Another bizarre encounter of the weird kind with a recruiter (yes—redundant; trebly so, as any encounter with a recruiter is de facto bizarre and weird).
A couple of days ago I received an email from a recruiter for a large security software company. Pretty much out of the blue, saying he’d like to speak with me and what’s the best time to phone?
Before I could reply to give him a convenient time, I got an early morning call—evidently just to chat. He’d found my CV on Dice, but didn’t seem to have anything specific in my line. Wanted to know if I’m wedded to the West Coast (I’m not), reminisced about his time living in Northern Virginia/DC (good times, good times) and finally expressed interest in my qualifications and enjoined me to keep in touch.
Well, the next day it occurred to me to ask a question about entrées into security—you pretty much can’t get hired unless you already have experience and I was thinking that perhaps a somewhat oblique approach might be effective. So I emailed him in the spirit of his “don’t be a stranger” approach. I made my inquiry and asked his advice—usually that’s an invitation for someone to propound on his expertise at great length.
In this case, him being a recruiter, it resulted in resounding silence. Evidently his emailing fingers have been broken since our conversation.
So much for his attempt at bonhomie and sincerity.
On a related front, a job shop recruiter contacted me a couple of weeks ago about a product marketing contract job with an enterprise software company. She didn’t have a lot of information about it, but had found my CV on Dice and wanted to submit my details to the customer.
Well, to cut this one short, on Tuesday I had an initial phone screening with the hiring manager—no further details about the job, just to “get a feel for the cultural fit”.
Only it turns out that she doesn’t even have approval/funding for this contract, and won’t know until month’s end, best case. Only then could she actually start, you know, interviewing.
I suppose it’s a mark of how desperate job shops are to get bums in seats (as we used to say in the UK; and which, now that I think of it, is probably an accurate expression by at least two definitions) that the recruiter is already flinging candidates at the client before there’s even a budget.
The more I work at this the better a convent starts to look. One without any sort of electronic connectivity, much less recruiters.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Bloody movers
So, I was in an Asian market today, thinking about buying a lobster. This is one of only two places in the Silicon Valley so far where I’ve found a lobster tank. (They also had a tank for blue crabs—live crabs $3.99/lb; dead crabs $2.99/lb, & I swear I’m not making that up.)
They looked a little weedy—a couple had only one claw, but I might still have sprung for one.
Then I remembered that the idiots who packed my house in Seattle ignored my clearly marked signs on which kitchen gear to store & which to move into the, you know, kitchen. So that right now the largest pot I have access to holds two quarts.
So much for a crustacean celebration.
They looked a little weedy—a couple had only one claw, but I might still have sprung for one.
Then I remembered that the idiots who packed my house in Seattle ignored my clearly marked signs on which kitchen gear to store & which to move into the, you know, kitchen. So that right now the largest pot I have access to holds two quarts.
So much for a crustacean celebration.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
500 pound gorilla off my back
As of yesterday, I no longer own real property in Seattle. The deal is closed & recorded with King County.
Thank God!
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Recruiters... (redux)
Okay, latest in the surrealistic world of recruiters:
Last week I was contacted (or “reached out to”) by an account manager for one of the job shops I’ve been speaking with. She had a requisition from PayPal, one of the large users of contract workers (although, as far as I can tell, they all pretty much use contractors as much as possible, as it saves them money & means it’s marginally easier to cut the payroll than to fire “full-time employees”). It’s not what I really want, & the money’s low, but it’s a three-month renewable, & I figure that 90 days would give me room to look around for something that really appeals.
So I reworked my CV to speak to the project management aspects, & then went back & gave her a bulleted list addressing their bulleted list, because God forbid they should have to actually look at my CV to find what I’ve done that would be useful to them.
Yesterday here’s what I got by way of update:
“Just wanted to follow-up with you on the Yahoo position and also give you a status update on the PayPal position. They are in the final stages with another candidate and said that they would circle back to me later this week.
“Please let me know if you have any questions.”
