Gratitude Monday: Workers

Today being Labor Day, I’m expressing my gratitude for the benefits that organized labor has brought to the workplace. Yes, I’m talking labor unions. Without them, there’d be a whole lot more miserable employment conditions than exist even now.

There are basically only two reasons why you and I are not working in sweatshops with dangerous electrical wiring, hot and cold running vermin and no toilets—unions and litigation. (I would also have added “80-hour weeks” as one of the not-any-mores, but that’s pretty much so last century.)

Business management in companies both large and small do not provide more or less sanitary and safe conditions, ventilation and some standard of minimum wage out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because over the past 150 years unions have fought with blood and treasure for the concept that labor is part of the value-add of both products and services; and because they’re terrified that if they screw up and get sued, juries will strip their corporate assets in punitive damages like a plague of locusts ranging across Iowa.

I’m not saying that unions haven’t at times been part of the problem—many of them are every bit as bloated and arrogant and greedy as corporate boards, and in fact you’d have trouble distinguishing one stance from the other across the negotiating table. And I’m also not saying that America’s propensity toward litigiousness doesn’t suck up resources, like some cosmic Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, that couldn’t have been better spent on something like, oh, curing cancer.

But it takes the kind of jackhammer represented by Big Labor and Big Lawsuits to get the attention of the heirs of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. If you doubt this, I refer you to the history of the textile industry in America: the corporations first moved their factories from states with unions to the South (God bless right-to-work), and then—when even minimum wage became too much for them—to Mexico, India, China and other countries where there’s no concern about pesky things like sweatshop conditions, unsafe factory buildings or child labor.

And it’s not limited to schmattas, either. Thirty-six years ago during my sojourn in the great, cough, state of North Carolina (which is probably still electing Jesse Helms to the US Senate, corpse though he be), there was a fire in a chicken processing plant that killed 25 workers and injured 54 others. Exit doors from the factory floor had been locked, trapping the men and women in the inferno (because NO BREAKS!). Exactly like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in 1911.

I’m not going to talk about the wages paid or the conditions in the factory, but the plant had never suffered a single safety inspection, so the managers weren’t troubled by having to fork out for any, you know, protections. North Carolina is a right-to-work state, and it don’t hold with no unions.

Let me also bring to your attention the decades of work by  the United Farm Workers to bring decent wages, as well as working and living conditions, to the men, women and children who tend and harvest the food we eat. I know that I personally find it easier to swallow fruits and vegetables when I know they aren't the product of slavery-in-all-but-name. (It would help if there were some sort of—oh, I dunno—independent inspection of food products to detect and cull out things like salmonella, e. coli, cyclospora and screwworm so that we don’t sicken and die from them, but I may just be indulging in a pipe dream.)

Labor Day was made a national holiday in 1894, in the wake of the Pullman strike, which ended after President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops to suppress the strikers. As a sop to thousands of workers who’d lost their jobs and their homes, Cleveland created a national holiday to “recognize” labor.

I find that a monumental act of condescension—declaring a holiday "for the workers", kind of like Flag Day, without any meaning behind it. It wasn’t even a paid holiday. And it was set for September to distinguish it from the international socialist/communist labor day of 1 May. But it played well with Cleveland’s corporate constituents.

(Someone may tell the Kleptocrat about Cleveland and we’ll see SECDEF assigning the military not only to firing on strikers, but also to taking up jobs in factories and the farms after all the deportations. As it is, he's nixed labor unions for several federal agencies and would happily ensure that working stiffs be reduced to indentured servitude. Or—what’s wrong with slavery?)

So it’s incumbent upon us, in times where enormous inroads have been made in the gains unions won for us (I laugh at the notion of a 40-hour week, because no tech employer for the past 15 years has expected anything less than 60 hours per week from its salaried staff), to consider where we’d be if they hadn’t existed.

It’s nowhere I’d care to be, I assure you. So I am grateful today for the battles that labor unions fought. They didn’t always win, but they did move us forward.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: human connections

Interesting thing happened last week. I’d finally said out loud what I’ve been feeling for months: that I have no skills that any employer would value, so there’s no reason for me to be competing in a hugely cutthroat job market. I’d stopped even looking at the job search alerts LinkedIn sends me five times a day.

But the thought of having to depend on Social Security (which the Republicans have been trying to kill since FDR implemented it during the New Deal), Medicare (which they’ve been trying to kill since LBJ got it passed in the 60s) and my 401k (as we head into administration whose policies the vast majority of economists say will tank the global economy) really wigged me out.

