Take Charge of Your Career -- You Don't Have a Choice

by Richard Stooker

A few months ago a high school student sent me an AllExperts question which boiled down to:

Which computer career pays the most money and has the most job security?

I was floored.

Job security?

Does this 16 year old kid write term papers on a typewriter? Call her friends on an AT&T Princess phone? Twirl a hula hoop? Listen to a transistor radio?

Make the most money?

Does anybody really give credence to those tables showing that in Boise ID the average programmer makes $1544 more than the average networker?

Who cares? Do you want to be average? Is anybody average?

The truth is, although it'd be irresponsible of me to have advised her to study COBOL, she'll make the most money at whatever career she enjoys, given some reasonable demand in the marketplace.

The more she works at giving her employers her best, the more money she'll make.

The more she uses her skills to solve more problems for more people -- and this can and should be some activity far beyond normal employment -- the more money she'll make.

Chances are, by the time she graduates from college the highest paying computer skill will be something nobody has yet heard of.

In the long run, she'll make as much money as she sets out to make. No more and no less.

Some computer programmers are now on welfare.

Bill Gates is the richest man in the world.

The more you *create your own job* -- whether you're formally an employee or not -- the more security you have.

In THE MILLIONAIRE NEXT DOOR, Thomas Stanley and William Danko compare the "security" of employment with the "insecurity" of
self-employment.

Work for a company and you get a paycheck at regular intervals, as long as the company needs you, does not go out of business and is not merged or bought out by another company.

However, the owner of a pest control business has irregular income, but from maybe 1000 or so different customers.

If one of those customers moves away or switches to a competitor, the pest control owner still receives income from the other 999.

Given reasonable management and marketing, pest control businesses will survive as long as the world contains mice, roaches and others.

I wonder how many Enron employees now wish they were pest exterminators?

I don't expect techies to kill fleas.

I do expect that the techies who understand they must constantly search for new ways to help people -- whether employers or customers -- will make a lot of money in this the third millenium.

Techies who just want management to leave them alone to code will have a niche when the economy is booming as in 1999. In bad times, pray for good luck.

It's up to us to shape our futures by the actions we take now.

Do the minimum, reap the minimum.

Do a good job, receive your fair share.

Take the initiative and use your creativity and hard work to far beyond where you are now, and harvest the abundance of the Earth.

Your choice.

Copyright 2002 by Info Ring Press

I hereby grant permission to all website owners and ezine publishers to reprint the above article as long as long as it is reprinted as is in full, including this contact information. Email Richard Stooker: rick@inforingpress.com

About the author:
Richard Stooker is the author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career. Changing Computer Career

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Current News in the Tech Industry:

Top Skills Include Mobile Development, Open Source

Not too long ago, Elance, an online job board for contractors and service providers, released a report that noted its online talent pool earned more than $20 million in the first quarter of 2010, with information technology as one of the top-performing categories.

According to the report, here are some of today's most sought-after IT skills that you should be seriously thinking about acquiring:

• Mobile Development: This category saw a 98 percent increase in the number of job posted by employers, and Elance attributed the increase to the emergence of devices such as Apple's iPad and the next generation of iPhone, as well as the popularity of Google's Android mobile operating system.
  
  
• Open Source: Open source technologies make up 20 percent of Elance's IT Top 50 Skills list. Popular skills include working with content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal, as well as open source database systems such as MySQL, and mobile, e-commerce and web server technologies.
  
  
• Cloud Computing: Job prospects for cloud computing are on the increase, with popular cloud computing languages such as PHP, ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails and Python making it onto the top 50 IT skills list.
  
  
• Social Media: These include application development skills for popular social networking sites such as Facebook.

_{Image Courtesy of Apple}

Top Skills Include Mobile Development, Open Source originally appeared on About.com Tech Careers on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 06:04:49.

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If you're looking for a last minute dish to make for a New Years party, try making some Spicy Password Crackers. They are both delicious and addictive. I call them password crackers because someone would likely hand over their password just so they could have another one.

They are simple to make and go great with a nice Pimento cheese spread from your local deli. Check out the link above for the recipe. Happy New Year!.

Hack Your Holiday Party With Some Spicy Password Crackers originally appeared on About.com Internet / Network Security on Saturday, December 31st, 2011 at 10:55:54.

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Windows 7 Cert Prep Course Available originally appeared on About.com Tech Certification on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 21:19:47.

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