At the Democratic Convention yesterday everyone kept on saying that Obama is going to create new jobs and he is going to create them in the areas that are hardest hit by out sourcing. These jobs are going to be good playing and for the middle class. There is a lot of talk that they are going to do it, but not a word of how they are going to do it.
I know in elections people do not give out specific plans. They do not want to be judged on the details of their plans in case they get elected and cannot pull it off. The problem is I really want details. I already know what republicans will do to spur job growth. You are saying the republicans have failed. I want to know just want you will do to create those jobs. I do not want to hear "invent in green technology and clean energy." I want to know just want that means. If you want to win over people like me, I think the plans will have to be more detailed.
I have been holding onto this for a while. Back in 2007 I was looking for a new job. I was complaining about my resume not being up to date. I asked if any of my friends wanted to write my resume for me. Antwon was the only person to take me up on this challenge. I did not end up using this resume for my current job.
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Objective: To be accepted as god among men, commandeering armies and putting said forces toward my own material ends.
Skills: I wrote “Of Mice and Men”. Was nominated for Peabody award; lost out to Vulcan Hippies who had unique interpretation of Woodstock.
Invented time travel. By using time travel, went back in time; invented bacon bits, toothpaste, Calvinism.
Have discovered no fewer than 1800 shades of the color blue deep within the Amazon Basin, many of which has been assumed to be extinct.
Got honorary doctorate from University of Southeastern Phoenix, Martian Campus.
Have set numerous national records regarding the consumption of tapioca.
Work history: 2004-present Invented nanite delivery system for NASA. Created different flavors (e.g., French vanilla, chipotle) to maximize nanite uptake and astronaut acceptability thereof. Discovered optimal strategy to ensure gray goo problem affected Commies, Cuban sympathizers. Made inroads towards creating exciting laptop version of said nanites. Programming languages used: Perl; Lisp; Tuvalu click-oriented throat clasping.
2001-2004: Herded plantation of cats in Australian Outback, Managed feline teams in excess of 400. Ensured maximum cuddly-wuddliness, minimum hairballs. Created pithy PowerPoint presentations correlating feline throughput to various external factors.
January 18, 2001: Built Rome. Took only one day. Achieved goal through careful foreplanning, copious Mafia contacts, creatively interpreting OSHA standards. (Length that hastily built Rome lasted available upon request.)
1988-2000: Invented novelty banana slug products. Was tougher than you might think.
I was looking at an old Sad Salvation entry and I found a mix that I never finished. It was a Job/Layoff mix from back in 2001. It was at the bottom of the bubble and lots of people were getting laid off.
I figure that I better finish up the mix and put in my blog. It has become a little more of a work mix. tell me what you think.
I Better Take Anything They Got
Career Opportunities - The Clash Where Do I Go - Hair Soundtrack Fred Jones Pt 2 - Ben Folds Cowboy - Kid Rock Finest Worksong - R.E.M. Call In Sick - Big Daddy Graham Happy Workers - Tori Amos Working In A Coal Mine - Devo Working Undercover for the Man - They Might Be Giants Taking Care of Business - BTO Work Is A Four-Letter Word - The Smiths 9 To 5 - Dolly Parton Today Was A Good Day - Ice Cube I Will Survive - Gloria Gainer
I have not thought about gender and work in a while. In the Merc news today there is a story about how jobs are divided by gender. This is pretty interesting. I wonder if this has anything to do with women settling for less in salary negations. I wonder if this might pull a whole profession down.
I also wonder if it is something else all together different. This stat really stood out to me.
About 42 percent of the nation's working women are employed in just 20 occupations out of 450 on the government's standardized roster of jobs, including preschool and kindergarten teachers (98 percent female), secretaries and administrative assistants (97 percent female), receptionists (93 percent female), registered nurses (91 percent female) and maids and house cleaners (88 percent female).
It makes me wonder about the labor supply and demand in these fields. I wonder if this is more than just labor the difference. Is there a difference in the competitive nature of these fields? Is like fields for a men more dangerous or dirty. I think looking at the top five might give us some insights.
