I am most certainly confusing taking pride in my work with being attached to that work.
Well, after all - If I didn’t feel attachment to my job, it would be kind of difficult getting up in the morning to go do it. I naturally cultivated such an attachment to pull me through those days when I didn’t care. But that is making it hard for me to leave this job and find another. The fact that I’m calling this inability ‘taking pride in my work’ is the ultimate in perversity.
I’ve got a confession to make: I don’t really care about the book business. There is no need for me to be here. I’m afraid that I can’t think of anything else I would care to be doing, so I have nothing to base a choice on. But that isn’t what I wanted to talk about today…
I’ve noticed that I don’t want to be the worker - I want to be the boss. I don’t necessarily mean I want to boss people around. I just want to be in charge of what I do. As the worker I am not. Although, there are a lot of off moments when my bosses are clueless and can’t tell me what they want either. It’s a bit like being shot out of a cannon. (no - I’ve never been shot out of a cannon, but still…) In those moments I’m flying. It’s exciting and nauseating at the same time, just as you might expect.
But I thought it through, and I have decided that even if I *am* the boss, there is ultimately no escape from becoming The Waiter, or The Delivery Guy. This world - which one am I even talking about? Global Capitalism at the beginning of the 21st century? - is actually about reducing people to the roles of Entertainer and Audience. I think primarily of homeless panhandlers, some of whom can be quite entertaining. I think of the couple bucks in my pants pocket, and for a moment consider how worthy this person is of what little I would be willing to give. I don’t really want people to entertain me, or even bring me things if it is going to cost. I just don’t care that much. I can go get the things I need and I can entertain myself in a pinch.
Of course, I have the disease of Bart Simpson: My imagination crippled by the things I’ve seen - by the world’s relentless attempts to bring me what I need or to entertain me. When push comes to shove, it’s all well and good to say I can go it alone. But, man, Is it painful at first. I don’t own a couch, but when people say ‘couch potato’ they’re actually being metaphorical. And television isn’t the only vehicle for crippling the imagination. But that isn’t what I wanted to talk about today…
I’m a bibliomaniac. Don’t believe me? It can be interesting to examine my relationship to books. It’s classic bibliomania and it isn’t. The successful booksellers I know have an evangelical quality: They get excited about pushing books on unwitting customers. They are sincere, not cynical. They sell a lot because they aren’t really selling - they’re true believers. They deal just as easily with subjects that don’t interesting as with subjects that do. They aren’t confused about taste: They don’t have to like what they’re selling, they only have to make the match between customer and book. They probably do get more excited when it’s a matter of books they prefer, but the subtlety of that difference is what marks the pro. The big mystery for me is that I know so many of these evangelists who are not successful booksellers. What are they doing wrong? With what I’ve just written still fresh in my head, I would have to say that they are still biased to the kind of books they prefer. Once they eliminate that bias they turn pro. And, maybe something crucial in their personalities is preventing them from taking that most ruthless last step.
From a bookseller’s point of view, it is of paramount importance to sell the books on hand. This doesn’t quite match the interests of the customer. I think you’ll find that a lot of businesses continue to operate despite a fundamental mismatch of this variety. Seller can continue to cause Buyer to make purchases, despite a good deal of strain in the relationship. Buyer isn’t quite sure they bought what they wanted later. By breaking commerce down into modules, you ignore the consequences as uninteresting: A businessman doesn’t give a crap whether you read the book or chuck it in the dumpster. But we’re talking about what I want now - and I want those books to be read and appreciated. I want those books to reside on a shelf with other interesting and worthwhile books. I want people to judge you favorably when they come over and peruse your home library. And most importantly, I will not say these things just to get you to buy books. That’s a bookseller. (Maybe it’s a ‘library consultant’, too.)
Are you sensing the same discrepancy in that list that I am? The impress factor is bugging me now. It’s no accident that I put it after ‘read and appreciated’.
Even though this isn’t the proper place to do it, I’m going to lodge a complaint about titles: I hate the way I have to choose a title for my blog posts up front. The permalink is derived from it, and it’s a pain to change it later.
