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No, I'm not actively looking right now. Obviously, if something comes up, I'll take it into a consideration but I'm not looking. I'm happy with what I do, I'm comfortable with the people I work with, the money is OK, the benefits are great, so why spoil a good thing ?
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It does matter.
People, most of them probably, go to their job for a living. But people are also not robots, or at least they shouldn't strive to.
SkyWalker
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"Rock solid: they cannot do without me".
To me becoming indispensable is not "securing job".
A company cannot survive for a long in such situations. (imaging an "indispensable guy" that stays ill for some time ... may the entire company fail !)
Rock solid to me should mean that the company is solid, running a business that has a good market, and that is it based on real needs.
2 bugs found.
> recompile ...
65534 bugs found.
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You're absolutely right! Does knowledge management ring any bell?
SkyWalker
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This is first time I joined an internal department(I think this explain itself).
I don't want to be here anymore.
Reasons:
Incompetent team.
No challenging work.
The department is always under fire (They created huge crap-in past few years- now the priority is to keep it working some how )
Feel inferior (as the employees in other departments doing same work get more facilities)
No project planing.
Just unreasonable deadlines (just 4 reports are to be made, "you can finish them till evening")
No training ( although they talk about it every time but it never happens)
SRS, RA ,SDLC - What are they?
and lots of other crap.
I am tired in just 5 months of staying here and cant handle this anymore.
It is Good to be Important but!
it is more Important to be Good
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just go ahead and you will acquire all that you want ...fight..
je t'aime...Ma mère,mon père,Ma soeur...et mon futur.
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That "but" says more that you've done 
SkyWalker
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I been with the same company for over 19 years of the original 150 employs
There are now 9 left. You only as good as you current knowledge. You may be irreplaceable to the company but is your company irreplaceable to you clients.
It also help if you can spell ? laurel's != Laura’s 
modified on Friday, September 12, 2008 2:21 AM
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I try very hard to never sit on my Laura. She hates it!
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Well, considering I've spent about 5 hours in the office* in the past month and the boss is still happy with my output... pretty secure.
But then again; anything can happen and it usually does. Or as Mr. Pratchett says; 1 in a million chances happen 9 times out of 10.
* I have a newborn in the house...
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First, no, I dont feel any secure about my current job and might be in the street in two months
The reason is that I'm working with a UN agency "UNDP" that has short term service contracts!
Changing the subject, it would be helpful if jobs can be sorted according to some criteria like those who sponsor visa or job relocation.. Just a suggestion!
All generalizations are wrong, including this one!
(\ /)
(O.o)
(><)
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Reasonably secure but I've been here nearly 30 years and it's all getting a bit beyond me ! The whizz kids are young enough to be my grandkids. We have job evaluation looming too........ Hopefully I can get out in a few years and hope there's something left in the pension pot for me
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Reasonably to very secure
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I work for a Telco that has just seen some major industrial action, and which is about to lose its monopoly position in this market. My position is only as secure as that of the entire company. If the company wants to progress (in spite of everything) I'd be key to that change, if they just want to 'consolidate' then I'd be superfluous. It's an interesting situation.
However, I've also worked for a company that had a policy that if you were the only person who knew your particular job and you were absolutely essential to keep things running - then you were automatically fired. Lot's of interesting and very valid reasoning behind this.
I just love Koalas - they go great with bacon.
I am convinced that lobotomising users will make little to no difference.
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Lee Humphries wrote: if you were the only person who knew your particular job and you were absolutely essential to keep things running - then you were automatically fired. Lot's of interesting and very valid reasoning behind this.
Umm...do you know any of this valid reasoning? Sounds crazy to me. I'd rectify the situation by either hiring others or training existing employees as backups. Then maybe simulating some disaster situations and seeing if the backup employees can handle it, or packing the expert of on holiday for a few weeks and seeing how the backups cope.
Simon
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Take the situation where people are avoiding letting others in on their "trade secrets". The primary reasoning was that just one person, in spite of all declarations to the contrary, would not be bringing in too much revenue or present too much of a business risk if lost. Also it would be hard to argue that they were genuinely core to the business. Another reasoning was that it was inappropriate for the business to be "held to ransom" by one person.
Just a few reasons, but there were others.
I am convinced that lobotomising users will make little to no difference.
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You know, some people are just a solo developer.
Chuck Norris has the greatest Poker-Face of all time. He won the 1983 World Series of Poker, despite holding only a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoloy card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game UNO.