1. Logging workers 2. Automotive body and related repairers 3. Cement masons, concrete finishers, terrazzo workers 4. Bus and truck mechanics, diesel engine specialists 5. Electrical power-line installers and repairers
To be honest I do not hear feminists yelling for more women to be in these fields. I think you need to see longer lists to see what is happening. I am not sure that these things are going to change any time soon. I am not saying that sexism is not at work here, but there are forces more powerful than just regular men being sexists here. Unless those forces are understood nothing with change.
I saw this article about how Google is going through its job applications. They are asking the people who apply now to fill out a survey. I wonder if someone can Google Bomb the survey. If it takes 15 people to rig the survey, do you have to split the job between all of them.
I will admit that I am not happy about the way Google hires. I am from the tribe of people who did not do well at school. I would like to think that I am a good employee now. I know I have worked with good people who have not had the best grades. I am worried that Google is going to leave good talent on the table and set an example for other companies. I just wonder how it will effect the future of high tech hiring.
I heard Barbara Ehrenreich on the cambridge forum on Sunday. She was talking about her new book Bait and Switch. I have not read her new book yet, but it sounds like her experience trying to get a job doing PR.
A couple of things she said struck me as odd. She said that the internet is a black hole when it comes to searching for a job. You never get any feedback. I do not see how different it is from the days of mailing paper resumes. I rarely got any feedback about sending a resume in the mail. I only heard back from companies if they had some kind of legal action against them.
She reacted very strongly to how much looking for a job is about personality. She was offended that people hat to hire people that they like. She said that she found looking for a job was 90% about personality and 10% about qualifications. My experence it more that getting a job is 55% personalty and 45% qualification. I think this is because so many jobs are about team work. If no one wanted to work with me, I would not be able to do my job. I think many people will hire someone slighly less qualifed if they will be able to work with the person.
One job coach told her not to have any experence on her resume older that 10 years. She sees this as a form of age discrimination. I wonder if is different than that. I wonder if people are only interested what you have done lately. In the high tech world it is seen as the world changes so quickly. What you did 10 years ago does not mean anything compaired with what you did last year.
I should read her book to see what it says. I have the feeling that I will not agree with all of it.
Some times someone needs to tell you the Signs it is time to quit your job. This list makes sense to me. I think the most important items are No. 2: The environment is toxic and No. 10: You feel stifled. I find that these are two things that will cause to hate a job.
Five more signs that are missing from this list:
1 - No path for advancement - The keys to a career is job trajectory. What you are doing this year will lead you to what you are doing next year. You can stay at a job that has no path for advancement for a while, but you will need to advance sometime. In a job where you cannot advance, there is a clock on how long you can stay there.
2 - No personal growth in the job - You have to be learning things at your job. If you are not it can get boring fast. It is way to easy to become a clock puncher if you are not growing in your job.
3 - Unrealistic requirements - Everyone has a line. For some people it is 30 hours a week and others it is 60 hours a week. Whatever your line is, there are other people who are jobs that will always ask for more. If the job is crossing the line for you, it is time to leave. If you are doing the work of two or three people a company will not correct that if the job is getting done. I understand time to market and budget constraints, but the nature of work is to keep on pressing until people break. Sometimes the only way to correct this is to find a new job.
4 - No sense of accomplishment in your work - At the end of the day or at the end of a project everyone wants to feel like they are doing something worth doing. We do not want to feel like we are getting paid to be Sisyphus. Your performance will suffer if you do not believe in what you are doing.
5 - Personal agendas get in the way of business agendas - I hear about this all the time. I know companies where the VPs rate their importance by how many people are in their org or how big their budget is. That can cause a lot of bad work to be done to protect empires. That is a company you want to leave.
This list is odd because it combines signs that a work place is not right for the individual with signs that the workplace is dysfunctional. Often when a workplace is not right for worker they should look to fix the situation right away. Few good things come from a workplace where you do not fit in.
Dysfunctional work places are kind of funny. Sometimes people can thrive in a dysfunctional work place. You can get a head if you understand the dysfunction. You can get opportunities you might not get other places, but you are taking a risk. At any moment the dysfunction can turn on you. A worker always needs an escape plan from a dysfunctional work place.
I have living in Silicon Valley for seven years now. I started my job seven years ago today. I am past the point where those seven years feel like both a long and and short time. Now it feels like a long time. When I got here everyone was talking about the internet boom. Now everyone is talking about web 2.0, but I am not sure everyone thinks they can get rich off it.
