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Getting Over the Stigma of a Previous Job?
Subm asks: "Some friends-of-friends worked at a company with such a high profile downfall their past employer became a liability. They weren't involved in causing the downfall, but with the name 'Enron' on their resumes, interviews were spent defending their past employment. SCO is more focused in its industry than Enron, was and its reputation is in a downward spiral in that industry (Unix and GNU/Linux, not lawsuits, that is). SCO's staff will have to look for other jobs sooner or later, and most within the Unix/GNU/Linux community. Can good workers get over the stigma of an employer's reputation? How will working at SCO affect its staff's careers? Does anyone at SCO talk about this?"
At least that's something respectable.
I'd imagine that pretty much the same would hold for SCO employees. If nothing else, being a former SCO employee makes the question "why did you leave your last position?" very easy to answer.
- Chief Financial officer of Enron: Not hiring
- Poor grunt at Enron who had no clue what hit him: Could look past that to his real experience.
- Lower level accountant at Enron: My get some questions asked in an effort to determine their position in all the mess
Obviously many don't think that way and wouldn't touch an ex-Enron employee with a ten foot telephone pole and I really feel sorry for them.However for every door closed there's a door open, consider writing a book about the mess or posing for playboy for example (they did a women of Enron IIRC)? You get the idea there...
IMHO there's always an opportunity for you...just look....
...in bed
It's tough moving away from a former employer. I recently left a position to pursue better opportunities. My former employer (really the owner) was furious that I had the gaul to leave. They threatened me with lawsuites, they harrased me. They just couldn't let go.
I gave that company three long hard years, and developed some absolutely killer applications for them. Now, if an prospective employer calls them, they make me out to be some malicious, spiteful Developer who left them high and dry. Three years of stellar work... down the drain.
With that said, I guess the best advice is that employment is like a marriage, you need to check them out, just as much as they do you. Else your left with stigma of the former employer, either you on them, or them on you. Either case, it's not good.
"reliable and honest" is exactly what SCO is known for. In fact, "reliable and honest" is exactly how my new Nigerian business partners describe themselves.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
If you can do the work, and do it well - - and you're reliable and honest and willing to take what's offered in the way of starting compensation - - many doors will open.
Not to be argumentative, but this is not necessarily always true.
A past employer can be an awful liability, especially in the case of a high-profile fraud situation or a combative company. Many times if you are a former employee you are "guilty by association."
It's somewhat similar to looking for a job and being overqualified. You have the skills, you can hit the ground running and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are the best damn candidate for the job. BUT... You have a PhD. The employer will snub his nose at you because you're overqualified. Does it matter that you are willing to take entry level and 60/hrs a week? Not really, because then they'll wonder why you're willing to work cheap.
Yes, your past credentials and associations matter.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
While that statement could be seen as inflammatory, perhaps I should share two examples to clarify my strong feelings on the subject...
My point is this: If someone comes from SCO with a skill set that I need, they'll get the gig. If they prove to fail at their skill, they're likely to loose their job.
As an employer I care about results, not politics.
Will I hire Daryl? If I need a scum-sucking-bottom-feeder - or was that a fish?
|>>?
Doh!
Where the hell is that Post Anonymously button.
You cannot seem to make up your mind if you use Redhat, back up the SCO claims or damn them, and what your business does, imbedded or bank software support....
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Fsck'ing liar.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75388&cid=6
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=74902&ci
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It's time that this FUD campaign come to an end. I own a small business that deploys five Red Hat AS boxes. SCO has already sent my legal department (2 lawyers) three letters (threats) regarding our "illegal use of the Linux operating system [sic]".
Like most users of Linux, we are at the point where we are not going to stand still while SCO trashes the entire Free Software movement. I have already authorized a payment of $10,000 to the FSF, and a payment of $5,000 to the Red Hat Open Source Now fund. If you want to do all you can during this waiting period before the trial, I would urge you to sign this petition [petitiononline.com] that signifies the unity of the Free and Open source communities against SCO's outlandish claims.
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I work for a medium sized (137 employees) company that processes customer data for many retail outlets, as well as a multi-national bank. We were one of the first companies to drop our entire line of Windows servers (workstations unchanged) for a Red Hat Linux solution in the summer of 2000. Porting our internal applications was a real pain, but the significantly increased uptime and greater ease of administration made up for all initial shortcomings.
Fast forward to end of 2002, and we had become disgusted with Red Hat's road map for its' Advanced Server license. It seemed as though we had lost all of the benefits of the GPL.
There was no way we were going back to M$, but there was a movement from higher up top to change distributions. To make a long story short, we passed on SuSe and chose the often corporately overlooked Gentoo.
The benefits of this move are stunning. We have been able to hire 16 additional employees to handle our own fork of Portage, and 22 additional employees to provide support. Not only to we do a "ghost compile" for each box (many different Pentium and Athlon systems), we also take a minimalist approach. The combination of those two choices have enabled us to increase performance per box to something like 26% faster on average.
With the obvious help of the Gentoo open source community, we have created a low cost, self-sustained IT department that can function well into the next decade. Thanks Gentoo!
... one can pretty much reduce their willingness to stay to a few possiblities, all negative qualities in a potential employee: Unethical: they stay because they value their income above personal ethics cowardice: they stay because they fear change more than hanging on to an ever-more untenable situation... Oh Yeah! I am sure that most of the overworked, underpaid staff who have no choice but to live from paycheck to paycheck and whose main concern is, "If I lose this job, my kids lose thier medical insurance," are just stupid, unethical or cowards. Before you jump all over this with, "I am talking about the programmers/techs, not the whole company..." Enter the real world - most people (programmers/techs/support, even admin assnt's) do not have the luxury of letting their ethics win out over a paycheck - especially when they are simply the innocent crew of a ship steered by a lunatic.
Remember, the original SCO is now Tarantella, Inc., and a SCO employee of 5 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the current SCaldera. Do such people deserve the opprobrium anyway? Similarly, should Ransom Love be blamed for the actions taken by Darl McBride?
MCI/Worldcom was one of the early corporate adopters of PHP. If you were interviewing for an IT position and wanted a forward-thinking individual, would you pass over an ex-Worldcom employee based on the ethics problems of Bernard Ebbers and his (probably small) cabal?
A single individual can rarely take credit for large corporate efforts (i.e. implementing an ERP system, etc.). Similarly, outside of situations where corporate officers are legally responsible, individuals should not be blamed for corporate wrongdoings.
The updated version would go something like this:
Dear Abby,
My mother, an alcoholic, is currently serving a life sentence for murdering my father after discovering that he was selling child pornography to support our family. I'm helping to raise the illegitimate child of my sister, who is in drug rehab and currently appealing a prostitution conviction. I spent most of my youth in foster homes and on the street, supporting myself and my cocaine habit by robbing the elderly. Finally I took a high school equivalency exam, enrolled in college and learned computer programming. I am now making a good salary working as a developer at Microsoft.
Recently I met a really wonderful girl. She is caring and loving, and I want to have a serious relationship with her, but I am afraid that if she finds out more about me she won't want to see me again. So the question is, should I tell her that I work for Microsoft?
I propose the addition of a new entry into jargon files:
Enroned (v. p. p.), To have one's rsum or reputation tarnished by a former (or current) employer.
USAGE: Man, I was totally Enroned the second it hit the news that my CTO was skimming the pot I've got no chance at a good job until this dies down a bit.
The previous sig has been removed due to
Oh, don't even get me started.