Don't gloat.

Editor,

This is for Drew (comment #97):

I wouldn't feel so smug if I were in your shoes.

I worked as a software engineer for 15 years before and during the dot.com bubble. I usually made $150k per year and made as much as $200k at the height of the dot.com. Pretty impressive, huh? (If money impresses you.)

But times change, and people who control things that you do not will kill the sector you are working in as that financial bubble bursts and, say, mortgages or derivatives become the hot new magnet for big money.

Here's another example for you.

I get burned out on computer programming every few years, and at one point I discovered that I have a talent for technical recruiting. In 1990 I went to work for a satellite communication company recruiting all kinds of high-tech talent for them. In November, 1991 (this is in Southern California), one day I was making $100k per year and I had 3 dozen job orders on my desk. The next day the recession of 1991 hit. The company I was working for instituted a hiring freeze (and later started laying off), and I was out the door, even though the people I worked for loved me and the work I did for them.

I have other stories for you if you want to hear them, but the point of all of them is the same: you think you're smart, you think your "success" depends on the "choices" you so wisely made; but the fact is that you are a pawn in a game that doesn't care one iota about you, your choices, or how "responsible" and "conscientious" you are. The game played by the people who really run your world doesn't have anything to do with "education."

It has to do with money. And if your country has to be bombed or your economy has to be looted or your industry has to have the financial rug pulled out from under it, you will be in the same boat as all those people you are gloating at today. I advise you not to gloat. You are not as self-made as you think you are.

Re: "New York Rebounds From Slump, Unevenly" (8/31/2010)