Job thread

[Yegolev]

If you can survive on her income, I can add some prevalent advice which is not always easy to take: Relax, take the time to do some stuff you couldn't do before, and be selective when looking for your next job.

I spent an afternoon learning what a EC2 is, and a S3 bucket.  I spent another afternoon registering at GitHub and running through some exercises using the EC2 I had set up.  Today I started reading about how to charge people to use your S3 bucket, then I got distracted by a phone call from my dad, and then that wood ape thread... but I'm really going to work on setting up a ftp (or whatever) site which I can potentially have someone pay me to use.

[Lantyssa]

Hopefully SFTP at a minimum.

[Hawkbit]

Is the EC2/S3 bucket stuff only related to AWS, or it more of a protocol used for other connections, too?

[Sophismata]

So... anyone want to see the job link?  I don't think any of you are in the line of work that I'm in.

Actually, yes please. I'm curious.

[Yegolev]

Latest job hunting adventure involves typical used-car-salesmen recruiters trying to fit a engineering peg in a admin hole.  Due to the general confusion over what an enterprise IT engineer does, I'm going to rewrite my resume (again) with a slant toward architecture roles and start searching for those.

Regarding the obviously-admin role, I just told the recruiter that I'd take $50/hour, which is an enormous lie, just so I could get more interview experience.  Also I suppose it never hurts to talk to people, even if they find out that the guy on the phone is terribly overqualified.

Trying out a project-centric format of the resume now, which has met with early praise.  Considering dropping my 1996-1998 job and creating a "Other Experience" paragraph.

Today I was called by and spoke at length to someone representing one of those executive placement services.  While the whole package of services sounds great, it doesn't really sound $2200 worth of great to me (however I am of scot descent), which is actually the least amount I'd pay if they were not able to place me in 90 days.  Anyone here ever use one of those services?

[Yegolev]

Is the EC2/S3 bucket stuff only related to AWS, or it more of a protocol used for other connections, too?

I'm sure there are other people who know AWS better than I do, but one of my many positive traits is that I'm very keen on sharing information.  History has shown me that there is practically zero downside to sharing technical information with others.

What I did was just create a free-tier EC2, which is what AWS calls a virtual machine.  I really forget what VMware calls a virtual machine (possibly "virtual machine" but somehow I think not), but it's what you would expect.  I'm not sure if it is paravirtual or emulated, but for my purposes it does not matter.  It's the latest Ubuntu LTS image which AWS provides.

An S3 bucket will operate independently of a VM, and I have two of these right now which I can do things with using the web interface (console).  The console appears to be geared almost exclusively for the use of the owner, with the ability of others with AWS accounts to be granted various accesses.  For the purpose of providing my wife's company a ftp site (yes, I'll implement sftp or vsftp or something, I did take a basic RHEL class ), I'd rather have something which allowed anonymous upload/download because I am confident that people who work in construction will not be able to correctly use a AWS account... also I don't want to have to manage that.

I haven't made any progress since the last time, but I believe there must be a way to mount the S3 bucket as a normal fs on the EC2, and after that it's just normal vsftp configuration.  Probably.  Once that is done, I will have a great excuse to create a front end for this.

[Chimpy]

VMware calls virtual machines virtual machines.

[Trippy]

Is the EC2/S3 bucket stuff only related to AWS, or it more of a protocol used for other connections, too?

The AWS services have their own special HTTP-based APIs for working with them.

An EC2 instance is a Xen virtual machine. You use the EC2 API to create/manage one. Once it's created you work with it like any other virtual machine that you can ssh into. There are also UIs that are built on top of these APIs but one of the benefits of using cloud services is you can script them to do a large number of operations at once like creating 100 EC2 instances in one shot so if you work wtih AWS a lot you end up having to learn how to use the APIs through some sort of language (Java, Python, Ruby, etc.) and AWS library. You can talk to the APIs directly by crafting the appropriate HTTP requests but I wouldn't recommend doing things at that low level.

S3 has it's own set of APIs for creating and managing "buckets" (places to put files) and managing files in those buckets (uploading, deleting, etc.). To retrieve something from a bucket it's just a standard HTTP GET request -- there's no special API involved with S3 basically acting like a standard Web server when downloading files -- so anything that talks HTTP can fetch from an S3 bucket (browser, wget/curl, etc.).

[Merusk]

Today I was called by and spoke at length to someone representing one of those executive placement services.  While the whole package of services sounds great, it doesn't really sound $2200 worth of great to me (however I am of scot descent), which is actually the least amount I'd pay if they were not able to place me in 90 days.  Anyone here ever use one of those services?

I've never used them, but I keep hearing how it's an employee market out there in Tech, so they should be getting referral fees from companies. Sounds like they're trying to fleece you in addition to the finder's fee they'll be paid for placement. 

