Slashdot Mirror
Internet Speed Applied to Careers
Johnny Mnemonic writes: "The Washington Post is running an story about a one-day Internet career. The guy quit his previous job, started a new job at 9:00--and was laid off by 5. Not sure whether to laugh or cry, but he probably holds the record for Internet flameouts. Isn't this how "Secret of My Success" started?"
The self-centered (and immoral) thing to do would have been to take his accumulated vacation time at the government contractor job, so when this gig vaporized he would still have a job to go back to.
The only moral I can find in this story is this- Ask for a signing bonus, and make sure the check clears before you quit your old job :-)
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
This is amusing, to be sure, but it underlines just how much people are letting the internet change their economic outlooks and their entire careers. Four years ago, the internet was going to change the world. Today, the world is much the same as it was twenty years ago, though with neater toys and perhaps fewer suits.
If you're changing how you're going about getting a new job, then you're crazy. You should be asking the same questions and demanding the same benefits/compensation today that you would've twenty years ago (adjusted for inflation, of course). Gone are the days of microserfdom with an eye to fabulous options. If they're not paying you cash and good dental, then look elsewhere.
I'm happy to say I rode the internet wave by staying by the sidelines. I had a lot less excitement than some of my buddies, but now I can say I'm the better for it. I'm several years further along in my career than they were, and now they have to scramble to make up for lost time. I don't envy them at all.
If I could work at one company in a nice area which paid me decently, gave me regular raises, gave me interesting work to do and valued my professional opinion, I'd stick around forever. Instead we're treated like an expendable commodity.
Every time I see this come up I'm reminded of how different American and Japanese companies are. I'm working for a Japanese software company, and I like it here; granted I've only been here a year as a regular employee (plus nine months as an intern before that), but the environment is pleasant, the work is interesting, the managers are for the most part sensible, and on the whole I find it a nice place to be. My benefits include 20 days of paid vacation a year (from year one) and company-owned housing (I pay $60/month), along with all the usuals.
Of course, you'd have to learn Japanese first, and with increasing competition from foreign companies working conditions are reportedly starting to deteriorate here as well, but it's still better than a lot of stories I hear from the US.
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BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL
This would look pretty interesting on this guy's next job application. When this guy writes about his previous job experience...and includes the dates of employment....
The anti-salmon
You should always have a Plan B. You never know what is going to happen. If I lose my job today I know at least three companies where I can get a job at. This is why you always prepare for the worst.
For a while there, a lot of people seemed to be under the impression that working in IT made them bulletproof. The economy was doing well, companies were hiring left and right, hiring bonuses were high, stock options were even higher.
Then came the problems. When the bubble burst, everyone thought "My job is safe. They'll just cut the {new | overpaid | deadwood} employees first. This was mostly true; the problem was, most people could be fit into any of these categories in the eyes of management. People were dropped during the first week, the first day, hell, even just before starting (which doesn't necessarily come with the luxury of severance pay, even though you've just left your old job and relocated). The people who were hit the hardest were the H1-B resident workers . . . you lose your job, you got 30 days to find another sponsor or it's back to your homeland with you. Jobs are still abundant, but it's not quite as easy as the media would have you believe to get rehired in an instant (especially if you just got laid off from your first job on Day 1).
So, everyone learned that the IT industry is, after all, no different from any other, and you should always cover your ass. The end.
Posted by polar_bear:
There's a lot of good advice being bandied about here, but it misses the bigger picture - depending on a large corporation for your living is a sketchy proposition at best. They have no interest in you, or your well-being. The bottom line is all-important - look how many companies are cutting staff not because they're unprofitable, but because they're just not profitable ENOUGH. The message is loud and clear - you are expendable. It's not about getting a job with a "reliable" company over a dot-com, because when times get tough you'll still be out of a job. Look at Intel, Cisco and the other companies that are ditching their employees right now.
Right now I work for myself, doing freelance writing and contract work. My goal is to find five to ten other folks who do the same kind of work that I do and form a company that works in the best interest of everyone in the "company" and shares the wealth. I think that in the "new" economy the people who are happy with their lives and careers are going to be the ones who stick with small companies that actually have an interest in taking care of their employees and don't have a desire to become the next Microsoft or Sun.
