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

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