Job thread

[Draegan]

I had to Skype a Scottish lady for an hour today for a personality profile. That was fun.

[Yegolev]

My boss' boss is from Edinburgh.

Atlanta is more progressive the closer to the center you get.  You'd be advised to live on the same side of the city as your job.

I'll possibly restate that when looking for work, stick to LinkedIn and select recruiters.  Monster, CareerBuilder, and Dice are simply trash now.

I don't recall any specifics, but I saw a memorable number of Quality Engineer slots in the Greater Metro Atlanta area while I was looking.

[Ironwood]

I had to Skype a Scottish lady for an hour today for a personality profile. That was fun.

That would be easy :  Edinburgh people have no personality.

[Bunk]

Well, I now have a corner* office, a new title, people reporting to me, and the joy next week of telling some people that they did not get the promotion they needed to stay with the company.

*corner of the block of offices in the center of the building, but hey, it has windows on two sides.

[Viin]

Is this one of those 'I'm too chickshit to fire someone so I'm going to promote someone to do it for me' situations?

[Abagadro]

Had a weird sensation the last couple of weeks. Looked up and suddenly I am one of the "old guard" in the office. Fourth most senior person in the entire enterprise (not huge mind you, but not tiny either) and now seen as someone with sought-after  "perspective" and expected to "mentor."  Scary proposition as I have no fucking clue.

[HaemishM]

I don't know if I qualify as someone with that much-sought after perspective thing, but the fact that I've been at my current job over 16 years comes around and smacks me in the face every once in a while. I mean, most of the higher ups that were there when I got here are still there (there's only like 4 or 5 of them) but it's incredibly weird realizing that many of the people I work with on a daily basis were in middle school when I started this job is an uncomfortable thought.

[Merusk]

I wish they were in middle school when I started. Coops and young grads are a big part of our workforce and that means people who were in high school or college when I started.  This also means my career is longer than they've been on this planet.

Which would t be a problem if the bosses keeping things held back weren't 15-20 years older than me.

[Selby]

and expected to "mentor"

Is this actually a thing?  I hear talk of mentors all the time but in my entire career I've never had a single person to look up to, much less than as a "mentor" relationship. My graduate advisor was 100% hands off other than telling me "you did it wrong" during my defense (would have been handy to know 6 months before but oh well).  My first real "boss" was more concerned about keeping things for himself so he'd be indispensable when layoffs came around (and he's the last one left of us 7).  My last boss wasn't even there the day I started and I had a junior guy show up at the gate and go "I guess I'm supposed to show you around, sit at this computer & take training for 6 hours & I'll come back at the end of the day."  Even my current boss has said "I wish I had more time to see what you can do, people say great things about your work so you obviously know what you're doing, keep it up."  Like I get a job and they just pay me to do what I want, since I'm a go-getter that means shit gets done quickly and without ANY intervention on their part.  I'm now to the point where if I hear of a new guy not spreading his wings & flying all by himself within a month or two on the job I feel he's lazy or incompetent...

[Polysorbate80]

What is mentoring, really?  You listen to them, give them support (including a little push now and then if they need it), and tell them both when they're kinda fucking up AND doing very good.  In a positive way.  That's all shit you need to do if you want to have a good relationship with someone anyways.

On a semi-related note, my boss of nearly 15 years retired last Friday, and it's my first day running the show.  Officially I'm an "interim" manager, but unofficially I've got six months to not fuck things up and the job is mine. 

Step one for the new regime is to throw shit away.  We've got equipment here that wasn't being used before we moved offices 12 years ago, and that stuff has gotta go.  The trick is the University's got policies on how stuff is disposed of, so I can't just throw it all in a dumpster and set fire to it...

[Chimpy]

Sounds like my boss at my previous job. He had pallets full of server equipment from the late 90s that he kept "in case someone might need a part".

[Yegolev]

Mentoring is real and it's not hard.  I put it on my resume since I do it.  It's pretty much just helping someone get things done.  I wish more people did it.

