[HawkWrites]

I'm a software engineer. I feel your pain, Kaii. There are some things we just can't control but we suck it up in order to better represent ourselves to our clients and staff. Sure, it can chip away at our self-worth but if your work-place is political it's pretty much what you have to do. I've come across a few of those situations in my own day-to-day activities and have simply refused to be political and have refused to say the phrases that my upper-management wants me to say (for example, I'm not really allowed to say "no" to a client even when I know the functionality of a system I haven't developed is at odds with what they want).

You just have to learn how to play the game, is all. Is it unethical? Sure, but lots of us are in that position. Is it immoral? Sure, but lots of us are in that position and we can all sympathize with you. Being IT isn't anything where you get a simple way out; if you can please a client, great. If you can't, you get shit on from all directions. "Shit rolls downhill" is true especially here.

[bojangles]

Yes I was in IT in 2 of the biggest financial institutions in the world.

I enjoyed it at first, interacting with pussy everywhere but it killed me slowly.

There are no promotions unless you lick ass hard - this shit is a career. The management are buffoons but they know are actually quite techie but need to dumb down for their management so it leads to a dumbing down dripping effect. However its corporate and so ass licking is required

I started off as a build engineer and asset management which then included hardware, I did helpdesk (windows XP support) then trading support and ended up in data centre management. Being before thrown back into asset management
My final role was basically being a blackberry tech. All that in 6 years
So I took a week off and did a project management course and handed in my notice.

I left work, had no job but had a professional qualification. Sure I lost a stable role and I needed monthly income but fuck it, I just did it and now I'm doing fine working for myself.

Take the risk, don't get stuck in IT.

[The Beast1]

Add me to the list, I'm looking to branch out from my role in IT.

[TopPanda]

Been a developer for 17 years now, and yeah, I'm still a developer. My attempt at climbing the career ladder was just sunk by poor timing really. But really if you're a programmer you can cut code all your life or go into management. Don't attempt to do both or you'll end up like my last boss who didn't delegate anything.

But if you're happy with just cutting code then you can have a good life. Just turn up to work, cut code, go home and don't get sucked into corporate politics. Also remember that IT is just a bullshit industry. Nothing I worked on 10 years ago (in some cases 1 year ago) still exists, so why get stressed over it?

[berserk]

I always assumed most skilled programmers would head to Silicon Valley. Corporate life in a big company sucks everywhere, it's an organizational thing. Most 'project managers' who studied business won't get up the ladder either, neither will the always expendable sales guy. I see the point about tech evolving though and that's why I think you need to be in a startup or make your own product. There are so many opportunities for a programmer who has some creativity.

[Travesty]

If I dropped out of software dev I would become a firefighter paramedic bartend on the side, or maybe a physical therapist complete 180 from desk and computers.

I have had far better than most in IT it seems so far.

[game_ethic]

Just out of curiosity, how many of you are software engineers, and are you actually happy with your career?

I love programming and it runs in my family(my father and his father worked for IBM as software engineers) so it's only natural that I gravitate towards a field that's related to programming. I have a solid portfolio(did intern work for a small business as a software consultant last summer and I'm applying for an internship with Google currently) so getting a job after graduation shouldn't really be a problem.

Anyways, would appreciate some answers/info from guys who are software engineers or are in related fields.

[Kaii]

Wow, great turnout in this thread! You guys are great. It actually helps to know you guys feel some of my pain!

As TravelerKai suggested earlier in the thread, let's start a PM group or something.I am not sure how we can all be on the same list or how to head it up. But, I think it's a great idea. Let me see how to get it rolling. I am open to suggestions.

We could be the first RvF/red pill IT group (RPIT)

[Onto]

I too am an IT consultant, and the job pretty much sucks. Every once in a while you get a good gig, but there's always some negative.

For me, the worst is the racism I've endured from Indians. They come here and build a nation within a nation and discriminate against everyone that is on the same level as them or below them, while kissing ass and often outright lying to their superiors.

