I was able to get my own pencil. In less than 5 minutes.

Yes.  The office supply closet is unlocked.  The door is open.  They have pencils, paper, and sticky notes.  There is even scotch tape.

I'm drinking a company subsidized Diet Coke

My PC and laptop are up, running, and I'm logged in.

I have my Orca card for commuting.

My health insurance is great.

I know nothing about this industry, but listened in on one of the meetings.  It was so cool.  Very interesting talking about Halo 5.  Yes.  I'm embedded in the XBox Business Intelligence Data Science group.  WHOO-HOO!

Me: Preparing for my new work enviornoment

Lightning Struck

13 months ago, I walked away from a wonderful, frustrating, engaging, amazing 25 year career in wireless telecommunications where I had the opportunity to work with such fabulous people.

We changed the world, we did.  We ripped networks, implemented new technologies which were obsolete before we finished installing their first generation; we deployed over the air data at rates which beat the landlines; tested satellite communications; did big data before big data was cool... Sheez.  When we started it took 10 people to budget / build / and maintain an entire network we used to figure.  Now, there are nearly as many connections as a human brain.

But yep, I walked away.  The chaos I thrived in was tidied.  There was a process for everything and everything had a process.  I'd helped build those and the standards. I'd seen the network grow and contract, domains split  But we know I suck when it comes to following the rules - even rules I, myself, might have made. 

I spent the next 13 months learning how the world had changed since last I looked for a job. 

I just accepted an offer today.  I'm moving into a data science role as a Senior Consultant with Design Laboratory to work with Microsoft's Shared Services BI group in games.  GAMES!!!!  I still can't freakin' believe it.  Nope.  I can't.  I'm excited/scared.  I start the 21st.  Now I gotta go scrub my mouth out with soap for practice. 

Yep.  I got the industry leap I was hoping for.  Nope.  This consulting gig doesn't fall under an 18 month thing. 

My biggest weakness:  "I left my network of engineers and lab rat friends behind when I walked.  That network was a source of strength."  I can't ever thank you all enough for your help and support over the years.  I love you.  Thank you.  You made me a better person and we did amazing work together.  And thank you for your laughter and support even after I walked.

That said, I had to turn down two other companies which were still interested, but hadn't offered.  When push came to shove, I had 24 hours to make a decision, but honestly, I was really impressed with the one I accepted.  The consulting firm is small, but the job is with a big company again.  It's in Redmond.  Again.  But it's games.  It's building new systems for analytics, it's metric design.  and it's in Games.  It's the industry I wanted and with one of the only divisions I'd cross the water for.  There were only two other companies I was willing to do that for.  All the others, I turned away.

So, remember y'all.  Sing often.  Laugh much.  Compliment each other when you're not cussing each other out.

One year ago

was my last day.  I'm not feeling nostalgic at all, but I am missing my friends.  One of the beautiful things, though, about this time off is that I've been able to reconnect with some others from way-back-aways.  Sometimes it's been for a phone conversation, or an email exchange, other times it's been for drinks and dinner.  We've worked with some amazing people over the years and the names I've forgotten... well, LinkedIn sure has helped remind me.

I'm sorry I haven't kept up with the blog but I've been going gangbusters since mid-October.  The most common word out of my mouth re: jobs though is "No.  No thank you," so nothing more exciting than that one flurry which ended in September.  That said, I've written a bunch of draft blog entries which I never finished.  I swear.  It's just because I got too busy.

So, I've had a lot of good intentions, just too many conferences, conventions, meetups, informational interviews, technical networking events, and Thanksgiving.

The last week of October I spent in conventions.  The best one was a virtual reality conference held in Bellevue.  I didn't make it to any of the developer's talks because, well, I don't write software for applications or games, but I did play with all sorts of hardware.  I also won a smart phone at another. The best part are the people I've met.

Networking has not turned out to be so horrible after all.  I've been learning tons about how the outside world here really is more stodgy than I thought "we" were.   What has been fun though, is that I've met theater people, young engineers from Boeing, people doing other things with technology - like fashion - which makes it so much fun.  What is striking though, is how little innovation there is in the realm of game or app or web development.  There's a lot of waste, which, I guess, if you have simple systems, is okay.  You can throw money away...until you run out of it anyways.  This is what just blows my mind.

