August 15, 2016 at 10:45 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item A Slower Job
August 16, 2016 at 12:36 am
Sounds great. I long for the day when I only have to work "part time". It is not the hours but more the burden of having so much responsibility, financial and otherwise, and part time implies that others have naturally lifted my burden (like the kids being their own responsible adults).
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
August 16, 2016 at 2:39 am
...It can also be less stressful since you work on lots of small issues without looming, ...Experienced, semi-retired professionals might really enjoy this job. I know this is something that might intrigue me in 15 or 20 years.
...QA certainly needs more quality workers...
Steve makes some interesting points. I'm probably the one of the people he is thinking about (No, I'm not applying for the job - too far away and I don't have quite the right skill set. ;-)). There is certainly work to be done, and there are older people who are capable of doing it and might like the jobs given the right circumstances. Slow does not have to mean inefficient or expensive.
A couple of things work against this:
First a "commoditising" attitude from the management looking for workers which will always favour cheap. The trouble with cheap in this context is that people who are cheap often require really clear instructions for how to do the job. Experienced people can cope with ill-defined problems. To address this the people hiring need to understand what they want, or at least listen to those who do.
Second the "stress factor". Speaking for myself, "I can't be bothered" with stress any more. I have interesting things to do and some of them pay me money! I look for "interesting" work.
If the industry can address these problems then I am sure there are plenty of older people who would be interested in the roles and way of working Steve describes.
Tom Gillies LinkedIn Profilewww.DuhallowGreyGeek.com[/url]
August 16, 2016 at 2:55 am
Just a thought but we need to be careful to not exclude new entrants into the industry as they literally are the future. We should not do it at the cost of excluding current professionals either. Just a balance required as per usual.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
August 16, 2016 at 4:38 am
Steve, it is a very good idea.
It only has the potential, as any flexible model does, to shift the balance of power to the employer's side,
resulting in lower wages, more competition among workers and less security.
So my forecast is: the model has great promise in the future.
August 16, 2016 at 5:16 am
Before I took this job I was keen to do similar - working on a degree in my spare-time alongside full-time career was leaving me frazzled at the end of the day. Unfortunately, I found that all of these types of jobs in my area paid a pittance (in terms of hourly £) and expected the world in 20 hours or less...decided it was better to stick at what I'm doing, than risk making the situation worse! When I'm much older and wiser I hope to have the option to take a step back though.
Like h.tobisch mentioned above, flexible employment models do have their risks - think 0 hours contracts...great in theory, but have proven to be poor in practice. Non-traditional working requires a great deal of trust between the employer and employee.
August 16, 2016 at 5:35 am
This is exactly what I've been thinking over that past year, as I'm almost ready to "slow down" a little. I didn't think of database support, but more about QA or general tech support since I started in dev and more or less moved to DB over 5 years ago and doing much support now with more limited project work. However, I do like the idea of DB support also and will include that in my thinking as I look into this more.
While the contract idea maybe could work, I prefer the idea of part time or even full time with flexible hours because I'd rather have a job more secure and be an employee of one company rather than contract with multiple companies and not get to know the people as well. I say flexible hours because I know sometimes there will be pressures to get stuff working at times.
Hopefully, when the time comes I can sell the idea of my experience and wisdom to help support a great team in my local area.
August 16, 2016 at 5:39 am
Having worked predominantly within support during my career I have to disagree with some of this editorial.
"At first, I suggested looking at recent graduates from local colleges for candidates, as well as junior people at user groups or SQL Saturdays,"
For a junior or entry level position yes, for any other level no. Management trying to fill support positions requiring experience with graduates is rarely successful given that issues need fixing asap with no capacity to take time learning and studying as it happens. Having said that, the main upshot of hiring graduates is they won't have families and kids; the hours of work are often brutal.
"It can also be less stressful since you work on lots of small issues without looming, deadlines."
Definitely disagree with this. It's probably one of the most stressful jobs in a company. The general industry approach of "chuck it over the fence and then it's nothing to do with me" by developers means support engineers often pick up the pieces with barely functioning software and systems after they enter Production (and get the full force of client's anger to boot). I acknowledge this isn't all developers, but in my experience unfortunately it is most developers. The culture of IT now means users and clients don't care what priority their issue has been classified as, they want it fixed asap regardless. They also now consider a lower environments as important as Live production service.