Infosys is finally, after 20+ years, starting to get sued for racism.

At first I couldn't understand why this was until I learned more about their culture and their caste system and the "untouchables". For Indian culture, it's completely natural and ok to discriminate against those that aren't the same as you.

I don't mean to start a race war here, and racist people can also have other good qualities as a person, but what I'm speaking is the truth, and if I get punished for speaking the truth then so be it, but at least this ugly politically incorrect truth that no American wants to see or acknowledge is now printed on this page.

[Onto]

(07-23-2014 06:57 PM)game_ethic Wrote:  

Just out of curiosity, how many of you are software engineers, and are you actually happy with your career?

I love programming and it runs in my family(my father and his father worked for IBM as software engineers) so it's only natural that I gravitate towards a field that's related to programming. I have a solid portfolio(did intern work for a small business as a software consultant last summer and I'm applying for an internship with Google currently) so getting a job after graduation shouldn't really be a problem.

Anyways, would appreciate some answers/info from guys who are software engineers or are in related fields.

I love programming, unfortunately there are a lot of politics, sexism, and racism that absolutely ruin it.

[Cobra]

(07-23-2014 08:07 PM)Onto Wrote:  

They come here and build a nation within a nation and discriminate against everyone that is on the same level as them or below them, while kissing ass and often outright lying to their superiors.

Infosys is finally, after 20+ years, starting to get sued for racism.

At first I couldn't understand why this was until I learned more about their culture and their caste system and the "untouchables". For Indian culture, it's completely natural and ok to discriminate against those that aren't the same as you.

I don't mean to start a race war here, and racist people can also have other good qualities as a person, but what I'm speaking is the truth, and if I get punished for speaking the truth then so be it, but at least this ugly politically incorrect truth that no American wants to see or acknowledge is now printed on this page.

This is definitely another kind of race trolling. Could you post some of your specific experiences? Maybe others here can get an idea of what to avoid. I may be getting into the business of recruiting for IT in the future so am very interested in this phenomenon as well since I have come across a lot of Indian IT guys "from" India within the Corporate offices I have worked in.

In Indian culture there is a much more defined concept of "class" where a Garbage man is already defined as one as he's born, rather than in the US where even a Garbage man can be high status as long as he makes up for it in other areas of his lifestyle and then has opportunities to do something else if he wants.

These guys carry this mindset over to the west. Once America invites them over, they get on a high horse. It not only fucks them over with local people and especially women (refer to: Indian race troll threads), but also ends up causing reverse discrimination against citizens of the very country that took them in. Then they wonder why people don't like them.

I get especially furious because being Indian I had to forcefully disassociate with these beliefs and fought very hard against them.

[HawkWrites]

(07-23-2014 06:57 PM)game_ethic Wrote:  

Just out of curiosity, how many of you are software engineers, and are you actually happy with your career?

I love programming and it runs in my family(my father and his father worked for IBM as software engineers) so it's only natural that I gravitate towards a field that's related to programming. I have a solid portfolio(did intern work for a small business as a software consultant last summer and I'm applying for an internship with Google currently) so getting a job after graduation shouldn't really be a problem.

Anyways, would appreciate some answers/info from guys who are software engineers or are in related fields.

I love what I do as an engineer (producing software that gets used has an amazing sense of accomplishment to it) but I hate all of the crap that surrounds it. Sometimes the politics and sacrificing your integrity aren't worth it and you have to move on to a new location.

[Onto]

Cobra,

I was raised in America by very, very liberal parents where we were taught that everyone is the same, regardless of their wealth, skin color, or where they were from. I welcomed Indians with open arms only to get stepped on, ignored, stabbed in the back, and even sneered at. Indian companies I've work through have twice tried to steal my last invoice. The owners of the first company, Technodyne, fled the US back to India on embezzlement and fraud charges.

