f13.net

Maybe we want to put job stuff in someplace other than Useless Conversation.  It's not useless and it distracts us from posting about random bullshit (read the UC thread rules).

Anyway, I got a email about a job offer in Alpharetta, GA for RIM (you know, Blackberry).  Looking for someone strong in HPUX 11iV3 and RHEL 5.  Can PM me for details.

I for one would like to know more about this RIM job you're advertising.

 :oh_i_see:

I bet you would, Magnus.

While I hate to derail this, I might as well post this up:

DC/MD/VA area

Temp (and a possibility of becoming perm) contracting gig.   Needs to have strong Juniper and Cisco skills.  Netscreen and Acme Packet familiarity a bonus.  Solid understanding of IP Routing (including BGP).

PM me for details.

Do we have any full-time Web Content Editors here? I'm entering negotiations with a venture capital and media firm and I'm looking for a good starting point for salary. I'd be doing copy, general editing, and possibly managing communications like Twitter and Facebook. I don't want to low-ball myself yadda, yadda.

Well, if we are going to have a thread like this, I may as well spam a few job openings we have. I'll just throw in the main details/requirements.

In Vancouver:

Senior Web Developer -
Must Have Skills:

• Server side / front end development with .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.x (ASP.NET, C#).
• 3+ years of AJAX, JSON and OO-JavaScript experience.
• In-depth knowledge of available JavaScript libraries and frameworks such as jQuery.
• Strong competency in CSS and semantic markup.
• Strong experience with performance optimization for highly-trafficked web applications.

QA Manager:

• Minimum 5 years experience in leading QA or engineering teams in a software development company managing multiple projects, leads, and individual contributors while effectively partnering with development and solving problems that cross organizational boundaries
• Experience releasing high quality scalable web 2.0 services and applications, preferably with web applications using Microsoft .net, Apache Web Server, Microsoft SQL server, and at least one automation toolset


Or, for those of you in CA or AZ that feel like giving me a referal bonus:

Data Center Engineer                                                   Phoenix, AZ
Enterprise Monitoring / Capacity Planning Analyst   Phoenix, AZ
Enterprise Software Architect - Analytics                   Westlake Village or Campbell, CA
Software Engineer - Mobile (iOS) Applications                   Westlake Village or Campbell, CA
Software Engineer - Mobile Applications                   Westlake Village or Campbell, CA
Sr Oracle Customer Data Hub and SOA Fusion Developer   Westlake Village, CA
Sr Siebel CRM Developer                                   Westlake Village, CA
Sr Software Engineer (back-end/middle-tier)                   Westlake Village, CA
Online Community Manager                                   Westlake Village, CA    :awesome_for_real: - not video game related   :cry2:

Applied for an entry level installer job at Comcast two days ago. Got a call today about starting the interview process. While not an ideal job, it starts at almost a dollar an hour more than I used to make and I might be able to get free internets which would be nice.

I just got hired on as a Messaging Specialist for a major oil and gas player here in Calgary. I'm beyond excited. The timing couldn't be more perfect for this as it's a major raise in all areas of my career. I've taken a very long a winding road in my IT career (I have next to no schooling), but it's nice to actually step into a role that's more focused and specialised.

Plus, the benefits and salary are incredible.

Interview with Comcast on Tuesday afternoon.

Don't do it!

Job is a job at this point.

I heard that.

Congratz. The no degree route is a long road.

Just tell me it's not CSR.

I believe I said what the job was earlier in this thread.

I didn't read!  :facepalm:

You all can become RN's, we have a shortage of 780 positions in the 11 county region of Indiana I'm in...

Hell we have two night shift slots open right now.

I don't do so well with blood.  Or body fluids.  Or people.  Mom's been a nurse for thirty years, so I've seen what she's gone through.

Sorry.  I respect y'all, but it's not for me.

How about people charred to the point where they don't retain much bodily fluid?

Amen to this.  It takes a special type to be a nurse.  In addition to all the stuff you have here, you get to put up with MDeities, which is generally spectacular. 

So the Comcast interview went fairly well.

When I asked when their benefits kick in for new employees they said 90 days and I thought to myself "America, Fuck yeah!" (most jobs in this town are 30 days, or if it is a University job day 1)

But hey, a job is a job at this point.

Should get the word out to new grads in AZ — RN gigs have gotten scarce here with the flood of recent graduates and ailing state economy.

In Oregon, no one is hiring nurses, and facilities are getting fined for being understaffed.

My mother has been looking for work for like 6 months and has barely even gotten a bite, and she has 10+ years of hospice experience.

If I was out of a job with no prospects at this point in my life I would probably look at apprenticing to a plumber or a starting welding or pipe fitting job or some such.

Huh...just did a Monster Search for RN positions, over 5000+ US wide, was 50+ in AZ, 30+ in OR, curious, did Oregon adopt the same nurse to patient ratio that California put into place?  Oh, I know that some areas can be a bitch to get a job, Indianapolis has ups and downs with many of the RN's threw out the state driving there to take jobs since they pay a ton (we share crappy flats and work 3 in a row to maximize the money if possible), a lot of it is what you are willing to work, I'm working night shifts with every other weekend, but many people don't want to work that kind of shifts.  Legacy Health System in Portland OR, has 29 RN slots listed right now, I usually look at the hospital or agency and go to there web site and figure out what is available and then follow up on openings if I was looking for a job.  The bigger web sites aren't that effective.  I also get head hunter calls about 1 or 2 times a month from travel RN companies.  

About a year ago I almost went back for HVAC.  Plumbing sucks...  30 years of poop in a pipe will turn you off that fast. 

We're considering a move to Seattle in the next year for a change of scenery and I don't think the HVAC would go over so well there.  I suspect, at least.

Plumbing...ecch. I'm considering a third act career switch, electrician is the building trade I like best. Can do it until you're 90, it's mostly clean and because it's dangerous to newbs, you can bill accordingly. But the apprenticeship is a killer when you're already 40 and making a decent salary.

My dad just retired as an electrician - his issue was that it was tough on his knees.  When his plant closed up last year he started looking for other work, but quickly found that the only stuff out there required too much up and down (heh) to keep him doing new construction builds.  Good luck though, he was very satisfied with his career.

And yeah, that would be a royal pain making the switch and starting from the bottom rung.  At least you know what you're in for if you choose it.

Yeah, but you can make a lot of good money as a plumber.  And if you're savvy enough to run your own business, you can do very, very well (because of the Ecch).

On a resume, what is the best way to differentiate between:

• Solid knowledge and experience (Windows OSes, PHP, mySQL, etc.)
• Once solid but now ancient (VMS-VAX machine I admin'd that was decommissioned six years ago)
• Some familiarity, but limited exposure (Solaris, IRIX, RedHat, etc.)

Extensive experience: MS Windows, PHP, mySQL, VMS-VAX
Familiarity with:  Various UNIX/Linux systems (Solaris, IRIX, RedHat)

2 lines, leaves out the negative. A resume is as much about leaving out parts of the information as it is about putting information there in the first place.

Thank you.

The resume will hopefully be mostly an after-thought since there is an extensive application and one isn't required, but I'd rather it look good than not.

Wind chill is -10 and I have an interview on campus in a building that doesn't have a parking meter within 1/4 mile. Joy.

Rather than write "familiar," I always use "proficient."

Minor, but it sounds better.

That pisses me off.  "Knowledgeable" maybe - but claim you are proficient and you AREN'T I will not only slash your name from my list but will let some other people know not to hire you.

RAR!

I'm not saying fib on your resume! I can't help it if you attract loads of choades into your interview rape dungeon.

Claiming proficiency in the case of the level of experience that Lantyssa mentioned in those systems would constitute fibbing though.

Totally agree with Cheddar. We catch you using 'proficient' when what you really meant was you once sat in a seminar about it, we peg you to the wall like a butterfly.

My company is hiring for people with PeopleSoft/HRIS experience. Priority is for Consultants and Business Analysts, but we're very much short staffed and expanding fast. We're located in Mississauga, ON (403/Hurontario). You can read up on the company here (http://www.katalogic.com/).

I don't have job descriptions because we're in the process of revamping all of ours, but the company works on the premise that anyone with a little bit of exposure can learn to be an expert.

If you're interested, send me a PM.

We are hiring in the Hampton Roads area for Consumer Sales.

https://www22.verizon.com/about/careers/openings/HJOBP000000003271835.html?sp=0

fyi - Training will be in Virginia Beach with the entire center being moved to Hampton by April.  Full benefits, good pay, etc etc.

Link doesn't work for me Cheddar.

Try verizon.com/fiberjobs and search for your state.  We have a ton of positions opening across our footprint.

FYI - when something DOES post make sure you apply within 24 hours.  Jobs with Verizon go QUICK.

Dropbox are hiring and the list of benefits are funny.

One extra gig of space?

That's not that unusual for startup jobs here in the SF Bay Area. The company I work for has similar "benefits" (no arcade DDR machine though).

Google, which of course is not a startup anymore, has really ridiculous "benefits".

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/googleplex2.htm
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/googleplex3.htm

But even with all that they are losing people to companies like Facebook.

Competition for top notch engineers is really fierce right now here.

Why is was this in Serious Business?

Google's a big place, and while it's far less broken than most companies of its size and generally a great place to work, a tiny startup it is not.

I kinda scratch my head at the folks leaving to work for Facebook -- I could certainly see going to throw the dice at another startup at some point, but Facebook would not be a place I'd leave for.  Yuck.

Competition for great engineers is always fierce -- even well after the dot com bubble burst when people were leaving the bay area and traffic seemed to be getting better, hiring really good engineers was hard to do.  The good people tend to not have trouble finding jobs.

It's pre-IPO and Goggle's stock isn't going up like it did in its early years post-IPO.

And from what I've heard through the grapevine, the people moving are getting a *lot* of options.

Someone obviously took the name at face value.

Because this was made to remove the job hunt discussion from Useless Conversation.

I'm sure they are, but FB isn't small either.  I may be completely wrong, but I'm not convinced they're going to magically go public for a gazillion dollars and make everybody multi-millionaires.  Of course when I look back at the kind of total nonsense that made people money during the dotcom boom, who knows. ^^

They were valued at $50 billion recently. There stock is trading at $25 per share right now putting them at an even higher valuation. (something like $257 billion at a $25 per share price IIRC)

Yup.  Aware of that.  I think it's silly.  From what I know of how their technology works and how social networks have risen and fallen in the past, I fundamentally do not believe they are as unstoppable/undisplacable as the people who value them at $50B do. 

Might be I'm totally wrong and unable to embrace the future of the Internet which is like buttons and friends lists and absolutely no meaningful privacy control.  I've been wrong before.

I do think you over-value privacy. Not personally, of course. But the sheep will willingly give up all their privacy for some stupid shiny.

Having an early gmail (my first initial + last name), I'm inundated with shit from everyone in THE WORLD with my initial + last name signing up for all kinds of shit. Maybe working in telemarketing when I was a kid lifted the curtain on this shit, pre-internet, for me. Who doesn't have a dozen emails and layers of obfuscation to at least attempt to stymie the non-stop assault of capitalism?

Facebook is going to make a fucking mint for the people that jumped ship when it goes public. Its realistic longterm viability is kinda meh, but that initial IPO is gonna be nuts. GS wouldn't be backing it and structuring it to milk the shit out to its HNW clients if it wasn't.

Any IT people in or around Houston looking for work?

Need a new IT assistant.  Desktop/server support, security administration, some clerical duties.  No travel, 8-5, 2003/XP shop.

I'll PM you.

Tempted, but if I can't get the fiancee to bite on San Antonio I doubt she'll go for Houston :)

I know of NOC openings in both Dulles, VA  and in Georgetown.  Ping me if interested and I'll pass your info on to the appropriate people.

Anyone here know anything about Roanoke?  Big opportunity coming up for me - but its a huge move.  Looks nice on the interwebs.

Amazon is hiring++.  Jobs in EU, CDN (new dev center in TO opening), and US West Coast.

Yeah, what's up with that ?  Tons of positions in the UK also...

Yes! Awesome place. 100k population so big enough for most everything you need while maintaining a small town/mountain town feel. The economy weathered the recent downturn fairly well from what I have been told.
Its especially nice if you are into the outdoors at all (close to skiing, the Appalachian Trail, Blueridge Mountains, etc etc), if you are more into a thriving opera company and symphony not so much. I dont know anything about the local school system if you have kids.

Most of the positions in Seattle are Kindle related, so I think they may be gearing up for a new Kindle launch, which is rather cool. I'm hoping for color, or maybe some enhanced tablet like functionality.

Rumor has it that the Kindle's going to be free to anyone with a Prime account, so I'm guessing that might be it.

Growth.  Not just Kindle.  Lots of dev centers around the world and new distribution centers opening for all ranges of skill (technical or otherwise).

Eh, I didn't see much for my level of skill without a pretty big move backward or out of IT. Also it's another HR department with a hard-on for degrees. Whee.

FWIW I agree.  But if you have relevant experience some recruiters might still call. 

It's time.  RedHat or SUSE?  I'm thinking RedHat.

Debian or Ubuntu.

My cousin in law is in management for RedHat.  He seems pretty happy - has a workforce all over the world and really enjoys what he does.

I'm learning/refreshing my skills on Fedora right now and I've liked it.

Not in the portfolio, unfortunately.  I suppose RH is fine.

If it's a US job/project I'd go with RH then. SUSE is more of a Euro thing.

Driving through Indianapolis I saw a few billboards with the super-specific requirement of "Know Linux?"

http://www.hostgator.com/jobs.shtml

From their page, looks like they want both Linux and Windows System Administrators 1-3 and Front Line Tech support for jobs in Houston and Austin. Knowing some of y'all are in Texas I thought I'd pass it on.

On target with that assessment, I mostly wanted to uncover any boobytraps.  The weather indicates a RH class/cert in the near term for me.

Thought I would throw some openings in here as well. My cousin's company just moved to Scottsdale, AZ and is starting to hire all sorts of IT folks:

http://parchment.com/company/careers (http://parchment.com/company/careers)

Also if you happen to be in the DC area, my current company is looking for technical support and QA people, message me if you're interested!

Potential opening for someone with background in training design and delivery systems.
Non-profit experience preferred.
Headquarters based in Fredericksburg, VA.

Send me a PM if interested.

Looking for someone unemployed or with lots of free time to take on a single contract project for a national non-profit.
Work involves taking a Blackbaud/Kintera database of nearly 90,000 records, removing/consolidating duplicate records, and putting it into a flat format (excel) for upload to Yourmembership.

Time is of the essence (72-96 hour turn around). Cost if of the essence since it involves a non-profit.
PM me if interested.

Another company reorg.  Huge power vacuum just occurred-  this could get interesting.

Blech. Haven't you had bad luck here recently?

Two things.

For all you IT guys, Bridgewater Associates, LP. (hedge fund based out of Westport, CT) is on a hiring binge right now for IT support (40+ jobs).
View their jobs listings here: https://sjobs.brassring.cogm/1033/ASP/TG/cim_searchresults.asp?ref=4192011142912&SID=^fPmWUZDlaon_slp_rhc_0YKLCYtavJxPvPWqp7fWI1cqadm/rT_slp_rhc_R4qRxpWXwAFm3b6KK6JSU

Secondly has anyone here done any work with them in the past or know anything about them? We are looking at doing some work with them, and while I am doing due diligence through other channels I figured I would ask on here as well as you never know with F13. Feel free to PM response.

Since their site is down, I'm guessing they really need those techs.  Expect long hours!

No for some reason it didnt connect the whole link or something funky.
Try this:

https://sjobs.brassring.com/1033/ASP/TG/cim_home.asp?partnerid=25310&siteid=5242
and then just run a query for IT jobs.

From what is publicly available, and you could find for yourself:

Biggest hedge fund in the world (1200 present employees with $94 billion in assets) So you will be nicely compensated.
CEO/Founder personally banked 3+ billion last year
Run with cult like efficiency, where people are encouraged to speak up or argue with their superiors if they believe they are right.
Hiring 40+ project managers, coders, Q&A, Database admins, etc etc
Yes you will need to submit to a background check.

I am not posting what the project is in open forums, you can PM me for more details.

Definitely an interesting list, some possibilities there, and I could get into more of an engineering role faster than current (the problem with being indispensable for select functions).  It's very Winux, though, and I'm not sure I can handle that at the moment.  Also, they would have to allow telecommuting since I am not moving except for Large Sums.  I think I need to bake a little longer in my current spot before I'm ready to take on a real leadership position.  I could do it, sure, and my team lead just threatened to make ME team lead this evening, but personally I think I need to work out some issues first.  Plus I am going to milk the training cow while I have a tit in reach.

So because Career Builder doens't have an understanding between Architect-Construction and Architect-IT I get a lot of odd matches on some of my job searches.  If anyone's honestly strained for a job, there's a ton of positions in Cincinnati.  Blue Ash (Middle-to-north of the Greater Cincy area) made a push 5-8 years ago to bring a lot of Tech companies around as it lost manufacturing jobs.

