Flutterby™! : Career woes

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Career woes

2001-12-28 17:15:35+00 by Dan Lyke 9 comments

Okay, it's turning into "Dan meta" day. It's funny when job interviews stop happening. Maybe this happened to everyone else much earlier, but career contacts for me right now are all "you should talk to X", and lunch or what-have-you isn't about working for the company, it's just getting together to talk, and at the end of lunch someone has either said "ya know, you should talk to Y", or "can you introduce me to Z?", or there's this weird date-like vibe of "do you want to come in for a drink sign an NDA?" Anyway, I've got that vibe from a project that looks moderately interesting, but would be on a Windows platform, and I'm not sure that going back there would be any less frustrating than my complaints with my current project. The current project is also not at a stopping point, the pace of completion is part of my frustration, but I hate to leave anything in the middle.

And of course what I need to do is figure out a way that I can get beyond being a coder, because I'm sick of struggling through other people's baroque designs, supporting their house of cards in odd and strange ways because they refuse to use glue. Shipping code and satisfied customers are beautiful; baroque filligree C code is interesting in the same way that museum art is interesting: I'll go to look at it, but I rarely want it in my home.

The nice thing about the latest good-vibe lunch is that it'd be working for someone who's software architecture skills in general I admire, but I'm afraid of the trade-offs of trying to integrate multiple applications on a Windows platform, and, of course, there's the old loyalty question (see my cryptic query on community earlier today).

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:34:00+00 by: ebradway

Welcome to the 2001/2002 Tech Bust! I didn't realize you were looking too. I'm on month three of unemployment and have started looking at ways to make life work outside of code and computers. Tiburon is my last ditch before I go completely outside of the box. I don't know where I'll end up but it seems to possibly involve a small RV and lots of yoga...

Right now I'm playing with mail agents in Linux and trying to get my SGI Indy up to snuff as a desktop box. It takes a certain Zen to live with a 100Mhz R4400 and 96MB of RAM - but the Indy sure makes it fun. Remember I always refered to Irix as Unix for Mac users. The GUI rocks and the Indy is loaded with bells and whistles - really!

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:34:01+00 by: Dan Lyke

I'm not actually looking, I'm just getting together to talk with folks who people say I should get together to talk with.

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:34:01+00 by: TheSHAD0W

Well, you could always take your coding skills and write a complete application... If you can figure out a useful appllication no one else has written, or someone else has written but badly, or someone is charging too much for...

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:34:01+00 by: Mike Gunderloy

Keep making those contacts. Otherwise you might end up like me...highly skilled and reduced to writing books for a (dubious) living.

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:34:01+00 by: Larry Burton

Usually when I get together because someone has told me I ought to get together it results in my doing gratis work.

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:34:02+00 by: meuon

TheShadow said it well Eric, if you have the free time, create something useful or entertaining from start to finish. Heck, even if you give it away with you name and e-mail address on it, it makes for a heck of a resume. Find a niche, and fill it. Go to the 'info-tech' meetings.. (suits, not geeks)...

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:34:03+00 by: Dan Lyke

Larry, I'm getting better at not doing the gratis work. Not perfect yet, but I'm getting it down to a few friends where I'm finally in the hardware loop enough that I'm not doing Mac support any more.

Meuon & Shadow: Yep, and I'll keep writing things in the hopes that something will take off. Although several times I've had the right idea and the completely wrong market, Meuon will remember an HTML browser in... what... 1993? Maybe early '94. D'oh!

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:34:03+00 by: Dylan

Don't get me started.

My unemployment just ran out and I'm trying to figure out what to do next. It doesn't help that my interpersonal networking skills are...well...crap.

Oh well, keep the faith, recessions don't last forever...do they?

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:34:04+00 by: ebradway

meuon: I tend to avoid suits nowadays. I had a nice 'suit' job that I left because some friends asked me to join their start up. I wasn't that thrilled with the 'suit' job then and don't want another one. I'm not upset with my situation, I just find it interesting how drastically different the tech job market is right now compared to any time in the past, especially the past few years.

As far as creating something goes: I haven't been in a very creative mood recently. Everything I created over the past year and half got unplugged arbitrarily. The mood will come back on it's own.