I consider myself a bit of a smart cookie, but I have no idea what that means. Am I out of the running for PayPal? If so, why would they “circle back” (again with the biz-speak)? Perhaps this is her way of telling me that if the other candidate turns out to be a raving lunatic with connections to Al Quaeda and the WTCU, the client might deign to reconsider my qualifications?
But what really threw me was the reference to Yahoo. As far as I know, I’ve not discussed any opening at Yahoo with her. Where did this come from, I wonder?
Which leads me to also wonder if she meant to send this “update” to someone else entirely, whom she’d proposed to both PayPal & Yahoo. Or if she actually had sent my CV in to Yahoo for a position, without telling me.
& lest you think this beyond the beyond, it’s happened before. Back in Virginia I’d been speaking with a recruiter for a position with Client X, tweaked my CV to address their job description, got the full pitch from him about what a perfect match I was, & then waited. When I finally contacted him, he informed me that Client A had concerns that I didn’t have a particular type of experience. When I told him that this experience wasn’t in the JD, there was a bit of a flutter & then it came out that he’d submitted my CV to the wrong client.
At least it was wrong as far as I was concerned.
After experiences like these it’s hard to take these people seriously. I wonder how it is their clients manage to keep using them?
BTW, I emailed this local Yahoo/PayPal chick to ask what, exactly, she was talking about. So far no reply. I guess “please let me know if you have any questions” didn’t mean she would actually provide answers to them.
Last week I was contacted (or “reached out to”) by an account manager for one of the job shops I’ve been speaking with. She had a requisition from PayPal, one of the large users of contract workers (although, as far as I can tell, they all pretty much use contractors as much as possible, as it saves them money & means it’s marginally easier to cut the payroll than to fire “full-time employees”). It’s not what I really want, & the money’s low, but it’s a three-month renewable, & I figure that 90 days would give me room to look around for something that really appeals.
So I reworked my CV to speak to the project management aspects, & then went back & gave her a bulleted list addressing their bulleted list, because God forbid they should have to actually look at my CV to find what I’ve done that would be useful to them.
Yesterday here’s what I got by way of update:
“Just wanted to follow-up with you on the Yahoo position and also give you a status update on the PayPal position. They are in the final stages with another candidate and said that they would circle back to me later this week.
“Please let me know if you have any questions.”
I consider myself a bit of a smart cookie, but I have no idea what that means. Am I out of the running for PayPal? If so, why would they “circle back” (again with the biz-speak)? Perhaps this is her way of telling me that if the other candidate turns out to be a raving lunatic with connections to Al Quaeda and the WTCU, the client might deign to reconsider my qualifications?
But what really threw me was the reference to Yahoo. As far as I know, I’ve not discussed any opening at Yahoo with her. Where did this come from, I wonder?
Which leads me to also wonder if she meant to send this “update” to someone else entirely, whom she’d proposed to both PayPal & Yahoo. Or if she actually had sent my CV in to Yahoo for a position, without telling me.
& lest you think this beyond the beyond, it’s happened before. Back in Virginia I’d been speaking with a recruiter for a position with Client X, tweaked my CV to address their job description, got the full pitch from him about what a perfect match I was, & then waited. When I finally contacted him, he informed me that Client A had concerns that I didn’t have a particular type of experience. When I told him that this experience wasn’t in the JD, there was a bit of a flutter & then it came out that he’d submitted my CV to the wrong client.
At least it was wrong as far as I was concerned.
After experiences like these it’s hard to take these people seriously. I wonder how it is their clients manage to keep using them?
BTW, I emailed this local Yahoo/PayPal chick to ask what, exactly, she was talking about. So far no reply. I guess “please let me know if you have any questions” didn’t mean she would actually provide answers to them.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Biz-speak 2.0 redux
Can it possibly be more than two years since I last took on the issue of the subset of business blather that we know as buzzword bingo?
Marlys Harris of Money Watch has stepped in to update us. (Came to me via the Soapbox maven.) A couple of thoughts on her list:
In addition to “human capital” I’ve also recently seen “talent management” to refer to HR. I suppose, like giving employees thank-you notes instead of pay raises, describing them as capital or talent is supposed to disguise the fact that they’re still treated like chattel.
