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Subject:Re: Like long hours? From:Richard Lippincott <richard -dot- lippincott -at- ae -dot- ge -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 8 Aug 2002 11:38:03 -0400
Kevin McLauchlan <kmclauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com> wrote:
>First, bad times don't last forever.
>Second, bad times are generally not across the board.
>Usually, it doesn't even register on you unless it's your
>current employment sector that is enduring the bad times.
Very true.
Ten years ago, things were bad in high tech...but they were a disaster in
aerospace.
Today, the situation is reversed. Things aren't great in aerospace, but at
least they appear to be stable for the moment. Meanwhile, it's a disaster in
high tech.
Neither now nor ten years ago is it as bad overall as it was in the U.S. in
the early 1980s, when the unemployment rate was between 9 and 10 per cent.
Will it ever get to be as good in high tech as it was five years ago? Maybe
not. Maybe that bubble is over for good, and although things will stabilize
it will just never quite come back to those levels.
So what do we do? We find the next big thing to write about. I don't know
what it is, but likely it's as unforeseeable as on-line help, the web, and
PDFs on CD were unforeseeable in 1985.
There will always be a need for tech writers, but there's bad news and good
news. The bad news is, there may -not- be a need for as -many- in the
specific fields where most of this list's subscribers have been working for
the past few years. The good news is if the next big trend is in something
we haven't got a handle on yet...well, then, we're all starting off on an
equal footing together at square one when we look for jobs.
--Rick Lippincott
Lockheed Martin
Saugus, MA
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