If you can tolerate the political climate (honestly the north end of the city is better than my end) and want to live in one of the cheapest cities in the US, take a look at this list.  (I've deleted all the construction jobs that showed up today, these are the IT ones only.)  The Achitect Specialist positions are for Citigroup.

The team I am on is hiring another LAMP dev.  The pay isn't the best (a bit over 48k) but the bennies are great and it is pretty low stress being government work and all.  So if you are looking for work in Austin drop me a pm for the details.

edit: just to clarify we don't do much design work, mostly php crud apps and currently working on moving our site into a cms.

Damn.  Wish I was a bit closer to Austin.  LAMP is what I've been learning and at an educated guess I've got two months left here.

Move, Austin is nicer than Houston anyhow ;P

It may come to that, but if I move out of my house within the next two years I take an instant $8,000 loss.

My company is once again looking to hire someone for support who knows linux and mysql, snmp is a plus. We're not having much luck so far for some reason, so if you'd like to work in Northern Virginia send me a message.

Ew.

:oh_i_see:

I am, however, actively looking for work since I can't deal with this bullshit job anymore.  I should probably go take the PMP test and get that out of the way... can't be that hard considering the shitbrains that I deal with.

Those that can't do manage.

If management didn't pay so well, I'd not consider it.

My company (http://acony-games.de/#/career) is looking for the following three positions:

Gameplay programmer - Unreal and console experience preferred.
Project manager - not necessarily with game experience but must have previous experience of managing projects.
Junior QA tester - must have a pulse.

All of these are in Germany, relo and visa assistance available if required.

So waiting for Iain to say OSX sysadmin. I want to be in the parade!

So if I said yes to the Junior QA tester, you'd basically fly me to Germany where I could play video games all day long, with 6 weeks of vacation a year?   :awesome_for_real:

How poorly does a Junior QA Tester pay?

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/farley.jpg)

Aaaaaand the suspicious-looking job offers start rolling in.  This is my least favorite part, separating the wheat from chaff.

If they ask you to provide your own pasties, it's a scam.

I'm thinking "Six Sigma" means it's a scam.

Actually, I forget there are people here who are more qualified to do things than to provide support. Here are all the positions:

Sales Executive - South Central Region
Sales Executive - Bay Area
Sales Engineer - Multiple Locations
Computer Systems Engineer
Mid-Level Documentation Specialist
Product Manager Integration
Junior Level Software Quality Assurance Engineer
LAMP Developer
Mid-level Software Engineer
Mid-level Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Professional Services Engineer
Senior Automation Engineer
Senior LAMP Software Engineer
Senior Network Software Engineer
Technical Support Engineer
Online Marketing Manager
Office Assistant
Staff Accountant Financial Analyst

We're really pushing for more people right now, apparently there is nobody qualified in Northern Virginia. Go figure.

Between 25 and 30k (Euros) a year. Of that the German government will take a fairly large chunk but your out of pocket healthcare costs are 10€ a quarter and you don't need a car.


In between telling us to tighten up the graphics on level 3 that's exactly how it works  :wink:

The reality isn't far off that to be fair. The holiday is 5 weeks and not 6 and if you stretch 'running test cases' far enough you can make it look like 'playing video games' all day.

These are a bit vague but may relate to my job experience.  I'll not immediately assume the pay is "low" and ask if telecommuting is allowed.

Little more specifics on your company? Industry?

Are they relocating people for these or allowing some to telecommute? (Sales positions not withstanding).

Switching thoughts quickly here, a friend of mine reviewed my resume and apparently a one-pager is not how it's done these days.  So I'll have to get to work adding buzzwords and listing out projects I led and some things I somehow forgot about, like DR experience.

For me, that would be a raise. What's the longevity on the position? October might be the death knell for me here  :sad_panda:

This annoyed me when job hunting, because if I was to stretch out my resume to include my college work experience programming and high school grocery clerk jobs, I could maybe hit 2 pages legitimately.  But no one cares about those BS jobs.  The "way resumes are done" keeps changing and it annoys me.

The most important thing, I believe, is to understand people now search for keywords.  The challenge is in crafting a resume that doesn't read like a HTML keyword list.

A key aspect of this is to make sure your job descriptions back up your skill list.  If you don't do that it looks like you are faking it.

We're going to beta very soon and expect to be live by the end of the year at the latest. We have a five year post release plan, so I guess the longevity is anywhere from 'we crash and burn on launch' to 'money-hats for the next half decade'. We are self funded though, we aren't relying on publisher investment for a launch.

Does it require being able to speak German?

I'm six-sigma LEAN certified.  Unless you work on a production line it's largely a scam.  Anyway, it just means have a process, stick to it, measure it and adjust it as needed.

Yes, it would make sense to actually post a link to the company:

http://ww2.sciencelogic.com/current-opportunities (http://ww2.sciencelogic.com/current-opportunities)

We make a network monitoring platform called EM7, of course that is explained more in-depth on the site. Currently we do have remote employees, and a new office in Austin to boot. I'm not sure which positions are telecommuting and which are not, but the current concern seems to be getting the right person no matter where they are located.

As far as these:
Computer Systems Engineer
Mid-Level Documentation Specialist
Professional Services Engineer
Senior Automation Engineer
Technical Support Engineer

The computer systems engineer is new, I'm not sure what that position will actually be about. The documentation specialist writes docs, professional services engineer goes and installs the thing, senior automation engineer will work in qa, and technical support engineer supports the thing.

It'd be a pay cut, but it's actually kind of tempting given my situation is still screwed up and I'm weighing various options.  How hard is it to get a long-term work visa and/or the German greencard equivalency?

Also my German is very rusty.  How quickly would I need to bring it up to fluency?

Depends. The company would sponsor anyone it recruited from outside the EU and in my experience this process takes anything up to a couple of weeks. In my wife's case it took an afternoon although she had the advantage of being married to an EU citizen.

The company speaks English and all of our business is conducted in English. Having said that, this is rural Germany and the level of English spoken outside the company is patchy. You can get by with surprisingly little German for daily life - eating at restaurants and shopping mostly requires that you have a few stock phrases memorised rather than any level of fluency. There is a language school in town and the company periodically enrolls non-German staff on courses there.

In general the cost of living is low here, even compared to much of Europe. Your Euros will go a long way and converting USD into Euros doesn't really provide an accurate basis for comparison because your expenses beyond rent and utilities are practically zero. Most of the things you would be used to paying for separately are provided through your taxes (which will be much higher than you will likely be used to - 30k a year will translate into approximately 1900/month take home). Cars are optional and public transport is both ubiquitous and cheap.

Can I apply to come live in your socialist commune paradise?  :grin:
All the bullies in our sandbox broke our toys.

In all seriousness, sounds like a heck of an opportunity for someone looking to get to the EU.

Business in English makes my life easy.  I'd relearn German fast enough to get around.  Rural appeals to me.  I'm not too worried about expenses.  As long as rent, utilities, and food is reasonable I can make it fine.  My other costs aren't a lot.

Which town was it again?  I'd like to look up the area.

My main concern would be if I could handle being a QA tester.  My mind might break having to repetitively test the same thing over and over.  (Plus the scariness of considering a move overseas.)

Fuck it, I am applying for a job in Germany!

Do you get a referral bonus, Iain?

I say we have Iain judge a miniature painting contest for the position.  :grin:

I do get a referral bonus as it happens so if you do apply, namecheck me (Iain Compton) and send me a note so that if people ask about you I can tell them that I sorta internet know you in some way. Bear in mind that I have no role in hiring and that the people who do have a role in hiring aren't going to ask me if my good friend xXx1337Satan666xXx is a good fit for the tester position, they're going to give me the name on your CV.

Lantyssa, the town is Villingen-Schwenningen and the office is in the Villingen part.

Pictures! Other people's (http://www.google.com/search?q=villingen&hl=en&prmd=ivnsm&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=mPwyTru0JIv5sgben7HpBg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CBoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1896&bih=894) and mine (http://www.flickr.com/photos/requiel/tags/villingen/).

9/10 times six-sigma and lean are just words.  If all you are doing is putting masking tape on a desk to show where a tool goes, you are probably doing it wrong.  If you are doing value-stream mapping and spaghetti maps and fully buying into it...You can make your operation pretty efficient. I've seen suppliers go from having a 4 month workflow for a product to several weeks. That being said, I wouldn't want to work at Toyota. You suddenly become a machine to be utilized.

This reminds me that I should probably get a better camera before I move to Africa later this year.

Sure, there might not be a ton to see, but I'd like to have clear pictures of what there IS to see.

Management decided to put the Sysadmin position I'm interviewing for up on Monster.com (via the local paper) - I've gotten 10 resumes in 4 days (with half not being local), as opposed to the craigslist ad I ran previously which got around 50 locals in the first day...

Monster.com was a cesspool the last time I used it (7-8 years ago), and their ad for phone reps there is getting no bites as well - does anyone still use it?

(edit : found out they used Careerbuilder, which is why half the applicants are non-local, gotcha)

CWA/IBEW walked out of contract negotions and called a strike.

Good news - I get OT and lots and lots of hours!

I've had a lot of interest on CB and Monster after I updated my resume and uploaded it.  I read somewhere that you should upload it fairly often so it stays "on top" and gets more notice.

The second thing I did was to start my resume at the top with "I am trained in <keyword><keyword><keyword>, etc."  So it looks like a sentence but it's really just putting the keywords on top so the nice computer can find them quickly and tag me.

Of course it doesn't hurt that my field (Quality Engineer) seems to be an in-demand career currently.  Before I did this stuff I had NO contacts via CB and Monster.

Unfortunately for them, it happened on the same weekend as the S&P credit downgrade, so the strike got bumped off the front pages it looks like.

Why do I get anxious over an interview for a job that I'm not 100% sold on?  Must be because I'm anxious, and I'm not used to dealing with people who don't know how awesome I am.  Now I have to figure out how to convince a hiring manager that I'm the shit.  Sigh.

It might make it easier on you if you try to approach it from the other end of the spectrum and make them explain why it's worth your time to even be there interviewing, much less seriously considering the position.  I am of course giving advice I myself am incapable of doing, but hey, I know that confidence trick at least works.

Actually a friend of mine who does highly paid consulting work does something similar to that.

He turns it into him interviewing them for his talents.  To see if their problem is actually worth his time/interest.

"What is the problem you want me to solve?" followed by, "Here is a first impression on how I will approach that problem and the resources I think I will need to accomplish my solution."

I have a job interview in an hour or so to be Sky Jr. at one of the local libraries.

19 an hour for part time evenings and weekends....yeah I can dig that.

Woohoo! Good luck.

Do they need a full time librarian or sysadmin?  :oh_i_see: (Funding not at its most stable for libraries these days, despite record usage)

Politics aside, it's a great field to work in. One of those occupations where you can get immediate feedback from helping people.

They had a full time position as a sys admin last fall paying 24 an hour. I didn't even get an interview for that one.

And the university just had a library IT posting that closed yesterday, but it required a college degree or I would have sent it to you.  :sad: They also hire librarian types quite regularly around here. Both Champaign and Urbana both are big on library funding (both have done major renovations/rebuilds of their buildings recently) and the University of Illinois has the largest public university library in North America. The biggest problem with jobs at the university is that the Civil Service postings are only open to Illinois residents.

That shouldn't stop anyone from applying for a job. I know universities are bit more strict on that stuff, but everyone I know who is hiring is having a really hard time finding *good* candidates for the job openings they have. They usually end up with someone thats "ok and hopefully we can teach them what they need to know" but would rather have someone with some experience.

Asking pertinent questions is an excellent way to display your skill set, plus it will give you a heads up as to how f'd up the organization is.

Academic professional classification jobs (as this job was classified by the University) all require at least a 4 year degree. They cannot even interview you if you do not have one. It does not necessarily need to be in the field they ask for in the posting, but the HR rules are pretty strict on that. (Requiring a bachelors is pretty much the only way they could create positions for which hiring decisions are not driven by the Civil Service testing process).

Without a degree, it's pretty bleak. Which is too bad, since I probably learned more applicable skills in the time some kids were getting a non-applicable degree with all Ds and beer kegs. Living on the road and working every job under the sun should count as an education :)

I am not denying that is quite possibly the case.

Eh, life's not fair. I mostly roll with it, but it does get tiring when you're looking for jobs and hit a zero-tolerance hiring procedure. Not very interested in getting six figure debt (at least), working part-time while dedicating the next four years (at least) of my life to end up at 46 with job experience 4 years out of date and qualifications for an entry-level position.

I don't have a degree but I don't tell anyone that and it almost never comes up in interviews. YMMV.

If you're getting interviewed, it probably doesn't matter as much at that point. Problem is, it's a barrier to getting an interview, I was recently passed up for a job I am perfect for, and the kid working there knew it (kid who would've been my boss to start and requested my resume). But even with 12 years professional experience (plus way more amateur experience, of course), HR wouldn't interview because I didn't have a TWO YEAR degree.  :oh_i_see:

If you guys want to know why cybersecurity is a mess, there's reason #1.

It leads to this:

Our AD network forces an exactly 8 character long password.  Guess how hard that is to brute force?

So, anyone have experience working for Amazon?  A friend of my wife has inquired if I'd be interested in working there (he recommened me for a job at Google which I didn't land, guess he's with Amazon now).  I currently like my job, but it can't hurt to look I guess.

That's not reason #1 cybersecurity is a mess. It's reason #1 you didn't get a job.

Get a fucking degree.

Yeah, you uneducated ninny!

Degrees are neat. I have 3.

I think his point was that it might not work out in his favor for the long-term.  If you are starting in your mid-40s, taking on $50-75k when you are turning 50 likely isn't a wise idea, unless you have a degree and prospective job lined up to make that cash back in 10-15 years.  

Of course, if you can find a way to have someone else pay for it, then by all means, go for it.  See if the AARP can help out.   :why_so_serious:

Degrees are overrated.  I have many and bet that I make less money than nearly everyone on these forums.

A 2 year degree.  Isn't that an Associate's Degree? You can get that at a community college.  Comes with fries and a drink for $5.99.

An online 4 year degree is only slightly more expensive and equally worthless.

Well yeah, but they look nice on a wall.

Mine look great in the bottom of a box in the back of a storage closet.  I haven't seen my PhD since it was mailed to me.  I hope no one ever asks to see it.  I'm honestly not sure I even know which box it's in.

The 2 year degree shouldn't be expensive or difficult to get, it would probably be worth doing just because of being able to get your foot in the door for things. It also means should you decide to move on to a 4 year degree you can transfer units and finish that off in another 2 years. The amount of debt you'd pick up at a state school shouldn't be anywhere near 6 figures doing the transfer thing.

It still takes .... 2 years to get, and if you are looking for a job right now most likely you can't wait 2 years just to get a degree so your experience matters.  If you don't work for 2 years, the worth of your experience drops a lot.

Yep.  Then why all of the pissing and moaning? People know the rules of the game, so play ball or just get used to the fact that some jobs are out of your grasp.   (Not really directing this at you, btw).

Online degrees annoy the shit out of me, but if they get you in the door, you'd be a fool not to consider it.

Community college does not take up nearly so much time that you'd be unable to work during it. Especially not as an adult.

An AS for that one job. Most things I'm seeing require a BS. Even so, it's a worst-case scenario if I have to take two years off and accrue that kind of debt (tuition + cost of living, you know house and truck payments, insurance, etc) and even that is assuming I can do it full-time. Otherwise, the debt might be less but the time goes way up. And it's a mostly useless degree unless you pursue the bachelor follow-up and as I mentioned and Kail re-mentions, it's 2 years of experience stagnation.

I'm not seeing how the money and time involved are not a big deal when I'm in my forties. If I were in my twenties, I'd be living in Villingen right now.

And I did mis-type, I meant 5-figure, not 6-figure :)

Ras: sorry if it's coming across whiny, I find it more of a fascinating thing than anything, that a kid out of community college with an associate degree can get an interview over someone with a dozen years experience with exactly the right position that was told to submit a resume by the admin at a job fair I was fact-finding (not job seeking). I'd be whining if I were unemployed right now  :grin:

I think you may be way off base on what it would take to get that AA/AS degree. At least here CA, community college is *extremely* cheap, you take the classes at night so you keep working, etc. The work won't really take you much time because you're going to be far far above the average person they're aiming it at just via life experience. Even the lower-tier state 4 year colleges here offer a lot of classes at night, when I was doing some grad work before I decided it sucked, I had a ton of classes in the evenings with people working full-time jobs. I wouldn't imagine the situation in NY to be much different.

Speaking of, I need to get that cover letter typed up.  Thanks!

Most of the tech positions I see allow for substitution of experience for college on a year for year basis.  Unfortunately most job sites don't allow for this in a job matching filter and if you don't have a degree it will not match you up, no matter how much experience you have.  The Work in Texas site is like this, on the advice of the Texas Workforce Commission people I ended up just putting down a 4 year degree on the qualifications profile page then not putting one on my resume or applications so that it would match me up for the positions I wanted to apply for.

