- If you are contacting me unsolicited, the first part of your message should be what job you are offering me, not a demand for a resume and home address.
- If I have given you the courtesy of writing back, explaining that I am currently under contract but will be available in N months, try to keep your job solicitations to less than weekly. Companies that politely write back expressing their interest get added to list of places to contact when I'm on the market again. Companies that ignore me and send me more inappropriate offers may not get the first round of e-mails.
- If you want me to start in two weeks, on a different coast, for a temporary position, the pay had damn well better be "market"
- I know that you aren't programmers, and some of the finer technical distinctions may escape you, and there is a fudge factor in both job postings and resumes. But do you notice how none of the languages or systems required for this job are listed under the "languages" section of my resume? That's a clue that I might not be the right person for the job.
- Failing that, could you maybe figure out that the one year of experience I have is less than the five years experience this job requires?
- Or that "tester" is different than "technical lead"?
- It really is insulting for you start a solicitation by demanding information from me. So imagine how pissed off I get when you don't even tell me what the job is.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
using my powers for good
According to site meter, most of my visitors are recruiting firms, so let me take this opportunity to give you all some advice:
Monday, November 26, 2007
Happy espioging
Business week has a video podcast up about how to conduct an interview. Go and learn
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Only chaos is sustainable
I happened to be reading this article* on the effect of the minimum wage at the same time I was reading Off the Books,: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. I'll leave discussion of the book as a whole to more qualified folks^, but those two sources, plus a pattern of posts in academic blogs, have helped me cement some thoughts on job having and finding. Specifically: dynamic equilibrium is good, static equilibrium is another word for decay.
For those who haven't taken chemistry in a while: equilibrium means quantitative measures are staying constant- for example, x% of the salt has dissolved in the water. Stable equilibrium is probably closer to what people think of when they mean "stay the same": each molecule is in the same state forever. Dynamic equilibrium means that the overall picture doesn't change- there's still x% of the salt dissolved- but an individual salt molecule may go from dissolved to undissolved hundreds of time.
Now let me use an analogy that doesn't make you wince or fall asleep at your desk, plus fits my point better: the medieval European cathedrals were built out of stone, and more or less didn't need maintenance- they were at a stable equilibrium. Meanwhile, over in Japan, there wasn't enough stone, so they built temples out of wood, which constantly rotted and needed to be replaced. For the century or so, stone looked more stable. But after several hundred years, even stone gets run down. But by that point, no one knew how to build castles. Meanwhile, the constant need for repair meant that temple-maintenance and building skills were alive and well in Japan. My feeling is that only dynamic equilibrium is truly indefinitely maintainable.
How does this relate to job searching? Suppose your goal is to maximize the time you're employed and minimize the time you're unemployed. There are two ways to do this: minimize the time between leaving one job and starting another, and minimize the number of these transition times. So for a given risk tolerance, the longer it takes to find a job, the less likely you are to leave your current one.* Several things affect the time to find a job, but by far the biggest one is the number of appropriate openings in a given time period, relative to the number of people applying to them. Unfortunately, there's a vicious cycle in which the longer it takes to find a new job, the longer people stay in their old jobs.
This would be fine, if everyone was already in their optimal job, but until we implement stable matching, and keep all parties involved from ever changing, that's not going to happen. The best thing for everyone would be to make switching jobs relatively easy and stigma free.
Programmers have this easier than most, because demand outstrips supply, and if you choose your location well you don't have to uproot your life to change jobs. And any occupation in which you freelance has the same benefits. Off the Books discusses how works in the ghetto shorten their inter-job time by having incredible flexibility as to what jobs they do. On the other end of the spectrum are academics, who have months between applying to a job and getting a decision, a huge pool of applicants, and a very small pool of appropriate jobs. And even in good job markets, highly senior people can take a long time to find a job, because churn is slow. My friend's dad is a highly skilled lawyer, but he's place bound in an area without a concentration of appropriate jobs, and it's taking him forever to find something.