And you're right, their racism towards me has created an anger towards them. I don't like feeling this way, and that's the terrible thing about the emotion racism creates…..it spreads very quickly.

But anything I say can't really be proved can it? It's just my word, so let's take the words of starchild5's post from the first page of this thread.

(07-22-2014 11:39 AM)starchild5 Wrote:  

If you are an American....As one member said...You guys need to UNITE, JOIN FORCES as your own kind who are on top do not want you to exist as they have us now to replace you easily.

Join Forces...That's the way out of American Slavery aka Corporations...

Good luck

The truth comes out there doesn't it? This kind of "Own kind" thinking is very natural to their culture. One just needs to take the pill and be willing to see it, so do that and read his post again. He's actually being very forthright and open, but I don't think many Americans reading that post see what I see, just like they don't see the repulsive nature of American women either.

As American's we are taught not to be racist, but the perversion of that is anyone that's foreign or a minority cannot be accused of racism themselves.

Edit: My current "co-worker/boss", Dinesh, is actually a very nice guy. When we talk about life and regular mundane things we do bond and I can see the good in him and I do care about him as a person and I can see that he wants to care about me, but when it comes to business he is a different person and is very discriminatory against me and that creates a tense situation. I understand though that he can't help it. It's just his nature, but because of it I am quitting.

I strongly suggest, if at all possible, American's do not work for Indian's or Women because a lot of job dissatisfaction will occur from it. This has been my 16 years of experience in the software world, and I have worked in more than a dozen environments in that time. In fact, if I had to choose between the two, I would work for a woman because at least they can be easily manipulated whereas racism is much more difficult to overcome.

(07-23-2014 08:33 PM)Cobra Wrote:  

I get especially furious because being Indian I had to forcefully disassociate with these beliefs and fought very hard against them.

This is interesting to hear. I often get a sense that Dinesh is struggling as well, though not winning. I think as more time goes on, generation after generation, then Indians will be more like yourself and renounce classism/racism/etc. For now though, it is what it is.

[Travesty]

(07-23-2014 08:33 PM)Cobra Wrote:  

This is definitely another kind of race trolling. Could you post some of your specific experiences? Maybe others here can get an idea of what to avoid. I may be getting into the business of recruiting for IT in the future so am very interested in this phenomenon as well since I have come across a lot of Indian IT guys "from" India within the Corporate offices I have worked in.

In Indian culture there is a much more defined concept of "class" where a Garbage man is already defined as one as he's born, rather than in the US where even a Garbage man can be high status as long as he makes up for it in other areas of his lifestyle and then has opportunities to do something else if he wants.

These guys carry this mindset over to the west. Once America invites them over, they get on a high horse. It not only fucks them over with local people and especially women (refer to: Indian race troll threads), but also ends up causing reverse discrimination against citizens of the very country that took them in. Then they wonder why people don't like them.

I get especially furious because being Indian I had to forcefully disassociate with these beliefs and fought very hard against them.

In my grad school for computer science all the international Indian students banded together to trade exams, notes, projects etc... to copy off each other. They were 50% of the master's program roughly.

In a software engineering class we had a semester long project with 7-8 people a team. At the end everyone voted on the grades of the other teams' projects.

Ours was clear and away the best by far we worked weekends on it together for 8 hour stretches.

All the Indians in the class gave us C and D marks on it. A few of us went into the Chinese born professor and he said yeah ours was the best, those students were full of shit.

We all got A's from the professor, but it shows the mentality.

The normal cat in software I come across is very sincere, helpful, congratulatory, and collaborative.

Look at Open Source in general.

Indians in my experience that are new in the U.S. do not operate on this level with the ones I knew in grad school. The few ones that have interviewed me either generally or technically have been the most stringent and least likely to expand on explaining the problem they want solved.