I think this is how a lot of Linux companies got started - but they got away from that model and are now paying the price. You hear a lot about how nervous people are about VA Linux or Red Hat, but no one is talking about how Slackware is struggling. Why not? I'd bet they still have a decent share of the market and the folks who work on Slackware are making a decent living. There's plenty of work in the Open Source space and Web consulting space for dozens or hundreds of small companies to make good livings - but I doubt that there's any room for a huge company that tries to be the next juggernaut corporation.
Just my 2 cents, though.
Back in high school many years ago, I saw a sign that read "What will you do when this button replaces your job?". My intuitive response was get a job fixing broken buttons. Keeping an eye on the classifieds kept me on track to the right field. I am one of the few who never made a buck flipping burgers. I knew sticking labels on bottles on an assembly line was not a job for me or the high tech equivelant, stuffing circuit boards. Low cost manual labor is the relm of the uneducated. Many engineering jobs are task oriented and therefore are temporary. Entering the technical service field has paid off well. I like a job requiring thinking and mechanical skills with steady recession resistant employment. Recessions are actualy good. More stuff is fixed instead of replaced.
The truth shall set you free!
An employee of mine that was working part time with me while finishing up his college degree was hired in August at a new company in San Jose, California, including signing bonus and all that stuff. He was going to be finished with his degree in December and was scheduled to start in January. Well this was last August, so you can guess what happened. He was laid off in early December, -27 days before he was going to start!!
He now works for a company involved in the Internet but actually making products, so it worked out in the end, but -27 days, now that's a story! :)
Also, he had very marketable skills so his only real question was does he have to give back his bonus? Last I heard, I think he got to keep it.
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Oh bother.
Two other factors:
Companies want to see some experience. There's a lot of junk fed to people in school, so there's a lot to UNlearn - starting with the attituds that you know what you're doing, that if it wasn't taught to you in school it's not important, etc. (This is especially true in software.)
You need to prove that you're over the hump and can do real work in the real world. That you can work with a team, rather than try to out-score the other team members. That you can handle a project with multiple solutions and not go for the "best" one over an "adequate and quick" or "easy to get right" one. That you can handle something longer, tougher, and more unknown than a class assignment, something without a canned solution. That you'll read the manual. That you'll pull a stock design for a wheel FROM a manual rather than trying to reinvent it.
Of course this gives you a chicken-and-egg problem: You need a job to get experience. You need experience to get a job. That's part of why work-study and unpaid internships can be a carreer win.
Most jobs are obtained through contacts. A recommend from somebody in or associated with the company is trusted much more than one that a candidate brought with him. A worker or administrator may know someone he's already worked with - and thus that he CAN work with - who has a necessary skill. And a contact will know of the jobs before HR does, and can help you prepare to fit in. And he probably won't try to get you into something he knows you can't handle.
At one time in many companies the HR department exists primarily to give nice brush-offs to the flood of unsolicited resumes while creating plausable excuses for hiring those recommended by insiders. Nowdays (or at least until the recent crash) they're more like a search firm. But even so an inside recommend is worth more than ten from outside.
It's called "networking".
And that's ANOTHER reason that work-study, internships, summer jobs, and the like are very valuable.
You notice the one offer you got was from someone you worked with while in school. Is that more understandable now?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The real answer is that a couple of the slashdot authors are sick.
Yeah, I know what a strain it is to post someone else's submission to Slashdot and add a "dept." tagline and maybe one or two sentences of my own. My prayers for a quick and complete return to health so that they can concentrate on a job which is obviously extremely mentally-taxing.
Cheers,
I think there is a theme building in this and several other Slashdot articles lately: you need to have common sense about your career choices.
Just like the guy last week who complained that his employer actually had the gall to try to enforce the intellectual property agreement that he signed, this guy didn't do his due diligence before hand.
It's a big nasty world out there. The last car dealer we went to in the bay area (Bob Lewis Volkswagon) tried to give us a starting price of $3,000.00 over MSRP. Abdominizers and other crappy products get sold to people like you and me, not just wrassin' watching folks in trailer parks. One of the good and bad things about the USA is that you can largely make your own mistakes.
I've made similar mistakes to this one. My 2nd job out of college was for a company that was taking over the regional office of another computer reseller. The deal got held up, and I spent two weeks in Cincinnati in a new apartment with no job. I take responsiblity for that mistake.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an incredible essay on self-reliance. (I also mirrored the Project Gutenburg free text version on my site here.) I carry it on my Palm Pilot and refer to it often when I'm feeling ripped off, used, or abused. There are two attitudes you can take when something happens to you, either it happened to you and you were powerless to prevent it, or it happend to you because you created it. The latter position is a more powerful one, since it gives you control of the situation and the power to change it.