"With great benefits, it might be the kind of job that an older technology worker would want. Especially if this were a part time position."
I don't think part time suits support. In-depth issues and tickets sometimes take several days to resolve and users/clients won't accept their problem being put on hold because the support engineer has Thursdays and Fridays off etc. Other engineers are usually snowed under with their own issues to resolve without having to pick up and run with part time colleague's work in their absence also. As an example in my current role, there are 3 engineers here and over 200 open tickets. Older part time workers won't want the on call support pager buzzing several times through the night also.
August 16, 2016 at 5:57 am
As h.tobisch and Tindog say, this approach has its risks.
I tend towards a middle of the road view. The main condition for it working as I want it is a relatively equal balance of power between the parties. The idea of having a loose network of people you can call on to work for you (or you work for them) is very attractive. They need to be people with whom you have a reasonably trusting relationship. You actually want people who will say "No. I'm too busy." or "No. I don't have the right skills (you should try Adam/Eve)" sometimes. Depending on what you do, imagine having access to: a web designer, dba, C++ programmer, Java programmer, operations guy etc and only paying them when you need them. You might even enjoy meeting up occasionally. Great! Suits everybody.
The downside is when "the employer" has all the power. They tend to force the price down "and pay peanuts". The problem with paying peanuts is sometimes you get monkeys, especially when you don't understand what you are asking for and the prospective monkeys feel they have to say "yes". When you have systems which were put together by monkeys, you get...
Consequences of this are that long term "the employer" gets rather a bad deal. They pay their peanuts and they get something that doesn't work, or works very badly. In the meanwhile "the monkeys" have run away somewhere else. They then hire some more monkeys...
The solution to this is for both sides to develop a network (personal, not TCP! 😉 ) of people they feel they can trust, try to be reasonable, try to do a decent job and try not to shaft the other guy. It's all very old-fashioned! 🙂 I tend not to work for "big-guys" any more.
Tom Gillies LinkedIn Profilewww.DuhallowGreyGeek.com[/url]
August 16, 2016 at 6:19 am
TheFault (8/16/2016)
Having worked predominantly within support during my career I have to disagree with some of this editorial.
I agree with all your disagreements!
August 16, 2016 at 6:49 am
No matter who you hire, you get what you get. If they are good workers you schedule around that. If they work part time, you schedule around that too. If they don't work so good you get rid of them and hire someone else. It doesn't matter who you hire or for what hours, you do the same thing, see how they do, help as much as you can bear, and make appropriate judgement calls. You know, you can hire the experienced top notch best of the best and they still turn out to be worthless. So hire that older worker. I'm one now and I do a heck of a good job.
August 16, 2016 at 6:57 am
On first read I did sort of like the idea, but I do agree with all of the disadvantages that TheFault brought up. Of course if this is more an entry level support position then there might not be quite as high an expectation, but I think we all know this is a bad assumption. As I get closer to retirement age I often wonder what my next job will be like and I wonder if there isn't a compromise here. For this type of position a part-time person in the traditional sense might not work out, but if you are looking for retirees, can you do something that is more part year instead. So a (semi-)retiree can work full time for 3 months and then be off for three etc. That may not mesh with everyone's idea of working later in life, but I know I would appreciate something like that. Obviously you would need to find several people of similar mindset to make this work.
August 16, 2016 at 7:14 am
It would be useful to have an experienced gray haired DBA who could offer technical assistance and architectural advice across any number of projects, more like an analyst role, wihout becomming mired in the trench muck of any specific project.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
August 16, 2016 at 7:23 am
Interesting topic with a diverse set of opinions. But, I was confused when I started reading the editorial. When I first read CA at the top of the editorial I was unsure if it was referring to CA as in California or CA as in Canada. The posts help me understand that is was a typo and was actually supposed to be QA.
When I was in college I did part-time computer consulting in their College of Business to students and faculty. It helped me round out my computer education with some practical experience.
When I "semi-retire" it would be nice to get a part-time position or contract to keep me a little busy, but more than that to help me keep my mind "sharp".
Dan Beggs
August 16, 2016 at 8:04 am
dbeggs57 (8/16/2016)
...When I first read CA at the top of the editorial I was unsure if it was referring to CA as in California or CA as in Canada. The posts help me understand that is was a typo and was actually supposed to be QA...
I read it as California.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
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