[Strazos]

Eh, it can be more than just "getting things done," but this depends on the culture of your employer - we're really big on it where I am, but we're much more "career" focused rather than this simply being a job, so there's lots of things new folks just aren't going to get for a while unless someone points it out to them.

[Yegolev]

You are very right, it can get very specific and in-depth.  I find that most people don't bother with it at all, though.

[Merusk]

Yep and then those same people proceed to bitch about "these kids never know anything."

Mentoring is essential to my industry, but there's a LOT of people who feel it's beneath them or something that should have been learned in school. I want to beat these people about the head and shoulders while yelling, "YES, JUST LIKE YOU LEARNED TO DETAIL THE FLASHING OF AN END DAM IN SCHOOL, RIGHT, JACKASS? All that studio time focused on construction methods and not how pretty a thing was, right? NO!"

 

[Yegolev]

Architects, amirite?

[Merusk]

Yep. Profession attracts more assholes than portalets.

[Strazos]

The key is for mentoring to be built-in to the workplace culture - here, it's a flat-out requirement that supervisors and senior leaders are evaluated against. A senior manager who ignores their mentoring responsibilities will get absolutely ripped during an OIG inspection.

Of course, I don't have a typical employer - the vast, vast majority of required job knowledge really just cannot be learned anywhere but on the job. However, the knowledge folks bring with them can sometimes make that process a heck of a lot easier.

[Paelos]

Yep. Profession attracts more assholes than portalets.

Heh, gonna use that in a blog post at some point.

[Merusk]

If you don't want me asking your boss about your resignation because I'm concerned about replacing you with someone of similar skill and interest, don't tell me you resigned.

Also; If there's something keeping the ENTIRE FIRM from printing, YES you can call me and the Department head even though we're in all-day meetings with the rest of leadership. ESPECIALLY because the Netadmin was being a douche about pushing the driver updates via group policy. Fuck me, why would you leave on Friday when nobody can print. The ONE THING we need to get shit into the archaic job review process!

/headdesk

[Yegolev]

Coincidentally, the family just watched Jurassic Park this weekend.

[Yegolev]

And so, without even trying, I've become a Real DevOps engineer.  On paper, at least.

[Yegolev]

Turns out that Chef uses knife and whisk, and I think I saw a spoon somewhere.  I do like puns but I'm wary of an enterprise solution that embraces them.  I'm probably JUST OLD.

[Trippy]

And cookbooks, and recipes and kitchen.

[koro]

Maybe Cheddar needs a lackey or houseboy. Or you could get the hell out of South Cackaslackey.

We are hiring in Elgin.  www.verizonwireless.com/careers.

CS and tech support call center work.

Kept forgetting to mention it, but I applied and was rejected for those a few weeks back. Got some form email saying I didn't meet their qualifications.

Alas.

[Ghambit]

Thanks guys, Baton Rouge and TB are good ideas. Same goes for Atlanta and Nashville, but I would need to carefully choose my home location there.  I have 11 weeks of severance pay so not going tits up just yet. 

TB/St. Pete are nice because they're an I-4 tech. corridor city.  With pvt. space industry clamoring for small business vendors, it's a nice location to be.  TB spends a lot on small business growth (in tech) as well lately.  Note: Lakeland just opened the state's first truly tech. school (I was accepted there, but didn't attend).

If it was me, I'd live inside Walt's world (probably Celebration) and commute.  Otherwise, live in St. Pete, which is a very "old money" feeling yachtie style community.

[ezrast]

Turns out that Chef uses knife and whisk, and I think I saw a spoon somewhere.  I do like puns but I'm wary of an enterprise solution that embraces them.  I'm probably JUST OLD.

Having also just become a DevOps Engineer*, I have been learning Salt. It has grains and mines and pillars. I think there must be something about deployment automation in particular.

*probably

[Tannhauser]

Thanks guys, Baton Rouge and TB are good ideas. Same goes for Atlanta and Nashville, but I would need to carefully choose my home location there.  I have 11 weeks of severance pay so not going tits up just yet. 

