I think it's pretty clear that the global economy is in a bit of a recession. That might or might not affect you in your job, but I thought there was some good advice in this article on actively managing your career. The article starts by mentioning a dinosaur of a language, COBOL, as a warning to those that might think they will always be in demand. There are still COBOL programming jobs out there but not a lot of them.
I think that too many technical people drift along in their careers, not really thinking about how to grow their career, or move it in the direction they want. That's not to say that you must manage your career, you might do fine just moving along from job to job and be relatively happy. There are plenty of great DBAs and developers out there that are happy to go to work and fairly satisfied with their jobs.
However I'm not sure they are the majority. As I've run this site for over eight years, I've heard complaint after complaint about being unsatisfied with your employer. Or with the job you're asked to do. I don't know how many people don't really like the work they do, but I do see people posting about that quite often.
I think people need a job, they need a purpose, something that makes them feel like they're getting something done. I'm sure no one thinks it's a great accomplishment to go to work managing database servers for some company, or building corporate applications, but it's a contribution to society. You are helping your company get things done, and you are doing an honest day's work (I hope) for an honest day's pay.
Is that what you really want to do in life? Or think is worth doing to support your family? Figuring out what you really want to do with your life is hard. I know I struggle with this, and while I enjoy this job, I'm not sure this is my passion. I'm actually not sure what my passion is, but I do know that I like working in some environments more than others. And I search out those jobs.
My advice to those of you out there is to think about what you like, what you don't like in the job you have, your co-workers, the responsibility, and then try to ensure that you are always moving in the direction in which you want to move. I don't believe that your career will be a failure if you don't, but I do think it can be much better for you if you put in a little effort.
Steve Jones
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