There will likely be another vacancy for a QA tester coming up soon and also a vacancy for an animator in addition to the roles I posted about earlier. If you decide to apply then hit me up via PM as I get a referral bonus if you end up getting hired.

The job I current have looked at my resume this way. I'm working for a smaller (450-500 employee) oil and gas company and my boss has come right out and said that we WILL get bought out eventually and since that will happen he'll make sure I get as much training and as many certifications as I want so I can move on afterwards (I currently have no degrees and miniminal certifications - none in the field that I am currently "specializing" in)

They hired me with what they considered 10 years IT experience, which resulted in a fairly good wage, almost 6 weeks of vacation/designated days off and enough stock options that I should be mortgage and debt free within 4 years and it all started with having a good 'fit' interview with HR before I had any sort of a technical interview.

You should look up your local community college (in NJ I believe every county had at least one, but who knows about New York? I sure don't.). The tuition is almost certainly going to be pretty low. My local one here in CA is $24 a credit (plus about $45 in fees, although I bet the books are ridiculous, as books always are). Community colleges have the day classes for the kids that aren't going to a four year school for various reasons, but the night classes? They're exactly for people like you. Grown ups with jobs and shit to do.

Hell, you could probably take at least some of the classes online. I took a theatre appreciation course online. It was very strange. It had a forum! I had to fight the urge to flame the 50 year old stay-at-home moms for being idiots.  :why_so_serious:

I would not recommend using this practice to set your passwords. Look up dictionary attack if you are curious why.

Why not just buy a degree from a mill since you only need it to pass "degree check"?

:oh_i_see:

I have my own method.  I just thought the timing for Sky's comment was amusing.

Since we appear to be schilling for referral bonuses helping our online friends find work, here's the latest postings from my parent company. A lot of them are sales positions, but there are also several data and web developer spots. If anyone has experince with Siebel, we deffinitely have jobs for that.

https://tbe.taleo.net/NA11/ats/careers/searchResults.jsp?org=MOVE&cws=1 (https://tbe.taleo.net/NA11/ats/careers/searchResults.jsp?org=MOVE&cws=1)

I'm seeing a disturbing lack of Vancouver in that list. Vancouver - it's Seattle without the America.  :grin:

I'll ignore that jab (I actually like Seattle)

I can post Vancouver jobs if you like, just thought the US ones seemed more suited to the crowd.

Let's see what we have...

http://www.topproducer.com/company/available-positions.aspx (http://www.topproducer.com/company/available-positions.aspx)

Well - if you live on the East Coast between VA and NY, currently unemployed and looking for some temp work, and unafraid of 6x12 hr shifts on the other side of a union picket line, I've got an opportunity for you.

Any idea what the backend web dev position pay range is? or even the ux director?

edit - Your company and products line up with my work experience in a pretty freakish manner.  I'd consider it if it was enough of a pay jump to cover the move and my wife's loss of job.

edit2 - I should probably quote the correct link.

The "four random words" proposal from xkcd is not vulnerable to dictionary attacks in the same way "one random word" or even "one random word transformed with some numbers and punctuation" is due to the size of the search space.  Combining a larger pass phrase and a larger alphabet (not just all lowercase characters) further increases the search space and thus the time to attack.

A good illustration of this: https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm 

I am learning that AD is a pain in the ass, or maybe just Vintella, but probably AD.

Last time I was working on a degree, the online scene was a wasteland of expensive paths which could use any of my prior education history.  I might look to see what I can find now, preferably cheap and easy that I can also import much of my previous 6-7 years of college into.  In the meantime, I think I am going to lie to Dice and say I have a 4-year degree.

The reason I came to this thread, though, was that I wanted to know the best way to learn PM skills, outside OJT, without enrolling into some PMP cult.  I'm rewriting my resume for IT Architect positions and PM skills would be helpful.

Have you ever had to shepherd some process or plan through planning-startup-steady state-close?  Say, planning a data centre move or upgrade?  That's project management. 

It's really ridiculously easy to see how much stuff actually fits under project management when you realize being a PM is simply head cat herder or something.  Planned a major travel vacation for a family of 5?  Completed your goals without getting DCFS or a marriage counselor involved?  That's some project management.

Given that by default AD puts you in a 10 minute lockout after 5 incorrect entries it really isn't a big deal. Unless you've got that turned off *and* have some front facing place that uses an AD login, I wouldn't worry about it.

EDIT: I would add though I don't know why your Windows people would change it from the default on max password length.

Oh, believe me, I know that and I do a lot of it.  Primarily because the HP PMs are all doofuses, while I am not nearly as much of a doofus.  Interestingly, the weekend that caused me to finally decide to get out of here was a datacenter migration of the single most important SAP system in the corporation.  The PM on that... sheesh.

The main reason I am asking is because there is a position which prefers "Familiarity with Project Management methodologies and tools" and I was suddenly suspicious.  Tools?  I can run a project, have done it before and will likely do it again unless I get fed up and leave this job to become a professional basketweaver, but I use MS Excel;  not MS Project if I can avoid it.  I now suspect that there is some set of codified principles, much the way Kepner-Tregoe codifies common fucking sense for problem solving, and ITIL codifies all the boring shit it codifies.  I can give a nod and dismissive hand-wave regarding KT and ITIL, but I want to make sure I know what I'm being dismissive of before I try it with PM.

Basically I want to know where the Cliff Notes are for the PMP cert.  I don't need the PMP cert, I just need to know how to talk about PM stuff.

Somehow, UNIX compatibility springs to mind. :why_so_serious:

Ah, it must suck having to worry about that.  :grin:

Just cruise the Adobe Live Cycle and IBM's site skimming for buzzwords until your mind melts.  It's all about mastering the art of managing production w/o knowing how to produce anything.

If you can find a study guide for PMBOK*, or something that explains it, I'd just read that over and get the basics terminology down.

Now I'm curious who the PM was, because I worked with a few based out of Marietta and some of them were.. yeah..  :uhrr:

The PM tool that we use around here, besides MS Project Server, is.. common sense?  I'm not sure what else someone would be talking about, although there is other PM software out there besides PS, but I've not been exposed to any of it.  

Not sure how you feel about Linkedin, but there are some PM related groups there which can have decent information as well.

*Project Management Book of Knowledge

Heh, if you want me to talk about people, PM or email me. :oh_i_see:

Also thanks for the advice.  I'll see if I can find stuff on PMBOK.  I know I can do the work, but it's about convincing others that I can do it.

lol

Send me a PM, I can send you copies of the powerpoint shit from my PM class. It covers all the PMBOK buzzword stuff.

me

Verizon strike is over.  Our employees return on Tuesday.

Got a friend of mine in Atlanta who is looking for a tax associate. If you are a CPA type who wants a job doing taxes, that's open.

Results? Employees forced to capitulate on everything? Actual compromise?

Union took a 15% pay cut but each member gets to mount the T-Mobile girl.

Nothing but management speak on the official internal channels, so it'll probably show up in the news before employees actually are informed of anything.   Short form is that some progress and compromises were made that that the Union felt comfortable enough in working without a contract (technically under the terms of last years contract), until they can come to an agreement on the new one.

Worth It!  :why_so_serious:

Union asked to come back to work.  There were 2 options - let them come back under a return to work agreement or perform a lockout.

Company really could have gone either way.  It was decided to let them come back under Verizon terms.  In a nutshell - They are not allowed to call another strike for 30 days and must submit 7 day notice before going back on strike, old contract is in effect for the time being, and no amnesty (this is a big one) for actions taken during the strike.  

http://www.cwa2202.org/pdf%20files/Agreement[1].pdf  ->may have to copy/paste this into your web browser

Bargaining is exactly where it was at 2 weeks ago (before strike started).

That agreement doesn't look horrendous. However, what sort of "misconduct" are we talking about?

My understanding is that VZ tried to cut pay and benefits so they went on strike.  Now pay and benefits are unchanged while they negotiatie, so it seems to me like VZ blinked.

Cheddar's got better info going than I do, but if I had to guess, it's probably a reference to various incidents of sabotage or the like during the strike.

Negative.  The union came to the table asking if they could come back to work - we agreed as long as they signed the return to work agreement stated above.  You have to have a contract otherwise it opens up bad stuff when things are finally settled.

The no amnesty means those who commited sabotage will not be allowed to slide (cutting cables, burning CO's, physically assaulting contingent workers/management).  Historically the company has been forced to provide amnesty as part of the settlement.  The actions from a small sector of the union were extremely egregious. 

As much as I'm normally a pro-Union guy, I'm actually 100% OK with the above, especially the assault bits.

Ironically, managing in a Union Environment has made me nuetral with regards to my feelings for the Union.  There are tons of pro's and con's.  Before, when I was on the other side, I had negative feelings towards them.

One of the older ladies I worked with a couple years back was spit on and knocked down/stepped on during the recent events.  Police had to intervene - I am 100% pleased there is a no amnesty clause.

Some of the events are even falling under an official FBI case.  This go round was incredibly bad. 

Unions are always seen as one of those carpetbagger things round these parts.

Along with books, science, and de-segregation.










 :why_so_serious:

HEY! The Bibles a book, and I'm pretty sure guns run on science.

I AM OFFICIALLY SKY JR. NOW!

Congrats, try not to get any hairspray on the library terminals.

YAY!  Congrats, Chimpy!

Whats up with this HR recruiter calling me, setting up a time to chat, I confirm, never get confirmation back, and then she doesn't call? 2nd time now.

I had the opposite problem recently when interviewing people for a position - half of the candidates who confirmed for interviews never showed.  :headscratch:

Woohoo! I hope you get as much satisfaction out of the job as I do. Nice to spend all day helping people in the community, even if they don't appreciate it 90% of the time.

And I haven't worn hairspray outside of that one summer in 1987...that unfortunately was the same summer senior pictures for the yearbook were taken  :rock:

That is odd .. too many interviews to go to?

I might decide I don't want to interview after I have already committed, but I think it is nice to tell someone.  I'm probably different.  I also have a hard time lying in interviews, which seems to hold me back a lot.

I'm getting a lot of hits on things I do not want to do.  This has cut down a bit after I rewrote the resume to be for IT Architect instead of AIX/TSM/SAP/ORA/etc senior admin.  After poking around and having a phone interview, I find that even senior admin work is now bullshit, shlepping bits around on a schedule and other drone work.

Meanwhile, I am gradually letting go of the lower echelons of SA work in my current spot.  Instead, I am doing engineering/architect work as much as I can, including sending instructions to contractors instead of doing it my damn self, being vague with my advice and suggestions, telling people I don't have time to put out their particular fire (I don't, actually, unless they are friends or strategically important), writing process docs, telling people how things really should be done, and stroking my goatee while thinking of radical infrastructure redesigns to streamline and automate the enterprise.

So far, so good.

I'd rather be honest.  My difficulty is actually being honest with myself though, as I tend to drastically understate my capabilities.  At least if they contact my references they'll gush for me.

I seem to switch between "No, I've never done that... or that... or that..." and "No, but how hard could it be?"  I don't know how well people react to the second one, whether it is true or not.  I think I am awesome but I don't know how to convince other people.

On that I try to emphasize I've worked with a bunch of different systems over the years and I'm good at picking things up.  That's really what problem-solving in IT is about.  You may not *know* something, but you can figure it out quickly.

Word.

I guess so - if there's that many open sysadmin jobs in Houston, then maybe I need to put my resume out there...


Have you heard about the bird?  :oh_i_see:

Papapaoomamowmow.

So now I am really, officially, going to be Sky jr. (I just passed the mandatory piss test).

Start the day after labor day.

Now to find a full time day job and I will be able to dig myself out of the debt hole I landed in from 2 years of underemployment followed by 8 months of unemployment!

I find it ironic that I stopped smoking pot after I got a job that doesn't test for drugs.

See, you are the type of person I would hire.

Me too, but it's hard to show that on a resume that can get past HR's keyword-based cock block.

Edit: also, everyone says they learn fast, but few actually do  :awesome_for_real:

Someone that can problem solve AND has a good work ethic is the rarest of the rare.  I hope that you find someplace that appreciates the skills you have Viin. 

Often, it all depends upon the context.

In my XP, in most corporate IT settings, at least on development/systems support side, departments have been whittled away, cheaper labor brought in (either via outsourcing or importing non-immigrant visa workers or even a famous IT contractor like scuttling experienced personnel in favor of cheaper younger workers who might possess certificates and knowledge but know little of how these systems at the company are utilized).

So you have a survivor mentality bunker set of those who are able to linger on, and they guard their "subject matter expertise" deftly, only willing to aid those that have favor with them. Others simply have to wait in queues or are thrown roadblocks.

Yes, any aspiring IT worker should be able to figure out the score and reverse-engineer without human help, but often, in these silos, even access is guarded those eager to go above and beyond thwarted.

Also, some people "learn fast" in those realms they take an inkling to, and if it's something completely foreign, without a helpful nudge here and there from a more seasoned (and willing!) professional, can end up total failures, even with all the "can do" bravado and "going the extra mile".

In most large organizations the IT department does everything it can to thwart innovation, they have ceased to become problem solvers and become the guardians of the status quo.  This isn't entirely as horrible as it sounds since I can imagine very few IT disasters worse than thousands of employees given free rain to implement their own innovative solutions.  Apparently obtaining some sort of happy medium is harder than it sounds.

There is a balance between maintaining vendor support and not rolling out new tech every month.

I'm not terribly worried about teaching people things because many of them are terrible at it.  Someone who can't ever be bothered to read the documentation I sent out the day before is not a threat to my job.  Also, as far as I know, mentoring is still something employers look for, at least in senior positions.

We're having fun dealing with Xerox right now. These chuckleheads aren't even reading the contract summary they walk in the door with. "Oh, you have a coin box" Yeah, maybe if you had read that before you drove an hour to tell me you can't do anything with a coin box. Then send a guy two weeks later who has to sit for five hours on his cell phone because he doesn't know what to do.

Copier still isn't properly configured, it's been a month and a half now. Sat in a corner for the first month. Four guys have worked on it.

I want to go work for Xerox. Sounds like easy money to me.

/me welcomes Lantyssa to the dark side.   :drill:

More proof that mead > cookies.   :awesome_for_real:

Hey boss. o7

Guess my f13 reading might drop a bit. ;D

(To be fair, it's damn good mead.)

Wait.. Lant is working for Min now?

YOUR WORLDS ARE COLLIDING. DON"T YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxuYdzs4SS8

The death of F13 Lantyssa, that's what!!

Ed: seriously tho, grats Lant. I know you were worrying.

The stress relief is unbelievable.  For the first time in a year I'm not fretting what the next year holds.

So you make Mead now? I'm confused. That doesn't seem like IT.

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE???

Of course not.  Making mead is man's work; she's the Mead Wench.  Probably in a costume much like her avatar.  /sagenod

First time I've heard the words "stress relief" involved with taking a job at a collection agency.  Unless you're drinking the mead on the clock...   :awesome_for_real:

I would probably get a lot of relief if my job involved hitting people with a pipe and taking their stuff.

Oh man, that is great.

Fuck working on a resume is so awful.

THE WORST!

Off to first evening as Sky Jr.

Hope I don't do something stupid!

Don't burn it down. The rest is probably just gravy.

So yeah, the Library has a fancy "Denver International Airport" kind of book return conveyer/sorting system with RFID chips in every book. Getting my Tour tonight I lok up as soon as we get in the basement (where the sorting room is) and every 4th ceiling tile is out of place.

Apparently it "loses" small/thin children's books on occasion and people need to go spelunking in the ceiling to find them. Heh.

Grats on the new position! 

I just got back from interviewing for a PRN position at the hospital across town, the director up'ed the ante, and offered me a full time and will make the pay better.  I'm gonna wait till i see the written offer before I jump to a new hospital, but it is new and has more staff.

Which one? And congrtas on offer.

Welcome to library tech (well, really most tech imo). An expensive solution that ends up being a giant pain in the ass, but you're married to because it was Expensive, so Deal With It. I bet someone went to a seminar (aka sales pitch) and thought it Looked Cool. And buzz words were unleashed like a motherfuckin' lead farmer.

Do you get to work with the public or is it all staff support. The staff support tends to be overall less stressful, but helping the public is way more rewarding. I can't count how many people in a dozen years I've helped connect with distant family, get a job, start a business, defend themselves in court, etc. Wonder what they'll do when we shut down.

Not to mention the pure fun stuff like being able to turn people on to new music, games and books.

I will mainly be doing staff/backend support but I will be cross trained in the basics to help patrons if they stop me as I am passing through (or if they need help when busy).

If it has fewer patients that are amateur boxers, I say jump all over it!

I read that as a porn position.

I have read one or two job descriptions which want a security clearance.  How difficult are these to obtain?

Also, working with the public is very far from rewarding.  Not any reward I want,at least.

