Will Bridges

I’ve got this friend that has been programming in ASP since back in 2000 or around that time. He helped get me a job at FEMA programming back in the day. However, being at the government for any long period of time kinda puts in a learning bubble. That’s the main reason I left working for the government is because I saw nothing that would help me advance as a programmer. Of course there were many other reasons.

But, anyways, my friend left FEMA about 3 months ago and found another job doing classic ASP programming. He found a pretty good one working for this company locally in Winchester, VA. But, because he was in a technology bubble from working at the government he had never been around .NET or any of the new Microsoft techs that are out now. Anyways, this company gave him a raise after three months and then laid him off two days later. To me, that seems absurd. Why give somebody a raise and then lay them off. Regardless, now he is
out of a job, he has a morgatge, and a son he is raising by himself.

All of the windows jobs I know of are .NET. If anybody knows of any freelance windows work in classic asp let me know and I’ll forward the information on. This is a terrible situation. All programmers need to take some lessons from this.

• Never over-specialize.
• Always continue your dedication to learning when you are a programmer.
• Diversify your skill set and be vigilant to find the tools and people to get you out of career choices that are a dead end.

Most companies do not care about you in this industry, even if you care deeply about their success. It’s just not the nature of the business. It’s unfortunate and maybe it would be a good idea for programmers to unionize at some point to relieve some of these problems. But the problems with unions is there is always someone out there, just as talented, who is willing to work outside the union for less money or more hours. So, maybe unions are not the answer, but then what is?