSphere and I don't have enough WebLogic experience to 
snag a contract using it.  I can make no sense in this shift, 
except to observe that clients are more cautious today.  

I saw one req for anyone who had experience with WebSphere, 
WebLogic, or jBoss.  The recruiter interpreted this as 
experience with all three.  I also talked with a logistics 
company that asked me first whether I had intimate knowlege of 
WebLogic, enough to tune it, troubleshoot it, and write objects 
for it (there's a little confusion; some managers don't 
distinguish between programmers and administrators).  The 
crowning moment of the interview was when the manager asked me, 
"What exactly is it that you do?"  

I can agree that specific experience helps, but when I talk with 
clients I sometimes find specific experience has no meaning.  
Sometimes programmers and engineers with years of experience 
have expectations that I would feel compelled to correct in the 
classroom.  On the job, my objections and explanations simply 
emerge on a case-by-case basis, and don't really get to the 
general principles involved.  Direct experience is better used 
in conjunction with formal training.  

One client told me about their latest project.  They are moving 
their company's primary product from C++ to Java using WebSphere.  
Their product is a real-time point-of-sale system.  Do you notice 
a problem here?  Sure, every computer science major in the 
country writes in Java today.  Sure, there are hundreds of nifty 
tools programmers can use in a Java environment.  Sure, IBM is 
pushing WebSphere like it's the best invention since agriculture, 
that it has so many features it practically writes your 
applications for you.  Frankly, I have seen so many problems with 
Java at runtime, and so many mysteries in the complexity of 
WebSphere, that I wouldn't recommend porting to WebSphere in the 
first place.  The new product won't look or feel anything like 
the old one, but I don't have to tell the client this.  I am 
working with a different company now.  By the way, when people 
look at the performance problems of Java, they wonder whether 
there is a real-time Java they can use.  There is: C++.  

Years ago I laughed when a recruiter asked me, "Do you know 
client-server?"  

"Yes," I replied.  "He pays my bills."  

It struck me as odd that anyone would ask such a question, since 
client-server relationships are built into every level of Unix.  
Apparently the question was a holdover from the days that IBM 
mainframes provided the services, and minicomputers and PCs 
were the clients.  It was an archaic term, and it bothered me 
that recruiters were asking the question.  Recruiters didn't 
make up the questions, so I inferred that somewhere their 
clients' managers were asking it.  

The buzzwords keep changing, and although the recruiters often 
don't seem to know what they're asking, the buzzwords reflect 
current trends in computing.  So it strikes me when the buzzwords 
change enough that a different skill set is apparently in demand.  
Last month the buzzword in which to have experience since the 
epoch was "clustering."  

Last month recruiters wanted to know if I had experience with 
clustering.  What is a cluster?  I have worked with Pyramid 
clusters, SGI FailSafe HA systems, and Veritas FirstWatch.  
These cluster applications at the platform level.  I have worked 
with volume managers from Pyramid, SGI, Veritas, IBM, and the 
FreeBSD community.  These were once called "disk clusters."  I 
have also worked with dual-port disks on high-availability 
systems, further confusing the issue.  I have worked with 
WebSphere applications that run on multiple platforms and do 
their load balancing in software.  This introduces enough 
ambiguity in my mind that I wonder what the recruiters are asking.  
In any case, the correct answer is "yes."  Client-server is dead, 
long live the cluster.  

Another revelation I had was something that I knew already.  
When agents asked me whether I would accept permanent employment, 
I always told them the form that employment takes made no 
difference to me.  When the issue of pay scale came up, and with 
agents it came up almost immediately, I told them I expected to 
make at least what I was making already.  If I compared the 
average permanent job with the average consulting contract, the 
two appeared to have parity last month.  If I compared the 
offers that were lining up, however, the contracts still had an 
advantage over the permanent positions.  

One company I talked with was an outsourcing firm that used to 
be an agency.  I worked with it when it was an agency, and as I 
expected, things had changed a little in its transformation to 
a consulting company.  The president sent me a note that it was 
good to hear from me, and that he needed highly skilled and 
experienced consultants like me.  Then he turned me over to an 
HR analyst.  She immediately made an appointment for my skills 
assessment.  Wait a minute.  Skills assessment?  That made me 
feel a little nervous.  What did a skills assessment imply in 
terms of company policy?  That if I didn't have the skills they 
were looking for right now, I wouldn't receive an offer?  That 
sounded more like an agency's approach than a permanent 
employer's.  Fortunately, I didn't have to find out the answer 
on this round.  

One agency had an internal conflict.  They wanted to represent 
me to a famous financial institution, but the account manager 
didn't see enough support on my resume.  The recruiter didn't 
see it that way; to him system administration was by definition 
support.  This little conflict amused me, because if they had 
seen my resume five years ago they would have seen about 80% 
support!  

Support is slowly moving to the bottom of the resume, which is 
probably a good thing.  Support is being done from Bangalore or 
Manila until the clients figure out what it should be and are 
willing to pay a premium for it again.  Tom Peters is definitely 
out of fashion today.  So while Bank of America cuts its support 
staff to the bone, I'll be directed to more laboratory-style 
development efforts that haven't gone overseas.   

At the end of my little quarterly exercise Visa once again came 
through.  While a "have gun, will travel" attitude is being 
advertised in the job market, "a bird in the hand is worth two 
in the bush."  I am off the market and back at work.  


10/7/2004 

An American with an open mind can recognize the value system of 
the old Hawaiians.  On my recent visit to Hawaii I got the 
distinct impression that old Hawaiians were Religious Scientists 
or Unitarians.  Although they had no concept of religion, they 
had gods, mores and ethics, and a concept of the Universal Life 
Force.  They called this force mana, and they believed it was 
strongest in the people most directly descended from the gods.  
The strength of mana was preserved through a complex set of 
behaviors called kapu, but mana itself was believed to exist in 
everyone and everything.  The life force of a person, for 
example, attached to his or her clothing, so clothing was not 
shared.  This is not unlike the belief systems expressed by 
American psychics today, who will ask for a personal possession 
of a deceased person in order to establish contact.  

Kane was the name of the original God the Creator, and also the 
name of Man.  In this language is encoded the Truth of God in Man, 
which Jesus taught in the Middle East two millenia ago, and which 
Americans such as Charles and Myrtle Fillmore and Ernest Holmes 
elaborated in the last century.  

Oracle towers were used in the temple, or heiau.  Priests, or 
kahuna, would go into the towers to receive guidance from the 
gods of the heiau, which included natural forces and deceased 
ancestors.  The term kahuna applied to any expert, be it of 
religion, the arts, or the sciences.  There were ritual kahuna, 
love kahuna, sorcery kahuna, medicine kahuna, architecture 
kahuna, boat building kahuna -- the list went on.  The kahuna 
drew on knowledge and training, intuition, and the collective 
unconscious, in fulfilling their responsibility of leading 
the people.  

    "I don't know if my gods are good or bad, but I am loyal 
    to them, and they tell me to always do right."  
	-- King Kamehameha I

I didn't write down this quote, but it can be found on a plaque 
at the Ahuena Heiau in Kailua.  Clearly the King was following a 
basic tenet that Christians profess, and which is the creed of 
the Universal Life Church.  Is it any wonder that when King 
Liholiho abolished the kapu system, it was a Hawaiian who 
called on American missionaries to fill the void?  

The story of Jesus of Nazareth may have taken a bit of wedging 
to be delivered to the Hawaiians, but it looks to me like the 
Universal Truth of Christ was something they already understood.  

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