In slow-churn areas like liberal art academics, a little bit of discrimination can fuck up someone's entire life. In high churn areas, it might hurt them for a couple of months. High churn areas are a lot more amenable to leaving the workforce for a few years for kids, then popping back in.
It's also a lot easier to coordinate jobs with a spouse if you both can work anywhere relatively quickly (or for that matter, move back to your home town to take care of an ailing parent).
That said, there's not much an individual job seeker can do about this, except choose a quick-turnaround field, so this isn't really helpful in any sense of the word. I just find it interesting.
*I include it for completeness, but it's not the best I've read on the subject, and goes against prevailing consensus.
^Okay, a few comments. 1. Venkates desperately needed a co-author and/or heroic editor. It's incredibly interesting data, but not particularly well presented 2. Like other books I've read on the sociology of poverty in America (which, okay, is one), this one leaves out related phenomena that seem incredibly relevant to me, and it seems to me that they're leaving out data that would make their subjects look bad. In Off the Books, it's welfare. Aside from explaining that one woman wasn't eligible due to past fraud, and a passing mention of food stamps while talking about facilitators, he doesn't touch on welfare at all, and I have to assume that welfare has a huge effect on an urban poor economy.
*My points hold for job searching while employed, but take longer to explain.
For those who haven't taken chemistry in a while: equilibrium means quantitative measures are staying constant- for example, x% of the salt has dissolved in the water. Stable equilibrium is probably closer to what people think of when they mean "stay the same": each molecule is in the same state forever. Dynamic equilibrium means that the overall picture doesn't change- there's still x% of the salt dissolved- but an individual salt molecule may go from dissolved to undissolved hundreds of time.
Now let me use an analogy that doesn't make you wince or fall asleep at your desk, plus fits my point better: the medieval European cathedrals were built out of stone, and more or less didn't need maintenance- they were at a stable equilibrium. Meanwhile, over in Japan, there wasn't enough stone, so they built temples out of wood, which constantly rotted and needed to be replaced. For the century or so, stone looked more stable. But after several hundred years, even stone gets run down. But by that point, no one knew how to build castles. Meanwhile, the constant need for repair meant that temple-maintenance and building skills were alive and well in Japan. My feeling is that only dynamic equilibrium is truly indefinitely maintainable.
How does this relate to job searching? Suppose your goal is to maximize the time you're employed and minimize the time you're unemployed. There are two ways to do this: minimize the time between leaving one job and starting another, and minimize the number of these transition times. So for a given risk tolerance, the longer it takes to find a job, the less likely you are to leave your current one.* Several things affect the time to find a job, but by far the biggest one is the number of appropriate openings in a given time period, relative to the number of people applying to them. Unfortunately, there's a vicious cycle in which the longer it takes to find a new job, the longer people stay in their old jobs.
This would be fine, if everyone was already in their optimal job, but until we implement stable matching, and keep all parties involved from ever changing, that's not going to happen. The best thing for everyone would be to make switching jobs relatively easy and stigma free.
Programmers have this easier than most, because demand outstrips supply, and if you choose your location well you don't have to uproot your life to change jobs. And any occupation in which you freelance has the same benefits. Off the Books discusses how works in the ghetto shorten their inter-job time by having incredible flexibility as to what jobs they do. On the other end of the spectrum are academics, who have months between applying to a job and getting a decision, a huge pool of applicants, and a very small pool of appropriate jobs. And even in good job markets, highly senior people can take a long time to find a job, because churn is slow. My friend's dad is a highly skilled lawyer, but he's place bound in an area without a concentration of appropriate jobs, and it's taking him forever to find something.
In slow-churn areas like liberal art academics, a little bit of discrimination can fuck up someone's entire life. In high churn areas, it might hurt them for a couple of months. High churn areas are a lot more amenable to leaving the workforce for a few years for kids, then popping back in.
It's also a lot easier to coordinate jobs with a spouse if you both can work anywhere relatively quickly (or for that matter, move back to your home town to take care of an ailing parent).