I've listed as goals, "To become the world's tallest midget porn star" and see if the idiots in HR ever read the stuff.  It went threw and when I did a self review I gave myself a "goal not met, still amateur status".  I got a chewing by my manager over that one :D

The best though was I had to do incident report after incident report after I got beat up.  I finally took a box of crayon's and drew a 17 page report and turned it in, you should have seen the risk manager about die when she was reading one report in a meeting.  We were all in the meeting and she flips over a typed page and there was my crayon report  :drill:
(http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6186/6124996031_9eed2be47d.jpg)

I doubt it will be any less crazy people.  I've got some updating to do on the the other thread.

Better to get beat off than get beat on.

What sort of security clearance are we talking about - a real Secret/Top Secret clearance, some pseudo-clearance like Public Trust, or the fake private sector background checks pretending to be a security clearance?

My last three jobs have all required some sort of clearance, but I would only refer to the one I got for my current job as an actual security clearance.

That is awesome Jimbo.

Depends on the level.  The lowest ones are pretty simple to obtain, the highest ones are not horrible if you've been "mostly" a good little citizen and what you haven't been good on you are up front and don't lie about on your paperwork (they WILL find out if you lie).  A good portion of what they are looking for is things you can be blackmailed with, so being upfront about all of that prevents that issue.  The backup to get one can take a good 6-18 months last I heard...

Certainly depends if we're talking federal or not.

I think my initial TS clearance came back in less than 100 days.

Secret/ top secret/ top secret sci?
Impossible in most cases unless the position and employer require it and the employer is willing to pay to foot the bill.

Its why most contractor employers want to hire someone already with the clearance. Substantially lowers their screening and hiring cost.

One reason I was pissed the position with the security firm fell through, they were going to pay for my secret clearance, dammit.

A good friend once went in for an interview after securing a another job (but did not know for 100% certain) and then when asked "where do you see yourself in 5 years?" he responded with "on a beach, sipping a pina colada, with $250K of the company's money in my bank account"… …if anyone else would have told me this, I would call BS, but this guy, I believe it because I sat next to him once in a VP meeting where he repeatedly yelled/proclaimed at a VP over us what a "piece of shit" a development project she commandeered was as she repeatedly and gently exhorted him to "assume positive intent" and that "we don't speak negatively and put down each other" -- the exchange went on for at least 10-15 minutes, with roughly those same phrases repeated back and forth (and the dozen others seated, completely mum, stunned, yet remaining poker faced)

The job descriptions I have read do not specify clearance level; I haven't called anyone about one of these yet, I am just asking in general terms.  Considering my line of work, however, I can guess that it would be whatever level is required for handling of data considered secret by the government.  Not the sort where I will be out in their field, killing their dudes, but I can't rule out "top".  I gather it takes money in addition to paperwork, and you guys make it sound like something I would require sponsorship to get.

Actually, this is true if the question is, "I want to get a clearance for myself, how hard is it?"  There has to be need and "I would like sometime in the future to have a job that requires a clearance." isn't a demonstrable need.

If the question is, "If I'm hired for a job that requires a clearance how much of a hassle is it?"

The answer is, it depends on the level of the clearance.  For a lot of things all it involves is a simple credit check.  For others it requires 10 years of full history or even a lie detector test.

I'm not worried about the hassle, except that it would be nice to have one already if I wanted a job that required one.  Sounds like this isn't possible, though.

Wrong thread.  NM.

Thanks for the well-wishes a few back, Nebu.

Right.  You cannot just shell out x amount of dollars and then get one.  There is a process of sponsorship/cost involved (for the company).

Generally its easier to get a job with a lower clearance as the cost ramps up astronomically for the sponsor involved.  BUT - once you have a clearance it makes the higher ones slightly easier (cost/time) to get as you have maintained one along with not needing to repeat certain steps.

Up to secret is not too bad - its the TS ones that can give you the creeps.  Like them contacting your third grade teacher or buddy you haven't seen in like 10 years.

Truth - TS can get pretty...involved. For instance, they dug back a few years to a job I had at a Walgreens for a few months. Agent briefly mentioned that he spoke with someone that I worked there with. The weird part was that the person he mentioned I had only worked with...for a day. A single day.

Granted, I also went to HS with the person (she was a year behind, only had 1 class together), but it made me really curious as to how they even dug her up.

Personally, I wouldn't sweat the process much if you don't have anything to hide. But do not be surprised if they're talking to folks who you have not even given as contacts (I'm sure this is by design) - during my initial check, I noticed that a coworker of mine had a card from an Agent on her desk (she was a bit of a slob, so I'm sure she wasn't supposed to have the card sitting out for me to notice). And seeing as the card had the agent's full title/agency, it was pretty simple to surmise that my check was somehow involved.

While I wish they hadn't spoken to this person (untrustworthy, a bit of a dunce), it obviously had about zero impact.

Depends on how high.

If you go this route, answer honestly. Unless you're going to have to talk about the harvested organs you keep in your refrigerator for special dinners.

[edit] Everyone already said this. But TS? My neighbor once was considering a very TS job with cryptographical elements. Two men in black types came to talk to *us* and it was very very thorough--who came to his place, did we ever hear funny noises, did we see his wife very much, did they seem to have a normal sex life, were we sure he had no more and no less money than he seemed to have, and so on. I wouldn't have answered a thing except he was very serious about considering the job.

Wrong thread, NM.  I think I've been there.  It's near Truth or Consequences. 

Even still, if you're up for a TS clearance you shouldn't sweat the fact that agents are interviewing prior acquaintances. It's just as awkward for your old stoner buddy as it is for you; they probably don't want to talk to The Man anyway, and certainly not about anything they could possibly be connected to.

Edit: Grammar hard.

I'm not worried.  Worst thing I did was get picked up for public intox during college.  In any case, I would get it or not, nothing to cry over.

SEE!

Oh, Secret is worlds easier than TS or TS-SCI.

You might as well give it a shot, see what they say.

As long as you have nothing you are ashamed of, secret is easy to get.

Yep. Basically just a criminal records check.

There's a big difference between "ashamed of" and "criminal".

I don't want the job anyway.  $85k for admin work, bleh.

Um, I think it'd a tad more involved than that.


Is this snark? I have no idea what kind of salary those sorts of jobs command.

No, Yes.

Do you think it depends on the agency doing the check?

I'm trying to get out of UNIX administration and into IT architecture.  I could make lots more money (LOTS as in DOUBLE current) if I wanted to do short-term contract work with 70-hour weeks, but I don't.  I also don't want to do similar work for less money, that's dumb.  Apparently I already am in "obscene income" territory anyway.

The senior UNIX admin contractor seems to be getting about $65 per hour these days.  This could be a W2 position with a contracting firm, but it won't have health insurance.  I mostly pay attention to AIX but there is also some enterprise linux and HPUX out there, maybe a few poor Solaris bastards too.  When I ask for more than $65 I get nowhere. :oh_i_see:

This seems backwards.  It's certainly not my experience.

Which part is backwards?  Wanting to be an IT Architect?

No, if you WANT to do it, you go for it.

But Architecture for flashing boxes is fast falling by the wayside all over in the UK and niche markets, like Unix and other smaller and easier (and cheaper installations) are starting to demand Niche pricing which means our UNIX geeks are getting much more contract money.

So, I'm surprised that it's the case as you say;  But in 100% honesty, if you WANT to do something, pursue it with all your might.  I've currently 'settled' because I kinda had to and it fucking SUCKS.

What I keep hearing here is that admin jobs are all going away to managed services and you have to become an architect to survive, but I am mostly hearing this from people selling managed services, so grain of salt and all that.

To be clear, what I really want is to not be on call every five weeks or robbed of a weekend every month.  I've managed to get to a nice mental place with my current job, and I generally keep myself inside normal business hours, but there's that annoying bit where I'm constantly pestered every time something breaks.  Makes it hard to engineer things, or accomplish anything that takes more than a single workday.

Architect spots are hard to find, although by architect I'm specifically meaning someone who develops new solutions and sets standards while lesser techs do the implementation.  Not necessarily the seagull consultant.  It's that, or enter management.  Which might happen anyway, since finding a job that pays more is going to be extremely difficult in the current climate unless I go the contract SA route.  But I feel like I'm too old for that shit.

Yeah, ok.  I wouldn't call that an Architect as such.  But Good Luck.

What would you call it?  I might be using the wrong term.  I really want to look for "whatever is the next step above UNIX/storage administrator".

Depends but Systems Analyst is one title.

Yep, that's a good one.  I might throw that into the resume and see what happens.  Probably lots of travel. :oh_i_see:

Yeah, Systems or Business Analyst (IT) would be that over here.  Basically, the chap who does the process review and says 'Right, Build this.'

It's what I do just now, strangely.

Its what my wife did. Working between the business users and the IT builders.
Now she runs the teams that do this.
She does it as a consultant though, not for one specific company.

Pay is not always in dollars. Sure, it's tough making chump change here in bumfuck, nowhere. But I can make ends meet with a little leftover for hobbies and vacations, I work a 35 hour week, 9-5 M-F and my weekends are my own, with decent benefits and federal holidays. Something I remind myself of every time I look at jobs around there area, I could make more money but I'd be much more miserable.

Amen to that.

I agree completely, which is why I'm not going for the $65x70 week jobs.  I've told people for years that money isn't everything... although the wife disagrees. :oh_i_see:  On the other hand, I want my wife to stop working and for that I need more income.  I'm still not willing to kill myself for it, though.


Awesome, I'll update the resume.  I already do a large amount of this in my current role, I just don't have the force of title to go with it.

The agency I work for here in SW Florida is seeking a computer programmer (MySQL, MSSQL, PHP, C#, .net) and a basic computer technician (nothing network admin level type...we've got about 700+ computers and 300+ laptops that need to be cared for 24/7).

PM me if you want specifics.  

Edit: Side-note, I had the computer tech position for four years.  Was fun, but got burned out fixing spy-ware all the time  :awesome_for_real:.  Still, I assure you the benefits are decent and it'll look good on your resume to have worked at my particular agency.  :grin:

Edit #2: It's two separate jobs...we're not looking for some uber tech that can do it all  :oh_i_see:

Sure you're not.  That might save lots of health insurance costs. :oh_i_see:

So I finally managed to pass my French exam today, which means my French is now Government Approved...whatever that means.

Well, it Does mean that I can finally proceed to my next position in wonderful...Cotonou, Benin. So, if you for some reason find yourself in that isolated part of the world...say hi.

Just do me a favor and don't get locked up, critically ill/injured, or die in the middle of the night.

Sounds like a f13 drunken knife fight night in Cotonou, Benin is in order!

You guys pay for the grossly overpriced flight, I'll supply the house.

I mean, to be fair...you're all paying for it anyway.  :grin:

Did you know Benin has an annual Voodoo Day? How awesome is that!

Doing those things during the day is okay?  You just don't want to have to get out of bed, right?

To my fellow Canucks in the GTA area, my work is looking for a Senior Technical Analyst who has experience with PeopleSoft. I could probably dig up a Job Description for the position if anyone is interested. Pay at our company is above average, benefits are decent and the workplace is pretty laid back.

If you're interested, PM me.

No, but I did know that they're the birthplace of Voodoo, with the largest market in West Africa (or perhaps all of Africa).


Yes - Please keep it to business hours.  :grin:

PeopleSoft again? Turnover much? :oh_i_see:

Does anyone have any contacts at En Masse Entertainment?  I just applied for a support position here in Seattle and would appreciate a reference if anyone has one.  Even if it is just to ensure my resume is looked at, that would be great.  Thanks!

So, like, ding.

grats

Time for the traditional celebratory impregnation, right?  :drillf:

Grats! What lvl? Were u kiting wyverns?

Already done. 


It was surprising and... I dunno.  Humbling, actually.  Is that possible when you move to the next level?

I honestly am not sure what to think at this point.  What I will say is this - I have a ton of work ahead of me.

So, yeah, kited a ton of wyverns and now doing the kill ten rats quest.

Yes.  You do, however, have to get over it QUICK.  It doesn't help.

I'm wondering if I will find the middle between unworthy and authoritarian mindsets.  Maybe when I retire.

Just a heads up.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers has a lot of IT jobs posted across the country right now. Both in and outside of the healthcare field.

https://sjobs.brassring.com/1033/ASP/TG/cim_searchresults.asp?partnerid=25163&siteID=5463&AgentID=8058388&Function=runquery

http://jobs.pwc.com/careers/it-jobs

They pay well and my wife likes working for them.

Nah, we're just understaffed right now. There's only 18 people in our company and we have 4 support clients and something like 10 consulting clients.

That was my assumption.

Oh, Ched. Your spawn will cover the earth, won't they.

Give it a couple of generations and we can all claim to be related because of Chedder's brood.

 :awesome_for_real:

I'm going to opt out of that cabal. :oh_i_see:

Cheddar is rolling out his genetics faster than they're rolling out FIOS.

 :oh_i_see:

How many iterations is he up to now?

Amazon is hiring for Social Games Innovation.  Need developers, artists, other.  More detail on technical other (e.g. Sys Eng, DBA, QA, Test Eng) in the new year.  PM me for any info.

Here is the complete list:

Open Requisitions (www.amazon.com/jobs (http://www.amazon.com/jobs))

•   Senior Product Manager, Social Games Innovation (ID 144621)
•   Game Developer - Back End (ID 147869)
•   Development Manager, Social Games (ID 151412)
•   Technical Program Manager, Social Games (ID 158653)
•   Senior Game Artist (ID 151249)
•   Database Administrator, Social Games Innovation (ID 160570) new
•   Quality Assurance Engineer, Social Games Innovation (ID 160569) new
•   Systems Engineer, Social Games Innovation (ID 160571) new
•   Software Developer in Test, Social Games Innovation (ID 160568) new
Upcoming Requisitions: UI/UX Designer (2)

PM me for any info.

Heh, looks like Amazon is looking to develop stuff for the Fire.

While the majority of you are geeks or executive types, I know we've got a few creative types here. (Sam & Bloodworth spring to mind.)

Please share this with your creative-type friends.  Particularly the Interiors and Graphics types.   Company's text below.


Our most recognizable designs (IMO) are: The new Steak 'n Shake next to Ed Sullivan Theater, Hilton Garden Inn, MGM: Monte Carlo Suites, Taco Bell & KFC's new prototype designs & First Financial Bank's prototype design.

I suddenly need a CompTIA Security+ cert and wondered if anyone here had any tips on reading material.

I managed to get 47% correct on the practice test just from guesswork.  Whee security!

Sky took that one recently. I found when I was prepping for the Net+ that the ExamCram series was very good at covering what was on the test. Also had a nice crib sheet included.

Kindle version is $15.92 so that's what I'll get.  Thanks!

I'll have to grab the titles when I get home. Main thing was practice exams, I was constantly hunting for fresh ones. Ten days before the test I did a 10-day trial of the safari bookshelf (O'Reilly) and got a few more tests from books on there.

It was actually pretty easy, I got a 94% on it and I'm a dumbass working at a podunk library that barely uses any of the tech involved. One book came with certblaster software which was pretty brutal the first take; much tougher than the actual test with a few trick questions (I don't remember any tricks on the actual test). Almost every test software and book had a bunch of errors, though. That would really suck if you don't have the material down, I was able to spot most of the error (I think), which I guess is good in that I knew enough to know it was wrong.

Wish I had taken it a couple months earlier to get the lifetime cert  :mob:

Did they change them to three years or did they keep with their original plan to gouge people once a year for re-certs?

Three years.

Hindsight reveals that putting my phone number on the resume was a bad idea.

Hah!  I made that mistake once.  One recruiter even did some research into who I was and where I was working, and started calling the desk phone of my current employer.  I was not kind to them over that one.

My current girlfriend is having a bear of a time finding work.  Plenty of interviews, zero response to whether she got the job or not.  It's nice to see that it isn't just the tech sector that has that problem...

That's pretty standard across the board these days. If you got it, you'll hear within two weeks. If not, you'll never hear anything from them ever again.

Whatever happened to the fine art of just saying "sorry, someone else got it" when you lose out?  I still have my rejection letter from Schlumberger, which I framed.  The only company out of the dozens I interviewed with to officially tell me no.

I just got an offer letter today, finally!  Pretty sweet deal, overall.  Not exactly the kind of work I want to do, but the schedule is setup to work around school and is flexible for our family.  Most money I've ever made, too.  It's for a pretty big web presence and I'm studying development, so its kiinda win-win.  Go me!

I got an offer letter last week that I turned down. Not going back to first line call center work for less than I make as a temp at the University no matter how good the company's benefits are and how much room for growth there is.

Not sure how it works for other companies - but putting your resume into the system will sometimes get you a surprise interview, even when it does not post externally.

I know I get them periodically when looking at my choices on who to interview.

The internet took it out back and shot it.

My rejection letter was from 2002.  Plenty of online\internet interviews and whatnot going on then, so I'm not sure I necessarily blame the internet...

I still have mine from PETA.  Most interesting interview, ever.  But was nice they took the time to send the letter.   :grin:

Amen. Call center crap is crap. I started there and I'd rather be homeless than go back to it.