Akin to “transparent” is “visibility”. You can’t be aware of something going on, you have to have visibility of it. Must be the noun—it can’t be visible to you, you must have visibility of it.
One monstrosity that pervaded the organization I recently fled was “learnings”. Evidently the legitimate “lessons” is insufficient, so they had to turn the gerund into a bastardized plural form to describe the aftermath of failed projects.
“Take-away” was big, too. I lost interest when I realized they weren’t talking about Chinese food.
And one of my bêtes-noires (mentioned in my earlier post) is still “socialize”, meaning to make others aware of something. There was a lot of that sort of socializing going on. And “circling back”; not to mention circling wagons.
What would you add to the list?
Marlys Harris of Money Watch has stepped in to update us. (Came to me via the Soapbox maven.) A couple of thoughts on her list:
In addition to “human capital” I’ve also recently seen “talent management” to refer to HR. I suppose, like giving employees thank-you notes instead of pay raises, describing them as capital or talent is supposed to disguise the fact that they’re still treated like chattel.
Akin to “transparent” is “visibility”. You can’t be aware of something going on, you have to have visibility of it. Must be the noun—it can’t be visible to you, you must have visibility of it.
One monstrosity that pervaded the organization I recently fled was “learnings”. Evidently the legitimate “lessons” is insufficient, so they had to turn the gerund into a bastardized plural form to describe the aftermath of failed projects.
“Take-away” was big, too. I lost interest when I realized they weren’t talking about Chinese food.
And one of my bêtes-noires (mentioned in my earlier post) is still “socialize”, meaning to make others aware of something. There was a lot of that sort of socializing going on. And “circling back”; not to mention circling wagons.
What would you add to the list?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The coffee house connection
Interesting (to me) story by Malcolm Gladwell in the WSJ about writing in public places.
I’ve done this for years in the old-style way: journal and fountain pen, in cafés and restaurants across several countries. There’s something about the nib of a good fountain pen scratching across a blank page of lined paper that’s incredibly satisfying. In a pinch, I’ll use a roller-ball, but heaven for me is an Italian pen, a journal and a café table.
Up until my move to the Valley they call Silicon, however, I didn’t get the attraction of people sitting in coffee shops frantically tap-tap-tapping on their laptops, trying to look extraordinarily important instead of like cheapos who won’t spring for high speed broadband at home. (Or like the out-of-work waiting for the employment commission office to open.)
Now that I am myself unemployed (or “between gigs”, as we used to say in Hollywood), I’ve found that I quite enjoy coming to the nearest Panera Bread (where I am at this moment) and haul out the Mini 10 for a quick trawl through Dice’s latest postings or to answer a couple of emails. I prefer Panera to coffee shops because I can get free refills here, and the staff are actually quite amiable.
Starbucks is out of the question because if their coffee were free it still wouldn’t be drinkable. I’ve never understood how they retained market share once other shops opened that actually serve potable beverages.
A coffee shop is a great place to eavesdrop—business meetings (I learned a lot about the current state of non-profits and social networking here a couple of weeks ago), family dynamics and just plain gossip (there’s quite a lively discussion going on in Spanish at the next booth as I write this; I can make out about 20% of it). If you’re stuck for story ideas, coffee houses and beauty salons are the place to go.
(Reminds me—I need to find someone to cut my hair locally.)
But what’s important to me right now is that being out in public, in one place for a length of time, gives me the chance to interact with people casually—a change from talking with recruiters and interviewing with hiring managers. It may be a sad state of affairs that right now being greeted as a regular at Panera is comforting, but these days, I’ll take what I can get.
I’ve done this for years in the old-style way: journal and fountain pen, in cafés and restaurants across several countries. There’s something about the nib of a good fountain pen scratching across a blank page of lined paper that’s incredibly satisfying. In a pinch, I’ll use a roller-ball, but heaven for me is an Italian pen, a journal and a café table.