TB/St. Pete are nice because they're an I-4 tech. corridor city.  With pvt. space industry clamoring for small business vendors, it's a nice location to be.  TB spends a lot on small business growth (in tech) as well lately.  Note: Lakeland just opened the state's first truly tech. school (I was accepted there, but didn't attend).

If it was me, I'd live inside Walt's world (probably Celebration) and commute.  Otherwise, live in St. Pete, which is a very "old money" feeling yachtie style community.

OK thanks.  Update:  I'm still unemployed, but have a couple of good leads.  One is working as an Air Force civilian.  I'm hoping to get hired down at Patrick AFB or Cape Canaveral.  They both do rocket launches to support both government and civilian launches.  Also open postings for Ft. Walton Beach and Panama City areas and Charleston SC and even over in England. 

[Cheddar]

Maybe Cheddar needs a lackey or houseboy. Or you could get the hell out of South Cackaslackey.

We are hiring in Elgin.  www.verizonwireless.com/careers.

CS and tech support call center work.

Kept forgetting to mention it, but I applied and was rejected for those a few weeks back. Got some form email saying I didn't meet their qualifications.

Alas.

Should have PM'd me.  Good luck!

[Yegolev]

Having also just become a DevOps Engineer*, ... *probably

I know, right?

Yes, I might have made fun of SaltStack instead, but their tutorial site and data organization makes my brain baby kick.  I'm currently unsure if it's me or them, but I haven't crested the grok hill with Salt yet.  I mean, I know what it does and generally how it does it, but something in the presentation/implementation is outside my ability to grasp just now.  The naming in the YAML seems a tad arbitrary to my old-school brain, but I probably just don't "get it" yet and that will pass.  I figure that I just need practical time with it.

Instead of this, I'm going to work on someone else's Perl.

[ezrast]

From what I've seen Salt isn't too hard but the documentation is indeed fucked from the beginning, with the "Get Started Guide," the "Official Salt Walkthrough," and the "Tutorials" all offering overlapping but distinct and sometimes contradictory information. Once you get to the point where you mostly just need the reference materials it's mostly passable.

[Yegolev]

Related to the conversation between koro and Cheddar:
If you are applying to The Weather Channel, Weather Underground, or WSI then PM me.

[Khaldun]

Well, I got taken kind of seriously for the reach job I applied for, but it's pretty clear that if I actually want to make that kind of move I'll have to seriously chase opportunities that are sort of in-between what I'm doing now and what I applied for--in the end, they not only made it pretty clear that they just couldn't move ahead if I didn't have certain kinds of work experience, they picked a guy who *did* have that experience who was actually chased out of his last position, in the view of most people, because he screwed up. E.g., it's more important to have climbed the ladder correctly than to be an interesting but 'unproven' candidate.

I'm not sure it's worth it to chase the administrative posts that prove you're on the ladder, though. Lots of downside in terms of what the work is like, and also some pretty serious risk exposure compared to my sometimes frustrating but very safe position. I'll get a chance to talk to a friend this fall who made the same kind of move last year, with some of the same misgivings I have, and see what she thinks of it now.

[Polysorbate80]

Don't you work in higher ed?  I work at a University, and there's another one just across the state line a few miles away.  It surprises me no end that these institutions that are forever trying to be innovative, "out-of-the-box" leaders wind up constantly bogging down in a mire of self-imposed inertia and fear of change.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, higher ed. Basically, yeah, I was interested in being part of the leadership in an institution that is very out-of-the-box by its design, where there's almost no way for it to get bogged down in business-as-usual without dying, because that's the only hook it has to offer. It's self-imposed inertia that's driving me nuts right now where I am, even though my objective terms of work are pretty great. But even at this place I was looking at I think it looks too scary to hire someone whose primary experience is on the faculty side (even if that's involved a lot of administrative work)--everything in academia now has narrow professional niches that have their own specific career trajectory and pedigrees.  There's only a few institutions that I can think of that are willing to do some interestingly unexpected things in this way--say when MIT hired Joi Ito to direct the Media Lab.