I meant more of the mentality. Everything changed when businesses went paperless.

Try getting some people to return a call instead of chaining email responses sometime.   People like their quasi-anonymity, even when signing their name to every single missive. 

I'm as guilty of it from time to time as anyone but a 5 min phone call is better than 20 damn e-mails.  If you need it in written form to cover your ass, send me a damn summation e-mail saying "per our conversation, here's our current status." or some such.

This post is once again valid.  The agency is seeking fresh blood since apparently either the last bit didn't cut it or the older blood had a falling out  (seriously, I don't know  :why_so_serious:)  Regardless, two positions are open again, one for computer programming and one for computer fixing.  PM me for details if interested.  Applications must be in by Jan. 23rd.

My company is hiring professional cake decorators in a couple of different major US and Canadian cities right now. 

I imagine that isn't particularly helpful with the normal skill set on this board.  :awesome_for_real:

Fuck that, I have an art degree. I'll decorate a fucking cake. Where can I sign up? Does it pay more than unemployment?

Schild; have you considered applying for the graphics position with my firm? I don't know if you're qualified but hey better to try than not.
Here it is again.

http://www.frch.com/us/about/careers.aspx

I get lots of offers for jobs that would be "great" if I didn't already have a job or was single.  It's the job-hunt variant of Diablo loot, and I need higher than blues.  If anyone here has any idea about UNIX, a job is waiting for you somewhere.  True, mostly it is contract work but if you're out of work then why not?  Hell, fake it for a few weeks and get some cash.  Trust me when I say anyone of reasonable intelligence can probably stay in one of these positions for a few weeks before they escort you out... and then you have some experience!

lol it's like programming in the 70's except back then you could fake it for 6-12 months.

Would far prefer to stay in Austin.

Speaking of Austin, we were rated as the best city to get a job in, or at least, the highest jobs available rate.

So, if anyone wants to be a contractor that pays less than unemployment here (I know, right) or work in the service industry, Austin is THE place for you.

It just took us 4 months to find a semi-qualified candidate for a 50k a year government job, I think you are being a bit melodramatic.

Point me to the government job posting.

Unfortunately, right now we're looking in Philly, NYC, Chicago and Montreal, and you have to already be in the field (3-5 years experience).  Besides, I would have to resist the urge to prank you.  It sucks being Comptroller without any direct minions to do my dirty work.

Bioware:Austin has like 30 open jobs posted on the ArsTechnica job board. Sorting by city there is also an Android UI engineer at some place called "Mutual Mobile".

Heh.

We filled it 3 months ago, all state jobs are listed on TWC, the hardest part is filling out the 10 page state application.  Look for Web Administrator, Programmer and Systems Analyst positions.

edit: The austin php meetup board (http://www.meetup.com/austinphp/messages/boards/) usually has many postings as well.  The Expression Engine/Codeignitor group (http://www.meetup.com/ee-ci-atx/) hasn't been around nearly as long but some fun folks there too.

I am not a coder, unfortunately. I gave that up because I hated my fellow students. They were awful.

I have interviewed for several Web Administrator positions where all they wanted was a grammar/format nazi to paste content into a CMS that was already in place.  State Systems Analysts seem to vary quite a bit and range from implementing off the shelf software, writing specs and or just documenting shit.  Most stuff firmly reporting to IT has the unspoken mission statement of "be sure and throw up enough red tape to make sure nothing changes ever", so for example if you are a project manager your unspoken mandate is to write a spec in a way to make the project so complicated as to require it be outsourced if it happens to get approved anyway.  Plus much of the state shit is like a decade behind the current trends and you really wouldn't have to be much of a coder to pull that off.

edit: Shit the comptrollers office is so paranoid that they don't even let their Web Administrators III's ($65k/yr and up) do server side code, prerequisites are basically CSS and HTML.  Tons of good that did them since some dumb shit went ahead and parked sensitive data on an unsecured ftp site anyhow.

Ok then. This is good to know. Would I enjoy such a position or would my coworkers be awful, lifeless people where I'd make every attempt to work from home if possible?

Varies, I've met some good people but shit definitely floats to the top and it can be frustrating dealing with ignorant policy and decision makers.  On the one hand it can be soul sucking on the other hand I get paid to do shit that no one in their right mind would ever pay for if they actually had to foot the bill.

edit: oh yeah and you leave on time every day on the nose, you take lunch every day, you never get hassled for calling in sick (accrue 8 hours a month and you never lose it), and take you vacation with no worries about a job being there when you get back.  Any looming deadlines generally take a back seat to all of the above.

State jobs are really comfortable.  I miss mine, things just got completely untenable where I was, unfortunately.  Regardless, if you can put up with the system it's a great way to make a living.

Ah, but you get a terrific front-row seat for teh crazy where you are now.   :oh_i_see:

We are hiring a new UI artist. Flash and Scaleform stuff mostly.

Flash and Scaleform you say?

Well timeframe varies by intelligence and guile.  I am trying to compensate for the fact that I've been doing AIX for 15 years (large scale corporate for 12) and it's probably second nature, so what seems like cake to me might baffle someone else.  But really, if you are out of work there's no reason you can't install CentOS on a PC and run through some exercises, then make bold exaggerations on your resume about how much RedHat you can do.

https://www.austincityjobs.org/postings/30142

See here's a job posting I could do *and* bullshit if I wanted. It pays roughly double unemployment but comes with the added benefit of potentially giving presentations to executives? For $30 an hour max? I'm sorry, but is this what we've come to? Executives that will take advice from a Magic Player who reads shit on the internet and makes $30 an hour?

Also, hourly jobs are ballshit.

For that price, the only presentations they should get are your unwashed ballsack.

Agreed.

Unemployment pays 30k a year?

$28.8k to be precise.

Edit: Oh, and thanks to our wonderful governor, Rick Perry - I can suck that teat for 2 years.

Shit, that's more than I got when I was on unemployment 15 years ago. Maybe twice as much.

Hell, I worked my ass off for 30k a year for years.  Enjoy it while you can.  Get a PO Box and a passport and go hitch-hike across Europe working in Hostels or something, you're still young enough to get away with it.

 :facepalm:

Doesn't look that bad to me. It's not exactly a management position, so you would be supporting those activities not doing them all yourself. Besides, BSA is a good start to into higher-level business positions. Unemployment is a poor start to anything.

 :geezer:

I wonder how much the project managers that I deal with take in.  Hopefully about $25 per hour or less.

Not if they get paid anything close to what the PMs here are making.  Some are making some nice change.

This saddens me deeply.

If I could get 30k in unemployment for two years, I'd be unemployed for two years A LOT.

I don't make much more than that.

It matches up with inflation perfectly in that case.

As someone who recently had a 6 month unemployment adventure in Houston (same state, different planet, although we did just recently get a Torchy's,) I have some insight to share.

My big mistake: working a 1 day temp assignment to gain cache with an agency. The unnemployment office will shut your payments down unless you make a new application - which of course takes 2 to 3 weeks to start. You can try to temp your way out of unemployment, but you should only take a job with an extended contract to start with. You don't want to have to continually update your last employer.

My big success: find a less desireable job with a long training period and good benefits, with some sort of clearly defined advancement potential. Slam out a few easy certs on the company dime, and either get promoted or get out before the grind sets in. About to wrap up my CCNA and execute the final step of my master plan. :grin:

(What's a Torchy's and should I be excited about this?)

I will not do any work for a company unless I'm getting paid under the table or I immediately become a full time employee. Unemployment is too good in Texas.

Torchy's is the second best taco place in Austin. The first place being Taco Deli. Now, Torchy's Tacos are better than Taco Deli's, except they are missing one thing. Doña Sauce. The sauce at Taco Deli makes it better than ALL OTHER tacos. Anywhere. In the US. Period. Or at least Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Arizona, New York, California, and Texas.

Wow, seriously balking at $30/hour? :oh_i_see:

And FYI, most government jobs are technically hourly, even up to very high levels. Salaried pay is only better, IMO, if you somehow manage to consistently work less than the normal 40-hour work week. At least for me, I don't see that ever happening.

There's no inherent benefit to being salaried over being hourly, other than the general tendency for salaried jobs to be more 'important'.

Started as a taco trailer here in Austin and is now expanding to Dallas and I guess Houston. Yes, you should be excited. I can't drive by the Torchy's near my apartment without stopping.

There is an inherent benefit to being hourly over being salaried though.  That is you get paid for the hours you work, so if you work more hours you make more money.

I'm not sure why being salaried is seen as more prestigious.  Really, it sounds like some kind of a con.

It's a lot harder to fire a salaried employee. Particularly when said employee works 40 hours per week. I've never had a job that I absolutely had to work overtime on as I work ruthlessly fast and efficiently. In multiple companies now, whenever asked to work overtime, I ask why? If the answer is anything but "because I'm a bad manager who fucked up and managed things poorly," I don't work overtime. There's no incentive. I'm not hauling their ass out of the fire. I'm a fantastic employee but I make people solve their own problems when there's no immediate gain for me. Besides, management is easily replaced.

Now, if I took an hourly job, I'd have incentive to work overtime at a loss to free time, which I don't particular want to do. Also, firing an hourly employee is as easy as snapping your fingers. They get no severance, nothing. You just walk them out.

"Right to Work" is a law in most states and most companies can fire you, but it's simply harder to penalize a salaried employee in any way. It's double hard to not give them severance should you want to get rid of them.

Finally, overtime is bullshit. America already works more hours on the whole than ANY other 1st World Country. It's absolutely pandemic in software, which is a shame. The vast majority of The Grind^TM is due to managers and producers having no clue how to make schedules or how long it takes to actually deliver a product. If tech weren't filled with such starfucking, greedy, and socially inept idiots "The Grind" would cease to exist overnight. Shame the third point there will keep them from ever unionizing. Yes, I just said every software developer here who is willing to put in overtime is basically broken, as a person.

tl;dr: Salary is about security. Hourly is about making an extra buck here and there.

Over on S. Shepard. Great tacos. Try the dirty sanchez, or the trailer park - I prefer it trashy (with queso.) The queso is good, and I generally hate tex mex as a rule. Also, who can resist frried cookie dough?

Unless you belong to a unionized 'classified', aka hourly worker in a public sector job, such as a University. Then its arguable that salaried positions are less secure, because firing a unionized person is hard as heck.

At the University of Washington, for instance, being salaried essentially means two things; you can be overworked without the possibility of complaint and your job is less secure and financially stagnant. No raises in years due to the economic crunch the UW is in. You can also be far more easily terminated as a 'Professional' staff member, aka salaried. On the other hand, unionized workers have mandatory raises every year, position increases on a time-served scale, and no possibility of overtime without compensation. Also, proving a union worker isn't doing their job is nothing short of a Supreme Court case.

Pro staff get more vacation time, but the truth of it there's no realistic way to actually spend it, so it turns out about the same in my case. My GF is pro staff, I'm classified. She earns about 2 k more a year than I do.

That said, yes, Pro staff have more prestige, and are therefore considered first for promotions to higher paid positions, especially towards managerial positions. Thankfully, I'd rather my eyeballs be paper cut with my 1044 than ever be a manager of anything.

It probably varies from state to state, from institution to institution, so ymmv.

Man, I should have taken you to Guedo's sometime. It was probably only about 15-20mins from your house when you were in AZ.  Their tacos. Goddamn.

I think your outlook kinda sucks, tbh. The whole "I'm smart and good, and you're a dumbass manager," thing happens everywhere. In fact, I guarantee you that every person who's ever worked in any company or a bunch of companies has stories about stupid managers. Every CEO who didn't start their own company has those stories.

I guess when I read this, there's about a million warning bells going off in my head as to why not to hire you if I'm looking. I mean, maybe that's a condition of the industry you're in, but if that's how you interact with your management or people you work with, that's kinda shitty.

Good managers I work well with, bad managers I work poorly with. Shocking.

I guess, it just comes off like that whole paragraph was very me-first-fuck-you, which probably wasn't your intent.

There is no benefit to being salaried vs. hourly, in fact it's often a detriment.

Some of you really don't live in the real world, having been in IT all this time.  I can't think of a salaried position I know of where I worked 40 hours. Nor can I think of a salaried person who ONLY worked 40 hours and survived any round of cuts.  Most places expect 45-50 hours per week minimum.  That's 6 1/4 - 12 1/2 weeks of free work a year. Suddenly your $50k year a job is paying you an hourly rate equivalent to $40k.

A salaried position isn't any more secure than an hourly.  You can cut an hourly worker's  hours to save money, you often have to cut the position on a salary.

Salaried positions are more prestigious because you're the guy making the decisions and with the responsibility.  It reflects a professional rather than a support position.  The salary is supposed to reflect that (but often doesn't.)

Both pale in compensation to being an utter cockwrench able to sell shit to anybody.  Want to make bank? Be a salesperson.  Even bad ones pull down at least $65k in the Midwest where the average compensation is around $30k.  Proven sales record? Unemployment is never a concern.

In the current market, it's actually a sensible way to be.

Having spent the last couple years in the lowest tiers of management, I've come to realize some things about managers. These oppinions are based primarily on my manager and some of the other lower tier managers around me:  Most of the lowest tier managers' time is spent trying to make sense of the bullshit passed down by upper tier managers, and if they don't, its the guys at the bottom who take the blame. There are idiots in every role and every position, but upper management is ripe with it. At the bottom of the totem pole, your role is to make your department look good by getting the most out of your employees. At the top of the totem pole, your role is making yourself look good by fiddling with numbers and metrics until you do.

As for sales, which I've also done - yes its a great way to make money if you are good at it. Also the most stressful, bullshit job ever invented. Salespeople are easy to replace - its not like they are expected to actually know anything about what they sell or anything. If you meet quotas - you get year end trips to Cabo. If you don't, well, maybe the guy we hire next week will instead.

I'll second Ironwood's second of Schild's lack of time for bullshit.  Of course, there is a middle ground.  Why did I get a pay raise from a company that doesn't hand out raises, after a year in which I mostly stuck to my rule of not working outside the 9-5 timeframe?  I'm not entirely sure but I think it has something to do with being a team player, while at the same time avoiding work that I do not want to do.  In fact, I'm looking for things to do that are outside the definition of my job slot (for my own benefit of course), and it seems to be working out.  I'd like to think my management sees the type of work I am doing and has assigned some importance to it, but who knows?  In any case, I'm doing things that I want to do and that will help me out in the next job slot.  Seems to be helping the account as well. :oh_i_see:

My original response to Paelos was "You're a bad manager, aren't you?" Not because he's necessarily a bad manager but because a lot of people become bad managers simply due to hiring Yes-Men and sycophant retards who will lick all the balls to move up the ladder. Personally I'd want people that challenged me and did things right while busting my balls when I did things wrong.

But that's probably why I'm not a manager, I don't kiss nearly enough ass. Ok, any ass. I don't kiss ass ever. I've never actually applied for a job I well and truly wanted because every company has skeletons in the closet and some measure of retard at at least one of the wheels - and I make it a point to tell them that I don't accept incompetence in my superior or inferiors, and most companies love hearing that. "This guy is no-nonsense straight to business, whoop whoop." Unironically (to me, at least), no company yet has failed me in making those same people interviewing me being the incompetent ones. This is NOT even remotely constrained to the gaming industry. Shit rises to the top in business because upper management of most medium to large companies would rather have lapdogs than individuals. That's fine, but let's stop pretending this isn't a *problem.*

Business in America didn't get to where it was today because of people like me. It got to where it is due to a combination of greed and survival skills. Not talent and eagerness to challenge oneself.

I admit, I'm not interested in a challenge.  Well, unless it's fun or profitable somehow, since I did teach myself Perl for no real reason, but those days are gone I think.  Middle ground, I guess.  I might angrily call out someone for doing something badly, but I will then turn around and calmly+nicely help fix the problem.  The core issue is that I don't care for much beyond my own professional integrity, not being inspired by my organization and all.  I may chit-chat (light sucking-up) because that's something you have to do and frankly it costs me nothing to engage in friendly conversation with anyone.  Also it might get me something.  Nothing wrong with the Schild method, you seem to have success with it.  I might be farther along if I adopted a more aggressive stance, but who knows?

I'm not even looking to get further along, I'm just hoping to not work with people who don't deserve the oxygen around them.

Most days, I feel like I'm asking too much.

Not a manager at all. I'm a CPA so I do my own thing in a small company. I'm part sales, part customer service, part technical expert, part tech support, and part resolution department. Every boss I've had has been brilliant at something, and horrible at something else. What I've been good at is identifying what the boss didn't do well, and making a point of stepping in for that area. That has yet to fail me.

It's not about kissing ass, unless you consider developing some modicum of repore with your superiors kissing ass. What I'm hearing from you sounds pretty immature tbh. I mean you can get in line with the other people who think they are better than working for certain jobs if you like, or you can run your own company. That would probably be my advice to you. If you're excellent at what you do and can't stand working for stupid people, work for yourself.

Otherwise, get over it.

You sound like me.  Is this an age thing then ?