Ideas arrive in my head unattached. There is a lot of ‘new’ stuff there that I have to explore to find the connections. I think a lot of people have a lot of thoughts arrive in their heads already wired up in a framework of other ideas. Most of mine don’t. I also suspect that it allows me to have more thoughts than other people - they’re just not complete thoughts. I’m working with more raw material, and more potential connections. That has it’s pluses and minuses. I’m not forcing myself to see accepted relationships, so I can more quickly find new ones.
You see, it is only now after hours of writing-while-working that I can reveal my original idea here had to do with Buddhism, and my desire to be a better Buddhist. (Heh. I hope you caught that one…) I shouldn’t identify with my job. My job can be taken away from me. I could probably also make a case against identifying with a career or a vocation. I shouldn’t be any more attached to those things than I should be to my shirt. They, just like a shirt, stand between my true self and the world. Not that I’m going to start going around naked - but the shirt isn’t me. Any attempt to view my shirt as me is as misguided as an attempt to find my identity in this ephemeral series of tasks I just happen to be doing a good job of avoiding today.
This is the source of my annoyance with cheerleaders. Trying to excite me about something I am not already excited about is disingenuous. If I cared, I wouldn’t need anyone to remind me that I did. All I ever needed was encouragement. Realistic encouragement. Support for doing the things that are just barely beyond my reach. I’m afraid I just don’t believe in going to the moon on sheer enthusiasm. But I know why that belief retains currency: Get bystanders excited and it will be easier to brush aside whoever would oppose you.
Posted in employment, ontology, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:59:00 GMT
Some of you might have read my post This Is Why I Don’t Read Want Ads
Well, now I can talk about why I don’t call the numbers in want ads:
$700-$800,000 FREE CASH (posted 12/03/2007)
$700-$800,000 free cash grants/programs 2007! Personal bills, school, business/housing. Approx. $49 billion unclaimed 2006! Almost everyone qualifies! Live operators. 1-800-592-0362 ext. 235.
Go ahead, call it if you don’t believe me. It is probably legitimate, but I’ve got some ground rules. When I dial an 800 number, I like for the operator to announce who I’ve reached. “Where Are You Calling From” is not adequate. I’m noticing this a lot recently. Callers don’t want to give up any information. Well, neither do I.
That’s the entrepreneurial spirit at work right there. They ask for $189.98 to send you a packet of information. I just assume all this information is freely available on the Internet. Of course, if I search for it on the Internet, I’m bound to uncover a bunch more similar services. Is what they do actually worth $189.90? If they can’t show me what I’m getting for that money, then you can be fairly certain that it is not.
Do you see how the ad says “ext. 235”? It’s not an extension at all: The man on the phone manually processed that information. He said there was a guarantee of $25,000. I wonder how easy it will be to enforce that.
So I’m starting to see how I could break into this business myself. This is one more thing that depresses me about the world: It’s almost too obvious that I could get an 800 number, write a little script, put ads in the paper and wait for the suckers to call so I can get them to divulge their information. At the very least, I could sell the list. I wouldn’t need to actually defraud anybody.
And then I could expand! Hire people to answer the 800 number. Give them a copy of the script. Pay them a fraction. Put the ad in papers all over the country.
Not exactly your Protestant Work Ethic in action. I need to take that format and combine it with something useful or productive.
HOME REFUND JOBS! (posted 12/07/2007)
Home refund jobs! Earn $3500-$5000 weekly processing company refunds online! Guaranteed paychecks! No experience needed! Positions available today! Register online now! http://www.RebateWork.com/
Wow - where do I even start with this one? “Processing Company Refunds”? Does that strike you as weird also?
If you’re daring, I suggest looking at that website. It’s not dangerous on its own - just if you believe there really is a woman named “Sarah Johnson” who looks like that stock photo. Testimonials and screenshots give the appearance of legitimacy, but you should know how easy it would be for me to create a similar site in a few short days.
Oh, and registering? That’s a credit card charge. Hey, but that’s weird: they don’t say how much they’re going to charge you. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that everything they say is a lie, but you can bet they aren’t working hard enough to deserve the money they get.
But I still don’t understand why they need money up front when they are sending you paychecks. Couldn’t they just grift their fee out - pay you a bit less each time? Do you think maybe it is because you will not see enough money to cover the fee? Once more I ask myself “How will this ‘guarantee’ be enforced?”