Here's the last paragraph of Emerson's essay, I think it's a good summary of what I'm trying to say.
"So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."
- Twid
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
In '94, I was a college student who'd gone through a rigorous internship selection process and had finally been selected as the summer help at a software house. I was especially ecstatic because they were paying me an ungodly sum for an intern--almost as much as one of their engineers.
:)
I was given the good news on a Monday morning, and was told to show up bright and early Tuesday.
By lunch, the company's stock price fell eighty percent.
That afternoon, I got a call from HR. I'd been laid off.
All before I ever showed up for work.
I'm happy to say I rode the internet wave by staying by the sidelines.
:)
I do not understand this attitude. About a year and a half ago I started a company with my buddies. We got initial funding, things were getting along, then times got tough, funding was cut off, the company died. I still think the idea was great (simply because I would be a happily paying user of our product), but that's beyond the point.
We got burnt - true. But do we regret it? Well, I don't know about the other guys, but I definitely don't. Why should I? I got absolutely amazing experience with more stuff than I could've imagined (from configuring Linux/Apache/MySQL/Oracle/NT network/you_name_it to writing code and designing databases and XML specs to writing business plans and estimating costs/prices to bullshitting to clients and VCs to listening to bullshit from potential suppliers), I worked with great people, I got to see for myself how hard (but doable!) it is to actually create something on your own, I had fun, for god's sake!
If I had to choose again, would I do the same thing again? Absolutely!!! Well... maybe not - I would've probably joined my friend's start-up, which was bought by a stable public company a few days ago
I went into CS thinking that I would like it... and I didn't. Not to say I found the subject material entirely boring and difficult... some of it is quite interesting... but at the end of a 4 year education, I'm totally uninspired for a career in the field.
I never went into it for the money, but I'm a very practical person... I passed up a lot of other subject areas knowing full well that there was a lot of volatility and uncertainty in those fields. CS seemed, if anything, "safe". People to this day still preach to me that I'll have no problem finding a job and that I'll make a lot of money. Granted, these people don't know much else from what they see on TV, but it very much was like that for a while. Nowadays you can make a lot of money doing something really boring, but you can't make a lot of money by winging it with a dot-com anymore.
I agree that a lot of what I was taught, no matter how hard or obscure, was for my own good. And I never found those subject areas to be entirely boring and dull, but I'd rather not pursue a career doing those kinds of things. My entire college education consists of different courses in those kinds of subject areas, however. So I didn't learn anything that I actually liked in the end... I'm just barely getting out with my neck intact, and for all I care every computer could be thrown in the ocean tomorrow and we could all go back to farming.
My bigger problem is with the real world, though. I need to eat after this. And I don't like the industry at all. And I don't like the idea of working for a dot-com at all. And because the dot-coms imploded, there is no room in the field anymore for inspired start-ups and creative ventures. It's all business now. As if the fantasy-land world of dot-coms wasn't annoying enough, now you're fighting with vultures to get a piece of the action. It'll be a while before even solid companies get back on their feet after this mess. And who suffers in all of this? Us. Why? Cause it's all about money. Who gives a shit about programmers? We were highly unappreciated from the beginning. The dot-com fiasco wasn't caused by programmers... it was all business people cashing in on a speculative mirage. I think there's more honest programmers looking for work now than there are grand success and/or failure stories out there... I don't think there were a hell of a lot of coders who fucked around, snorted blow, and fell hard when the shit hit the fan. Most of them watched that happen to others, and now everyone's looking for a job.
This story about the one-day job only reinforces my points. It proves that the computer industry doesn't care about people... hence why should people care about the computer industry? Fuck it, I'll be an actor.
Just because the net is the big new thing doesn't excuse this guy from doing some research and career management.
.com employees brainwashed into believing things will right themselves, but that's still a pretty loud and clear warning sign.
Never, ever, accept a new position until you've met all your managers/supervisors, and also talked to some of the people on the inside, to get a feel for not only the stability of the company, but also the culture. Also check out how their stock is doing, compare their performance to other similar companies, etc.