More than likely, the problems in tech don't really exist in CPA land. That being that managers in tech, unless naturally talented, are horrendous managers and never receive the training they need. There are good managers out there, but for the most part, they got there by being good at X, so they were promoted to Y, and no longer do X.

That's a problem.

As for myself, while there are people like you, who are maybe willing to "step up" and fill in for a role their manager is good at, I'm not about to step up and fill in for the management part of a managers roll. The American credo of "Do the job you want, not the one you have" is way, way, way too "Work above your pay grade for me." Simply saying that likely makes me unemployable at a lot of companies. These are companies I wouldn't want to work at to begin with. If you wanted me to do Y job, you shouldn't have hired me for X. I'll go way above and beyond in my role, but I draw the line at doing some or even part of someone else's job. At least until that person gets shitcanned.

These salaried people you speak of? They work for the wrong fucking companies. Really. I've worked for those wrong companies. The company I've worked at for 12 years now as a salaried worker (ad/marketing agency) rarely ever asks me to work overtime and when they do, I'm usually either compensated with a small bonus (rare) or I get some flex hours somewhere when the crunch is over. I think I've had to work overtime/weekends less than 20 times in my entire 12 years here. When crunches come, we've even hired freelancers to make sure the workers don't have to work overtime, weekends or holidays, or at least minimize that off time spent working. Part of it is that my immediate manager is also my friend of almost 20 years but it's also because when the timeline gets fucked, it's not usually his fault. It's either the client being goddamn insane or somebody between the client and the work that fucks something up.

I'm not even exactly sure what you do. It's not coding, but what is it?

You totally are.  I have this discussion with my wife since she refuses to believe that she is above-average intelligence, and also refuses to believe that means most people are stupider than her.  Even if you were of average intelligence, half the people you meet will be dumber than you.  Also remember that for every genius, there's a raging idiot out there somewhere, undoing his work.

Also the Peter Principle is real.  I'd use this to my advantage, but that damn professional pride I have gets in the way.  Although I think I have figured out how to use it and also continue doing good work, although that's not really the same principle.

Schild, you really need to work for yourself.


I assume age (possibly maturity!), plus too much time under the corporate hammer.  I decided to work with the system instead of against, and I sleep better.

Sheeit, I'll give you a full rundown:

Two years at CompUSA, was headhunted for a new Best Buy flagship store.

Five years of Best Buy. They asked me to be a store manager in lieu of going to college. Shot that down quick.

Two years at Bang & Olufsen. I worked alongside a crazy dude from Ghana and a vegan weird chick. The whole thing was bizarre. The dude bashed a thief in the back of the head with a remote control though and ripped the license plate off his car. Anyway, that job was crazy.

One year at Big Huge Games. My manager there made me not want to work in the gaming industry again. Started f13 shortly before starting there.

The rest of college was odds and ends jobs, full-time but nothing important.

Three years at GoDaddy. This is where I had my best manager, but worst upper management. I was one of, if not the top salesperson my entire time there. I made unbelievable money doing it. Came in late every day and left pretty much whenever I wanted. Absolutely hated the job though. Looking back, I think I was good at the job because I'm confident enough to always sound right even when I was making shit up about things I'd never even heard of, whatever.

One year and change at Challenge Games, which turned into a little under two more years with the big Z (so three total). Did Game Design at both.

Once again, I find myself not wanting to work in the gaming industry again.

Edit: I should point out, while I've spent an abnormal number of years in sales, it's because I'm good at it. I can sell shit in my sleep. I hate it, but it's the one job I've found where when I come in and do the job, no one gives me shit for anything else. When you're above average at sales, you have the run of a place. Job fucking sucks though.

To answer your question specifically, I was CompSci in college, until I met other coders. So, I suppose I'd be a dev of some kind if devs in general were tolerable people. Protip: They're not. The ones on f13 are the minority of a minority.

So do you have a definition of what you might want to do? A prototypical job that you would enjoy? Do you like things static or dynamic? Do you want to set your own hours or have a standard 9-5? What is it that you are looking for?

I have absolutely no idea. I applied for a place the other day that paid decently and I'm pretty sure their business is making up buzzwords.

Personally, I always felt that if you're asking for someone with an outstanding grasp of English that you should totally interview someone who points out typos in the job description.

They didn't call me back.

Honestly, I don't care what the job is, I just want a job where people enjoy what they do with management that enjoys enabling their employees.

Pretty sure you can only pick one of those two as this seems to be the Sophie's Choice of employment decisions.

Edit: I should add, I've been asked multiple times at multiple jobs to be a manager. I've always turned it down because, somehow, failure succeeds and the managers above me would be even worse than the lower level managers I've been dealing with. Yegolev is right, I have to somehow work for myself. It's just hard to do without, well, a pile of money.

Yes.

I want this too.  If you find it, give me a call. 

No, I'm not joking.  I'm sick of unhappy people, of office politics, and of insecure assholes that empower themselves by stepping on heads. 

People are unnecessarily dickish when it comes to the workplace and I'm powerless to understand why. 

The irony is that I think schild would hate being a manager but he'd probably be a rather good one. I don't say that lightly. I agree with many here who are saying that people are promoted to management not because they have leadership skills (which schild does) but because they know enough of the work that they can supervise other's work. People skills are glossed over.

This seems particularly true of tech areas. I work with one other person in tech (my boss) and we get along famously, both with each other and the rest of the staff. Sure, we have bad days when we're catty and frustrated, but who doesn't? On the other hand, my GF works in a big ole database center and they are constantly up in each other's shit about every little mistake.

I wouldn't hate being a manager, but as I've turned down every management position anywhere I've been offered, I have no "real" management experience on my resume. As such, I can't just walk into the job. Now, had I thought being a manager at ANY of my previous jobs would've fulfilled some inborn need for my employed life to not suck ass, I'd have that experience.

In other words, I've held myself back due to dealing with nothing but manchildren and idiots.

iirc you're against Seattle, but (as usual) they are hiring like mad here.  I would think with a decent resume, your degree and experience should snag you something fast. 

Even with my shitty resume and no degree it took me only 3 months, but I found what appears to be (on paper) the perfect job as I'm finishing my degree. 

Also, I don't know you personally, but from the interaction here on the boards I would fully tell you to go for a management position doing something you like.  I mean, you manage F13 very successfully and that should translate.  We all know coworkers can be dickbags, but you've dealt with it in the past.  At least in management you can tell the dickbags what to do.  What's another year of trying to figure out if you're good at something?

Either way, good luck. 

I wish I was a hot chick, then I could just work HR and be fundamentally useless to society and swagger my way to the top.

If I ever run a company, HR will be full of slovenly, overpaid geniuses with neckbeards and mother issues.






















Just kidding, it'll be dumb hot chicks.

The only other upside to Seattle, is that there is a massive startup community here.  My best friend is a developer that actively goes to startup gatherings and he has to turn offers down.  You could do your day job, then pursue your dream at night.  The downside being that sometimes you dump time into projects that don't come to fruition. 

And yes, I have never met an HR person that I have liked being around, even outside of work.  Bulldoze the whole lot of them, imo.  At this job I just started, I did all my starting paperwork (w-4, i-9, all that jazz) online before I even stepped foot in the office.  I haven't even met an HR person yet, other than two emails about interviews.  I'm not sure what they're doing that requires a whole department.

My god schild I see why you are bitter.  Working retail, game design and customer service, sales. /shudder   How are you even sane at this point?    :grin:   
     

I think Schild would be an outstanding manager.  He's bright, concise, and knows how to fit people with their strengths.

Sounds to me as though you should create your own company and set up as a freelance PR and media consultant. It's basically sales without the horrors of retail, reasonably creative, you'd be working for yourself and you should already have a decent network by now.

I found it, but the pay sucks.

Working with people who love their career and helping people all day is pretty cool, though.

No, it comes from working in an industry with razor-thin margins. You can work overtime or be fired for someone who will because the company can't afford two of you.   Mechanical, Electrical, Structural Engineers and Architects in addition to construction field supervisors all have this problem.   Don't like it?  Good luck transferring that $50k degree into another field.   The best you can hope for is becoming a partner or starting your own firm and rolling the shit downhill to the next guy who'll have to follow the same path.

We're not marketing, nobody sees value in professional services, all they see is another line-item on their 10mil construction project.  Yes, there's companies that have lots of experience building and see value in a professional and are willing to pay for it.  They are not the majority of people doing buildings.  Those clients you find and keep and guard as jealously as you fucking can; until they too begin to ask you to cut your own throat to save some money.

Eric Schild
Ocean Marketing?

I was waiting for someone to make the Ocean Marketing joke after Iain's post.

No, there's a reason I have no interest in doing PR. It's a field full of unmarketable people that is rivaled only by HR. Just horrible human beings.

Seriously?  Any engineer should have skills that transfer from building design & construction to another industry.  Is designing the power delivery for a commercial office building the same as designing power delivery for a PCB?  No, but it's not so far off someone won't take a chance on you being able to learn.  ME should be even more transferable. You may not get 150k right away but you won't be getting chump change either.

The US is way short of qualified engineers.  If you have an engineering degree and can't find a job you're doing it wrong.

And Schild if you have a Comp Sci degree and can't find a job in Austin that's not at a game company you really aren't looking.  Every major player in Semi-conductors, Space and Defense and commercial software have facilities there.  Real scientific/critical system computer science, even at an entry level, is nothing like greasy code monkey shit.

I don't have a CompSci degree. I *was* on track to get one. Took a hard u-turn into Digital Media and Film immediately after I met other CS majors.

What an awful lot.

I know it's cheesy, but have you tried a career aptitude test? Now that you kinda know what you like/don't like...

I hear the Avenger controller is looking for a new PR firm.  :why_so_serious:

Okay, admit it you fuckers:

There is a secret ignore button, isn't there?

No, it was an obvious joke and Haemish may not have seen there was a new page and has Quick Reply turned on.

Or you got into that type of engineering because that's what you wanted to do.  "I got into electrical design because that's what I wanted to do, not circuit design."  I can't read all their minds but I'll ask one next time I'm around 'em why they put up with it.   I suspect it's a passion for the product.

Didn't see the next page and it really was that obvious a joke. Of course, you need more roids and about 150 less IQ points to get the job, not to mention finding a lack of ethics somewhere.

It's also beautiful around Seattle. If you like fishing, hunting, or hiking, it's a great place to live.

Opening in Pittsburgh for Verizon tech support (call center).  Not the most exciting gig, but good pay and full bene's.

verizon.com/jobs


edit.  This is a union position.  It is better to apply sooner rather then later (do not spend a week tweaking your resume as that will only hurt you).  Feel free to PM me if you have questions.

I meant from a job perspective.  Yeah, we moved to Seattle simply for the outdoors; the work thing is secondary.  That's not really a false statement, either. 

Ahem.  /seattlevoice:  I mean it rains all the time here and is ugly and terrible and the people suck.  Stay away.

I don't know about awful, but a lot of them certainly didn't belong there.  I'm not sure if half my starting class could have turned on a computer, much less program one.

CS majors are pretty bad.

CS attracts a lot of people who are interested only in computers. Like their entire life revolves only around computers - you go out to dinner and they can't do anything but tell computer-related jokes. In college I skipped most of my CS classes because the people were so intolerable. Like a professor is writing on a chalkboard, runs out of room, someone makes a joke about how it's too bad the chalkboard doesn't support copy/paste, then 10 minutes later people are laughing at that same joke.

That said I haven't really found the same thing to be true out in the real world. Probably depends on where you work but the concentration if socially retarded people was a lot higher in college than outside.

Well yeah, because outside of college you are generally encountering the employable ones rather than the raging aspies who can't abide human contact.

The raging aspies either hide in engineering until they become a meme on the internet or stay back and become TAs and shitty associates in colleges to ruin the lives of the non-raging aspie computer science majors.

Engineering school was 100X better than the CS department.  The CS department had a bad rap and most of the engineering professors made fun of how horrible the CS majors were.  My engineering school was actually quite focused on making engineers who can present and socialize in groups and on projects, if you were an anti-social twit they actually enjoyed failing you until you got 3 strikes or figured it out.  I have a CS degree and it was so painful to get that in addition to my engineering degree, it was almost a complete waste of time.

Someone went to Cal.  :-P

I knew lots of EECS majors there who were a bit off on the social scale, personally. There's no doubt it was a more rigorous program than the L&S CS major but I have my doubts it produced more well-adjusted people.

My program just had considerably more interaction with people and projects and lots of weeding out that wasn't solely based on classwork.  The weird imbalanced people in my years for the most part either switched majors or dropped out for a wide variety of reasons but being unable to present work effectively to a group was definitely one of the big ones for those who were just "into computers."

The CS majors you really have to watch out for are the ones who aren't interested in computers.

Yes, it was really fun carrying those retards through the 400 level classes.  It got even worse in MIS grad school.  Either they couldn't code or their code was so bad you'd just end up screwing yourself if you decided to rely on it.  Everything was team based and the program was highly technical, yet you still got a lot of "herp-derp MBA with a computer" type.  

Key word: only.

It was the people who weren't interested in computers that worried me.

But then I only showed up to classes for the grade.  I was a post-bac when I got my CS degree, and think I had more practical programming experience than the majority of my professors.  (Which explains why the two lecturers I liked were part-time faculty who did programming for a living...)

Resurrecting just to say:

I got a permanent day job at the University.

It is not anything fancy (pretty lowly job doing clerical work at the health clinic) but it pays pretty good for the work and the University's benefits package is still really good. Plus, the whole "foot in the door" thing.

(still Sky jr. nights and weekends at the library too).

Congrats, Chimpy!

Now you've got to do what I say since my taxes pay your salary!  *giggle*  I've always wanted my very own minion!

Tell old Pat to make the state pay the university the half billion it owes the U and then we can talk!

Yay bennies!

lol @ taxes paying for education

Bah, tell the board of directors and politicians to stop giving away free scholarships and tuition!  Or something like that.

Illinois is so fucked up which how we fund education around here.   

One of the bennies is a tuition waiver for classes at any state school. Cheap Masters degree here I come.

:Love_Letters:

I assume that you're being sarcastic.  I hope that you're being sarcastic. 

I think he meant that taxes aren't going to education in a significant amount, not that it wasn't paid for by taxes.  A jab at underfunding.

It means if it's not health care or military or corporate handouts, it's going away in our lifetimes.

We're on a year-to-year thing here at the library as we're being systematically defunded at every level, next year we only have a small amount of dwindling muni funding left.

New for 2013: education insurance.  Contact your local AllState mafioso for details.

This is wonderful, congrats!

Hey peoples,

The place I've been at for a few months is looking for someone to basically talk to schools and help them use our product.  CL posting Here. (http://providence.craigslist.org/csr/2887425356.html)

Fairly frenetic, multitasking ability helpful.

It's a work from home type thing too, so that might work well for someone.

This seemed like as fine a fine place as any to post this.  I was, about a month ago, offered an opportunity to lead the largest project on the account.  Moving two datacenters' worth of machinery to two other datacenters.  Why would I accept something like this, the guy who wants to stay technical?  It seemed like a great way to not be a system admin when I am fifty-five.  So now I'm a lead of (right now) five contractors.  The thing about doing this that bothers me most isn't having to tell people what to do, calling them to find out if they are going to dial into a checkpoint meeting, or finding out during a maintenance how much they do or do not know... it's that I don't know everything that is going on.  Apparently I'm something of a controller!

I also think I must be a tad deranged since I find I enjoy leadership at times, even when people are yelling at each other.

Sounds like fun and a good opportunity to grow a bit. Worker bees have to put in some effort to trust people to do their jobs, I know I still do sometimes (especially if I think I can do it better and faster than the person tasked with the job). But, the best managers I've worked for always let me do my thing and only help/offer advice if asked or I obviously needed some light coaching (say, when dealing with a very irritating co-worker who pushed my buttons 1000 times too many). So I try to model after them.

I'm trying to do that, unfortunately:
1. I could do these things faster and better, which is irritating after hiring "senior admins".
2. These guys have to jump out of the nest, no time for feel-good shadowing.

So tonight I'm getting them all into a virtual room, having one of the new guys drive and share his desktop, and making a more experienced one that likes to rack up hours be the guide.  The other two are watching.  Taking notes?  Jesus, I hope so after how many times I asked them to.  One or two are rather nervous, getting cold feet.  So I'm throwing them in the fire, then pushing them back in with a stick when they try to get out.  This is what happens when you come on after the project is in full swing.

I actually think I'm having too much fun, but I'm probably being paranoid.  My boss has been so pleased with my performance so far that he's tossed me an award.  Presumably because he doesn't have to deal with the bullshit anymore. :awesome_for_real:  I think I'm going to be sad when I get these guys going and can go back to doing my usual job.

Don't be too hard on them, not everyone learns well by drinking from a fire hose.  :awesome_for_real:

If they are out of their depth as supposed senior people, I assume it's too late to replace them?

Welcome to a leadership role.  Hardest part is balancing micromanagement with freedom to act.

Harder then it sounds.