Is our entire economy based on this sort of bait and switch? How is that supposed to last? I’ll say it one more time: Even if that site offers legitimate work, it is still “Processing Company Refunds”, which doesn’t sound productive - it sounds like dead weight loss. Maybe, in a way this sort of work IS productive - if it forces those companies that offer rebates to close the loophole when they see how often they pay it out.
Posted in employment | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:05:00 GMT
The frustration of Grumble Grumble Grumble continues…
I wish I had the time and mind to give that topic a better treatment, and I probably don’t have it now, but here goes anyway.
I Am Not A Hard Worker
This is one of the fundamental things about me. When somebody (ahem - it’s always the Marketing Director these days) comes into my office visibly agitated, I know my day is ruined. That kind of excitement doesn’t motivate me - it just distracts me. She was getting all excited the other day about this Holiday Gift Guide. They don’t seem to be doing it the same way the did it the past several years. It’s smaller, but more disorganized. They always make last minute changes anyhow. It’s easier for me to start working on it once it has stabilized - but that would be way too late. So I break it down into phases. PHP script and a separate CSS file to edit as need be. Then, start with title entry on the database - it’s only about a hundred titles this year. I don’t want to fuss with jacket art or blurb text on titles that don’t wind up in the final version. (Actually, this deserves an entire discussion of versioning. I wish I had the time and effort for that, too.) As I stuff all the content into the database, and it starts looking full, I go back to revisions of the layout and stylesheet. I asked for design hints, but they hadn’t even started on that yet.
There is a constant in my life: Nobody agrees with me about what is hard and what is easy. I did the demo as soon as I had script and some titles. The Marketing Director started overreacting to cosmetic things - I had to insert some dummy text for the introduction because - surprise, surprise - she hasn’t supplied it yet. My boss looked over and said “It isn’t going to be that color is it?”… Who cares what color it is now? There are 216 web safe colors, and I can reload the design in fifteen seconds. Start worrying about the stuff it will be difficult to change later.
Naturally, we are all going to have different skill sets, but I’m talking about really basic knowledge. Pressure to accomplish more causes people to forget what they are capable of, and what conditions are actually conducive to that accomplishment. They’ll never put me in charge, because I’ll never get overly excited about things I can’t finish in time - I’ll always suggest we use that time to do something more manageable. I think it’s important to pick your battles. I can’t pretend to be like other people because it is always a disaster when I do. And, I can’t afford to have people assume that I’m like other people either, but they only recognize normal people and idiots - So I confound their incisive analysis of the world.
I thought about how I accomplish things - Big things. It doesn’t happen because of furious work to meet a deadline. I don’t have the stamina for that kind of drama. I’ve been known to crack up under pressure. I even wander off in search of something else - obviously I found myself in the wrong place, and real things still need to get done in other areas of my life. I lose interest, and there is nothing to be done about it. No sense of accomplishment has ever been enough for the intensity. If my brain were wired differently, I might value the sense of accomplishment more, and think I was getting a better deal. Hey - I’m sure it’s a great model for lots of people. I won’t claim to know what’s best for everybody else. So, why do they claim to know what is best for me?
I know from the occasional success that when I do a good job of something, I like to forget it and move on. I don’t like to celebrate. I see no need to celebrate, and it only scrambles my head anyway. Even little successes can derail my train of thought. I discovered a long time ago that it was foolhardy to bask in that glow. Highs and lows have no attraction for me - I prefer to pilot a steady course. I can forget myself in slow deliberate work. Apparently, I live in the wrong time.
My Ideal Of Work
I like to sit down and concentrate; Block out the time necessary to focus on one thing for a while, and then probably several other things after that. I work best without interruptions or distractions. So basically I’m doomed. When is that ever going to happen? There are always a million things competing for my attention. My own mind is worse than anything in the environment. I can barely write a complete sentence for all the thoughts bubbling in my head. My written output could be a hundred times what you see here if I started to ignore everything around me. But then how would I eat, sleep, or get to work on time? When would I ever meet my responsibilities? There is an endless stream of maintenance and damage control, and without it, I would still notice something else to work on every five seconds.
