email me if you'd like to join a concerted inquest into your retiree subsidy for medical benefits

I know of at least one very strong effort taking place b/c people from the McCaw / Cingular line still don't have their subsidized medical showing up.  Let me know if you want me to forward your name to this person so it can be added to the case against this being a "one off" "issue" (challenge, opportunity, growth potential)

That Cingular / AT&T Wireless acquisition "gap" from July 9, 2001 through December 25, 2005 is showing up on multiple people and continuing to affect their calculations and records.  I'd completely forgotten, but was just reminded - the company requested me to supply my tax records from that period (to prove I was working with the company?).

Accomplishments Which are not Within Me

On taking an inventory of the "success" or "failure" of "my life."  Why?  Because I have the time.  It is summer, so the sun rises early and falls late which makes for so much time.  My windows are open.  The heat has yet to rise and so the air is still fresh and it is time to consider "the job market."  And this endeavor has become inquiry because there is this time.  By the very act of "lack of success" (I've been looking for two months now), I am forced into evaluation.  While humbling, it's also thrilling.  I'm terrified of my own gratitude at my "failure."

There are possibilities I could focus upon if I chose, so do I choose?  What is a "successful" life?  What makes one a "failure"?  This being unemployed really fucks with how I see myself some days.  And yet, this existential gap is central to the whole experience I asked to embrace.

• I did not want a job right away.
• I did not know what I wanted to do.
• I knew I didn't want to replicate my gerbil wheel.
• I knew my life had gotten smaller in the past number of years.  Friends moved, divorced, died, fell away... so many.  I grieve their loss.

Maybe it is my accomplishments which brought me to that dead end.  I'd achieved what interested me.  I'd eaten strange foods, lost myself in cities where I couldn't read a symbol.  Most mountains of any interest to me, I have at least driven through, and I certainly have no interest in climbing. This has now become a search for what I've left undone, and what I need to do to earn a buck or two.

As a human ant, I'm driven to scramble around pushing the grain of sand back towards the growing mound surrounded by the other ants.

To Begin the Catalogue of My Failures:

• I will never paint a portrait in oils to the degree of accuracy, brush stroke, and color that I admire.

• I will never write a harrowing novel with the depth of some of my favorite authors have:

     C.J. Cherryh 

     David Weber 

     Orson Scott Card

     Louis Lamour

     Octavia Butler

     Marge Piercy

     Alice Hoffman 

     Lisa Marie Rice

     Kristen Ashley

     Remittance Girl

     Charlotte Stein

     Jane Austen (yes, I've read the entirety of her work)

     Charlotte Perkins Gilman

     Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley

     Margaret Atwood
     Bill Moyers
     Viktor Frankel
     Alice Walker
     Clarissa Pinkola Estes

   

• I will never finish a novel.

• I will never write a compelling character in a novel form.

• I've had to give up the following dreams:

         Jet fighter pilot - by age 11
         Dancer for NYC Ballet - by 16
         Lawyer - by 20
         Nun - 21
         CEO of a major corporation - by 25
         Painter - by 40
         Novelist ...

**************  What I have done **************

I have seen and walked in Angkor Wat.  This was an experience I didn't believe I'd ever be able to participate in while hearing about the wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

I fell in love with a very good person and he's been a witness to 3/5 of my life.  And the world has changed so that now it is right and meet to just love and be loved by another person irregardless of my sex, race, religion, or ethnic origin.  Amazing.

We remodeled a house and made it a home.

I hire and work very well with talented designers, artists, and craftspeople.

I've been healthy most of my life.

My love and I "dropped" everything one weekend and flew to Paris on a Sunday, stayed for a week, and came home.

Dave drove the Amalfi coast and I ended up begging him to pass the buses.


I ate pho in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Venice is the most beautiful city I've ever experienced, but the craftspeople and artists of Hanoi are the most technically impressive - and abundant.

I learned to scan a poem.

I've had poems accepted for publication at respectable venues.

I was asked and moderated on two very impressive poetry and writing boards.

I was a very good engineer.  Surprisingly good.  I was an awesome Operations tech.

There are very few people in the world who have had the opportunity to "grow" a job around their own interests.  My interests in core network performance and configuration gave me the opportunity to do the work I loved for year after year after year.  I got to examine the "innies" and the "outies", learn how to write queries against databases, participate in some very interesting technical discussions at a very high engineering level, drive change through an organization.  Wow.  Just wow.  There was shit which didn't exist and I made it.  I made it happen.  And then I walked away.

Gap Year

Lovely article about others doing and trying to figure out how to explain...

http://www.nextavenue.org/taking-gap-year-midlife/

and a new blog to share:

http://unretiring.blogspot.com

It is easy to forget

the initial impulse for this Walk-About is to explore the world, the alternatives, to learn, to make my life larger, not smaller.  It is not to find "another job."