In the movie "The Matrix", Chuck Norris is the Matrix. If you pay close attention in the green "falling code" scenes, you can make out the faint texture of his beard.
Chuck Norris actually owns IBM. It was an extremely hostile takeover.
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Yeah and some of us wish we still were 
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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I don't have a lot of experience on this topic, let alone any, but I'll say that if you think you can make it as a solo developer, and you actually want to make a difference to your income then I would say go for it, I mean it's going to be hard work at first, but as soon as you have a good product out there that is selling then you have made it.
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Hardest thing is having the idea
2nd hardest thing is marketing it correctly.
easiest thing - developing the solution.
I can only give you my experience with commercial software which was in the early 90s so it was before the advent of the internet and a major force. We got the idea and found an industry sponsor who basically stopped us starving while we built the app over a 16 month period. Once the app was completed to our satisfaction we started marketing it, at that point we ran into some of the issues:
There are only # of you how can we allow our core businees software to depend on just # people.
It's not Microsoft.
Can you add these features to meet our business model.
What happens if you get run over by a bus - I still get this as a contractor, did you know every developer has a bus following them.
It's not Microsoft.
But it doesn't do this.
I don't like the color scheme (remember it was the 90's).
It's not Microsoft.
Took me 6 years to get out of supporting the customers we did manage to sell the product to. It still runs in 2-3 clients to this day, supported by my ex partner. I think the internet has changed that model dramatically but some of the issues are still there.
When you listen to the people who are running their own show they spend a minimum of 30% of their time selling and or paperwork. I like developing solutions, I hate marketing, if I ever talk to another tax man again it will be too soon and I will NOT get ulcers.
The corollery is I will never be a millionaire so there are trade offs.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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I'm not a solo developer so this isn't my experience. I've considered it a few times, but I think for now I need to gain some more experience first. As I understand it there are two ways of going solo. 1) Create a product/site/app that you can charge for. 2) Charge for your services and skills. Option 1 requires quite a bit of upfront work to create the product, and then you need to advertise or build up brand knowledge and sell it into your target market. Option 2 requires a lot of networking, and building a name for your self, I've seen people say that it often starts by doing jobs free/cheap for people you already know, and spreading the word. There are agencies that can help get you started with work like this for a a cut, and eventually, you'll build up the contacts to get work on your own.
Pete O'Hanlon (Someone who has actually done it) has some articles on going solo[^].
Simon
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Simon Stevens wrote: Someone who has actually done it
Many of us have *actually done it* here. I've written extensively many times on why option 1 is the only one that makes sense and option 2 is utter madness.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
-Sam Levenson
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While I generally agree (when I have considered going solo option 1 would be my preferred route), I'd be interested to hear why you think option 2 is utter madness?
There seem to be plenty of people around who contract out their skills rather successfully.
Simon
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I've written about it here many times before. Essentially contracting out as a for hire programmer means your time is not your own, you work super long hours for little reward and you're stuck in endless meetings and re-inventing the wheel over and over again. You're fielding calls at all hours from a huge number of entirely different people. You are often entirely responsible for supporting software forever that is completely different at different offices with a different set of people who may have also tinkered with it or hired someone else to. You have to compromise your design endlessly to cater to the slightest whims of people who for the most part have every desire to shoot themselves in the foot with a bad design but don't know it and eventually you realize it's not worth the bother to try to enlighten them. It's super stressful, unrewarding and involves long hours for not very decent reward when you add it all up.
Making software for direct sale is completely the opposite, you're time is your own, you can work on a sane release schedule, you have *complete* control over the design and how it's implemented, you can really craft something excellent and you have all the time in the world to fine tune it and make it the best out there. You only have to write the bulk of the software once but you can sell it over and over and over again. The ratio of work and stress to reward and free time is many orders of magnitude better. I've been doing it for about 8 years now and I'm to the point where I can take 6 months off every year and still make a very good living. If I wanted I could work the whole year and make a killing but that's not what interests me at this point in my life.
Of course both options require a lot of hard work and long hours in the beginning but my option means that tails off eventually, with the contracting option it never tails off.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
-Sam Levenson
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, but honestly, speaking about solo development, do you think people can make living out of a simple software business on the internet? I know a guy here from the cp who would be very angry if I mentioned his name now 
who says he makes a good fortune out of a two apps website, dont ask me how much cuz when I asked him he kept saying "thousands" without being specific!