[AccessD] Sorry for joking around

It used to be that you worked for a company, and they paid you to go to 
training seminars which they paid for.  Now you are lucky (or not) to 
work for a company at all.

In any event I find myself kind of "stuck" in maintenance mode as a 
consultant, maintaining databases that I designed (or inherited) years 
ago in Access.  I am struggling to break out of that but I feel that I 
owe the companies, so I continue to support them, which takes a lot of 
time.

Of course they pay me moderately well for my continuing support, but 
what I do NOT want to do is continue designing NEW Access applications 
which I will be stuck supporting for the rest of my life.

And so I struggle to learn "the new stuff".  One thing that working 
"for" a company does often provide is a live, daily, close support 
group, other people that you can go to with questions, live, in person.

These DBA email groups are close, but still not the same.  OTOH there is 
almost certainly more expertise in these groups.  When the day comes 
that we can literally remote in to each others computers and you can see 
my code and I can see yours...

Anyway, I am loving the vb.net stuff I am doing now and learning a lot. 
  I had reached the point in Access where it felt like there wasn't a 
lot left that I wanted to know.  Boy howdy, there's a TON of .net stuff 
left to know.  ;-)

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


Darryl Collins wrote:
> hahahaha! yeah, I must admit in every role i have had for the past 10 years, I try to make sure I am there because i am learning something.  Kind of like going to paid uni really.  Right now I am here in my current role as I have had to learn Access and now I am about to have an SQL Server database handovered to me, which will be interesting to say the least!  Looks like a few late nights doing research aaaah... :)
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of jwcolby
> Sent: Wednesday, 30 April 2008 8:35 AM
> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] Sorry for joking around
> 
> 
> In 1994 I took a job for $12 an hour.  I had been making 44K a year and 
> got laid off, and couldn't get work (Southern California during the 
> recession of 92).  In fact I have only ever had one "real job" since 
> that time, I have been a consultant.
> 
> At any rate, I took this job for $12 / hour learning Access as I built a 
> database for a small company.  I read Access books for 4 hours and 
> worked six and they paid me for the whole time.
> 
> the rest as they say is history.  You can believe that the work I did 
> for $12 / hour was worth... about $12 / hour.  ;-)
> 
> But I came out of that job with a pretty good grasp of Access.
> 
> John W. Colby
> www.ColbyConsulting.com
> 
> 
> Edward S Zuris wrote:
>>  Sorry for joking around.  Things are getting grim.
>>
>>  I know a client who thinks $15 an hour is too much.
>>
>>  Before this is over, we'll be working for table scraps.