Probably because if it's anything like the contracts we had, they'll have to pay the company back if the peg doesn't fit the hole after 90 days. You, on the other hand, they only promised employ. It's not their fault you didn't work out/ like the job they found you. 

[Sophismata]

I work in tech / consulting in Australia, and there's huge demand but not much supply. Recommending anyone who then gets in will grant you a finder's fee. If your exec placement group gets the finder's fee AND payment from you it sounds like a sweet deal for them. Possibly also for you as well, but I tend to be finicky about where I want to work so I've never trusted an agency. I get bored too easily if the work is dull.

[Ironwood]

I haven't made any progress since the last time, but I believe there must be a way to mount the S3 bucket as a normal fs on the EC2, and after that it's just normal vsftp configuration.  Probably.  Once that is done, I will have a great excuse to create a front end for this.

There are plenty of ways to do this.  Since it's been around a while, there are so many 3rd party apps that can turn Cloud Storage into 'local' drives, it's not real.  They're all much of a muchness.  The Cloudberry stuff is nice, but not free.

There are also ways to do the authentication and user identity if the anonymous doesn't work out for you.  Which I'd look at.  Because having an anonymous dump in the Cloud is a sure fire way to get, er, dumped on.

These days, I'm more using the Microsoft stuff.  It's amazing how quickly they managed to make Azure into a slightly better fitting AWS.  Not as many options, but it all hangs together nicer in my mind.

[Torinak]

Today I was called by and spoke at length to someone representing one of those executive placement services.  While the whole package of services sounds great, it doesn't really sound $2200 worth of great to me (however I am of scot descent), which is actually the least amount I'd pay if they were not able to place me in 90 days.  Anyone here ever use one of those services?

Borderline scam, most likely. Last time I was actively involved in hiring practices at a large tech company, I learned that headhunters routinely got 10-40K per placement from the company. If they can get more money from the candidates too, more power to them I suppose.

Unless their hiring standards have tanked in the last few years, if you turned down a job offer from Google you should be able to pretty much write your own ticket.

[Yegolev]

I somehow passed the initial Google interview and they are going to set up two back-to-back interviews next week.

[Rasix]

I somehow passed the initial Google interview and they are going to set up two back-to-back interviews next week.

Grats.  You are more impressive than I.  

Seriously though, this could be a great opportunity.  Although, I feel you on the uprooting thing.  We're really comfortable as well.

I got my shitty bonus yesterday.  It was less shitty since I'm a top performer (I guess), but shitty nonetheless.

[Yegolev]

Again, wondering how to put this into my resume in a professional manner.

Because they are going to have to give me a large sum to move to Mtn View.

[Rasix]

Because they are going to have to give me a large sum to move to Mtn View.

I hear they're good at that.  Although, you may have some issues living in a very expensive "house" that's barely the size of your current living room.

[Yegolev]

I have low standards around the board.  Wife's not moving, just me.

[Paelos]

The job probably isn't worth leaving your wife. Or maybe, IDK. 

[Torinak]

Because they are going to have to give me a large sum to move to Mtn View.

I hear they're good at that.  Although, you may have some issues living in a very expensive "house" that's barely the size of your current living room.

I hear they're very good at that. Last I heard, Google also had offices in pretty much every high-cost-of-living city in the world, so if everything goes well relocation or travel might be an option...though they've apparently been trying to consolidate people into Mountain View for some bizarre reason. Maybe they want more people to experience the wonderful stenchsmells of the Bay Area, or the insaneexciting real estate market?

[Miasma]

I have low standards around the board.  Wife's not moving, just me.

Eh?

All I know is you apparently have enough room in your backyard for the military to carry out emergency landings in helicopters.  That's a much larger yard than you'd get near google hq.

[Merusk]

I have low standards around the board.  Wife's not moving, just me.

Eh?

All I know is you apparently have enough room in your backyard for the military to carry out emergency landings in helicopters.  That's a much larger yard than you'd get near google hq.

Dude needs a job and having one at Google on his resume, even for 2 or 3 years, > inconvenience of only seeing family every few weeks I'd wager. Far more people do it for far less prestigious jobs than this.

[Yegolev]

Being in the final four contenders for a job at Fiserv, I had a mild panic attack when I realized that my days of unemployment might be over soon.  I'm going to try to ignore job stuff this week other than the already-scheduled Google interviews and see if I can get some time on a pro karting track.

I'm going to have to think overtime to come up with a unemployment bucket list, ASAP.

[shiznitz]

Today I was called by and spoke at length to someone representing one of those executive placement services.  While the whole package of services sounds great, it doesn't really sound $2200 worth of great to me (however I am of scot descent), which is actually the least amount I'd pay if they were not able to place me in 90 days.  Anyone here ever use one of those services?

Borderline scam, most likely. Last time I was actively involved in hiring practices at a large tech company, I learned that headhunters routinely got 10-40K per placement from the company. If they can get more money from the candidates too, more power to them I suppose.