The best and brightest development lead I have ever had (made a serious stack of cash at 27 and went to fuck around in Thailand for a year), said he will never work with Indians again after a year working with many. Too hard to work with, won't communicate, smell.

This is why I do not fear the competition or hordes.

Quality companies attract quality developers. (small to mid-size usually)

Code sweat shops or big cog corporations will squeeze you and attract lower talent much of the time.

A company with strong venture capital that is lean as fuck and offers good salary, stock option, and bonuses while treating their developers as their most important asset does not often go for HB1's not familiar with American culture in my experience although I am still new at the game relatively.

Basically if you can't beat out an HB1 for the quality dev jobs you need to seriously up your game. Software is endless there will always be needs for new tools and systems until we have a sentient OS that takes us all over and enslaves us.

If you can communicate well, understand American business culture, and can lead with a good portfolio you will have recruiters dialing you non-stop.

[TheKantian]

I cannot comment on IT. However, I can comment that, yeah, Indians are the most in-group people I've ever met.

[JuanQuinQuin]

(07-23-2014 08:07 PM)Onto Wrote:  

I too am an IT consultant, and the job pretty much sucks. Every once in a while you get a good gig, but there's always some negative.

For me, the worst is the racism I've endured from Indians. They come here and build a nation within a nation and discriminate against everyone that is on the same level as them or below them, while kissing ass and often outright lying to their superiors.

Infosys is finally, after 20+ years, starting to get sued for racism.

At first I couldn't understand why this was until I learned more about their culture and their caste system and the "untouchables". For Indian culture, it's completely natural and ok to discriminate against those that aren't the same as you.

I don't mean to start a race war here, and racist people can also have other good qualities as a person, but what I'm speaking is the truth, and if I get punished for speaking the truth then so be it, but at least this ugly politically incorrect truth that no American wants to see or acknowledge is now printed on this page.

This here. That's why I prefer to make a little less money and work for small to medium shops. The H1B Visa Scam is particularly in the benefit of big corporations that's why you do not see many foreigners in small to medium business.

Either way, I do not blame Indians. They are doing what I probably would do. I blame our politicians and our elite. Mainly the Ds. That's why I laugh when I hear any of them talking about putting your skin in the game. Pleaseeeeeee!

[JuanQuinQuin]

(07-23-2014 09:45 PM)Travesty444 Wrote:  

(07-23-2014 08:33 PM)Cobra Wrote:  

This is definitely another kind of race trolling. Could you post some of your specific experiences? Maybe others here can get an idea of what to avoid. I may be getting into the business of recruiting for IT in the future so am very interested in this phenomenon as well since I have come across a lot of Indian IT guys "from" India within the Corporate offices I have worked in.

In Indian culture there is a much more defined concept of "class" where a Garbage man is already defined as one as he's born, rather than in the US where even a Garbage man can be high status as long as he makes up for it in other areas of his lifestyle and then has opportunities to do something else if he wants.

These guys carry this mindset over to the west. Once America invites them over, they get on a high horse. It not only fucks them over with local people and especially women (refer to: Indian race troll threads), but also ends up causing reverse discrimination against citizens of the very country that took them in. Then they wonder why people don't like them.

I get especially furious because being Indian I had to forcefully disassociate with these beliefs and fought very hard against them.

In my grad school for computer science all the international Indian students banded together to trade exams, notes, projects etc... to copy off each other. They were 50% of the master's program roughly.

In a software engineering class we had a semester long project with 7-8 people a team. At the end everyone voted on the grades of the other teams' projects.

Ours was clear and away the best by far we worked weekends on it together for 8 hour stretches.

All the Indians in the class gave us C and D marks on it. A few of us went into the Chinese born professor and he said yeah ours was the best, those students were full of shit.

We all got A's from the professor, but it shows the mentality.

The normal cat in software I come across is very sincere, helpful, congratulatory, and collaborative.

Look at Open Source in general.