When I put it this way, I sound practically unemployable. I am scared of job listings, and yet I wake up every day and go to work. I don’t think anybody at my current job knows what my job description is. I don’t even know why I keep coming here, anymore.
Self-Assessment
I drift in and out. I am like the moon on a cloudy night, visible only part of the time. I often forget why I am here. (The real challenge is to accept that there was never any reason and just keep moving.) Do you think this quality could work to my advantage? Well, I don’t. My plan was to stop being that way.
A little thought exercise for you: Maybe I have trouble with self-assessment because I have no self. I know it sounds radical, but can you prove I exist? This is where I assume we are all going to dredge up Rene Decartes. “Cogito Ergo Sum”? Well, I don’t believe a word of it. It always sounded wrong to me somehow. A cop out. Too obvious - probably the wrong sense of a couple different words. I’ve certainly go the thinking part down, but in what sense “Am” I? It’s simply a more intellectual version of the later parody “I Shop Therefore I Am”. We are merely assigning identity tags. Like putting on a t-shirt. I have only a few clues as to who I am, but it’s still the “Am” part that bugs me. Plenty of stuff exists. So what.
Awareness is more interesting. And more problematic. I can be aware of what I’m doing right now, but it’s almost never enough. I’m only ever aware of a very small slice of my world. If you want to argue that it all exists, then I’m not sure what your proof is - I can kick all the rocks I want, but there will still be many rocks I can’t kick. And the inductive principle won’t satisfy me. I am constantly thinking about things that do not exist, and it doesn’t prove anything that I continue not to encounter them.
This is all to say that awareness is patchy for me at best. I may be aware of something at all times (hey - talk to me when I am half-asleep, and see how that goes…), but I’m not spending enough time being aware of the same things, if that makes any sense. I am like an ant crawling across some vast surface. You can ask me to be something else, and I can give it a shot, but sometimes we are just going to have to accept my strengths and weaknesses in the short term. Unless you prefer failure.
I’ve been ready to do it my way for a long time now, but I never really get the chance. Following the rules always ruins things for me. We’ll never know if my way works until we give it a chance.
Posted in employment, ontology, web-craft, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:14:00 GMT
I’ve been at work all day. Nothing weird about that. I’m never working terribly hard, but it is just one damn thing after another. A lot of it is atmosphere: the people around me having non-stop crises. It makes me nervous - like I should be working harder. And that stresses me out. One of the network PCs that only stores files went dead the other day, and I occasionally have to adjust my plans. We think it just needs a new power supply, but in the mean time I can’t access those files. One more thing to stress me out.
I’m having a lot of vague discontent with my tools. I find myself zipping around from one program to another on my computer - and a some time is lost every time switch. It seems that software in packages is the problem. Operating systems that carve out space to run different processes are much too clunky. I’m getting glimpses in my imagination of how I would do it differently. Of course, that’s not nearly enough if I really want to do it differently. Also, a constant problem in my life is that other people are not interested in dealing with my solutions: My way of using a tool is frequently criticized.
Last week - when I was off - they managed to compose and send the email newsletter at work without me. There were some subtle disasters involved in that. Nothing earth-shattering. Until I noticed that some album covers were linked to a well-known online retailer. The click logs showed that about five people clicked through. If it were me, I would think we were a bunch of pathetic losers. And my actual opinion is not too far off from that. You see, this is why it takes me so long to craft these missives on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. Not because I am inefficient, but because I am thorough. It’s hard some days to convince the bosses that it has to take so long. This time I think I’ve got a solid case. I’ll keep rhat in mind the next time I’m alt-tabbing frantically between my web browser, my image editor, and my ftp client resizing and renaming album covers and book jacket art.
I’ve been scribbling a lot of notes in my notebook on the way to work in the morning, and it’s really hard to put together a block of time to rework them here. But I’m still hoping. Hey - now with the TV writer’s strike, maybe I’ll chuck my TV tuner and stick to videos.
My sister is plotting her escape from Washington. She won’t be taking away bulky items left in my apartment years ago - she’s decided to fly, based on other constraints. I’ve been roped into going with her out to BWI on Saturday. It’s my brotherly duty, I suppose.
