Re: Money vs. Perl

I like what I have right now

That's the kicker. However, and I put this forward very carefully - as a developer, you need to make sure you're not typecast as a Perl person. I can program in pretty much any language you put in front of me, yet contract houses will never look at me as anything but a Perl developer because that's 75% of what's on my resume. I can also be a junior DBA (in both Oracle and MySQL) and a junior sysadmin (for at least 3 flavors of *nix and Windows Server 2003), but I'll never get hired as either.

Now, this makes me very attractive as a senior developer in a small firm, but I'm still shortchanged as a technical person creating a career. Just be warned.

Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

Comment on Re: Money vs. Perl

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Re^2: Money vs. Perl by cog (Parson) on Mar 15, 2005 at 19:20 UTC
contract houses will never look at me as anything but a Perl developer I am still trying to understand exactly how bad that might be... It doesn't seem bad to me at the moment, because I do have a job and the market doesn't look too bad. And, moreover, Perl is what I like to do. OTOH, I realize that the market won't stay the same forever... there'll be ups and downs (and hey, I'm only 26). Perhaps it won't be as bad if I aim at having more things other than Perl in my resume...	[reply]
Re^3: Money vs. Perl by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Mar 15, 2005 at 19:37 UTC
At some point, you're going to have other people who depend on you to bring in a certain amount of money on a regular basis. This is usually spouse / children, but not always. At that point, the fact that a job is steady, stable, not life-threatening, and bearable is more important than cool or specific language. Case in point - I recently left what was very close to my dream job (complete autonomy and my vision created the entire web prescence of a $100 million company) in order to work at a drudge-type job. Reason? I needed the extra $10k/year to pay for what my family needs. Things like a fence, swingset, new clothes, extracurricular activities ... shrugs Another point that's more where you seem to be - you probably have a certain amount of debt. Maybe a few credit cards, a student loan, and a car payment. Now, those aren't crimping your style. It's only $800/month and you make an extra $1000 on top of that + expenses. Now, imagine what happens when you buy a house, get married, and have a kid. $800/month gets eaten up real quick. Now, imagine what happens if you suck it up for a year, take the sucky job, get rid of all the debt, and then get married/buy a house/have a kid. I know what I wished I had done 6 years ago ... Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing. Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid. Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence. Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.	[reply]