It's never too late. :oh_i_see:

Really, though, I'm trying not to be hard on them but the project marches on and I can't keep relying on the two or three guys who know what's going on.  I'm trying to make it as easy as I can for them to succeed, I just am not going to do it for them.  We have semi-well-formed process documents and knowledge spread among techs, and I need them to become comfortable in accessing that.  Once they have gotten one or two migrations under their belt, they will be just fine.  I think.

What I'm trying to instill tonight is a reassurance that it's OK to ask questions early and often; I haven't said anything negative about anyone's skills.  This is something that really held me back early on, trying to hide what I didn't know from my team and manager.  That tactic completely doesn't work.


Yes it is.  Before being outsourced, my head contained all the major details of the SAP/UNIX enterprise at TCCC.  After, it grew too fast and I was distracted by my new bureaucracy.  Now I'm trying to direct people in a process that I haven't actually done and it's very weird.  Uncomfortable at times.  Then I catch myself looking over someone's shoulder, or calling up people to tell them to join a meeting.  You know, all the shit I hate my manager doing. :oh_i_see:

Once I get some solid leadership skills, I can go work with Ironwood at the bottlecap factory.  We can wear short-sleeved button-down shirts with short ties, sit behind brown metal desks and frown at our inferiors.

Which the schlemiel, which the schlimazel?

Hossenffefer incorporated?

Hassenpfaf* Incorporated?




*Err.. spelling?

DAMMIT!  Ninja'd!

Heh, sorry.

That said, if you're in the BA, we're looking for a helluva lot of people... (http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExternal.returnToResults&CurrentPage=1)

I really wish you guys would move up to the middle part of the Bay.  All the big tech corps are in south bay, but I really don't want to move down that way......  Oakland is filled with Hipsters, you should move here!

Not that it matters.  I was looking at that stuff, but have finally secured a job with the guvument, which should pay me to travel around the world doing computer shit, so goodbye Bay Area tech I guess.

As long as the loudest yeller is you you're good.  :awesome_for_real:

Being in a leadership position definitely has pros and cons. I think in some ways the best leaders are people are skilled at leading and only moderately skilled at the actual job. People who are really good at the job are often control freaks, try to do too much themselves (which eventually breaks down), prone to not seeing the bigger picture and not good at dealing with people with a wide range of skills.

My experience is that it's best to have a shadowy figure / power behind the throne / XO / Destro type who can lead by example and be a go-to guy without being an actual manager.

Those got filled quick!

(Rhyssa, the spelling is 'hasenpfeffer'.)

 :thumbs_up:

Awesome, any idea when you start? I take this to mean you made it off the register and have received an entry class invite?

Unfortunately I'm still out in Benin so I'm in no position to buy you a drink.

Story of my career thus far. It would be nicer to have the better pay, but the freedom and lack of ultimate responsibility is nice. Vizier is the word I use.

On Oakland: fuck Oakland. Or maybe that was just being poor and living in the shitty part of Hayward (not the hills) for a couple years.

Shirley, I'd love to work for the company but I want to start a new department dedicated to schools and libraries doing kiosk work. :)

Fuck Oakland and indeed.  That entire part of the bay is a place to avoid.

Around 'July'.  Got offer letter to start orientation in May, but it said that I could take it or wait for the second offer (they send out two, then terminate candidacy).  Emailed and asked when next orientation was, and they told me July and that it would be ok to wait for it.  So told them I would do that, since it will be way more convenient to finish up all my affairs here by then.  So, should get second offer in another month or two, and be in DC for training in July.  I find out at the end of the 3 week orientation what country I've been assigned, then train the next few months specifically for that assignment, then head out.  I gave notice at my job, and am leaving at the end of March, so I'll pretend I'm European and take a couple months vacation.

Since who knows when the next time I'll be able to take longer than the American standard 10 days a year vacation.  Also, I've been running though iPhone programming courses online.  It'll give me a few months to see if I can get rich off some stupid gimick before signing my life away to the State Department.   :awesome_for_real:

On Oakland:  Seriously, fuck you guys, Oakland is awesome.  Yes there are shitty ghetto parts.  There are also very very nice parts, and much of the downtown and northern half have become a major hub for great food and drinking establishments (not to mention lots of cool stores to shop at).  There are just a lot of great neighborhoods in general.  A lot of this is more recent, so if you haven't been in the area in the last decade or so, or still live in Hayward (which is not Oakland), I can understand.

No seriously, its not just me hyping this.  The New York times even named Oakland number 5 of there top places in the world to visit in 2012, just below London, and above Tokyo.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/travel/45-places-to-go-in-2012.html?pagewanted=all

Its also nice that there has been, in the last few years, a big local brewing boom here.  Lots of cool new beers, and some of the best beer bars in the entire bay area are here (several only about 5 minutes walk from my place):

http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/Oakland-Magazine/March-April-2012/Beer-Beer-Beer/

I'd also say call this entire part of the Bay a place to avoid pretty bad as well.  Emeryville, Berkeley, Albany, and into parts of El Cerrito are all very neat areas as well now.

Everyone who loves Oakland has this take on it.  "It's great man!  Just don't go to the shitty parts!"  Except I'm not from around here, so I have zero idea where a bad neighborhood vs. a good one is, and reading the murder reports from that area, I'd rather not take my life into my hands to find out on my own.  I will concede that Berkeley, El Cerrito, and Albany actually have a pretty interesting scene and can be fun.  And I'll even give you one better: Oakland isn't as bad as Richmond ;-)

It's like Harlem. There's been a huge renaissance there in the last five to ten years as well, but there's still a bunch of shitty places and if you're not a native, it's not the best place to live. When the wife and I were looking for places in the city a few years ago, we passed up some absolutely huge places with relatively cheap prices because the surrounding areas just weren't "there" yet. I'm still thinking of buying a couple of those places to rent out, but not to actually live in.

The people I know that live in Oakland love it. I'm still not sold, but I see where they're coming from.

Shit, I'm getting old.

They need to do what Atlanta did, and just divide the city in half. Keep the crazy on one side, separated by a major interstate.

They also put a circle around it, to keep the hicks out.

Do the hicks only travel in the counter clockwise direction on said circle?

I miss it a bit.

A bit.

Inevitably, labor trouble.  Can't say much but I'm suddenly a huge fan of in-person interviews.

What?

He can't say much. :oh_i_see:

But even the tease was odd!

Ha.  Hahahahaha.

Do you have an incredibly smelly guy?

Remember, if you don't, it's you.

I expect Cheddar knows what I am dealing with.  I hope not, but probably.

Yea. I'm getting sick of this job hunt.

Parker Schnabel is looking for a heavy duty diesel mechanic, journeyman excavator, loader, and rock truck operator for the mine this summer, according to his Facebook page.

Alaska might do you some good!

I keep getting good offers from the area I last lived in.  An area I was more than glad to leave and never want to live in again. 

Wouldn't be so bad except that these jobs would pay about 20% more than the mediocre job I have in the town I love.
Torn.

Anyone have any experience with this?

I have experience with living somewhere pretty that pays shittier than the ugly place I can live that pays better. Is that what you mean?

I made a decision a long time ago to live somewhere that has great weather and nice scenery, but either have to commute  or get paid 20% less. I commuted for a little while, long enough to find out I hated commuting. I have mostly worked here for less pay (although stopped working several years ago). My spouse has always commuted (used to be an hour 20 min one way, now it's closer to hour fortyfive) as there are no jobs here for him. He doesn't mind the commute (it's pretty) because he loves living here and doesn't want to live where he works.

It's a matter of what makes you happy in life, and how you want to get there. You will likely have to sacrifice something, so weigh both and see what you want to live with. 20% is nothing to sneeze at but if you're miserable maybe it's not enough to help you not be.

Seems somewhat relevant to the discussion at hand:  http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-recruiters-look-at-during-the-6-seconds-they-spend-on-your-resume-2012-4

I have been reading about eye-tracking software being used for websites to improve design.  It's very interesting to see it being used by recruiters, and might help tailor your resume a bit differently.

Man they picked two terribly formatted resumes for that.

Or, maybe, the executive position resume got more scrutiny because it was for an executive position and the FPGA Chief Architect position only got a brief look at the years of experience, skills and education because that was what was relevant for initial impressions?

My alternative is that people are fucking liars and you can't trust them until you grill them face to face.  Which is a bonus for executives, less so for people that do work.

#1 - Never let HR pre-screen your applicants, unless you are in a situation where you have more submissions than you can glance over.
#2 - Mandatory written basic skills test over a broad area, this should expose any areas where they blatantly overstated skills you care about on their resume (and maybe reveal talents they didn't bother mentioning).
#3 - Interview with the in depth questions.
#4 - Background check on potential hires.
#5 - Hire people you can see yourself actually wanting to work with.

I would watch them fill out the written test, also.  Like, sit across from the table and stare at them.  So, may as well ask the questions.

I'm hiring contractors so it's a bit different.  We are complaining about a lack of pre-screening.

Like IT contractors or construction contractors? Because I've done the latter and it's a lot of fun to quiz those dudes.

Good contractors, good general practitioners and unicorns.

 :awesome_for_real:

While I will agree with the contractors thing, I've always gotten great general practitioners where ever I've gone (though I've been with Kaiser for a good long while).  Maybe its just you!

Must be nice.  I've had to deal with many doctors who just wanted to throw pills at problems without getting to the root of the issue and others who flat out refuse treatment because "we don't know how to deal with that."  Finding a good doctor is a godsend.

The range of choice of GPs out in the backwoods where Sky lives is probably a lot thinner than what we get here in sprawltown.

Got a long-term consulting gig. Problems over for the moment.

Awesome. Congrats.

Good news Schild.

My company is looking for the following at the moment:

• Senior designer
• Marketing artist
• Senior UI artist
• Senior animator

• Gameplay programmer
• QA tester

Specs for the above are available here (http://www.aconygames.com/#/career). If you sort of internet know me then mention my name in your cover letter (Iain Compton) and drop me a PM telling me who you are in case I get asked about you.

Who needs PM's?


edit.  Job link broken.  Yeah, I clicked it.  Shut up.

Do you guys have a US office or is this all done at the German location?

This is all in Germany. Visas will be arranged where required (we have a lot of American emigrés already).

They never got back to me on the QA position.

Warum nicht?

WARUM!?! :cry2:

Well, it seems they are adding an engineer position at my job after all.  Woot!  So now I'm waiting for it to be posted.  Even better, if I get it I'll get to travel, too bad it will mainly be to China and India but hey.  My dream job in my dream location!

 

We've opened positions for 10 embedded developers from entry to senior level.  Let me know if anyone is interested.

Must be US Citizen and able to obtain a clearance.

Wir haben schon zu viele rote Pandas.

Es gibt keine solche sache wie zu viele rote Pandas.

Congrats.

Also congrats that no one made any snarky comments about the types of things you might be hired to consult on.

I had assumed he was being consulted for snarky comments.

My company is hiring a ton, and not all in Colorado (we have some field/remote positions too). We do IT stuff for healthcare companies, but you don't have to have healthcare experience (certainly not for some of the more technical positions). Ping me if you want to know more.

Software Engineer
Transaction Support Analyst
Solutions Specialist (field)
Technical Product Manager       - Good position for a technical person who doesn't want to code, but can talk to customers and create solutions.
Implementation Manager
Technical Security Specialist
Contracts Processing Specialist/Order Entry Specialist
Supply Chain Value Analytics Manager
Solutions Specialist (field)
Customer Success Manager (field)
Sales Consultant - Supplier or Hospital verticals (field)
Service Operations Director - Device & Implant Segment

Colorado is a great place to live, if a tad expensive for you middle-of-nowhere dwellers.
Linky: http://www.ghx.com/about-ghx/careers/find-a-job.aspx

Looks like work is sending me to Tel Aviv for 2 weeks.  That's going to be one hell of a plane flight.

I hear the sushi there is the bomb, from my coworkers.

And Paelos just got put on a watch list by Echelon for that quote/reply  :grin:

All depends on the connections.  I think the security checks could be more fun than anything :)

Hmm. My company's hiring again. Anyone want to program Robonaut? :) They were looking for several coders and a manager for that...

Heh, we get security briefings about going through Israel's security.  Let's just say that their government sometimes aggressively supports their private sector interests so make sure you don't have any crucial proprietary IP on your laptop...

Pffft, I'm already on several.  :awesome_for_real:

Got an offer for a IT architect spot in Savannah, only problem is that it requires three certs I don't have.  Seems silly.  I'm not sure if I want to look into it.  I have become very heavily involved in my supposed career advancement at HP, including some help from my boss who put me in charge of another mess of a project.  Apparently I'm not nearly as idiotic as my wife tells.

Or you are more of an idiot and thus are rising accordingly.  :grin:

I have a phone interview tomorrow on my lunch break for what is probably the perfect job for me at the university: user support at the college of fine arts (my degree is actually from a unit in that college). Hopefully I won't fuck it up!

Good luck, Chimpy!

And Yego, what can it hurt to look into the position more?  HP's not a bad place to work but right now I'm gun-shy about investing all my eggs into one basket after they laid me off.  I thought I was going to have a nice long career at HP as well.

Chimpy, that sounds awesome. You'll get some fun toys, workstations underpowered for Photoshop and crappy ancient wacom tablets instead of touch screens! Or maybe I've worked in the library too long. I was kinda sad face flipping through a fantasy art book I got for inspiration (see miniatures thread for blah blah), 95% of the stuff in it is Photoshop. I'm such a luddite.

Yeg, 'It's who you know!' Or 'You're soaking in it.' Something like that. If you've got someone pulling you up the ladder, I'd stick with that unless he's some rogue moron who will take you down with him some day. Or the Savannah gig gives you big numbers and bennies and pays for training + cert fees, of course.

I have considered this more than once.  The trouble is that I am still one of two that can fix certain things, and I'm constantly being consulted on things outside the all-consuming migration project.  I also listened to the lamentations of the admins who had to work this past maintenance weekend without me.  I'm still not sure if I would have been better off working or in the woods feeding ticks, but the boy enjoyed it so I made the right decision.

I don't want to look at the Savannah job because in the end I won't take it even if I pass the interview, but before that I will spend time and energy on it.  The big strikes are that it is contract and that I would have to relocate to Savannah.  Which is a nice place, but I can't move.  I also have yet to find a job that beats my current pay/benefit combination.  I can't go anywhere else and get twenty days of vacation, for example.

Also, the "pulling up the ladder" comment is very accurate and I'm not interested in squandering someone's goodwill and assistance.

The art and design department has all recent generation iMacs (even their stations with Win7 are boot camped iMacs ) of course that is not the only part of the college but keeping up to date computers is not generally a problem on campus.

Got a call this morning about another IT job (this time in the facilities dept). I am going to have to call in from Ireland heh.

Flight booked and hotel reserved.  Gone May 3-12th. 


My laptop is already filled with Israeli IP.

Pictures of Bar Rafaeli don't count.

Email subject:
"UNIX Administrator reqiored in Atlnata,GA"

Didn't even read the listing.  I'm not yet in the place where I will start taking on multiple temp shit jobs in an attempt to frankenstein together a reasonable income.  Despite the news reports.

Work has become stale for me. Anyone know of someone hiring Business Analysts with HR Systems (PeopleSoft) experience?

People change jobs when they become stale?  I didn't know that was an option.  I've just let myself turn into a misanthropic, depressed sad sack who keeps working at the same place ten years after it went stale and is stuck in a rut too deep to climb out of.  It's easy and pays well so I don't have a right to complain or feel bad.  It is, never the less, hollowing me out.

Changing would have probably been a better idea.  I wish I were dead.

I'm heading in this direction in my current job. I would prefer a public sector job that turns my brain to mush over what I'm doing right now. It's so bad my last performance review last about 10 minutes with my old manager and new manager staring at me in awkward silence for 5 of those minutes waiting for me to tell them how the performance review should be done.

That was my breaking point.

Good lord people, find something you enjoy. You'll add years to your life.

This sounds disturbingly familiar to me as well - the sheer volume of work replaced challenge or stimulation a long time ago.

Reading through this thread, I feel really lucky to work for a small Hungarian company. Cool co-workers, understanding bosses, don't have to do overtime often, and I get to work on interesting ITsec research projects.

If anyone is interested, feel free to join us! As long as you're fine with making about $1k per month   :why_so_serious:

Thanks for everyone's posts in this thread today, I really needed it.  I've been in a funk from walking away from a (relatively) high-paying job 2 months ago with no precise plan for the future, simply because it was literally and figuratively killing me.  However, reading some of your posts and putting myself back where I was before I quit, I'm absolutely convinced I made the right choice.

We were recently.  Check verizon.com/careers

I can't begin to convince myself it's worth it when it starts to take away your joy for life. The owner of my company tried to convince me I was too laid back and should have a healthy amount of stress in my life.

One of my old bosses once told me that she didn't believe I took enough pride in my work because I missed a "filing day" where we helped catch up on the filing. Bear in mind we had a filing girl at the company who was terrible. Also bear in mind that my regular work was doing the exact same 3 activities every month for 10 projects.