I was in a bad way.

Then, Wednesday I saw a listing for a PM job that I thought I could do, generally useless though I be. But their applicant tracking system crapped out every time I hit the submit button on the application. (Tried multiple times on three browsers.) I looked on LinkedIn for a connection, and there was a product manager connected to a friend/mentor of mine. I reached out to the latter for an introduction, which he graciously gave. Thursday morning the PM responded, saying he’d already passed my “very impressive profile” to the hiring manager, who’s already in interviews, but was interested. He sent me an internal referral link to the application, but I still encountered the submit problem. He also contacted a recruiter, who at least looked at my LI profile.

I can’t tell you how much this basic interest and acknowledgement lightened my perspective.

But then, also on Thursday, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed and came across this tweet:

It had only been posted a few minutes before, so I was the first to stick up my hand. The poster DM’d me with the job description and a link to the internal referral. It’s a job I cautiously think I might be able to do, and my background at least carries gravitas in this field. As I was filling out the application, a guy I know only on Twitter, CISO for a law firm and an elder in cybersec, tweeted, “Recommend!”

As of time of writing, I’ve heard nothing further on that first job (remember—they were already interviewing), and I have a screening call tomorrow with a recruiter for the second job. (The tweet got 17 replies, and several were from people also interested.)  I’m not delusional—scores of people go through multiple rounds of interviews for every job in tech out there and still don’t get hired. But the fact that—after months of considering what I need by way of Plans B through R to feel financially secure in the coming chaos, to have two actual human connections, from people willing to help me, is such grace; it makes me cry. Whatever the outcome.

And that’s my gratitude for today.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Laboring class

Today being Labor Day, I’m expressing my gratitude for the benefits that organized labor has brought to the workplace. Yes, I’m talking labor unions. Without them, there’d be a whole lot more miserable employment conditions than exist even now.

Republican candidate for vice president JD Vance sparked rightful guffaws and boos last week when he assured a gathering of firefighter union members in Boston that he and the Kleptocrat “are the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history.” Even if true, that would be a low bar, but it seems appropriate to use this as the starting point for thoughts about workers being worthy of their hire.

There are basically only two reasons why you and I are not working in sweatshops with dangerous electrical wiring, hot and cold running vermin and no toilets—unions and litigation. (I would also have added “80-hour weeks” as one of the not-any-mores, but that’s pretty much so last century.)

Business management in companies both large and small do not provide more or less sanitary and safe conditions, ventilation and some standard of minimum wage out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because over the past 150 years unions have fought with blood and treasure for the concept that labor is part of the value-add of both products and services; and because they’re terrified that if they screw up and get sued, juries will strip their corporate assets in punitive damages like a plague of locusts ranging across Iowa.

I’m not saying that unions haven’t become part of the problem—many of them are every bit as bloated and arrogant and greedy as corporate boards, and in fact you’d have trouble distinguishing one stance from the other across the negotiating table. And I’m also not saying that America’s propensity toward litigiousness doesn’t suck up resources, like some cosmic Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, that couldn’t have been better spent on something like, oh, curing cancer.

But it takes the kind of jackhammer represented by Big Labor and Big Lawsuits to get the attention of the heirs of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. If you doubt this, I refer you to the history of the textile industry in America: the corporations first moved their factories from states with unions to the South (God bless right-to-work), and then—when even minimum wage became too much for them—to Mexico, India, China and other countries where there’s no concern about pesky things like sweatshop conditions, unsafe factory buildings or child labor.

And it’s not limited to schmattas, either. Thirty years ago during my sojourn in the great, cough, state of North Carolina (which is probably still electing Jesse Helms to the US Senate, corpse though he be), there was a fire in a chicken processing plant that killed 25 workers and injured 54 others. Exit doors from the factory floor had been locked, trapping the men and women in the inferno. Exactly like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in 1911.

I’m not going to talk about the wages paid or the conditions in the factory, but the plant had never suffered a single safety inspection, so the managers weren’t troubled by having to fork out for any, you know, protections. North Carolina is a right-to-work state, and it don’t hold with no unions.

Let me also bring to your attention the decades of work by César Chávez and the United Farm Workers to bring decent wages, as well as working and living conditions, to the men, women and children who tend and harvest the food we eat. I know that I personally find it easier to swallow fruits and vegetables when I know they aren't the product of slavery-in-all-but-name.