Up until my move to the Valley they call Silicon, however, I didn’t get the attraction of people sitting in coffee shops frantically tap-tap-tapping on their laptops, trying to look extraordinarily important instead of like cheapos who won’t spring for high speed broadband at home. (Or like the out-of-work waiting for the employment commission office to open.)
Now that I am myself unemployed (or “between gigs”, as we used to say in Hollywood), I’ve found that I quite enjoy coming to the nearest Panera Bread (where I am at this moment) and haul out the Mini 10 for a quick trawl through Dice’s latest postings or to answer a couple of emails. I prefer Panera to coffee shops because I can get free refills here, and the staff are actually quite amiable.
Starbucks is out of the question because if their coffee were free it still wouldn’t be drinkable. I’ve never understood how they retained market share once other shops opened that actually serve potable beverages.
A coffee shop is a great place to eavesdrop—business meetings (I learned a lot about the current state of non-profits and social networking here a couple of weeks ago), family dynamics and just plain gossip (there’s quite a lively discussion going on in Spanish at the next booth as I write this; I can make out about 20% of it). If you’re stuck for story ideas, coffee houses and beauty salons are the place to go.
(Reminds me—I need to find someone to cut my hair locally.)
But what’s important to me right now is that being out in public, in one place for a length of time, gives me the chance to interact with people casually—a change from talking with recruiters and interviewing with hiring managers. It may be a sad state of affairs that right now being greeted as a regular at Panera is comforting, but these days, I’ll take what I can get.
The job hunt
Anent yesterday’s interviewing farce, let me say one thing for the benefit of prospective employers:
Thirty minutes of face time isn’t enough to give the candidate a sense of what it is you’re looking for, no matter how many of these slots you string together in an afternoon.
Especially when you don’t seem so certain yourself.
Unless you’re planning on yet another round of togetherness to really talk about the need & my skills, I do not see how you can make an intelligent decision.
(I also don’t get you asking so many blue-sky questions—what would I do to change the overall product that would increase market share, put smiles on shareholders’ faces & make the cover of Time?—for a six- to nine-month contract position.)
I know it would be a crap shoot from my end, & I’m quite glad that my commitment would only be for those six to nine months, if I’m made an offer.
Thirty minutes of face time isn’t enough to give the candidate a sense of what it is you’re looking for, no matter how many of these slots you string together in an afternoon.
Especially when you don’t seem so certain yourself.
Unless you’re planning on yet another round of togetherness to really talk about the need & my skills, I do not see how you can make an intelligent decision.
(I also don’t get you asking so many blue-sky questions—what would I do to change the overall product that would increase market share, put smiles on shareholders’ faces & make the cover of Time?—for a six- to nine-month contract position.)
I know it would be a crap shoot from my end, & I’m quite glad that my commitment would only be for those six to nine months, if I’m made an offer.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Recruiters...
What can I say—as a category, recruiters are scum. Doesn’t matter if they’re in-house or out, they have the mind set of used car salesmen. Ditto for the ethics.
By way of illustration, here are my most recent experiences with three of them—recent being in the past four business days.
You may recall that I was scheduled for an on-site interview with a healthcare company last week. I indeed had it—nearly two hours in & then out again on public transport to downtown SF for an hour with one of the two people I was to meet. The hiring manager straggled in about 15 minutes late, read her question from a print out, wrote her answers on the sheet like she was taking a junior high fill-in-the-blanks test & then shooed me out because she & her team member had someone else to interview.
Okay, that’s not the recruiter’s fault, although it is an indication that the organization & especially the hiring manager are largely clueless when it comes to how they bring on new employees. & it’s a huge sign that this person isn’t someone I really want to work closely with.
But all along the way this recruiter (on staff) has been late with his communications—always with a reason, but yet another indicator that this place can’t organize its way out of a paper bag. Immediately following the interview he promised faithfully that he’d call me that afternoon to give & receive feedback. The call didn’t come until late the next day—no feedback from the manager, just wanting my thoughts.