Indians in my experience that are new in the U.S. do not operate on this level with the ones I knew in grad school. The few ones that have interviewed me either generally or technically have been the most stringent and least likely to expand on explaining the problem they want solved.

The best and brightest development lead I have ever had (made a serious stack of cash at 27 and went to fuck around in Thailand for a year), said he will never work with Indians again after a year working with many. Too hard to work with, won't communicate, smell.

This is why I do not fear the competition or hordes.

Quality companies attract quality developers. (small to mid-size usually)

Code sweat shops or big cog corporations will squeeze you and attract lower talent much of the time.

A company with strong venture capital that is lean as fuck and offers good salary, stock option, and bonuses while treating their developers as their most important asset does not often go for HB1's not familiar with American culture in my experience although I am still new at the game relatively.

Basically if you can't beat out an HB1 for the quality dev jobs you need to seriously up your game. Software is endless there will always be needs for new tools and systems until we have a sentient OS that takes us all over and enslaves us.

If you can communicate well, understand American business culture, and can lead with a good portfolio you will have recruiters dialing you non-stop.

Amen!. or in Shala. LOL. You just said what everybody in the IT world knows for sure but everybody is afraid of saying because the PC squat will come to hunt you. Either way, do not blame the H1B holders, not 100%. It is the fault of our elected politicians.

How many of you have contacted your Senator and Congressman regarding this H1B Issue?

While our King Hussein keeps pushing for more benefit for the H1B crowd while people in some states are barely making it.

[Onto]

(07-23-2014 10:37 PM)JuanQuinQuin Wrote:  

Either way, I do not blame Indians. They are doing what I probably would do.

I would not be doing what they are. It's not the way I was raised. If you don't blame them, I'm guessing it's because you've never had to suffer their discrimination first hand?

[Zyzz]

(07-23-2014 10:00 PM)TheKantian Wrote:  

I cannot comment on IT. However, I can comment that, yeah, Indians are the most in-group people I've ever met.

Jews as well. Especially the conservative and orthodox ones.

[JuanQuinQuin]

(07-23-2014 11:11 PM)Onto Wrote:  

(07-23-2014 10:37 PM)JuanQuinQuin Wrote:  

Either way, I do not blame Indians. They are doing what I probably would do.

I would not be doing what they are. It's not the way I was raised. If you don't blame them, I'm guessing it's because you've never had to suffer their discrimination first hand?

Discrimination. Well, I have had to choose in the past between a guy from my neighborhood and a guy from CT. Both almost at the same level, I chose the guy from my hood. Call it human nature. I work in IT where jobs are plentiful so I can afford to pickup with whom I work with. I do not work under any woman neither for big corporations, except when the amount of money I get is equivalent to the amount of shit I have to take from the corporate drones.

[Travesty]

(07-23-2014 11:11 PM)Onto Wrote:  

(07-23-2014 10:37 PM)JuanQuinQuin Wrote:  

Either way, I do not blame Indians. They are doing what I probably would do.

I would not be doing what they are. It's not the way I was raised. If you don't blame them, I'm guessing it's because you've never had to suffer their discrimination first hand?

No, you should blame Indians. Not targeting anyone in particular but if any nationality/culture as a group acted in a such a manner I would blame them.

Shame is lacking in America overall.

Many parts of many cultures suck including American culture as we all know well enough. The bad parts of all cultures should be shamed constantly, until only the good is left. That is the only way to improve society.

For instance white Americans in general are bad at dancing, not willing to learn foreign languages, lack overall style and swag, and in many parts of the country lack a sense of general warmth (can be stiff, cold, overly polite, uptight) which should be shamed. These are shame worthy parts of the white American culture.

[rhodey]

(07-22-2014 10:40 AM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

(07-22-2014 10:07 AM)Kaii Wrote:  

This will be a rant. I work for a large bank doing IT work. I am supposed to be a senior level engineer with SCCM (Systems Center Configuration Manager for the geeks here). However, instead of doing cool engineer work like designing application virtualization, or zero-touch imaging or anything related to the level I am supposed to be working at, they have me doing bullshit busy work and helpdesk level shit.