Labor Day was made a national holiday in 1894, in the wake of the Pullman strike, which ended after President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops to suppress the strikers. As a sop to thousands of workers who’d lost their jobs and their homes, Cleveland created a national holiday to “recognize” labor.

I find that a monumental act of condescension—declaring a holiday "for the workers", kind of like Flag Day, without any meaning behind it. It wasn’t even a paid holiday. And it was set for September to distinguish it from the international socialist/communist labor day of 1 May. But it played well with Cleveland’s corporate constituents.

So it’s incumbent upon us, in times where enormous inroads have been made in the gains unions won for us (I laugh at the notion of a 40-hour week, because no tech employer for the past 15 years has expected anything less than 60 hours per week from its salaried staff), to consider where we’d be if they hadn’t existed.

It’s nowhere I’d care to be, I assure you. So I am grateful today for the battles that labor unions fought. They didn’t always win, but they did move us forward.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Attention to detail

Last week a recruiter contacted me on LinkedIn for a job.

I’m not sure what he saw in my profile that made him think I was in any way capable of doing it, so I replied thus:

And this was his response:

So, not only does he not read profiles, he doesn’t read his messages. But he has a job.

 

 

Key interview question

Last week I interviewed for a product management position with the head of HR of a small pre-IPO software company. According to this person’s LinkedIn profile, she has a few decades, including V-level slots, with some legit, Fortune 100 companies. So I was a little surprised when she said:

“Oh, you were a product manager at [Megalithic Software Corporation]. The daughter of a friend of mine is a product manager there. Her name is X Y; did you know her?”

Uh, MSC has more than 150,000 employees, including several thousand PMs. Maybe a few thousand fewer staffers and a few hundred fewer PMs now, but still.

“Oh, I don’t think so. What unit does she work in?”

“I don’t know. But are you sure?” Voice becomes louder, pronunciation more distinct. “Her name is X Y.”

“No; sorry.”

Dunno if that ended my candidacy with that company, but I’ve not heard back from them since that call.

Fear & loathing in Las Vegas

As some of you may be aware, there’s a sporting event taking place on Sunday. It’s driving MAGAts crazy because they consider that American football, in which teams of large male millionaires padded to the max crash into one another and millions of people bet their beer money on which one will leave the field with higher numbers on the scoreboard—“that’s mah game, man!”

But this year they’re conflicted, because of Traylor.

That’s to say, in case you’ve been in an ashram for the past year—Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs (I don’t know what a tight end does, and I’m not sure why they don’t also have loose ends) is dating Taylor Swift.

If I have to explain to you who Taylor Swift is, we have no reason to be here. But she is everything MAGAts fear and loathe: smart, talented, powerful, successful, happy and richer than any hundred of them will be in their entire collective lives. And female.

They've also managed to cobble together conspiracy theories about how the Traylor thing is either a Pentagon psyop, an NFL hoax or a Biden manipulation. I am not making those up.

Well, not that any of them will be reading this, but today’s earworm is Swift’s “Shake It Off”.

Volume up.

 

 

 

Gratitude Monday: Partners

I spent a good deal of last week trying to deal with various aspects of getting healthcare coverage. In one case, it was the insurer wanting to charge me premiums based on my income from…two years ago. (I filled out the required form, attached proof of being laid off last may and now wait…six months for them to adjust.) In the other, it was the insurer claiming that I need to pay higher premiums for prescription coverage because I didn’t meet the prior coverage requirement. (I do, but CVS Caremark is playing silly buggers with Anthem about who needs to provide proof.)

So it was a welcome change to reconnect with a former colleague, who was laid off a year ago, to start an accountability partnership with him.

For one thing, I really like him—he’s a terrific product manager (how he won the layoff lottery when some others were left standing, I do not know), very smart and really funny. For another, he brings a different perspective to my job search from my two other partners.

Third—he’s been searching on his own for more than 12 months, and I know that having someone to check in with regularly will help reduce the sense of isolation and anxiety you feel when you’re in this cycle. And I’m grateful for his help, and for the help I can provide him.

That's not nothing these days, I assure you.

 

 

Show me the money

I had two interesting senior product manager interviews this week, both of which say something about how companies are approaching their hiring practices.

The first call was brief—maybe eight minutes tops. Because, after the opening small talk, the recruiter brought up the subject of compensation. He did this because it was risibly low, and he acknowledged that. I rather got the impression that he’s learnt to open the conversation with this data point because he’d had too many calls that came to a screeching halt 20 minutes in when it came up in the “normal” course of interviews.