Then he swore that he’d get feedback from his people no later than Friday & he’d call. Not surprisingly to me, he finally got round to phoning me yesterday afternoon, to tell me that they’ve decided not to hire for any of the six product manager positions they have open (which he said they desperately need to fill), but instead to “focus” on a group manager of PMs.
This is a position that’s been open for going on for six months & for which the recruiter tells me they have no one in the pipeline.
If he’s to be believed.
(Whatever; really what this tells me is that there’s no way I’d want to work for these people, even if they were paying market rates.)
Recruiter #2 (independent) solicited me for a very interesting PM position, with a “very well-funded startup”, which turns out to be headquartered in London & would therefore entail substantial travel back & forth. He emailed me on Thursday, we set up for early Friday afternoon for us to have a call, & then I heard nothing. Late that day I rang him, got a bit more information & a promise that he’d send me the job description & more data on the company, its principals, etc., Saturday morning; then we could have a call early Monday (yesterday) to discuss.
Thank God he gave me the company name so I could research on my own, because there’s been nothing but dead air from him since then. No email, no call—even though I sent him a targeted CV and cover letter late Sunday to spark the conversation I expected yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll have to call him to see if his head’s out of his butt yet.
Finally, I’ve been working with Recruiter #3 on a contract gig with one of the area’s “Internet” giants” since sometime in July; maybe initially in June. I’m not laying the length of time this has been dragging on him; that’s on the client. But after a second phone interview with the client, on Friday the recruiter (representing the job shop that would run the contract) called to say I’d finally have an on-site interview Tuesday (today), which could last four to six hours.
Well, since my phone interview had brought up interest from the client for a position I hadn’t been aware of before, I asked if he could give me a job description, a list of the people I’d probably be seeing, an idea of the typical interview process, &—oh, yeah, where, exactly would this take place?
He promised he’d get me all that information, send it to me in an email yesterday morning, & then call me in the afternoon to go through it all.
Imagine my surprise when I heard nothing from him either electronically or over the wires. I sent him an email; no response. I left voice mails on his office & mobile numbers; no reply. Finally, this morning at about three hours before I was supposed to show up somewhere to meet someone & talk about something, I had to leave a VM in the company’s general mailbox. He called me shortly thereafter…with nothing concrete except the address (which turned out to be wrong).
He didn’t know exactly what this new job was—tried to talk his way around it by giving me more general info. Said I’d be meeting with this person; or possibly that one. Assured me he’d arrange a quick phone call with one of the PMs he already has working there on a contract to talk me through the process; never happened.
Of course, the client turned out to be, um, less than well put together. They had six PM candidates there, being interviewed by a phalanx of their people, but they weren’t terrifically good about communicating. For example, the person who was supposed to start the round with me never got a call from reception. Then they didn’t seem to be really clear about which position I was there for (as opposed to the other five interviewees).
That mass candidate thing is pretty low-class. Although it was amusing to see a German woman go postal because while she was in the loo, someone came to collect one of us, alone. When she returned she kept demanding to know why only that one guy had gone, & when would they be back for her, & did “they” know that “we’re all here together”? I’m glad that Belgium & Poland weren’t anywhere near, because she was ready to roll out the Panzers & start amassing an art collection.
My carousel of interviewers was interrupted by a fire drill (literally). It didn’t give me a lot of confidence about security that I was able to get back into the building without swiping a badge; I wouldn’t have done it except there was no one person in charge of me, so no one I could contact to escort me back in.
& a further warning sign: the group manager showed up 25 minutes late, addressed me as Nora & then went off on a call. When he got back & said, “I understand you’ve worked at [Internet Giant] before, I had to interject that I haven’t, nor is my name Nora. He assured me that he has actually read my CV before; but there’s no way of telling, & I’m not sure it’s a good sign that he apparently had Nora’s there, but not mine.
Well—that’s not recruiter-specific, but I did have to get it off my chest.
I called my guy after I got home. In keeping with much of our interaction, he didn’t really know anything at all, but he said he should have a go/no-go decision by Thursday.
Thank God I have a new inquiry from a recruiter for another position. Sadly it is a recruiter. You can’t live with them, you can’t kill them all.