"Life is a banquet, and most poor bastards are starving to death!"
Patrick Dennis, Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade

Hives, Prednisone, and Sweet "No Thank You's"

B'
Well, who the hell knows what "caused" this, I certainly don't, and neither does my doctor.  Hives.  I broke out in hives last Saturday and not just a few.  By Saturday night I thought I was having The Worst Heartburn Ever, I was downing Benadryl trying to keep the itching under control.  Agh!  Went to the doctor's on Monday and I got dosed.

Allergic reaction, sure; but to what, I have no idea.  Worse, it could be caused by contact to anything within the past month and boy have I been out and about the past month.  I'd post pictures, but really, I did that on facebook, so I'll just show you the arm rash and leave the foot shots out of my blog.  Still, it's kind of like being in a science fiction film.  My skin welts up for about 15 minutes with burning and then it dies back down and you can't even see that anything was wrong.  The patches have been, for the most part, consistent in their pattern and location, but I have gotten some "interesting" sites.  At least it's not oozing and disgusting as that year I got chiggers in Indiana while on the I-90 RoadTrip.  Those were horrible.  This is just painful.

Onto the job search update.  There are plenty of companies who do not respond at all to tell you you are out of the running for a job.  This is frustrating because you want to follow up, to understand if there is anything you can do to progress through the "slush pile" which follows the "Submit" button.

The answer to that is no.  Frankly, a friendly little, "Thank you, but no thank you," would help a person who is looking for a job know to cross that one off their list.  This is important because one of the dilemmas one faces while looking for a job is the question of how many jobs in one company should a person apply to when you haven't closed one of your other applications?  Is two too many open applications?  How about four open applications?  What if they never show the jobs "closed" in any manner?  How is your resume "seen," or cover letter "seen" by the various applications?

That said, to me, I now see that as a "not a good match" company.  I might have been interested in them, but without a mechanism to understand if / how you're moving through the process then I don't see them as investing in treating people with some basic respect.  It's annoying to have to go back & follow up at all the various dashboards / individual job notices, but that's not the real problem.  The problem is there is no indication that a "proceed" to apply for another job isn't imperiled.  I have no problem being rejected for unknown reasons, I'd just ask that I be informed I was tossed out of the pool.

This company at least tracks your submissions and color codes for active (red) or dead (black).  But this, too, goes back to the Tracker you need to make for yourself.

My tracker has the date I submitted, the company name, the title of the job description, and I have inserted a hyperlink to that job description because NOTHING IS MORE EMBARRASSING than

being on an interview and not knowing WHICH JOB you're talking about.  Yes.  That happened to me.  Yes.  I did that.  Sometimes, if I'm unsure if the job description hyperlink will remain live (e.g., think of the job descriptions posted on sites like LinkedIn or Dice, which are trawled / scraped, and not the company's own site), then I copy & paste it in a Comment in my Excel Cell for the job description.

I also have a tracker for the "dashboards" - basically, the larger companies have a tracker for all the jobs you've submitted to.

But going back to the topic at hand, say a job's been showing up as submitted to for a while and still shows open, I'd guess that if you haven't heard from the company in three weeks you might as well just count yourself as dead in the water.  Those are the irritating ones.  Those floating lumps of non-state submissions polluting your clean little tracker.  I just want to " slap them in their face just to get their attention." 

But I did get three of the nicest rejection letters this week for two jobs.  One was a true long shot, but I figured, "Why not?"  The second one was from both the HR rep & the hiring manager at the company where I flubbed the technical review.  Even  as the company was large, receiving those didn't hurt as much as they "ended the story."  And that was fine.

My "numbers" are improving for call backs, so I might be getting better at selecting to which jobs I might actually have a near fit.  But warning, I found out from one of those call backs that the first job I thought I'd applied for to them only had my cover letter and not my resume.  Be ware when applying through the job sites.  If you can find the job on the company site apply there.

RootMetrics App

If you have an ios device, pull this down.  I don't know if they have it for Android.  Anyways, the stats comparison is astounding.

Cell Phone Coverage Map by RootMetrics

https://appsto.re/us/wEV0x.i

Talismans and Nightmares

Wednesday, June 3rd - Contemplations of a Contact Killer

It might be that today just happens to be another grey Seattle day which followed yesterday's grey Seattle day (which killed my outdoor party - sort of.  Not really, just a little bit.  We ate outside, goddamnit, but it was chilly), but I had nightmares last night and woke up feeling like, "The Contact Killer."  In the nightmare I heard myself yelling, "Someone hear me!  Someone hear me!"