The company in question has had two really major security breaches in the past couple of years, breaches that affected hundreds of customers and brought them the kind of press that no software company wants. It may be possible that they should consider better compensation for the people who have to clean up these kinds of messes and maybe prevent them in the future.

The second interview was actually fascinating. The company is doing interesting things in cybersecurity, has been around for more than a decade, getting close to IPO, but has never had a product manager. They’ve crafted a thoughtful job description, enumerating some really high-level expectations (including briefing analysts and the press, which typically happens at the director level), and engaged a high-powered recruitment firm to run the hiring process.

But when we got to compensation, the salary was in the exact same where-do-you-expect-to-find-someone-senior-at-this-rate range. With no bonus or equity. Again, the recruiter acknowledged that this was low, but that’s what was budgeted. He mentioned that the company execs expect this person to “be the CEO of their product line” (typical buzzwords for this role). He didn’t point out what was obvious to me: that this person would not have a compensation package that is in any way CEO-like.

Look, when even the recruiters are embarrassed to talk money, you know these are interesting times.

 

 

Cross communication

Had several interviews last week, which in itself is odd, it being Thanksgiving, with a maximum of three working days for most people in the US. But it got…odder.

We were toddling along fine; I told him about my experience, he told me about the opportunity and the company. Then he said, “Okay, I’ve some logistics to get out of the way.”

Well, I thought that was a segue to the question of compensation, but no.

Recruiter: This job requires reporting into one of our US offices, either Tampa or Salt Lake City. Are you okay with relocation, and if so, to which?

Me:

Recruiter: I thought I mentioned that in my email…?

Me:

(He had not. It would have kinda stood out if he had.)

So, that was a hard stop.

I hesitated on whether I should point out an error on their website, but what the hell—I wasn’t getting the job anyhow, so I sent him a reply to his initial email (which did not mention the relocation thing) and directed him to the solutions page, where three inches of text separated a repetition of the same statistics, but with one number changed.

It’s not clear to me why you’d repeat this data on the same page, but if you’re going to do that, you should not say that the decrease in alert triage and response times is 58% in one instance and in the other it’s 52%.

As of yesterday, they hadn’t fixed it.

 

 

 

Plus ça change…

I interviewed for a position with a cybersec startup last week—the recruiter had reached out to me and it looked like it could be interesting.

However, the VP of Product Management (who, 10 years ago owned and managed a tree removal service and whose LinkedIn profile still enumerates very minor tasks he performed for unrelated work early in his career) was clearly looking for someone more technical than I, so I knew that would be the end of it.

His shop, his call; fair enough.

However, I had found a typo in the data sheet the recruiter had sent me as prep for the VP call (she said it was a white paper, but I do know the difference between the two), so when I sent her my thank-you (since they’d masked the VP’s email address), I said—very nicely—that I’d found a typo and someone in their marketing department would probably want to correct that.

(The company has fewer than 150 employees; I reckoned that the marketing “department” might be the CMO plus one general dogsbody. Interestingly, when I looked up the CMO on LinkedIn, I discovered she has a BA; in “English—Technical Writing”. Well, we all make mistakes.)

I didn’t point out that this particular typo should have been caught by spellcheck in the first draft. I seriously do not know how it made it past what should have been multiple sets of eyeballs on the screen.

Two days later I received the thanks-but-no-thanks email from the recruiter’s email address. It was possibly a systems-generated (or maybe they’re using AI) effort; no mention of my editorial assist and the signature was just the company name.

Bless their hearts.

 

 

 

Working it out

Staying for a moment on yesterday’s Labor Day theme, I’m seeing some post-pandemic shifts in white-collar employment trends. The big panic in 2020, of course, was “how are we going to hit our numbers this quarter if employees aren’t working in the office???” Turns out employees saved their corporate bacon by working from home, collaborating by video calls and chats, and generally stepping up to the challenges of managing professional and personal responsibilities. It wasn’t without strain, but it’s generally agreed that productivity met or bettered in-office metrics.

Go figure.

But starting last year, companies have begun flapping their hands about having staff return to offices, because reasons. Some of it is probably tied to angst about all the rent they’re paying for office space, which is empty or only sparsely occupied. I’m frankly unclear about the soundness of this rationale—it’s emotional rather that practical. They want to feel like they’re getting something for the tens of thousands they’re paying commercial real estate landlords, I guess.