It is unbelievable to me how management can be in IT and know nothing about technology. Or, the amount of whiny fucking people you have to work with. Of course, there are plenty of women here who also don't do anything and complain all the time.

I have been in the industry for a while and worked my way up from call center bitch to engineer. It's becoming more and clearer to me that the only way I will ever be happy is to work for myself, or a company that gives me freedom in my schedule and my workload.


I would love to quit and just do my own thing, however, like most of us, I have financially obligations.


Have any of you been in this situation? How did you handle it?

I really just want to feel free.

Thanks for reading and any advice would be great.

I am an IT consultant and started out more or less exactly like you did. I work primarily with Microsoft and VMware stuff.

I will tell you the same thing a CCIE, that owned a million dollar house, told me years ago.

You have to be willing to leave.

There are no promotions in IT. There are no raises and bonuses in IT. Especially OPEX areas like support, infrastructure, networking, etc.

You need to adopt a "Fuck You, Pay Me." attitude.

If you want to get out of the helpdesk? Get certs and quit. Want to get out of Jr. Administrator or Admin level? Quit. Want to stop being an engineer? Wait 5 years and then quit. Want to stop being an Architect or Consultant and jump to the C Suite or director level? Get a MBA and then quit.

That is your natural corporate progression in Information Technology.

All that said, I am trying to make the jump into being location independent and live abroad or split time between the US and China. Perhaps trade, construction, or other things between China and Africa will yield great opportunities to guys in our age group.

If you or others on RVF are interested in things like this (I have already spoken to a handful already about this stuff), lets keep in touch over PMs and perhaps we can someday find some niche that alot of us can share into.

Eventually IT will start culling more and more jobs, not because of Indians with HB1s or too much competition, but because the technology itself may eventually render these jobs useless. I am already seeing the wall myself. The cloud is not going anywhere and will make a bigger come back for round 2, once the storage gets much smaller and cheaper. Can you imagine a crystal rock storing terabytes without needing lots of cold air to keep cool? Datacenter guys might be okay in the next five years, but what about in 10 years?

Think about that.

Wow I have similar goals and a similar career track. I'm currently studying for my VCP. Please include me in the loop.

[saeta119]

I have to say one benefit of being in the IT field is that you can find jobs all over the world. For example here in eastern europe you can come not knowing the language and find a job with an international company as english is spoken at work.
I know many lawyers hoteliers architects doctors who just cant find something here due to them not speaking the language.
Im in IT and finding a job was not hard.

[THERE WILL BE SEX]

Good thread guys. I'm in IT and a lot of this thread rings true, especially about Indians. Although, I haven't that bad of an experience as I've been lucky not to be in a lot of projects with them.

Office politics is tricky & constantly shifting. I was on a project where I sided with the business side (the dark side) because IT was actually darker (lying, not forthcoming with problems, lobbying to push shitty products). I wanted to deploy the right solution to the business and I got their back (immunity) until the Sr VP got fired and the project ran out of money. Then the IT side did not extend my contract. With so much drama, I was ready & glad to leave at this point.

I have to somewhat disagree with the raises and bonuses. If you work as a contractor/consultant you can give yourself a raise by just telling the client you're getting other work offers on other projects at a higher rate. You don't have to explicitly say that you're charging more or you move on. They'll understand that they'll need to step up or else. As for bonuses, banks are known for this. I got an offer from Bank of NY for a 6 figure salary and a healthy bonus (I think it was around 15-20%). Another bank I worked at also had healthy bonuses, which they gave annually around March.

Still, this thread has a lot of interesting and eye opening stuff even for a veteran like me.

I do wonder though why a programmer/engineer guild or union doesn't get off the ground..

[polar]

I'd like to be on the PM list too, please