By way of illustration, here are my most recent experiences with three of them—recent being in the past four business days.
You may recall that I was scheduled for an on-site interview with a healthcare company last week. I indeed had it—nearly two hours in & then out again on public transport to downtown SF for an hour with one of the two people I was to meet. The hiring manager straggled in about 15 minutes late, read her question from a print out, wrote her answers on the sheet like she was taking a junior high fill-in-the-blanks test & then shooed me out because she & her team member had someone else to interview.
Okay, that’s not the recruiter’s fault, although it is an indication that the organization & especially the hiring manager are largely clueless when it comes to how they bring on new employees. & it’s a huge sign that this person isn’t someone I really want to work closely with.
But all along the way this recruiter (on staff) has been late with his communications—always with a reason, but yet another indicator that this place can’t organize its way out of a paper bag. Immediately following the interview he promised faithfully that he’d call me that afternoon to give & receive feedback. The call didn’t come until late the next day—no feedback from the manager, just wanting my thoughts.
Then he swore that he’d get feedback from his people no later than Friday & he’d call. Not surprisingly to me, he finally got round to phoning me yesterday afternoon, to tell me that they’ve decided not to hire for any of the six product manager positions they have open (which he said they desperately need to fill), but instead to “focus” on a group manager of PMs.
This is a position that’s been open for going on for six months & for which the recruiter tells me they have no one in the pipeline.
If he’s to be believed.
(Whatever; really what this tells me is that there’s no way I’d want to work for these people, even if they were paying market rates.)
Recruiter #2 (independent) solicited me for a very interesting PM position, with a “very well-funded startup”, which turns out to be headquartered in London & would therefore entail substantial travel back & forth. He emailed me on Thursday, we set up for early Friday afternoon for us to have a call, & then I heard nothing. Late that day I rang him, got a bit more information & a promise that he’d send me the job description & more data on the company, its principals, etc., Saturday morning; then we could have a call early Monday (yesterday) to discuss.
Thank God he gave me the company name so I could research on my own, because there’s been nothing but dead air from him since then. No email, no call—even though I sent him a targeted CV and cover letter late Sunday to spark the conversation I expected yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll have to call him to see if his head’s out of his butt yet.
Finally, I’ve been working with Recruiter #3 on a contract gig with one of the area’s “Internet” giants” since sometime in July; maybe initially in June. I’m not laying the length of time this has been dragging on him; that’s on the client. But after a second phone interview with the client, on Friday the recruiter (representing the job shop that would run the contract) called to say I’d finally have an on-site interview Tuesday (today), which could last four to six hours.
Well, since my phone interview had brought up interest from the client for a position I hadn’t been aware of before, I asked if he could give me a job description, a list of the people I’d probably be seeing, an idea of the typical interview process, &—oh, yeah, where, exactly would this take place?
He promised he’d get me all that information, send it to me in an email yesterday morning, & then call me in the afternoon to go through it all.
Imagine my surprise when I heard nothing from him either electronically or over the wires. I sent him an email; no response. I left voice mails on his office & mobile numbers; no reply. Finally, this morning at about three hours before I was supposed to show up somewhere to meet someone & talk about something, I had to leave a VM in the company’s general mailbox. He called me shortly thereafter…with nothing concrete except the address (which turned out to be wrong).
He didn’t know exactly what this new job was—tried to talk his way around it by giving me more general info. Said I’d be meeting with this person; or possibly that one. Assured me he’d arrange a quick phone call with one of the PMs he already has working there on a contract to talk me through the process; never happened.
Of course, the client turned out to be, um, less than well put together. They had six PM candidates there, being interviewed by a phalanx of their people, but they weren’t terrifically good about communicating. For example, the person who was supposed to start the round with me never got a call from reception. Then they didn’t seem to be really clear about which position I was there for (as opposed to the other five interviewees).
That mass candidate thing is pretty low-class. Although it was amusing to see a German woman go postal because while she was in the loo, someone came to collect one of us, alone. When she returned she kept demanding to know why only that one guy had gone, & when would they be back for her, & did “they” know that “we’re all here together”? I’m glad that Belgium & Poland weren’t anywhere near, because she was ready to roll out the Panzers & start amassing an art collection.