I have worked at this job longer then I worked all of the jobs I had as an adult combined. That might be why it seems like a long time.
Who knows how long I will be here. The last time I was home, when my mother asked me about moving back to Philadelphia my father said, "He has been there this long, I don't think he is in a rush to come back." There is something comfortable about San Jose. It is the kind of city that seems to fit me.
For a while I have taken pride in working for TiVo, a company that is the best in the world at what we do. It looks like someone agrees with my assessment.
Once again it is time for the Friday Five. This week I am even doing it on Friday.
1. What was your first job? I had a summer job working at Burger King. We had nine different managers (the story usually had three at a time) in the six weeks I worked there.
2. How old were you when you had your first kiss? 16. I meet the girl in driver's ed class. We are still friends.
3. What was your first car? What happened to it? My first car was a 1988 Plymouth Reliant K. It was my father's car and he gave it to me my second year in college. I put over 200,000 miles on that car, after my father had already put 100,000 on it. The engine died after a long life of service.
4. What was your first concert? The Monkees. It was their first reunion tour in the 80s. They were playing after the Temple University Homecoming game. My oldest sister took a big group of my friends to the game.
5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? Cleaning the apartment, Watching the Eagles, maybe San Jose Car Show, maybe a movie.
The last company that I worked for before I left the Philadelphia area was Ficomp, Inc. In many ways working at that job helped me figure out that I wanted to leave town. I was an accounts receivable clerk there. It was really a futureless job. I could have stayed in the same position for 30 years and no one would have noticed.
I went back there today to have lunch with a friend who is still working there. The company has grown and there are some new faces there. What surprises me are the things that have not changed. A lot of the people I worked with are still there. Most of them are still working in the same jobs. Some of those people are having the same conversations they had three years ago.
When I go back to that building I am so happy that I left for the west coast. I have no doubt if I was still at Ficomp I would be more unhappy that I can even think about right now. I think about the idea of working for this company again and it makes me want to gag. I know if I hit hard times and I was back in the Philadelphia area, I would have to think about asking for a job there. This is an idea that scares me.
I think I am done visiting Ficomp when I come home to visit my family. I will still try to visit my friend who works there, but I do not want to keep on visiting the office. I think I have it out of my system now. I do not think I need to network with these people any more. It is time for me to break with this part of my pass.
I found out last week that my job is secure. TiVo is not planning to cut my job in the upcoming months. They are actually going to adding people to my department. This makes me feel pretty good. I am not ready to leave TiVo yet. I do not think I will be ready leave right after the holidays either. I want to stick around for a while. I do not want to be unemployed in Silicon Valley until things start to rebound around here.
Having a certain future takes a huge monkey off my back. It gives me a chance to make better plans. If I leave TiVo, I would like it to be on my terms. I do not want to be asked to leave because I am being laid off. There is part of me that thinks that I want to be at TiVo until we either hit it big or close up shop. I do not want to be asked to leave before the big finish.
I have to try not to do anything too stupid with my money. I need to build up my funds so I do not find myself out in the cold if I do get laid off. There is still a chance that might happen to me. I cannot depend on nothing. My job still might go away. I feel that I will still have a job, but I spend money like I am going to be laid off.
I still feels good to not worry about my job. I should start thinking about other things now. I am not sure what those other things are. I know there are a lot of things that I am not paying enough attention to right now. It is bad to let too many things in my life go to seed.
There is a chance that I will be looking for a new job in the first quarter next year. There is a chance that my position at TiVo will no longer be there. This is really scary to me. I cannot talk about too many of the details. What I do know is that I have the chance to survive the next round of layoffs. There is also a clear chance that my job will no longer exist.
This hangs over my head like the Sword of Damocles. At work I am trying to make sure I survive. When I am on the job I can focus on working. When I come home I start to think about my future. I start to think about what my life is going to be like if I get laid off. When I think about getting laid off, this is when I panic. I really do not want to be looking for another job right now.
I am in an odd position when I am looking for a job. My current position is Customer Service Engineer. If I tell people my title they do not understand it right away. I am the person that goes between the Engineering department and the Customer Support department. I am the person that makes the information flow both directions.
