The Joel on Software Discussion Group

I have been layed off from my last 3 positions forming a combined 5.5 years work experience. I have delivered many projects and have excellent references from management and peer developers. They all say I am hardworking and knowledgable, so I do not think it has to do with performance.
At my last layoff they said I was "expensive". However I was promoted to team lead on a major project just 3 months before.
I have multiple offers every time I look for positions, but am just fed up with the unstable nature of this industry.I love developing software and want to continue in this field if I could just have some stability.

I don't get it - Is there a question you would like to ask, or are you just wanting to have a bitch'n'moan and noone else will listen to you?

Your relying on stability from others? No wonder your stressed!

It seems you need to take control of your life and set the boundaries and take responsibility that your the only one that going to bring stability in your life.

In the end you are just staff. Your employee will lie to you to tell you that you are safe and then get rid of you the next day.

It sounds like you do consulting type work. That is constantly hire and fire. Use people up, get rid of them. Get them to work more hours so you can fire them faster.

It is always like this with contract type work. i work in DC and that is virtually the only work available. So I generally refuse 100% to work over 40 hours/week unless I am given compensation.

If you are doing contract work 3 jobs in 5.5 years is not bad at all. Lasting almost 2 years in a consulting type job is a long time.

It is ALWAYS like this. The only way to get around it is to develop something yourself to sell. Then use your job as a way to generate revenue to help market your product.

"I have multiple offers every time I look for positions"

Congratulations on your success at achieving stable work.
 
"but am just fed up with the unstable nature of this industry.I love developing software and want to continue in this field if I could just have some stability."

You misunderstand stability. Stability in this industry means being able to get a new position after being laid off from the previous ones.

This is like plumbing. You can be a plumber for some other company, make $5 an hour, and always get paid by the same person. Or be a plumber working for yourself, get paid $150 an hour, and have a different client every 4 hours of the day.

Given the nature of this work, if you have been buying houses, that needs to stop. You are a renter. You rent. Your kids need to get used to starting school in a new city every year or two. This is the engineering life.

So if you have a total of 5.5 years of work experience, I'm guessing you graduated from college around 2004?

Bear in mind that the U.S. economy has been in the crapper since 2000, so the fact that you've managed to keep yourself employed more or less continuously since graduation is an achievement in itself.

If you want stability as a software developer, pretty much your only option is to get a job in government.  Below the executive level, when you factor in the value of the retirement benefits, public sector IT jobs actually pay MORE than private sector, more vacation, fewer hours during the workweek, AND have a lot more stability.

In the American white-collar workforce (not just in IT), the constant threat of layoffs has become pretty much a permanent fact of life.

You're going to have this problem until you start your own business.

Good for you that you're able to find a new job quickly after getting laid off.  That's the closest you're going to get to job stability in this industry, unless you're self-employed.

If you graduated from college in 2004, there's another problem you're going to notice soon.  All those programming languages you work in are going to be obsolete soon.  When you apply for a job in another language, prospective employers and recruiters don't give you credit for experience in other languages.

The biggest annoying bit about working as a wage slave software engineer is "Every couple of years, all your experience loses its market value."  Experience in C is still useful when writing/fixing C# code, but employers give it a market value of $0.

If you don't like it, then start your own business.  It isn't as easy as it sounds.

I share your attitude over the short-term nature of jobs today.

In virtually all the jobs I had, I delivered high quality work and gained the respect of my peers. In some companies management was over the moon at just how good my work was.

However like you I never managed to get a long-lasting, stable job.

I got tired of it as well.

The only solution is to create your own software product. If you get a hit, you will find self-employment or running your own company is much more stable.

The trouble is getting a hit in the first place and having enough savings to get to that point.

Even if you are good at what you do and learn new skills on your own time, constantly having to find new jobs is a real pain.

For example over the years I have programmed in C++, PHP, Java , SQL and C#. However at one time my last job was C++/website work.

At the time people were moving to do a lot of website back-end stuff in scripting languages. So the industry just said:

a) Even though you have worked for years producing desktop applications, we won't consider you for a desktop application job because the very last thing you did was for a website

AND

b) We are doing website work but not in C++, so tough luck.

Recruitment is an insane game. Having to dance every 1 - 2.5 years is a pain.

> This is the engineering life.

This makes me laugh or rather want to cry.

Companies make big money out of software or at the least manage to save vast amount of manual labor because of it.

The average software developer in employment isn't raking in big, big money. What is so wrong with wanting a stable job with decent hours and having enough money and time left over from work to start a family.

The companies have waged war on us.

"i work in DC and that is virtually the only work available. "

That's the result of the Republican Revolution.  Contrary to what people have been told, Ronald Reagan did not reduce the size of government--he outsourced it!  Reagan also made working directly for the federal government as distasteful as he possibly could by replacing the defined-benefit Civil Service Retirement System with the defined-contribution Federal Employees Retirement System on 1/1/1984.  His goal was to drive talent from government service.  Reagan and the Heritage Foundation types believed that talent belonged in industry where it could produce profits for investors.

"What is so wrong with wanting a stable job with decent hours and having enough money and time left over from work to start a family."

Nothing wrong with wanting that, but if you expect to get it, the US isn't a land of life long company jobs any more, where any hardworking teenager with good values can expect to graduate knowing how to read and do basic math, and then get a job that pays a fair wage for a solid days work.

"The companies have waged war on us."

I own a company and  have waged war on no individuals. I am at war however, with corporations, sheeple and endemic stupidity and apathy of both the populace and of specialists who should know better.

If you own a small business, part of the taxes you pay subsidize your larger corporate competitors.  If you own a small software business, part of your taxes indirectly subsidize Google and Microsoft.

It's possible to succeed in spite of this handicap.  That doesn't make it fair.

Taxation is theft!

http://fskrealityguide.blogspot.com/2009/08/answers-to-common-pro-state-troll.html