My carousel of interviewers was interrupted by a fire drill (literally). It didn’t give me a lot of confidence about security that I was able to get back into the building without swiping a badge; I wouldn’t have done it except there was no one person in charge of me, so no one I could contact to escort me back in.
& a further warning sign: the group manager showed up 25 minutes late, addressed me as Nora & then went off on a call. When he got back & said, “I understand you’ve worked at [Internet Giant] before, I had to interject that I haven’t, nor is my name Nora. He assured me that he has actually read my CV before; but there’s no way of telling, & I’m not sure it’s a good sign that he apparently had Nora’s there, but not mine.
Well—that’s not recruiter-specific, but I did have to get it off my chest.
I called my guy after I got home. In keeping with much of our interaction, he didn’t really know anything at all, but he said he should have a go/no-go decision by Thursday.
Thank God I have a new inquiry from a recruiter for another position. Sadly it is a recruiter. You can’t live with them, you can’t kill them all.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Dogs have their day
Those madcap kinetic artists who brought you the choreographed treadmill dance video are back. This time with dogs.
I'm pretty sure all their props came from Ikea.
Also, this time their mamas didn’t dress them funny. Perhaps the dogs are a positive influence on them.
(Extra points if you spot the non-pawed, four-legged ringer.)
I'm pretty sure all their props came from Ikea.
Also, this time their mamas didn’t dress them funny. Perhaps the dogs are a positive influence on them.
(Extra points if you spot the non-pawed, four-legged ringer.)
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Labor Day 2010 (Part 2)
This employment thing is still eating my lunch. It makes me wish I had killed off a considerably greater number of my brain cells with alcohol than I evidently have done.
It’s the inherently unequal relationship that gets to me, something I didn’t feel until we got into this century. That’s the one that puts the employee in the permanent position of being a supplicant.
I feel this particularly as, yet once again, I’m looking for work. Again & again I’m expected to demonstrate how passionate I am about Company X & it’s product line(s), & to show how I personally can add several digits to the bottom line through my expertise & enthusiasm.
At no time am I expected to inquire what I might expect in return by way of compensation, career growth, benefits or satisfaction.
It’s interesting; recruiters want you to give them your salary history (completely irrelevant, since you were being paid to do something specific for a particular employer; not for whatever Company X anticipates you’ll do for them), or at the least your “expectations”. When I counter that I can’t really say what I expect until I understand what I’m meant to be producing (specifically), or what the entire package is to be, I get, “well, you must know what you need as a minimum.”
Uh—what I need as a minimum to survive is completely irrelevant—unless you’re telling me that your company expects me to work for survival.
(While I have no doubt that this is precisely what they’d like to get away with, I assure you that I have no interest in anyone who’d expect me to do that in real life.)
Of course, that compensation “package” these days is melting like gelato in August. Business try to spin their little attempts to appear competitive, but they’re risible:
When it comes to vacation, they cleverly call it “PTO”, which, when you look it up, turns out to be “paid time off”, doled out like gruel in a Dickensian work house. Employers tout a number of “PTO” days, but this number includes all time off: vacation, sick, holidays. So “20 days PTO” doesn’t really amount to much.
For retirement, an employer considers itself paragon of responsibility if even has a 401K, which amounts to them contracting with a vendor to charge you fees to invest your own money poorly. What—you’re looking for corporate matching? What asylum did you escape from?
(Of course, do not by any means pretend that you’ll be with a company long enough to actually retire.)
If they say they have tuition reimbursement, you’ll discover that when it comes time to make use of it, there’ll be restrictions. My last attempt to take advantage was stymied when I was told that there was only enough budget for one employee in the department to take courses. (& this was with a supposedly advanced enterprise software firm.)