The problem with my job is that it is a hard job to find in another organization. Most of the time you cannot just walk into a job like mine in another organization. I do not want to go back to being a phone support rep again. I think I have burned myself out from doing that. I know that there are other things that I could do. I just have not figured those things out yet.
I am regarded well at my job. I know people and I feel that I have a good reputation. I do not want to lose any of these things. For once in my life I am at a company that is fun to work at. As long as it is fun to work at TiVo, I do not want anyone to show me the door. I am not sure how I am going to get around that. I know now is the time I have to work hard and make sure people want me kept around.
This has been one of the longest weeks that I have had in recent memory. On Monday I knew that something was going down at week. I thought there was a chance that I might lose my job. On Tuesday I found out that I was going to keep my job, but I was not sure what the fallout of the layoff would be. On Wednesday I found out that my department might be done away with after the holiday. On Thursday I spent the day trying to figure out where my jog would be going. On Friday I tried to pick it all up again.
I am happy this week is over. Last night I was physically and mentally exhausted. It had been such a hard week I had nothing left when I got home. I feel asleep right after I got back to my apartment. I must have slept for 9 hours. I was so beat it felt good to just sink into my bed. I took such an emotional beating this week, it felt good to just surrender to my bed last night.
I am looking forward to Monday. It will give me the chance to sort everything out at work. It will give me a fresh start. I am hoping I can focus next week. On Friday I really could not focus at all. I seemed distracted by everything going on at work. I did not feel like getting any other work done. I am hoping to get some momentum next week. It will be hard to work if I cannot get going. I do not want the next couple of months to be that hard.
I have now been through two rounds of layoffs. This round of layoffs has a really different feel to it then the last round did. In the last round I felt that I was being played as a sucker. For a little while I felt as if it would have been better if I was laid off. This round feels a lot different.
In the April round of layoffs they destroyed my department. They laid off my boss and half my department. After the layoff they tried to pull me closer to the call center. At first they wanted me to spend half my time taking customer support calls. I felt like I was getting demoted. It was not really the job I wanted to do. I found someway to fight through that.
This time it is very different. I felt that I was kept because of my skills. I feel that I was kept because they see something in my that will be important in the future. I am proud that I survived. I feel like I have done something right. I know that I have the chance to hang in at TiVo. I know that I have the ability to stick around a lot longer if I given the change.
I guess the big difference is that I have a clearer idea of what is going on around me. I think that I can see what is motivating the people around me and around the company. I do not think I am going to be screwed by someone else. I will have to see what happens from this point forward. I have a good outlook, but things can always turn on me. I will have to see what happens.
If you want a more objective view of the layoff you can check out Yahoo.
I talked to our Evangelist about the layoffs. He seemed to be taking it really hard. I asked him how he was taking it. He said it is hard whenever your family gets smaller. He takes the company very personally. I guess that is what happens when you are a corporate evangelist.
After I found out that I would not be laid off, I spent much of the afternoon thinking about two things. I thought about leaving San Jose and I thought about staying in San Jose. Both of these ideas have a lot of weight in my head. They seem to be a central idea behind my last few months here.
I do not consider San Jose to be my home. I live here, San Jose is the address on my drivers licence, everything I own is here. I still do not seen San Jose as my home. I feel that there is some kind of distance between me and the city. I lack a connection to the city most of the time. I feel connected to my apartment, my office, and my car. For rest of city could be any other place on earth.
With all those things city, San Jose has a small place in my heart. I want good things to happen to San Jose. I think people from the rest of Silicon Valley should show San Jose more respect. I think the construction going on around the city is a good thing. I worry that the economic downturn might effect the money for those projects.
There is part of me that wants to leave San Jose. I want a new city to explore. I want a new place to figure out. I want to live in a city that has better parks. I want to go somewhere that has a different character. I want new experiences. I feel that somewhere out there I could find a city that I would enjoy more then San Jose. I miss parts of Portland and Philadelphia. I wish some of those elements where here.
I think if I leave San Jose, I will never move back here. I know that the dot.com boom period is over. It is something I will not be able to cash in on. Right now Silicon Valley is paying for those excesses. The whole Valley is depressed right now. If I leave now, that is it for me. I am not going to make my way back here.
