Employment Security and Job Searching

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

"Greg Rundlett (freephile)" <greg at freephile.com> writes:
>
> >
> >  (Just to be fair: Crypto is useful, and has lots of applications.
> > It's just not a cure-all, and can't help with most of the big security
> > weaknesses one sees in the real world.)
> 
> <humor>
>     Does employment security improve if you get a job in crypto?
> </humor>

Only if you encrypt your résumé?

Funny. A friend of mine in information-security did tell me, at one
point, that all of the relevant companies had headquarters in the same
town--even on the same block; and that, in that way, he had `job security'
because he could (literally) walk away from one company and into another.

> For the tenth time in 10 years (the third time in the last 12 months),
> I'm looking for a new job.  Harvard is closing the Initiative in
> Innovative Computing at the end of June.  I'll probably end up with a
> great new position building on my talents and network of connections
> -- but not unless I get the word out.  So, that's the first reason for
> this message.  Sorry if it was done so badly?  But what's the best way
> to broadcast to all your friends and colleagues that you are
> officially in job search mode?  Change your status on Facebook and
> LinkedIn?

And e-mail. I guess telephone-calls don't count as broadcasting.

> To make lemonade out of lemons, I have thought about writing about my
> employment saga.  Sadly, I think it's an example of an all-too-common
> experience for Technology workers over the past decade.  Then I stop
> and ask "What's the point?"  Sounds like a boring book that nobody
> will care about.  What do you think?

I think that, if you're interested in doing something like that, you
should do it--but, from what I've heard, you shouldn't expect to be
getting rich off it it (or anything close); not because the
subject-matter is lacking, but just because that's how it generally
goes. Similar to `if you start a business, you'll probably fail. Just
because, statistically, something like 90% of businesses fail in their
first year.'.

But, I can see you finding an audience. I recently gave my wife a copy
of Ellen Ullman's `Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its
Discontents' to read--not because she's a `technophile' who'd identify
with it, but because she's *not* a technophile but would identify with
it for other reasons. I figured she'd appreciate the sort of `drama'
that Ullman conjures, and the important parts played by human-to-human
relationships and `what it /feels/ like to be a programmer' in the
book. And I was right: a day later, I asked my wife if she'd started
reading it yet, and she said:

      I'm about two-thirds through it. It's great--why didn't you give
      me that before!? I feel like I finally understand where you've
      been coming from all of these years! I don't understand a lot of
      the technobabble between the characters, but I feel like I
      better understand how you see the world, and *why* you are so
      into the things you are.

And there is *tremendous* value in books like that, just for that
reason--because they can help people appreciate not only things in new
and better ways, but they can also help people appreciate *each other*
in new and better ways.

The inner workings of an unemployed geek are difficult for many
non-geeks to comprehend, and it's not helped by the fact that many of
us can have difficulty expressing these things. I wouldn't be
surprised if there were a sizable audience of tech-spouses to devour a
book that explains the quiet angst of laid-off engineers, in the same
way that my wife responded to `Close to the Machine'. If you can write
it, you might even save some marriages at some point.


> Maybe it would be a good idea just to create a forum where tech
> workers could don an avatar and complain about work in Dilbert-esque
> ways for the cathartic value.  I'm a cheerful, positive attitude
> kind of person, but when I think about the negative impact that job
> insecurity has had on my family, I think I'm ready for some venting.

Are you familiar with The Daily WTF <http://thedailywtf.com/>?

-- 
Don't be afraid to ask (Lf.((Lx.xx) (Lr.f(rr)))).