Half a decade ago, I lost a job due to a merger and consolidation.  Friends
and strangers were amazed that it was my first, these things being
commonplace in recent years.  Anyway, I consulted for a year and at some
point arranged an interview with a software house with a Cobol package on
the hp3k.

I scheduled the trip on Monday and by the time I arrived for the interview
on Thursday, the company had been acquired by another firm.  The new firm
specialized in migrating applications from mainframes to client-server
technology.  I interviewed with the company President, then their VP of
Technology.  The second interview was very enlightening.  I remember
commenting that I had worn my grey suit when I should have worn my purple
(Barnie the dinosaur) suit and Thanks for the eye-opener.

Seems to me that we may be in the vanguard of the age of continuing
education, where what you learned in college or a technical school only
remains relevant for a limited span of time, somewhat shorter than a career
span.  It is easy to be in a job and working hard and being productive in
that environment while technology and the state-of-the-art pass us by.  If
you're lucky, your employer may encourage or insist that you keep current.
If not, it is up to you to look after yourself.

In my case, I signed-up for a visual basic class right away.  Then I took a
job where both the hp3k and hp-ux were in use, and I have since studied and
worked to some extent with Unix, relational databases, C, C++, VB,
networking, and Java, and object-oriented systems design.  I'm no expert in
new technology since I haven't done all these on a commercial scale...
yet... but I'll need these more current skills to compete in the current
employment marketplace (especially since I missed making a killing in the
BULL market so early retirement is not an option).

It's not an entirely comfortable thing to sit down in a classroom where
most of your fellow students are the age of your kids.  But I think it's
going to become more and more commplace.

Mike Steffen
World Almanac Education

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