Then they claim that, well, productivity may be right up there, but creativity is suffering, and people need to be in the office together for that to happen. Yeah, that’s the ticket. People need to be milling around in the open-plan office, bumping into one another and thereby sparking…big ideas! Innovation! 10x!

They never give you any examples of the “watercooler serendipity” moments that are supposedly no longer taking place. (And, to tell you the truth, while they yap a lot about innovation and 10x, any real suggestions of anything but incremental change make their bowels wobble.) What were all these acts of creativity that presumably provided all the sparkle magic that working remotely has removed? Dunno.

But corporations are telling us they’re serious now about RTO: workers better come back or else. They’ve moved from enticements (“Remember the free snacks/meals?”) to mandates to threats. Google has decreed that employees must adhere to the hybrid (three days per week) in the office. Anyone not complying will have that in their personnel file. Amazon is telling people who moved out of commuting distance to an office that they need to move back. Even Zoom, the company whose fortune was made by pandemic-induced working from home, is telling staff to get back in the office.

In my own search, I’m seeing more job listings that specify on-site and hybrid requirements than remote ones. seems like this change has taken place over the past few weeks.

Last week I had an interview with a recruiter for a cybersecurity firm in Columbia, Md. It was a terrific opportunity, one in which I’d really add value. The interview ended when the recruiter (who is situated in North Carolina and apparently hasn’t been in the corporate HQ because he said he had no notion of the geography) said that the person doing this job (completely research and analysis, so requiring nothing more from the company than a computer setup and connectivity) “has to be in the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.” He was very vague about why this was so.

For me that would be a 50 mile commute, from suburban Virginia across the District They Call Columbia to exurban Baltimore. It would be insane whether I did it by car or public transportation.

(Although that ended the interview, I emailed him with a copy of my résumé, including a matrix of my skills and experience mapped to the job requirements. He didn’t bother to reply.)

There are indeed some jobs that require the workers to be on site. Surgeon (although robotics and video are chipping away at that). Firefighter. Manicurist. Prison guard; probably. There are many more jobs that corporations have signaled they don’t think are worth staffing, eliminating them in favor of computerized self-service. Retail and airline operations now want you to perform all the tasks formerly attended to by humans.

But for whole swathes of the workforce, jobs can be performed wherever there are computers and connectivity, without any loss of productivity. The pandemic demonstrated that, and all this corporate assholery is just precisely that: management (who, let me point out, are not in the mandated return-to-office cohort) demanding that workers jump through hoops as a reminder of who holds the power in this equation.

It's nothing they’ve not tried before; it’s just dressed a little differently. But I’m wondering how it’s going to play in the GenZ era?

 

 

Gratitude Monday: finding the win

I don’t think I realized how deep I’ve been in depression ever since I learned last September that I’d be laid off in May. But the weight of that black dog must have been part of what prevented me from really scrambling to find another position in the Megalithic Software Company. Because I couldn’t bring myself to find the energy to care about the place.

Four years ago, when I was applying for the job that eventually led to MSC, I was uncharacteristically focused on and determined to be hired for that position in that company. I networked shamelessly; I researched like a boss; I bought a skirt for the in-person interview. I did everything except supply 8 x 10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.

Because I was playing to win, and doing that work was winning.

Somehow in the past nine months, I’ve lost the vision of what “winning” is for me. It was so crystalline back then, and I had all the energy of an F-14’s thrusters to make it happen. And confidence; whoa! But now…

To give you an idea, somehow on the train between Lyon and Arles on my trip to France last year, the lens cap on my camera jammed into the UV filter, shattering it completely. I took it out to shoot and little shards of glass fell out onto the street. It was impossible for me to replace it—there was no camera shop in Arles, and the store they directed me to in Avignon didn’t have the size I needed. I won’t shoot without protection over the lens (which cost at least a house payment-and-a-half), so for the rest of the trip I just used my mobile phone to take photos.

Since mid-November, the Nikon has sat on a shelf, waiting for me to haul my ass out to the camera shop to get a new filter. (Yes, I could order one online, but I wanted professionals to look over the lens for scratches and clean it up before putting on the filter.) Since November (with the exception of a few meals with a friend, medical appointments and going to the office until mid-May), my only outings have involved Wegmans, Costco and the public library. I just couldn't move.