That said, there's not much an individual job seeker can do about this, except choose a quick-turnaround field, so this isn't really helpful in any sense of the word. I just find it interesting.
*I include it for completeness, but it's not the best I've read on the subject, and goes against prevailing consensus.
^Okay, a few comments. 1. Venkates desperately needed a co-author and/or heroic editor. It's incredibly interesting data, but not particularly well presented 2. Like other books I've read on the sociology of poverty in America (which, okay, is one), this one leaves out related phenomena that seem incredibly relevant to me, and it seems to me that they're leaving out data that would make their subjects look bad. In Off the Books, it's welfare. Aside from explaining that one woman wasn't eligible due to past fraud, and a passing mention of food stamps while talking about facilitators, he doesn't touch on welfare at all, and I have to assume that welfare has a huge effect on an urban poor economy.
*My points hold for job searching while employed, but take longer to explain.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Unhelpful advice
Attractiveness is positively correlated with tips for waitresses. I don't have a hyperlink to my freshman year psych textbook, but it's also correlated with getting hired and not being found criminally insane. I'm going to go evo-psych on you all and suggest that this isn't just a male desire to be surrounded by attractive women. Attractiveness is correlated with current health and childhood health, both of which are correlated with intelligence.
How can you make this work for you? Dress nicely. Wash. Make sure your hair is clean (although a friend tells me that super long hair is unprofessional for women). Plastic surgery is probably overkill.
Don't go too far though. Especially for women applying for knowledge jobs, looking too beautiful or sexual makes you look unprofessional, 'cause really, you can't be both hot and smart. That's just not right.
How can you make this work for you? Dress nicely. Wash. Make sure your hair is clean (although a friend tells me that super long hair is unprofessional for women). Plastic surgery is probably overkill.
Don't go too far though. Especially for women applying for knowledge jobs, looking too beautiful or sexual makes you look unprofessional, 'cause really, you can't be both hot and smart. That's just not right.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Think Like Syrup
Ask The Headhunter has some advice I do agree with: how to make yourself stand out in a job interview. He compares it to sticky websites, which I think is a bit odd, but it works.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
More straying from the mission
Jane Espenson, a writer/producer on Buffy, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica (not all at once, obviously) has a blog, focused on helping aspiring screen writers perfect their craft, although obviously she's got a lot of strike updates at the moment. I'm really sympathetic to this strike, moreso than any other strike I can remember, but seeing a writer I really like describe her picketing location with multiple exclamation marks is just depressing.
Besides that, it seems like a great resource for prospective screenwriters, a constituency I'm sure reads this blog with rapt attention, and in large numbers.
Besides that, it seems like a great resource for prospective screenwriters, a constituency I'm sure reads this blog with rapt attention, and in large numbers.
Code Monkey like tab and mountain dew
I initially resisted contract work, because I thought that it was mostly click-monkey manual testing, and I wanted something more interesting. This turns out to be absolutely not true- I have done more automation and planning in my first two and a half week at my current (temp) position than I did in my year at my previous job, and I have a lot more responsibility (in a good way). It may partly be a function of size: large companies hire temps mostly to do work they don't want to waste a full time employee on, small companies hire temps to smooth out variations in their work flow without taking on a major obligation.
On the other hand, being a temp lawyer sounds like exactly what I pictured for programming, and I didn't even know that click monkey was even an option for lawyers. Tom the Temp makes me glad I didn't choose law the way Young Female Scientist makes me glad I didn't choose academia. To be fair, lawyer temps are bored and mistreated at $35/hour, which is a hell of a lot better than what some people have. Even people with years of post-graduate education. But it still sounds hellish.
On the other hand, being a temp lawyer sounds like exactly what I pictured for programming, and I didn't even know that click monkey was even an option for lawyers. Tom the Temp makes me glad I didn't choose law the way Young Female Scientist makes me glad I didn't choose academia. To be fair, lawyer temps are bored and mistreated at $35/hour, which is a hell of a lot better than what some people have. Even people with years of post-graduate education. But it still sounds hellish.
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