These sorts of precarious financial situations are almost always know about by the current employees of the company well in advance. Often times, I've seen
It all comes down to research. Most people put more effort into choosing a car than they do their career, which is a real shame.
I think that this is becoming true - at least for skilled workers, who can reasonably expect, at the moment, to move onto a new job without much difficulty.
Are we being short sighted though? What happens during the next depression? Skilled workers without any real job security or long term contract will be on the scrapheap without any hope of reprieve. Unskilled workers are having these new working practises foisted upon them, and they do not like it - it is not so easy for them to move on.
My worry is that this environment is reducing the quality of life in our society by removing stability and certainty. At the moment, while the economy booms, this is okay, but what of the future? There will be a bust, sooner or later. What about the unskilled, who will suffer from the easy come easy go working practises we have forced them to accept? What about the skilled workers, who will find that their taking their employment destiny into their own hands has blown up in their faces?
I can't help but think we are digging our own grave.
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I remember when I went to Sillycone Valley last year for a company I was working for, and while searching for prospectable employees for my department I noticed the majority of resumes coming via fax had employment histories for some people as little as about 3-4 months.
After talking with management then arguing with them about why I did not want someone with 4 months experience here and there in my department (security based), they told me to take a quick look around at where I was. Sillycone Valley, home of dot.com computing land, where anyone could lose a job today and have about 2 more the same day.
Well it may have been true late 90's and early 2000, but most of the companies as we all know are history. Its sad to see these things happen (companies going out of business) and that does not set a record though for shortest amount of time in a company.
True story
When I was about 15 years old, I went for a job at Wendy's (hamburger fast food joint). After being interviewed I got the job and was instructed to come back for work later that night. Upon me getting back later that night, I was shown how to clean grills, wash dishes, etc. Then told to buy some black shoes, and some shirts and ties for work (no bs). The whole rundown of job tasks took about 40 minutes.
After I was told how to do everything, I was told to get lunch and hurry back for work. So I ordered lunch sat down and ate, thinking whether or not I would stay. I decided I didn't want to work there. So I quite after eating (hehe).
Total time employed, less than 2 hours. AND I was sent a check for a whole day too.
360 degrees of Karma
Enrollments in computer science are steadily declining because no-one wants to be a half-baked engineering student who isn't guaranteed a steady job out of college! So sign up today! We have small but over-enrolled classes with non-English speaking professors ready to teach you things that would make most human beings cry! Learn obscure languages and methodologies, cause who wants to learn Cold Fusion? Assembly language and Lisp are the future! Pay $80,000 to spend 4 years with society's worst alcoholics and drug abusers clad in Abercrombie and Fitch! Earn no marketable career skills! Prepare for a future in a turbulent industry where 90% of the companies are a joke and the rest of them will have you in a cubicle until the end of eternity! Learn to cry when the NASDAQ plummets! Regret not being a Journalism major! Make your 1450 on the SAT's totally meaningless! Become a real life Dilbert! And best of all, keep a straight face when your MBA idiot CEO asks you to keep working for the next month for no pay... so you can make marketing calls and schmooze gullible VC's.
What are you waiting for!?!
This is a mischaracterization of the Post article. The company hired/fired this guy because one sector of the company did not know the plans of another sector. He probably came in on a hiring effort based on the last thing the company was doing before the buyout.
;)
He was used to an orderly and slow process based on the regulations a government contractor must follow. Then he went to a pure private firm which had an unclear focus due to the fact that someone had let out a rumor about an impending buyout.
Such a rumor makes everyone go haywire. People put on a show of how efficient at their jobs they are so they dont get laid off. Whoever hired this guy probably wanted to show they could make that decision fast, so they wouldn't get cut themselves. They didn't care about the guy they hired.
This can happen with any company, tech or not, especially an ill managed company.
Of course, in my experience tech companies tend to be ill-managed.
Global warming is good for you!
If I didn't know first-hand from my time there what incredible retards the people in IT at GS were, I would be more surprised that they suddenly cut off funding to a company like that. But, in fact, they are retards of the first order, and their sudden urgency in cutting costs is not really remarkable.
Their IT budget for this year was projected to be $1.8 billion - quite a large number. Except that it was being entirely mismanaged and misspent - the place was being run like some crazy Silicon Valley dot-com. 3 consultants were being hired for 1 spot, people in field offices were leaving problems unresolved for days, half of the staff was stuck in planning meetings all day and the other half of the staff spent the day surfing the web for stocks and news on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And they were heaving a great time heaving money out the window - nothing was ever repaired, simply replaced. They even lost a Sun E450 server - lost it! They were pretty sure it wouldn't have made it out of the building past security, but they had no idea where the $150,000 machine was. So what did they do - they ordered another one!
