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Re^3: Perl Job Marketability Question - very important for me!

by sundialsvc4 (Abbot)
on Jun 20, 2014 at 03:02 UTC ( [id://1090544]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^2: Perl Job Marketability Question - very important for me!
in thread Perl Job Marketability Question - very important for me!

“Mom,” I am most-delighted that your experiences to-date have been so dramatically different from mine.   As tempting as it may be for me to say, “Just yew wait, ’enry ’iggins,” despite such obvious and explicit provocations, I shall but graciously decline, and move on.

One of the great illusions in this business, which I have witnessed in its birthing over ... uhh ... the last 15 35 years or so ... is that “the ability to Write Source-Code™ (in Perl or whatever-have-you ...)” singularly Makes “You (Yes, You!! ... Yes, the Whole World is About You!!) A Rock Star.™”  

Well, pardon me for having a point-of-view that dates back to a full 10(!) years before the Perl programming-language was invented, but “I am not exactly impressed by this fond notion.”   I am, to be sure, very grateful that you have found gainful employment either by your willingness to relocate anywhere on-a-dime (as for me, I own 17 acres of land in one particular place in America .. with no mortgage ....), or to take remote-work for chump change whatever fees such work may command.  Truly, I am glad for you.   But I do not share your point-of-view, nor do I think that you should decry others who do not share it.   Perhaps indeed the next fifteen years of your life will demonstrate that “knowledge of Perl” is truly all that you will ever need to Live Long And Prosper™.   However, please excuse me for requesting a fifteen-year delay on the final decision of that particular point.   I’ve been there.   You haven’t.   Yet.

Meanwhile, my advice to the OP will stand:   that a software-professional’s business value to his employer/client is not tied to proficiency in any particular programming-language tool.   That one’s business-value to any particular employer is not linked to “the particular programming-languages and/or methodologies of the present day,” but rather to “the business, itself.”   That you therefore should not seek to plot your future career-course based upon any present-day proficiency in any particular programming language, but rather that you should be fully prepared to “discard” such proficiencies at a trice ... knowing, of course, that it is the big business-picture that actually matters, and that none of this actually has anything to do with languages.   That you should be at-a-trice willing to don an entirely new set of pantaloons, knowing that your true value to your employer is not linked to your attire of the moment ... but that it might well have very-much to do with your willingness to change pants.

The OP, after all, has just painfully witnessed this first-hand.   His employer decided to supplant an existing “legacy” Perl system, over which the OP had labored for many years, with something “–er.”   The OP did not see this coming, because his entire perception of the business problem was 100% tied to the Perl implementation of its solution, of which he was the (thought to be) priceless keeper.   Unfortunately, the decision-makers did not share this opinion.   As part of the decision to supersede the system, they irrevocably chose to jettison the OP as a now-extraneous artifact of that “legacy” business past, because they did not perceive the OP’s business value apart from that of the now-obsolete system of which he was the technical custodian.   Fifteen years of (perceived to be ...) “Perl-specific” employment history was perceived to be valueless in comparison to, say, “three years of experience with <<dot-Net | Python | Ruby | Haskell | Java>>.”   Yes, even though you have been supporting our business using this “obsolete” tool called Perl for the past fifteen years, we will cheerfully replace you with someone who “has been working with (tah, DAAHH!!) dot-NET” ... for less than three.   (Plus, he costs $15 an hour less than you do.)

It does not matter what you think of such business decisions, as you have no control over them.   It does not matter whether you consider such decisions to be stupid.   It does not matter if they are.

To get very-specific on this point ... in my earliest days, the “OMG you’ve got to have this” language was ... PL/1.   The conventional wisdom of that day was that “knowledge of PL/1 was Your Golden Ticket.™”   Obviously, this did not turn out to be the case.   “But, why?”   Because the world of business did not pause to suit IBM’s purposes ... any more than the same business world paused to suit Larry Wall’s.   Your best-bet, therefore, is to broaden your technical perspective across as many “silos” as possible, instead of comforting yourself within any particular one of them.   Just sayin’ ...

No, “Mom,” and with very(!) earnest respect to you personally, I am not going to “rise to your occasion” on this one, and I don’t mind saying that you’ll have to wait another fifteen years to find out why not.

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Re^4: Perl Job Marketability Question - very important for me!
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 21, 2014 at 04:40 UTC

    Dude, I've been around longer than you (40 years) and you have no reason to be disrespecting Your Mother. Your Mother has demonstrated knowledge that, at times, makes me feel like a mere mortal and I'm quite sure I charge a lot more than either of you.

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