I want to start off this article by saying how awesome you Gnomies are. I
asked for feedback and boy, did I get it! I received several e-mails with
tips regarding what books to buy for my Dreamweaver training. I appreciate
all those e-mails very much and tried to respond to each one. However, the
one e-mail I got that I cherish above the others came from a reader named
Ron.

Ron wrote me enough material to classify as a book. His e-mail
consisted of 10 paragraphs (and some of those paragraphs could have been broken up into 2-3 “normal-sized” paragraphs). I cherish Ron’s correspondence due to the length of time he must have spent writing it. He gave me what he believes is the best advice he could offer. That advice? Get out of the tech industry. He then advised I go into real estate or carpentry.

Ron has spent 30 years in the industry. He has worked on large servers as a
hardware and software guy from what I can tell. Ron even has his own
company. Ron lamented how all of the tech jobs are going overseas or the
ones that stay here do not pay well and expect you to have many more skills
than were required even five years ago. He also said that many jobs want the job seeker to move from state to state at their own expense.

I see two flaws in Ron’s advice for me. First, I am attempting to learn a
lot of new skill sets to stay viable. Those skills include Web page design,
programming, scripting, databases, and the like. Therefore, I am preparing my
skills to be diverse enough to keep myself desirable for employers. The
second flaw I see for me is the moving. I have picked up and moved more
times than you have fingers on one hand. I would gladly move again for the
right opportunity.

I want to reiterate how much I do appreciate Ron’s advice. Though his advice
is not truly relevant to me, is it relevant to you? Tell me, what is the
state of the tech union? Do you see it drying up and withering away? Do you
see it growing and thriving? Maybe you see it as stagnant and not moving in
either direction? Either way, I crave your feedback.