Unless their hiring standards have tanked in the last few years, if you turned down a job offer from Google you should be able to pretty much write your own ticket.

I agree. Maybe tech is very different but I have never heard of someone looking for a job paying a search firm.  Even if the firm is legit, how can you possibly know if they did anything to help you?

[Teleku]

Because they are going to have to give me a large sum to move to Mtn View.

I hear they're good at that.  Although, you may have some issues living in a very expensive "house" that's barely the size of your current living room.

Eh, you can live all around the Bay Area in great areas and commute in on one of their super buses.  You don't have to live in Mtn. View/Palo Alto, ground zero for high priced real estate.

[Yegolev]

Can I sleep in a culvert?

[Trippy]

Because they are going to have to give me a large sum to move to Mtn View.

I hear they're good at that.  Although, you may have some issues living in a very expensive "house" that's barely the size of your current living room.

Eh, you can live all around the Bay Area in great areas and commute in on one of their super buses.  You don't have to live in Mtn. View/Palo Alto, ground zero for high priced real estate.

Except that the super buses mostly stop at the other highest priced areas in the Bay Area. They do stop at some of the BART stations, though, and there's a shuttle from the Mountain View Caltrain station so you can commute that way. This is an out-of-date map of the Google Bus stops circa 2010:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?err=1&msa=0&mid=zGkojhWojNBo.kH7J2er3ffro

[Merusk]

Fuck fucking luddites and their fear of doing things differently so they territorially piss all over any suggestion that they might be doing things wrong or inefficeintly.

No, Asshole, you shouldn't be doing a realistic render in sketchup. No, I can't fix your idiocy of 20 mil polys and 400megs choking a single-processor app.  Just answer the nice business-eval lady's questions and stop pissing in fear because you're a dinosaur.

Also, I'm quite inebriated and looking for other opportunities. Know a design firm, I'm open to it.

[Paelos]

Drunk man seeks job. 

[Teleku]

Because they are going to have to give me a large sum to move to Mtn View.

I hear they're good at that.  Although, you may have some issues living in a very expensive "house" that's barely the size of your current living room.

Eh, you can live all around the Bay Area in great areas and commute in on one of their super buses.  You don't have to live in Mtn. View/Palo Alto, ground zero for high priced real estate.

Except that the super buses mostly stop at the other highest priced areas in the Bay Area. They do stop at some of the BART stations, though, and there's a shuttle from the Mountain View Caltrain station so you can commute that way. This is an out-of-date map of the Google Bus stops circa 2010:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?err=1&msa=0&mid=zGkojhWojNBo.kH7J2er3ffro

That map shows stops all over the Bay Area.  I'm not saying you wont have to do some work to get you to the pick up point, but its a lot easier than driving yourself down everyday.  Especially since you can just work from the bus while you commute and they count that.  Thats actually even better coverage than I thought.

I know I always preach Oakland, but it is pretty damn nice/fun in the downtown area.  Though I guess the prices have shot up even there now according to friends, compared to when I was there just 3 years ago.  Commute time is obviously very long to google HQ, but I know a lot of google employees had moved into the area anyways and just took the bus.

[Yegolev]

Housing prices are just another way for me to jack up the benefits package.  I only just completed two phone interviews yesterday so I don't even know if I'll make it to the final round of interviews, and I'm postponing my final decision until I get an offer letter.

The interviews were very interesting, ran long by 45 minutes, and were exhausting.  Possibly unironically, there were technical difficulties but I sorted out everything.  The Google engineer saying things like "Hmm... well I don't know why this isn't working" was more likely ironic.

[Yegolev]

I believe today is the last day of my sixty-day "preferential rehire" phase during which I can be put into another HP position without any significant paperwork... so of course today is the day that I get calls from HP managers desperately trying to fill gaps in their organizations.  One of these desperate people supports NASA in Huntsville, which would actually fulfill a child-wish to work with rockets and space and NASA and stuff.  Not sure if the manager can pierce the HP bureaucracy to get me in there, but I'd be willing to give it a try for a little while.

Also the damn Weather Company finally contacted me about a systems engineering position that I posted to at least a month ago.  God help anyone who gets laid off and doesn't have any money saved to pay bills with.

[RhyssaFireheart]

God help anyone who gets laid off and doesn't have any money saved to pay bills with.

Heh, try dealing with that for 1.5 years now.  Yes, bankruptcy is a go.

And good luck on the positions!  Not being employed sucks.

[Yegolev]

Actually, other than lack of income I'm finding unemployment to be fantastic.

[Ard]

I miss unemployment something fierce.  I strive my hardest to return to that state, preferably as permanent retirement.

[Sophismata]

Really? I like my work. I'd go crazy if I've gone crazy when I didn't have something interesting (but occasionally onerous) to do.

edit: actually should clarify. I can go to a pretty bad place if I'm left bored.