Yeah, the submission of cover letters and resumes continues, but the return rate is shit.  All the contacts and calls I've gotten have been from meeting people at Meetups, or from my name showing up in recruiter's searches.  And yet today I have two interviews.  One for a permanent job within a very large corporation and one to interview with a technical contracting company, but more to help me figure out if I want to do contract work / how contracting work works.  You know I'll let you know if I figure it out.

Thursday, June 4th - Tech Interview debacle

Technical interview yesterday - embarrassing.  No, I didn't know the SELF JOIN.  Aaargh!  And then on the "build a table structure" thing, I kited off into timestamps to reduce inventory so I could check the rate at which items "left" the store.

The other interview with a recruiter went well.

Monday, June 8th - Reminiscing

Just got the "thank you for your interest, but..." email from the Tech Interview of Thursday.  I am not surprised.  After I quit beating myself up for not having learned my query language in school, but from copying from others or going to google, I realized this is much a self-selecting algorithm they have in place.  So, this just upholds my basic theory that interviewing is like dating.  No harm.  No foul for it not working out.  At least I learned about self-joins.

Which brings me up to my basic thesis for this post.  When I left work, I didn't expect to have another job for at least a year, if not more.  That might be a surprise to some.  I've had more than one person talk about the expectation I'd be quickly "snapped up."  That was not what I believed would happen because I didn't want to "just jump."  I'm specifically avoiding the Telcos at this point.  I will re-think that if a few more months pass, but for right now I still break out in hives.

I'm less like a..

Part of my planning was based upon the failure of being seen as Cinderella.  What I mean is that I didn't think I'd dress up pretty for the ball and The Prince would fall for me at first sight, first ball.  I projected my financials to cover three - five years, but that was with Dave having a job.  That has obviously changed, but even so, I have cash in the bank and I can type.  I have no problem dropping out of tech for a period of time because I do have a life outside of tech.  And I have the money.

Obviously things have somewhat changed, but still, finding that "match" is what it's all about.  That said, I've begun to explore the idea of being a contractor.

I like the idea of being a contractor because I'd get a chance to test the waters.  One drawback I see about contracting is the lack of income growth (i.e., raises).  But that could also be that I'd be coming in at a top rate.  I really have no idea, but would learn.  More importantly, I'd get to check out company cultures.  Move around a bit.  Update my skillsets.  And more importantly, remain untied to any single company.

and more like a...

So, no, it is not a surprise to me that this process will take time, that it won't be easy.  I don't see this as an issue of "ageism," as much as I see that

1)  Learning to read job descriptions so I apply for a job to which my experience doesn't overwhelm (i.e., applying for "too junior," or I don't have the language, etc.)
2)  Sending your resume in is the same as sending a draft of a novel into the slush pile of a publishing house.
3)  Refine.  Refine.  Refine your cover letter.
4)  I've gotten more "hits" from my LinkedIn profile or Indeed resume than I have from direct resume submission.
5)  I am not as "cheap" as those with less experience.
6)  The competition is actually quite deep.  We now compete with the world.
7)  Companies are self-selecting organisms.
8)  Sometimes some people will be able to hit one out of the park on their first try (Dave is a good example).  Me, I'm an acquired taste.
9)  I want my summer vacation.

"You are not as good as you think you are."

It's humbling not knowing everything, in fumbling a technical interview, in saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, in being awkward.  I've got my friends.  I have my Davie.  And my dog, Blue, loves me.  Job hunting is never easy.  What makes it easier for me is this is a willful situation.  I chose to leave and in making that choice, I accepted early on that this could take a while.  I accepted that I would face rejection.  I accepted that I would be competing with people who have much fresher skillsets than I because they haven't been siloed for as long.  I accepted that I might have to find another way to make a living.

Here's an amazing article about "What is the worst thing about working at Google?" which summarizes the problems people "like us" who have worked with the same company for aeons will face.  Check out Joe Canella's response:

Well basically, you end up spending the majority of your life eating Google food, with Google coworkers, wearing Google gear, talking in Google acronyms, sending Google emails on Google phones, and you eventually start to lose sight of what it's like to be independent of the big G...

To which the majority of folks will say "boo-hoo, poor spoiled Googler". But that's sort of the point. You are given everything you could ever want, but it costs you the only things that actually matter in the end. Your time and your energy. This is not unlike many people's situation at many companies, but at Google you don't quite see it coming. It's supposed to be different.

In the end, what I started to see was the most amazing, talented, passionate group of people I've ever known, all in one place, with no free time or energy to pursue the things that mattered the most to them. 

But AT&T no longer the cachet that Microsoft, Google, or Facebook, or Twitter has.  That I hadn't counted on.  That was a surprise.