Until last week when my job search accountability partner said she would be in Arlington on our meeting day and could come out to the People’s Republic and then we could go to the camera store. Well, okay. Finally.

We also discussed our career goals and next steps, and I confessed that I just don’t know what my goals are and how am I meant to get somewhere if I don’t know where it is? Do I really want to stay in tech? If so, what flavor? Do I jump on the AI bandwagon? If so, what do I do and how do I position myself? Do I stay in cyber security? If so, how do I dodge the assholes?

If I leave tech, where do I go? And what do I do?

And why does none of it excite me or inspire me or charge me up?

You see my problem? I’ve been poking at this stew on the back of the stove for at least three months and got nowhere. Because it’s all blah.

And then she mentioned writing—people need good writing, she said. That’s what I can do.

Well, yes—people do, in fact, need good writing, but it’s been my observation over the decades that everyone thinks they can write, so they see no need to pay someone to do that job. And now that ChatGPT and its ilk are out there, they just double down on it, because AI, man! It’s intelligence! And it’s cheap!

But I’ve been walking around this notion for the past few days, trying it on, taking it off, looking at the seams, feeling the texture. Is this the next pivot for me? Going back to my roots of writing? And if so, where? For whom? And for what purpose?

Is that what winning looks like now?

Well, I dunno yet. But yesterday I took out the Nikon to get some shots of the sacred lotus next door. After nine months, it felt good to have it in my hands. I stopped along the way to practice on a hydrangea and wouldn’t you know—it’s been so long since I’ve used a real camera that I forgot to check the battery! If that’s not a metaphor for my life, I do not know what one is.

So I had to walk back home, swap batteries and then go back out.

It was worth it.

(Apparently you can catch large-mouth bass in that pond.)

And that’s what I’m grateful for today: a different perspective on winning, a reminder to keep my batteries charged and the feel of shooting photos with a real camera. The depression is not lifted, but I may be able to see beyond it.

 

 

Gratitude Monday: resources & prospects

Well, here we are—mid-May and I am once again unemployed. It’s scary, I don’t mind saying, as I have not managed to win the lottery (possibly for lack of buying tickets?), and the economic climate is unstable, what with Republicans playing silly buggers with the debt ceiling.

But I am not without resources and I am grateful for this.

And by resources I mean more than financial. I have friends who encourage me. I have a network of people who are connected to companies I might be interested in working for. And I have skills and experience that are valuable.

I also have a track record of finding and securing opportunities that are wonderful.

So I have prospects. For which I am also grateful.

 

 

Weaving mystical rings

Well, okay—my last day at Megalithic Software Company. So many emotions running through me; really hope that, well, hope and peace and anticipation prevail.

My earworm for today is Mary Black singing “Bless the Road”.

It was one of my BFF’s favorite songs—she who embodied the philosophy of blooming where you’re planted. This has never been my strong suit, at least it doesn’t seem so. So I need all the encouragement I can get.

Gratitude Monday: a clarifying chat

I had an interesting conversation last week with a colleague, generally around my work situation. I told him that I’m possibly ready for a pivot, and my strategy is to look for companies that are doing interesting things, then network into conversations about what there product management needs are. He responded with a story that really struck me:

Some years ago he was selling a house and discovered there was black mold under the roof. So he had a black mold remediation guy come out. While the guy’s guys were working on the roof, my colleague chatted with him. Turns out he used to be a data base administrator before he got into black mold (so to speak).

How did that happen; why the switch?

“I got tired of having to relearn my job every couple of years. Mold stays the same.”

Well—shoot; ain’t that the truth. At what point do you decide that the treadmill of tech-du-jour requires that you run as fast as you can just to stay in one place? (Currently it’s AI, and job descriptions are asking for 5-7 years’ experience in a field that sprouted essentially last year.) Next year it’ll be something else.

Then my colleague asked me, “I’ve got a friend at Company X, cyber crime intel—what do you tell him that you can do for his company?”

And I got that deer-in-headlights look.

Not only because I absolutely loathe with an incandescent hatred touting myself, but also because—as I told him—I don’t know how I can help them until I understand what their needs and gaps are.

That was a revelation, because it articulated what I’ve been feeling for the past couple of months, as I cannot get excited about any of the jobs recruiters and headhunters have brought to me. For me and at this point in time, that’s the wrong way to go about this. My strategy—explore companies and challenges, then present my solutions—is the right one. For me. Now.