And so, most of the "data" and analytics interest I've found out here in the wilds is related to marketing data and / or bioinformatics and healthcare.  Minor amounts of network performance, or app performance and little of that is predictive.  Most dashboards people come out with are monitors.  There's little to no forecasting.

And the people I've reconnected with, they confirm what I've only just begun to realize in the past few months:  that the work we did was ginormous.  A couple of people I've been reconnecting with were let go at the C. acquisition.  They've actually had some very interesting experience.  Most importantly, they've acquired the skills to deal with uncertainty more than those of us who were "left behind" have.  One guy talked about how he jumped through several companies after moving from HQ engineering into sales - and found he loved it.  Another woman made her way through contracting work after the 2008 collapse and is now poised to be one of the next gen IT leaders in her organization.  Still, I've met some new people and made some new friends who are teaching me more about how this outside world works.  This learning has been interesting.

Here's what I've learned so far:

1)  Most companies work reactively and there is little understanding about proactive, or planned operational events such as load redistributions / rebalancing; planned growth (how they do this without examining the budget impacts kinda makes me nuts); reboots / restarts to clear memory leaks during off-peak hours; development of overload control processes or mechanisms;

2)  Performance management is NRT (see #1) and forecasting is maybe a week out?  or based upon a 1.5 multiplier or something crazy.  There's no analysis of congestion impacts.

3)  No one seems to have budgetary responsibility, they just throw money at their networks.  Which works, I guess, as long as you don't mind being unable to access the website, the network, or have lots of capital to dispose of.

4)  Predictive analytics (see #2) and forecasting, are just beginning to become a "thing," as are GUIs for the NRT operational effects of load, or code changes.

5)  There's little awareness of network efficiencies to be gained with compression techniques in coding.  Everything is really big and sloppy "out" here.  There are a few innovators, but they're struggling to be heard.

6)  Everyone wants to be a "data scientist" as though that was a thing before.  LOL  There are now masters degrees being offered.  I guess that's a blend of statistics and software, but without the subject matter expertise, you're just a statistician who can write programs, or a programmer who works a lot with statistics.  Me, I'm keeping with the engineer in wireless core performance who can also code and applies statistical tools and machine learning algorithms to explore relationships.  I also practice data visualization as performance art.

7)  I turn down offers to interview with Microsoft, Amazon, or T-Mobile at least once a week, if not more.  If you want big, the big guns are hiring now.

8)  Yep, I'm a few years a head of the curve unless I want to go work with a big boy.  Predictive performance analytics is just a glimmer in the eye of a very few companies.  You can tell by the the Azure or AWS experience that neither Microsoft nor Amazon have that ingrained in their culture - yet.  They might be trying to catch up with themselves, but we know how well that works out - and how long it takes to do.

Readings from the past week

An article from NextAvenue referencing an AARP study just released on job-seekers age 45-70.
One of the most important points was this:

1. Don’t delay starting to look for work after you lose your job. Those who are still unemployed were much more likely than the reemployed to have waited three months or longer before beginning their job search.

“The most popular answer for why people took time off before starting to look for work was that ‘they need a break,’” says Trawinski. But postponing the search for three months or longer worked against them.

AARP's Future of Work@50+ Initiative.
Actually, I didn't find much here, but it's a "good" hyperlink to have because it looks like they are ramping up.  I still prefer NPR's NextAvenue newsletter by far.

A good read to remind oneself that rejections are not bad.  And a couple of other points to remember:
1)  You don't want to get an offer at a place which doesn't "fit" with you, so them thinking you might not work for them is not a bad thing.  That would be like marrying someone who doesn't love you.  If you have the opportunity, nay, the extremely good fortune to be able to job search for a career instead of just another job, then you want that mutually enjoyable dynamic.

2)  If you, like me, haven't interviewed in 25 years, then your skills will be very Very VERY rusty.  These are skills, ergo, learned behavior.  You will need to acquire and develop new skills.  Don't beat yourself up if you're not good at it.  Most of us in tech are socially awkward, if not downright weird.