I’m currently involved in discussions with a San Francisco health insurer, which offers a salary that’s about $15K below market, no signing-on bonus & “benefits” that include their health plan (extremely badly reviewed on consumer sites), 20 days PTO & “discounts on alternative care services such as chiropractic, acupuncture & massage therapy.” Here’s what they tout for a commuter program: “An employer-sponsored plan that allows you to make pre-tax contributions into a special account used to purchase your public transportation fare or to reimburse yourself for eligible out-of-pocket expenses for vanpooling or parking”
So, basically—nothing.
What I love, though, is the “employee recognition” “benefit”: “Thank you cards to recognize fellow employees.”
Well, that certainly makes up for the $15K loss, plus the $6250 annual commuting costs.
(The recruiter explained, “we’re a non-profit.” Really? I wonder if your rate-paying members agree with that designation?)
Here’s a suggestion to corporate America: if you want me to be “passionate” about your welfare, show that you value mine by offering me compensation (the whole package) commensurate not only with my experience but also with the job you want done, & don’t pretend for an instant that I should treat you with any less contempt than you direct my way.
It’s the inherently unequal relationship that gets to me, something I didn’t feel until we got into this century. That’s the one that puts the employee in the permanent position of being a supplicant.
I feel this particularly as, yet once again, I’m looking for work. Again & again I’m expected to demonstrate how passionate I am about Company X & it’s product line(s), & to show how I personally can add several digits to the bottom line through my expertise & enthusiasm.
At no time am I expected to inquire what I might expect in return by way of compensation, career growth, benefits or satisfaction.
It’s interesting; recruiters want you to give them your salary history (completely irrelevant, since you were being paid to do something specific for a particular employer; not for whatever Company X anticipates you’ll do for them), or at the least your “expectations”. When I counter that I can’t really say what I expect until I understand what I’m meant to be producing (specifically), or what the entire package is to be, I get, “well, you must know what you need as a minimum.”
Uh—what I need as a minimum to survive is completely irrelevant—unless you’re telling me that your company expects me to work for survival.
(While I have no doubt that this is precisely what they’d like to get away with, I assure you that I have no interest in anyone who’d expect me to do that in real life.)
Of course, that compensation “package” these days is melting like gelato in August. Business try to spin their little attempts to appear competitive, but they’re risible:
When it comes to vacation, they cleverly call it “PTO”, which, when you look it up, turns out to be “paid time off”, doled out like gruel in a Dickensian work house. Employers tout a number of “PTO” days, but this number includes all time off: vacation, sick, holidays. So “20 days PTO” doesn’t really amount to much.
For retirement, an employer considers itself paragon of responsibility if even has a 401K, which amounts to them contracting with a vendor to charge you fees to invest your own money poorly. What—you’re looking for corporate matching? What asylum did you escape from?
(Of course, do not by any means pretend that you’ll be with a company long enough to actually retire.)
If they say they have tuition reimbursement, you’ll discover that when it comes time to make use of it, there’ll be restrictions. My last attempt to take advantage was stymied when I was told that there was only enough budget for one employee in the department to take courses. (& this was with a supposedly advanced enterprise software firm.)
I’m currently involved in discussions with a San Francisco health insurer, which offers a salary that’s about $15K below market, no signing-on bonus & “benefits” that include their health plan (extremely badly reviewed on consumer sites), 20 days PTO & “discounts on alternative care services such as chiropractic, acupuncture & massage therapy.” Here’s what they tout for a commuter program: “An employer-sponsored plan that allows you to make pre-tax contributions into a special account used to purchase your public transportation fare or to reimburse yourself for eligible out-of-pocket expenses for vanpooling or parking”
So, basically—nothing.
What I love, though, is the “employee recognition” “benefit”: “Thank you cards to recognize fellow employees.”
Well, that certainly makes up for the $15K loss, plus the $6250 annual commuting costs.
(The recruiter explained, “we’re a non-profit.” Really? I wonder if your rate-paying members agree with that designation?)
Here’s a suggestion to corporate America: if you want me to be “passionate” about your welfare, show that you value mine by offering me compensation (the whole package) commensurate not only with my experience but also with the job you want done, & don’t pretend for an instant that I should treat you with any less contempt than you direct my way.
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