Wake Up! Wake Up! Wake Up!


Just the beginning. Make sure you can pay your bills!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Moving to Austin? Consider these points before committing to the move ...

This is the very last post I will make as a resident of Austin, TX. It wasn't so long ago that Austin, TX was the best place in the USA to be a high-tech worker. There were (and still are) plenty of jobs, great music, lots to do, and a good, central location in the best State in the Union. Now, however, there are mounting clouds on the horizon. I now have four days left here, and I wanted to share my perspective and give some hopefully valuable advice to people moving to Austin. People considering a move to the area might want to think very carefully, do a lot of research, and perhaps choose one of the exurbs surrounding Austin (Hutto, Bastrop, San Marcos, etc.) since the cost of living is much lower and there are fewer of the irritants and dangers described below. IMHO, urban Austin and its suburbs are poor bets, especially for family-oriented people, and I voted with my feet - I just sold my home, and leave forever next week. I lived in Austin for 40 years, and saw quite a bit o...
Keep reading

The race to the bottom

We abhor the temporary IT staffing model common today; the prospective staff are sought on a last-minute basis filtered by misconfigured, mindless Applicant Tracking Systems hired by recruiters largely innocent of IT knowledge treated as virtual slaves by client companies frequently dismissed when they cannot conjure miracles frequently dismissed on a whim, or by mismanagement discarded, often with little or no notice, after the assignment treated with no regard for their well-being This cruel system corrupts clients makes the hapless staffers cynical and mistrustful provides poor matches between jobs and prospects incentivises dishonesty on all sides clouds and confuses the market wastes tremendous amounts of money and time .  This pernicious, awful system is slowly breaking down with time, and is sustained only because of power imbalances , inertia and indolence. Granted, there are still a few conscientious companies and people working in the staf...
Keep reading

How to Break Your Face

I love it when I hear or read the phrase "hit the ground running".  I know what it is supposed to mean: (contractor version): "We don't have the time to train you.  You must get meaningful work done your first day on the job, figure out where we hid everything that you need, don't back-talk, and have ten times the productivity of our lazy and entitled employees, who we can't fire because they have legal rights. You will be fired, with no notice, at the earliest available opportunity." (employee version):  "We don't have the time to train you.  You must get meaningful work done your first week on the job, all while plowing through our tiresome and enormous stack of access requests for the resources you need to use, interminable meetings which are little more than talk-fests for our manager wannabees, badly designed and poorly configured workflow systems, and terribly written requirements / user stories to describe the work you are suppose...
Keep reading