Finally, we got to chatting about money and what’s important. I realized that, really, I’m in a position where my basic operating expenses are covered. What’s hazy is budget for travel. This means that I don’t need to make big bucks working all the hours God sends; I just need to earn enough to travel. This completely shifts the burden. Yes—lots of money would be lovely but all I need to bring in is what gets me to France and Korea and, really, wherever I might find otters.

So, today I’m grateful for my colleague, whose black mold story and questions clarified so much about my next career phase and left me relieved and hopeful.

That’s big.

 

 

 

Filtered light

Sometimes in the morning at the office, the blinds at one window vibrate. I don’t know why—there doesn’t seem to be anything different about them from the windows/blinds on either side, but it makes a flickering pattern on the floor.

There are HVAC vents next to all the windows; maybe the one in front of this window works overtime.

 

Do the hustle

Okay, this is painted on the elevator doors on every floor of the parking structure at the building where Megalithic Software Company leases four floors.

I just wonder.

 

 

Climbing out of Hell

So, my tech issue got solved, but not by anyone in the Megalithic Software Company’s IT organization. I literally was ready to schlepp my laptop over to my yoga instructor’s house, because her husband is a computer genius, when I IM’d a summary of my situation to the actual in-house IT guy at my company (the one that was acquired by MSC). He told me what docking station to order from MSC, and he was right.

It arrived Tuesday; I managed to connect all the appropriate cables and I now can see stuff on the 27” monitor.

(I still can’t get the laptop to recognize the Bluetooth headset, but that’s a fight for a different day.)

 

 

Tech hell

I spent three hours yesterday trying to connect a 27” monitor to my Megalithic Tech Company corporate laptop. That includes trying to follow the IKEA-level instructions and then on a chat and then a call with MTC’s IT support. Guy kept trying to get rid of me—go to this web site and do that; no—I told you, the monitor has power and is connected to the laptop. Oh—then go there and do this; no—I told you, it’s connected.

He finally initiated a call, again trying to fob me off on some goose chase, even bringing someone else on the call, who started by telling me to connect the monitor via the cable.

Three cables came with the monitor: HDMI/HDMI (I have no HDMI port on the laptop or the docking attachment), USB-C (no more available Type-C ports on the laptop & all ports on the docker are Type A) & Type-C to Type-A. I used that last one, but the laptop absolutely doesn't recognize that a monitor is attached. The only display that shows up in what Chrome OS is pleased to call a settings menu is what’s in the laptop lid.

Tech Guy’s last take was to send me to a public site to do a “hard reset”, which should have taken at least 30 minutes to repopulate the machine. Nope—just like a restart, instant.

Then, I was to order a new cable. Well, when I did that (using the link TG gave me), I got a reply saying I should go to a different site to order the cable, but I have no idea what to order.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to work on a 14" laptop screen, with an alien OS, in the shadow of a 27" monitor. Ugh..

 

 

George and I...

Ordinarily when I do yoga, my energy level rises so much that I wear basically only sweat pants and tee-shirt; even so, usually by the end of the lesson I need to cool off. However, since my knee surgery, I find myself cold most of the time—and since my thermostat is set to 72F, I know it’s not the environment, it’s me.

So last Friday when my instructor showed up via Zoom, I was still wearing a hoodie, zipped up, which stayed on for most of the lesson. I pretty much never pay attention to which tech swag I’m wearing, and Lord knows I have enough tech company tee-shirts to outfit Sacramento. So I didn’t think anything about it as I was moving about, until my instructor asked, “When did you work for Goldman Sachs?”

Well, I had to parse what she was talking about, and eventually arrived at:

And the mundane answer is that I got it at a party during one of the Grace Hopper Celebrations of Women in Computing. It’s all cotton, a little on the thin side, but comfortable and comforting to wear. Also, it has pockets. And I can top it with an oversized fleece I got from yet another STEM organization if I have to go out. The hood part has no drawstring, so it's more an ornamental feature than a functional one, but still.

(As an aside, GHC is a great place to get wearable swag, because if you ask the women handing it out, "What size should I get?" they'll tell you. No problem. The Goldman Sachs woman gave me the once-over and without hesitation said, "Large." She was exactly right. Go to any other tech conference and ask the guys handing it out that question and they start backing away, stuttering and shrugging because they're too afraid to answer it honestly.)

But Saturday morning, I realized that my answer should have been, “Oh, yeah—George Santos and I…we were besties.”

That’s a Dorothy Parker moment I’ll never get back.