I just laughed at her, and gave her my two weeks notice in that meeting right there. I caddied and travelled for a year after that, just to get outdoors and realize the world wasn't made up of small minded people.

My old job just sent out a notice that they are looking for engineers of the same specialty as me.  The same engineers that they had 7 of, but laid off 4 and the remaining 2 quit within a month of the layoffs.  I find it highly amusing, especially since engineers with my specialty are "a dime a dozen" the old VP told us...

Hah, I had a talk with HR at my old company and had the site manager in attendance as well (~2500 person fab & design center spread across a 6 building campus, so yeah, a big wig).  I had documented evidence that I was being underpaid (statistical evidence from dept of labor as well as two competitive offers from other companies) and wanted a raise to make me comparable.

The site manager said pretty much the same thing, which I knew was BS because we had spent the last 2 years with a rec open and had interviewed dozens of people.  There were plenty of people who could do the work but they wanted too much money (according to HR).  So I took one of the other jobs that were offered to me at a 50% pay increase and left.

Sometimes management can be VERY out of touch and the only way to wake them up is to leave and have them have to deal with schedule & milestone issues.

I need one more mid level java developer in Austin.

Funny, I did the same thing.

What broke it for me was in January, when it was announced that raises would be held back for essentially all but the top 30% of staff, due to profitability.  I knew then I wasn't going to make it through the end of the year.

Got an offer for an IT job here at the university today. Double my vacation a year and enough money that I could quit my job as Sky jr as well as my day job and make the same amount of money.

Did you say two openings?  :grin:

Congrats!

Yay.  Congratulations, Chimp.

Congrats Chimp!

  Now hopefully its not helpdesk and more backroom type stuff  :).

 :thumbs_up:  Congrats, Chimpy!

Congrats!

So, I got first world problems. Just got another offer from another department on campus. Pay is slightly more (though I can probably get the one yesterday to match that), job might have more flexibility.

First world problems are a pain lol.

I'm still looking for a java dev.

Pick the one that has the people you like the most, especially for a boss.

^^ ding ding ding!

Both bosses I got along with well. This is really not a cut and dry decision, blah.

The one yesterday would be a more consistent schedule and would be supporting a much larger organization so it would give me better exposure to larger volume stuff.

Which one is in the more stable department?

The one today in theory as it is effectively a contractor for the campus IT division that hires out people on contract to individual academic units so if the department decides to cut IT, I would be sent elsewhere. But the other dept is the largest department on campus in terms of total staff to support and has been short staffed for several months and is not likely to downsize in the foreseeable future.

In either case, as long as I do my job and not ruffle any feathers moving around between departments is somewhat easy, foot in the door and all that.

:grin:

The downside is that you'd have to move to Illinois and live in the Champaign area.  I'm fairly certain no job is worth it.  :grin:

C-U is fine. Well except for the whole you can see Bloomington on a clear day it is so damn flat.

My girlfriend is seriously starting to hate life while job hunting in the bay area...

Went with job 1, called the lady and she upped the offer to more than the other position and I felt the job was a better fit anyway.

I start July 30th. Think I might buy me one of those catleap monitors to celebrate.

Congrats, Chimpy.  I know you've been looking for a long time.

What does she do Selby? We have a couple open reqs.

The owner of your company is a wrongheaded douchebag, and you need to run away as soon as you can.

She's got a degree in psychology and has been a case manager for low income\mentally unstable people for the last 4-5 years.  She got laid off and relocated out here and everyone wants a master's in social work and 10+ years experience for the same job she had back east (and pays the same as back east).  She's currently working at a loan auditing firm that essentially outsourced itself to America from overseas to get American contracts, while paying their workers what the asian subcontinent feels is "too much" ($10/hr basically).  She's very bitter about it.  Lots of interviews, lots of "we'll get back to you" followed by silence or "we went with an internal candidate\someone with 20 more years experience" responses.

Hm, well, unless that qualifies her to be a VP of HR (it might  :why_so_serious:) I don't think we have anything matching.

Going to look for another contractor.  You will have to go through Tek Systems.  Need an AIX expert.  Standard pay, weekend/evening work, free soda, and you get to work with me.

You are supposed to be pitching the job, not tanking the chances of someone applying for it Yeg!

We need a gameplay programmer (UE3), a backend programmer, a UI artist and two senior QA bods.

Also a lead designer but I've pitched for that so don't go breaking my heart.

Tell them to pull my resume out for the QA position. :-P

Verbal Update:  Did a Terminal Services conversion which took 125 piece-of-junk workstations and made them decent thin clients using Thinstation in a 6-week period.  Migrated a remote office shortly afterwards, and spent last week moving a second office over.  Required extensive knowledge of Terminal Server, AD, GPO, DNS, DHCP, and Exchange.

kthnx

If you're still interested then you should reapply. I don't think they keep old CVs. Mention me in your cover letter if you do (goes for anyone here).

Dear Creative Director,

Please accept my attached CV for consideration for your open Lead Game Designer position. I'm totally way better than that Iain guy.

Cheers, Viin

Today my boss tells me he is taking the early retirement package (that the general public might not know about).  Besides the fact that I will have had four managers inside of three years, this means I have no choice but to tell him that I need a title change before he leaves.  I have worked too hard on this project - and done too good of a job - to start over proving myself to someone new.

Also today, I attended a presentation just to congratulate my account on a milestone: no service misses for this month, the first time since the account opened in January 2010.  Additionally, my project (yeah, it's big and visible enough to be singled out) was "green" for the first time ever.

And... fucking Swype.

Tomorrow is D day.  4% reduction in my line of business at management level and no one is protected.   :ye_gods:

 :uhrr:

Rumours are going around of 10% at my job too.  No one knows when but it's been talked about for at least 3 weeks.

A lot of shit is hitting the fan. Next year is when we find out if the county follows through on their promise to de-fund libraries completely. We're one more major public tax vote away from short-term stability, but the tea-tards are out in full force.

They fucking use our wifi.

Setup a filter on the wifi that redirects tea party websites to someplace fun  :grin:

See if they want a lemon party to go with their tea party?

Sometimes it's difficult when you're on the high road.

This times a million.

Remember that the economists have said that the recession is over, right? 

I hope you guys aren't part of it and that everything comes out okay.

Serving all the public, even the douchebags, is not the easiest of jobs that is a fact.

I survived but it has been a brutal day.  Never, ever, ever seen one like this before (this would be my 5th one or so).

Now for the re-org.   :uhrr:

You'd think 4%-management-only would be relatively "easy" as layoffs go. Our are always 10%-mostly-grunts.

I'm interested, but I don't want to be moving too far away for a few years at this point in time.  After that I may want to get far away.

Eventually senior management realizes that if they cut more grunts middle-management will have to do the work and has no idea how.  Plus they cost a lot more and you can't shift them to multiple part-timers to cover the same job as easily as the grunts. (No benefits to pay, yay!)

I'm also dying to relocate to his region...but I decided to be the responsible man and stand behind my fiancee's wish to be near her elderly mother, especially as she got ill last year. Responsibility sucks in some ways, dammit.

It's not the being responsible bit that sucks, leaving right now would probably amplify it, but what do you do when the situation sucks regardless?

Well, we're one big budget hit from forcing my hand on the situation. It's just weird realizing I've hit an age where I can't just pick up and move thousands of miles away 'just because'. I used to be so very gypsy.

If you don't have family tying you down, I'd say do it while you can :) The gypsy life slowed down my financial goals, but those are always uncertain and I really value the years I moved around and met new people all the time.

That's if mean old Iain isn't shredding your resume!  :ye_gods:

My advice in general to people considering moving abroad to work is to do it. It opens your mind in a lot of ways and changes your outlook profoundly. Even if you have family then figure out a way to make it work, things are inevitably simpler than they appear at first and a decent company hiring foreign workers will assist you with relocating dependants and partners.

You realize that your chances of finding a cute woman with a gypsy accent are significantly improved in Europe, decide to do something for yourself for once and move.

 :grin:

Heh.  That can wait a few years.

Being with dad and making sure mom is taken care of is more important right now.

Yep, this. My mother would be fine, we have lots of family in the area. But my fiancee is an only child and they have no other family at all, so she's the sole (well, along with me) caretaker and her mom is in her 80s.

Red Panda high 5!

(https://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/12/7/19/4xoNjOihtkeVQ7VPV3ADNQ2.gif)

Power vacuum?

Don't miss good long term opportunities over short term issues.  I know it is not an easy thing to try and think past the death of an in-law without your spouse calling you heartless or worse, but you are in the middle of your life while your in-law is at the end of hers. 

But I don't know your situation, obviously.

No parents to speak of here, which is why I just took a job on the other side of Canada.

That's pretty heartless. I'm not going to abandon my mother-in-law to fend for herself.

This is similar to my situation.  When my Dad passed my aunt and I moved back home to take care of my Mom.  I've been out of work now a couple of years, and it sucks, but I can't really abandon my Mom to move someplace else for a job.  It wouldn't be so bad if she was a bit healthier but she's been slowly declining and her memory has been getting worse and worse.  Right now it's to the point where she can't even keep track of what day it is anymore.  Also family is family and it's bad enough I have other relatives that still try to leech off of her.

More importantly, would you abandon your mother or father?  If not, then why are you asking your spouse to abandon theirs?

I'm glad I didn't move away prior to my dad's death in '08.   I would have regretted it when he took a very unexpected downturn due to an infection and died inside of a month.  As it is I feel bad that I didn't go to the hospital for two days after he was admitted just because it was 2 hours away.

Wife has decided to urge me to find employment at another company due to rampant :uhrr: at my current one.  So, anyone need a team lead with strong AIX/TSM/ksh and varying degrees of EMC/Oracle/DB2/SAP BASIS/leeenux/unix_is_unix_how_hard_can_it_be? :why_so_serious:

What happened to your soon to be retiring boss who was dragging you a few rungs up on the corporate ladder on his way out?  If it were me and it still looked like this was going to happen I think I would tough it out for 6 months so I could plan a sideways exit based on the newer position.  Normally this makes the guy who just elevated you look bad but he will be retired so I doubt he gives a crap.

How masochistic are you?  How much do you hate your family? :evil:

Oh, this hasn't gone away, however the depth of :uhrr: has increased so I'm just keeping my options open.  I'm now a Team Lead, next step is to socialize my name out so I can start moving around to other accounts.  The main issue right now is that the services division head was sacked and replaced with someone from finance.  That's never good.  My account team executive was already replaced by someone from finance, which was bad enough but when the entire services division gets a beancounter as lead I need to devise a Plan B and possibly Plan C.


This depends entirely on the salary and if I can work remotely.

It could be worse, they could have replaced him with someone from sales...

It could be worse, yes, which is why I'm still here.  Also, I'm scheduled for Suse training next month.

Peanuts.  You can work remotely after you go home from your 8 to 10-hour day.

Just got offered an entry-level network tech position at a small hosting company. Full time, benefits, way better than my lazy ass deserves. Turned my day from kind of stressful to awesome in a heartbeat.

Now I just have to move out of my buddy's spare room and I'll be like a real grown-up.

I swear it's like the damn MBAs are taking over everything and subjecting us all to their masochistic love of spreadsheets and account balances.  Something that an accountant in a department used to do is now forced on everyone to do individually and there's hell to pay if you don't already know and love the bean counting ways.

Recessions mean that everything comes under harder financial scrutiny.

FTFY.

--Dave

Our IT department was fairly recently moved to report to the CFO instead of the VP of Ops (we haven't had a CIO since the last one retired) and it has actually been a pretty huge improvement. I am as surprised as anyone.

Or join the Foreign Service like I just did, and they'll send you all over the place while paying for all your housing and bills!  You also get the advantage of serving your country instead of random evil corporation!  Anybody here who is even decently computer savy (getting through the interview process is more a matter of how good at writing and interviews you are, rather than what you know walking in the door.  They train you for everything else.) could get in as a computer tech (an IMS or IMTS).  I mean, hell, I got in somehow.  Also, age doesn't matter in the slightest.  My new recruit class through orientation ranged from a 24 year old to a 55 year old who's been in the IT industry for 30 years.

Though of course you don't have a whole lot of say in where you go (though you get decent control on your first time out).  When we had our Flag Day (ceremony where they finally announce where each of us are going and hand us the flag), there was sort of a funny Russian roulette of 6 possible places I was going to end up:  Ho Chi Mihn City, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Warsaw, New Delhi, or Lagos (Nigeria).   :why_so_serious:

But I lived.  They're sending me to Poland!

Congratulations on the job Ezrast.

Yes, congratulations ezrast.  I've added your handle to my Firefox dictionary as a token of respect.

I don't know why anyone would work for peanuts when they could just get two $45/hr admin contracts and work both at the same time, remotely.  If you're conservative, just keep your main job and take on a remote contract and slop your way through it in the evenings.

As for the change in leadership, I suppose it can't be too bad as long as I survive the process.  Change is opportunity, of course, so I need to figure out some way to capitalize on it.  Fortunately, I'm a thousand times more mercenary than I was two years ago.  This doesn't mean that I abandoned my pride in my work, just that I am not going to (intentionally) be a lackey that is stuck in a rut.  Finishing this project on time and under budget will be a Big Deal that I can use to mobilize myself.  Either within HP or elsewhere.

 :grin:

I suppose a known evil corporation is better than a random one.

Whelp, I just survived my fourth round of layoffs at Funcom in 4 years. Yay, me.

Yay! \o/

I'm an instructional designer with five years experience and an M.Ed. (currently working on a PhD.) and would love to get the hell out of the podunk central Florida town I currently work in.  We value timeliness over quality, and it's so much  :uhrr: at once that I'm dying to get out.

Anyone have training departments or something hiring for not terrible pay?  I love being on f13 all day, but I want to...you know, work and stuff too.

http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExternal.showJob&RID=118606&CurrentPage=1

"5+ years instructional design experience creating innovative sales and technical training solutions within high-tech companies"
"MA in instructional design, related discipline or equivalent work experience"

Seems to fit (well enough) your qualifications.

No offense but go to each of the fortune 500 companies home page.  Click 'Jobs' o the equivalent.  Click search.  Enter "Instructional Designer".  Press enter.

Maybe we don't know where to look to find such things!

*goes back to counting his peanuts*

I was looking more for folks who like their current employer.  www.higheredjobs.com is good too.

I'm just having a really bad week at work, and I think it's spilling over.

Interesting Apple posting.

There was an instructional designer type job recently at Illinois. Jobs.illinois.edu then select "academic job board" (they broke the direct link to the site somehow a couple weeks ago)

I think its fixed?   https://jobs.illinois.edu/academic-job-board (https://jobs.illinois.edu/academic-job-board)

Oh cool they did. Must have fixed it this weekend, it wasn't working on Friday evening.

Can anyone describe, in non-marketing or buzzword terms, what ITIL actually means?

Half the tech jobs nowadays require X years with it, and even though I've read the Wikipedia article on it several times, I still don't get it.

Like any of those things, it looks like it is a framework for documenting the IT capabilities and processes the IT department adheres to. (Plus asks questions like, what is your process for validating your data backup strategy? How often is this executed? etc)

Yeah my (very vague) understanding of it is that its basically the UK version of the controls we do for SOX audits.

So if I have experience with implementing and meeting ISO 27001, PCI/DSS, SOX, GLB, and similar requirements... ITIL is just another version of that?

Well heck, why didn't they just SAY so?   :uhrr:

(goes off to add another buzzword to his resume)

ITIL looks like it might be a British thing? Is it a British company?

It's a series of buzzwords and concepts wrapped around basic IT management concepts, but repackaged and resold to the same morons that bought into six sigma and the like.  It's not a certification process like the ISO's, it's middle management bullshit.  I was forced to take a basic class in it about a year ago, and it just confirmed that it was an utter waste of time.

I'd suggest fishing around on jobs.google.com and see if you find anything interesting.  We have a department that deals with internal training (Google EngEDU) and groups that deal with training and courseware and such that's external-facing as well.  I found a couple reqs that may be of interest, but I don't know a lot about this specific area:
http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/seattle-kirkland/engineering/ux/instructional-designer-seattle-kirkland.html (also in Mountain View and New York)
http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/mountain-view/ops-support/program/technical-training-and-certification-program-manager-cloud-platform-mountain-view.html
http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/mountain-view/prodcs/technical-courseware-developer-publisher-and-distribution-solutions-mountain-view.html

I'm happy to feed a resume into the referral system if you want (should be no worse odds than if you just push the apply button) -- feel free to drop me a PM. 

Also, if anybody has background in embedded systems or OS (Linux especially, Android a plus) engineering, and is interested in that sort of work, the core Android team and Android@Home are always hiring and I'm always happy to pass resumes along for Android related roles.

I have an interview tomorrow and I had forgotten how unreasonably nervous I get about them.

Anyone else just HATE them ?  Christ, I used to interview by the bucketload while I was in charge.  You'd think I'd have better defenses than this.