I have more stories like that - like trying to update ntp.conf entries on 2,000 machines because one server went down instead of updating the DNS entries, but in general, the place was a zoo. And then the market crashed, and management in the other business units got pissed. As one exec said, "$1.8 billion, and all I got was a Palm Pilot!" So their budget was slashed, heads started rolling, and now things are a little bit more austere than last year.
Not surprising, not even one bit.
Michael laid them all off.
alternate answer-Andover laid off everybody *except* Michael, told him that computers and automation would make it possible for him to do the work of many.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"DeMatteis, without key card or severance check, stands at the back of the room."
I would think the company would still be liable for severance... even if he only did kind of work for one day.
One other thing, if your company was running out of money, barring extenuating circumstances... wouldn't you initiate a hiring freeze.
Wow, that gave me a good laugh. From my experience, that isn't what the college grads are doing, that's what the veterans are doing. Life in the "real world" outside of the "ivory tower" seems to install those attitudes, rather than diminish them from everything I've seen.
... That you can work with a team, rather than try to out-score the other team members.
I mean in college you've only got grades to compete against each other for. Outside of college everyone is competing for money.
I presume you're referring to: prov[ing]
Yes, in the real world you're competing for money. But in a well-run company your TEAM is competing aginst OTHER COMPANIES. If your management encourages you to compete WITHIN the team you've got a problem. Success AS a team requires cooperation WITHIN the team.
And that's one of the places where the "management can be very bad and not (quite) kill the company" effect shows up in high tek. A lot of silicon valley management DOES encourage this. It's called the "star system". (The opposite is the "Demming approach".)
In a star system a few high-profile alleged geniuses get all the resources (and most of the rewards), while everybody else's work is thrashed around and by them. But the bulk of the work is actually produced by the bulk of the team, and this slows the rest of them down (and annoys them greatly, slowing them further). The result is that the company is less productive than its competition (IF it gets to product at ALL) and eventually fails.
Demming management style recognizes that the best self-salespeople on a team may not even be the most productive. It distributes work so that everyone has something useful to do that they enjoy doing, and rewards everyone who produces rather than just the highest-profile tale-spinners. With the job divided up into territories where each member is a local expert the whole team "strokes" each other and works smoothly together. The members respect each other and divide new problems appropriately rather than competing for plums which end up going to the stars with the rest festering over doing scutt-work for no recognition. Management can concentrate on connecting the team to the rest of the company and keeping upper management from thrashing it. And LOTS of work gets done.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That is why computers are my hobby. I know not many people have that option, but I am a paramedic by trade. When people stop kicking the bucket, I will then be laid off! But you know what.... I am still barely above the poverty level. I love me work, and this is where I belong! I am done with my rant......
http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=112
if you know what cum laude means...
Noisy orgasm?
(Sorry.)
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This is a good point. Last year, my senior year as a comp sci major, I recall going through the hiring practices and wondering when, exactly, the employers were supposed to start throwing money at me. I mean, I'm not a fool. I was graduating cum laude, from the honors program (that sounds sort of redundant if you know what cum laude means...), with two degrees to boot (applied math and comp sci), having done a co-op, etc. Never happened. I interviewed with maybe a dozen companies over about a 4 month period and got precisely one job offer: from the people I co-oped with (and I already knew about that one before it came).
The media made it seem like you just knock on employers' doors, tell them you're a programmer, and *bam*, money, stock options, prostitutes, ferraris, etc. No industry works like that. Not one. HR departments of big companies are AWLAYS going to go through their motions to weed out duds (legitimate or otherwise) and match buzzwords from your resume and your interview with buzzwords from the job description and "desired qualifications" description, and small companies have always got to worry how you'll fit into their particular, quirky environment, whether or not they can afford to continue to pay you until you finish whatever it was they hired you to work on, etc.
And, of course, if your company has to fire you because the VC cut the funding, take that as a sign that the company was not paying its own bills anyway, and couldn't afford to hire you in the first place. You don't want to work for companies like that in any industry, it's just plain stupid.
--- I've been in school *way* too long....