In my last days at BAE the venerable Fox and Friends would invariably include a daily segment where somebody or other took Obama to task for being “negative.” This attitude, which is ludicrous on its face, becomes less confusing once you remember that a significant portion of the United States doesn’t live in a reality-based society, lives, rather, in a magical place where thinking something (or, just as powerfully, _not_ thinking something) makes it real, or makes it go away.
I myself am ambivalent about this distinction. Much of my headspace is devoted to unreality or counter-reality; my professional aspirations lie in that foggy territory. Still, I am apparently well-enough grounded in the nuts and bolts of life to prefer people who acknowledge the real state of affairs, however unpalatable they might be. So I don’t mind hearing about how the crisis is the most serious in 40 years, how primary education in this country is abysmal by any reasonable metric, etc. That’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay, but I’d rather know than not know.
As a public service message, then, I figured I’d update you on how the economy is affecting Monica and I, since we’re at a place where we can be buffetted by it more than the six or seven LSH regulars. First, to recap: I left my job in Nashua and moved back to MN because Monica got cancer and needed immediate surgery. This was … Monday. The surgery went well, and from what we know p(recovery | breast cancer) is as high as it could be.
But that leaves me in the difficult place of looking for a job at a time of record unemployment; with a variety of bills to pay, all the usual ones plus the new medical ones, most notably Monica’s health insurance, which we must be very, very careful to never ever allow to lapse. And a new stipulation: unlike before, whatever job I get either must be in Minnesota, or allow me to telecommute.
So how hard will that be? Here’s what I know right now: in the fall, when I went through this before, after I posted my resume on Monster the response was a mini feeding frenzy. The phone didn’t stop ringing with offers that I was a “good match” for, most of which were unpalatable for one reason or another. Once you eliminated the crappy ones, I was left with three likely candidates; and when the first hard offer came through, with a “take it or leave it by tomorrow” ultimatum, I wound up taking it. The wage was high, the economy was starting to go pear shaped, and I wasn’t of a mind to play chicken with fate. Elapsed time, from beginning of job search to taking a job, was something like ten days.
Fast forward to now. Since Monday I’ve been a job-huntig dervish. I updated my resume; posted it not only on Monster but on Dice, HotGigs, and a few others that seemed relevant. Searched out every likely employer on these sites, contacted them directly. The response has been a number of recruiter phone calls that might have been promising leads, except the jobs weren’t local: Charlottsville, VA; Newark, NJ; Tampa, FL. Kind of hard to work in Tampa and come back a few times a week to take Monica to chemo.
A couple of local recruiters have nibbled. One conversation seemed promising but apparently wasn’t, since the recruiter re-posted the job ad and stopped responding to queries about the status of my candidacy. Another conversation led yesterday to a pre-interview with a recruiter, which went well enough that he’ll put me forward to his client. Hopefully that will lead to an interview. We’ll see.
The main thing I’ve learned from this is that your strengths are your weaknesses. I have extensive experience in the defense industry; three years in academic research; and a couple of years in a West Coast-style telecom startup. I know a shitload of languages, both computer and spoken, have non-trivial knowledge of neuroscience and western literature, read widely, write well, etc, etc, all of which you would think are good things – you’d think having all these skill sets and a history of accolades in each of those areas would make me way more employable, but seemingly not. The industry folks I talk to are just confused. If they want a Java developer who does some kind of data warehousing then anything extraneous to that story is like hairs on their peanut butter sandwich.
I’m thinking about creating four identities; with four seperate resumes; and seeing what happens then. The tough part would be spinning each of the jobs in my employment history. If I want to make some kind of “Data-centric Java developer” persona, then how do I explain all the defense work?
I’ll keep you posted.