In my heart I feel that Silicon Valley will come back. I think there will be another explosion of technology that will fuel Valley again. I still want to be part of something like that. I think once we get to the other side of this down turn there will be a huge upturn. If I can get thought this period in the Valley, I will find a huge payoff. I want to be around for the next big thing.
If the forces of fate turn against me I see myself leaving San Jose. If I lose my job at TiVo, there is a good chance I will be moving onto my next city. I am not sure what city that is. If TiVo does not let me down, I see myself staying in San Jose for a while. I know that I change my mind every other day when it comes to this city. As of today, this is where I stand on San Jose. It might change any day.
Here is the seed for a layoff mix. It has a good start, but it needs something else.
Career Opportunities - The Clash Where Do I Go - Hair Soundtrack Fred Jones Pt 2 - Ben Folds 10 - Neutral Milk Hotel Cowboy - Kid Rock Today Was A Good Day - Ice Cube I Will Survive - Gloria Gainer
If you have any other ideas what should be on this mix send me a note.
I had two TiVo dreams. In the first dream TiVo was having a convention. TiVo had taken all of the employees to a resort hotel. TiVo had invited the families of all the employees to come along. My Parents came to the resort. The TiVo parties were going on throughout the hotel. My parents and I sat down in the only empty restaurant. We waited for other people from TiVo to join us. My sister Dot got there a little while later. I could not get my family and the people from TiVo into the same room. They just stayed in different rooms.
In my other dream a layoff was coming. I knew it, but I was not sure who else knew it. It got to the end of the day and they still did not have the meeting. Everyone in the company was loaded onto buses. We were told that we are going to an overnight meeting. The buses too us to a hotel. All of the employees where in a room together. JR was leading the meeting. We were doing things like, "Name ten things that remind you of band camp." It was like we were going to have one last fun time before we got laid off.
My fears about writing about work have been compounded. I read on the weblog of Mark Pilgrim that he was fired for comments that we wrote at his web log. The worst part is that it was not even comments he was making about his job. He was just writing about his life in general.
This makes me think about my weblog and my web site. I have been telling the people I work with about my web site. I have been trying to show off my Dreams about Bill Gates Site. I know that I have only told about a dozen people at work about the site, but that is going to spread. I am not saying that everyone at work is going to spend all their time reading my web page. I am just saying that someone might check in on it from time to time. I am not sure what they are going to say if they read some of the things I have written.
Part of my problem is that I have so many conflicting ideas about work. There is part of me that really wants to go and find a new city to live in. There is another part of me that want to stick it out at TiVo until the company either goes under or goes big time. I feel that I am working a job that is taking me nowhere, but I have a pride in the job I do. All of these conflicts make me think that I am going to stay at TiVo for a while. When I am faced by conflicts like this, inactivity usually wins out.
This adds to another part of my life I am going to hide from this web log. I already knew that there are a lot of little things that I will not put here. There are things about myself that I cannot tell my closest friends about. I know there are lots of little parts of my that I am not ready to put on the internet. I wonder if I will be able to give people a good idea of who I am without showing those parts of myself.
For the most part I am going to try to put this fear behind me. I am not going to worry too much about what I write here. I am probably kidding myself to think anyone is reading this web log at all. It would be nice to hear from anyone who is reading this.
I know that I cannot write everything that I want to write about work on this Web Log. I want people who I work with to be able to read it. I want to mention the name of the company that I work for, TiVo. I also want to mention my name. The problem is if I have these two things in this web log, who knows who will be able to find it. Some one might be able to search for it. I could cause some bad times for myself.
I never know how people are going to react in the world place. If someone fines my bitch about my job, it might be bad for me. I can see people say to me that if that is how I feel, I should look for another job. While I have problems with my job, I do not want to get fired because I am blowing off steam. That is something that I do not like.
A lot of the web logs I read people comment about their jobs. Most of my life revolves around my job. Am I going to be able to write anything interesting if I do not include my job in the mix. Will I feel there is a wall between my life and what I am writing? This is a tough question. For right now I will be careful about what I write about my job. Maybe I am kidding myself that anyone will read this.