3)  The strikes against you will add to your length of time.  Save money in your emergency fund accordingly:

• Race
• Sex
• Physical attributes (sorry, but yes, physical attractiveness has a lot to do with employability)
• Age
• Physical abilities

How to Decode Job Descriptions

Jaizus!  This took me three months on my own.  Remember - payscale.com is your friend to help you investigate the increasingly normalization of  job titles.

A 2014 article about job salaries, but which will help you with your decoding.

An article on smart ways to Find Jobs if you're over 50

Living a dream before it curdles

I was at GeekGirlCon this past weekend and it provided me with more than a few moments of reflection.  It was at GeekGirlCon in 2013 that I began to think about a different kind of life.  It was the first convention I'd attended in years.  In a way, it was a "coming out" moment for me in the sense that for the first time in probably over 15 years I was in a room with so many people focused on a single set of topics.

A convention isn't just a random crowd of people, but people gathered together for a purpose, and unlike a fair or a festival, there's an educational, or academic, component.  So, while I've been to plenty of fairs or festivals, or large crowded gatherings, it had been too, too long since I learned something with a focused intensity along with a crowd of others.

GeekGirlCon is that "perfect size" convention for me - not too large, not too small.  There's an entertainment quality to it, but also there's some interesting alternative components to it as well, and that is what moved me.  I saw very smart people who created beautiful works of art in comics; games - board, RPG, and programmed; there were writers' panels; scientific topics; even an introduction to 3-D printing.

This year, I dressed as I usually do - in one of the t-shirts from my collection, although this picture is from my working days.  I wish I had the imagination to have thought of Darth Princess.  She is my hero.

So, it's a fun Con, with a large variety of topics to which I was exposed for the first time.  And the sheer concentration of talent and smarts reminded me of this larger world of possibilities.

What happens when a person hits that point where they've "done it all"?  I still have no answers, but I do know I'm happy not to have spent a miserable year.  This blog is doing better than I expected, I've met some interesting people, I've learned about changes in the world of technology outside of wireless telecommunications, I'm still working on the development of my interview skills, but I think I'm getting better at that and at networking.  And, frankly, those are two life skills we should all keep working at even if we do have a "good job."  I've heard about so many long-term employees who are "surprised" at their lay-off and that just boggles my mind.  Layoffs were such a constant through the 90's and early '00's, that maybe "we" forgot how tenuous that industry is, how untrustworthy a corporation is.  "Needs of the business..." blah blah blah means bottom line - you need to take care of yourself.  And there will be more to come guys.  More to come.

I could smell it in 2013 and by the 2014 GeekGirlCon I was pulled forward even further.  I'd already given my notice, but still had the opportunity to retract it if I wanted.  I gotta say, my ex-boss was willing to let me recant my retirement.  I was terrified at the time.  I'd given three months notice to

ensure there was a healthy time for the transition, but it also played hell on my nerves.  I wanted to stay where I was.  I was comfortable, wasn't ?  I made very good money.  I had an amazing reputation.  I worked with fabulous people.  My work was interesting.  WTF was I thinking?

And then I went to GeekGirlCon again, and I saw possibilities - again.  I spoke with other companies who were rapidly hiring - again.  I met women who were talking about the fallout from GamerGate and pushing them to write their own programs, share their own voices and interest.  I met a few women at the con and we have now been meeting for a full year as CodeSistersSeattle.

Possibilities are not promises.  There are no guarantees.  While at GeekGirlCon 2015 I thought of how angry I would have been this past year if I hadn't left, how even more frustrated.  How I would have trapped myself.  Bottom line:  while getting a job when you're over 50 is tough, I've been running into plenty of young women who have been looking for a year or more or are still under-employed.  It makes me feel like less of a freak and I have a chance to give back, to help someone else.  But the Con re-grounded me in the hopefulness of the possibilities and so, no, I won't be turning away from the ideals I've set for myself.  I'm trying some more outrageous things besides working on my letterpress printing design, cleaning up my four books of poetry, learning python the hard way, investigating the possibility of developing my own game, organizing a women's meetup, volunteering to be a block watch organizer, and writing two blogs.

Bennies pulled

Just got notice that the tt has pulled the med bennies.  Of course, fwiw, I've escalated.  But it's looking as though getting a lay-off package is better than retirement.

Yep.  The new reality - ask for the pack.