Not Maru

These feline amusements have come my way, and I thought I’d share.

First: Bing as kitty-TV. You know, Microsoft’s search engine landing page du jour, which certainly looks better than Google’s. Although Google probably doesn’t care, given its market share.

Second: the family cat gets to the phone before the answering machine.

They’re not Woody Allen, and they’re not Maru. But still, it's Friday.

Consequences of cool

I have an Android phone, so I’m unfamiliar with the Siri application. I suppose it’s swell.

However, someone has taken the “Tell my wife I’m running late” use case and taken it a few releases further.

One can dream.

Recruiters 24

<Frustration Alert>

Had a phone screening yesterday afternoon with a recruiter for a major enterprise software company. Went through the usual drill and then we came down to The Question: what’s your current salary?

Now, first of all what you’re earning from your current employer is only mildly relevant to what the prospective one should be paying you because each situation is different. Your role is different; your compensation package is different; your benefits are different. Even if you have the same title, your duties could be wildly different and so should the compensation; you’re lucky if you’re talking about the same bowl of fruit, much less comparing apples to apples.

(It’s made even more ludicrous when your current job is in a different market, although that’s not the case this time.)

And then there’s the contractor-vs-FTE shift. It’s just patently absurd.

But what completely ate my lunch was the recruiter explaining to me that this company (which is almost as large as its CEO’s ego) has to have my current comp because “we have to justify any increase over what you're making now.”

Well, it’s not an “increase”, because they’re not paying me now. And to say that any offer they make is pegged to whatever you’re being paid by a different company, in different circumstances, for a different job is completely whacked. What if I were unemployed? Would they have to justify paying me 20% more than unemployment insurance? Or 10% more than what I was making at my last job, which might have been years ago in another state? What if I were waiting tables? Or clerking at Target?

Look—you don’t pay someone for what they did before they got to your organization, you pay them for what they’re contributing to your success now. You pay what the job is worth to you. (Which means that someone with advanced degrees or years of experience in X typically doesn’t get paid for those qualifications unless advanced degrees or years of experience in X are germane to doing this particular job.)

But I have to say I don’t find it particularly surprising coming from this company. When I worked for them eight years ago they were every bit as blinkered, bureaucratic and tight-fisted as they’re coming off now.

What’s interesting is that, in the process of sending them my CV, I saw what the top of the salary range is. And it’s a whole lot more than 20% over what I’m getting now. But clearly, unless I were already making 90% of that figure, I wouldn’t ever see it from them.

Well, I’m not going to worry about it—since every offer extended has to be approved by the above-mentioned CEO, it’ll be a long, long time before this might ever be an issue.

Surgical strike Pt 5

I finally got the sutures out of my knees yesterday, thank God. They were driving me nuts—itching and catching on fabric. (They’re some sort of stiff plastic thread.) And one of them actually came out on its own.

I can’t think why they don’t use the self-destructing stuff that vets use on our four-pawed friends.

Both my PCP and my physical therapist are impressed at how well I’m doing. I’m actually being pretty good about doing the PT exercises, since I want to get through this.

Actually, I scared the cleaning guy at work this morning. He came upon me lying in an empty cube doing leg lifts. Sorry about that, but I needed an unencumbered stretch of floor to run through the routine, and he was in the process of doing the conference room when I went looking.

I'm sure he'll be psychologically prepared tomorrow. In fact, I bet he peeks into every cube on the floor just to make sure there's not a body lying under the desk.

Royal carriage

Interesting license plate frame, spotted on El Camino Real in Mountain View. (BTW, El Camino Real is literally "The King's Highway"; originally the route of the Franciscan friars who built the missions along it. It's also the main drag through the Silicon Valley's several counties.)

The driver actually was a woman, but I didn’t notice any signs of royalty or even nobility in her mien or her driving.