Into the valley of death

Half a minute. How did this happen?

I have been designing, adapting and modifying databases for about thirty years. I’ve been doing other things as well of course, but the theme running through all of it has been writing databases.

With the advent of The Cloud, small businesses are no longer really interested in the kind of databases that I came to know and love. They want their database online and they want parts of it to be available to their customers. They want their data to be available from home and elsewhere through their smart phone. I needed to learn some new skills and quickly!

Now I have to admit that I’ve always been a bit dismissive of the guys who design web sites. After all, that’s what kids in college do for pocket money, right? But, if I was to embrace this new world, I had to quickly learn so that I could apply the knowledge of decades to this new world, then make a quid from designing databases that live in The Cloud.

OK. I did the work. Went up the learning curve, then into the market. What I found was that there is a great disparity between what First World designers try to charge and what Emerging Economy designers get paid.

I had thought I would market my old skills with a new twist through the quickly growing freelancer sites. I quickly discovered that it would be stupid of me to spend days or more designing an online database application to find that I still had to dig into my shrinking pocket to take my wife out for the evening. 

But every cloud has a silver lining. I noticed that there were a lot of jobs for people to rewrite website material that had been written by a person from an emerging economy. That makes sense. Most of those guys have English as a second or third language. English is probably the most difficult language in the world to master. It’s an amalgamation of Latin, Old German, Norman French and Greek, just to mention a few. Some words sound the same but are spelt (Not spelled) differently. Some words are spelt the same, but pronounced differently. For example: It grated on him as his gait was not great as he carried the grate to the gate.

So I have found a new opportunity. The only thing that never changes is that everything changes. I’ve always liked writing but mostly did it for my own amusement. Apart from being paid for a few local paper and magazine articles, I’d never really made any money at it.

Now out of the valley of death rides ........................