On 24-9-2014 14:39, Stephen wrote:
> On 24/09/2014 12:24, Thomas de Groot wrote:
>> On 24-9-2014 10:43, andrel wrote:
>
>>> I am 50+. Which indeed means that I have to become a freelancer or have
>>> to find a job in management and not be productive myself anymore.
>>>
>>
>
> Being a freelancer is not too bad if you can find the work and don't
> mind travelling.

I am trying to find jobs as freelancer indeed. I do hate travelling, but 
if I have to I do not complain.

> Having the language skills you do opens lots of doors.

I do speak Dutch and English, I understand German but always get the 
genders wrong. French is not so good, my Spanish worse, but improving. 
Then I do speak C, Matlab, and a bit of Java, Python, Javascript and I 
used to be able program in e.g. Fortran and Prolog. Then there are the 
classical languages Latin and various assembly languages.
Of course I know a bit about functional languages, although I never used 
them. And I can explain why the guarded commands language of Dijkstra 
has a fundamental design flaw and why my version is better ;)

> I really sympathise if you have to go into management. I miss working
> with my hands and for years I travelled with a small toolkit in case I
> had to fix something. :-)

yes, that is what I fear most. I got into this business originally 
because I wanted to make things. Such a pity that one might have to give 
that up. Incidentally my desire to keep building things was one of the 
reasons why I accepted these temporary positions, otherwise I would have 
gone the way of the devil much earlier.

>
>> Yes, I believe that sums up the situation indeed. Americans would
>> probably call this a new opportunities situation (and they are not
>> wrong) but in Europe we have a different approach to this, especially
>> the older generations. We always believed more in stable job continuity
>> and job protection.
>>
>
> That is mainland Europe. In Britain it has been like that for decades.
> And we are worse off for it.
> No wonder the Iraqis called America and Britain, Satan and little Satan
> one follows the other.





-- 
Everytime the IT department forbids something that a researcher deems
necessary for her work there will be another hole in the firewall.

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