Posted in web-craft, employment, computer-interface, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:35:00 GMT
I found the following article as an example of poor math skills.
Daily Mail: More than half of workers think they’re over-qualified for their job
“In total, the study found four out of ten of the workforce think their employment does not match their level of education.”
Four out of ten is not more than half. Nice try, though.
Once I got over that amusement, I realized there is some good grist for the mill here: Why would people feel overqualified for their jobs? Would they rather feel underqualified?
I suppose I feel that way about my job too. It can be boring for long stretches, but occasionally I have to be clever. Come to think of it, my skills would only cause problems. If I invent new and better ways to do things, there is no transfer of that knowledge. Nobody fills in for me when I am on vacation, so nobody learns what I do or how I do it. My skills can make the job easier to do, but nobody else benefits from it. There haven’t been any real incentives to taking on more responsibility, and there isn’t anyone for me to supervise.
That’s why I would leave. But where would I go? For my entire adult life, I haven’t found anyone who could explain to me what people actually do. It’s all hypothetical. I apply for things and I don’t even get the courtesy of a response. If the job market were a ‘free market’ it would be a lot easier for me to predict what the work involves, and how much it would pay. Any market transaction is supposed to allow both parties to get what they couldn’t have on their own. If I can’t judge the value of either end of the deal, then how am I supposed to get excited about making the transaction?
Posted in employment | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:52:00 GMT
It’s been raining all day. I had forgotten what that was like. I can’t walk down the street reading a book for fear that the pages will get wet. I had to find my umbrella. We also couldn’t go outside this afternoon for our weekly kickball session.
I guess it’s just as well. I’ve been grumpy today. (Maybe I’m trying out all of the Seven Dwarves?) There is a crush of data entry for this season’s new book catalogs. I’m doing Random House. We don’t have our part timer doing data entry anymore, so I have to cram some of it into my busy schedule.
A couple inspirations from today:
Meet Your Future Employee…
American kids, dumber than dirt.
Ouch! some of my educator friends ought to get a kick out of those two articles.
Okay, I’ve been at work eleven hours now, and that just seems… wrong. I’m going home.
Posted in employment, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:16:00 GMT
Set to the tune of Broken Social Scene’s “Bee Hives”
- The language of potentials upsets me.
- I also don’t want to hear about how difficult anything is.
Mountains are not climbed by talking about either a) How many great mountains there are, or b) How steep the cliff face is.
If you believe in my abilities (and, please stop it with the “You can do anything!” talk), then it hardly matters a) what I choose to do, or b) how difficult other people think any of it is. If you really believed that I could do anything, then you’re in no position to judge the difficulty. It’s as simple as that. It’s no coincidence that I dazzle people with easy solutions to hard problems, and then I get scared when I try to map out my future. Look at what has happened to me: I’ve taken that kind of talk seriously. People who I thought knew better than me, had my interests in mind, or were friendly, were all - as it turns out - poisoning me for life. Sure they had good intentions in most cases, but I believed their unwitting lies. They steered me wrong. The lesson seems to be that I should have ignored all that advice.
Does any of that even count as advice anyway? “Look at all these mountains!” and “Wow, that’s a really steep rock face!” I don’t suppose it does.
Now given all that, let’s have a second look…
Something I read in the Warsh book triggered all this: The job search for economists. The eternal need to show off to people what you have done. I started thinking that I haven’t done anything worth showing off because of the contradictions in what people told me about the world. Their fear infected me. I expect that isn’t what they intended. I expect over the years all those artificial self-esteem builders people are exposed to as children will wear off. I certainly never got anything from the “You can do anything!” bull. Maybe I should just concentrate on doing a few things well, then being proud of the results, huh? Confidence sounds great, but it doesn’t do any good when you’re wrong. But neither does fear serve much of a purpose. Because when fear surrounds an enterprise, it suffuses every otherwise manageable facet - subgoals you’re better off not fearing, since they bring you closer to accomplishing what seemed so fearsome in the first place.
I think my last girlfriend left me because she was tired of hearing me complain. It’s too bad, because I think I can see the use in complaining - as long as you’re careful to hear yourself. She was young, and I don’t think she had developed the same bitterness as I have. And besides, complaints are the mental space where I solve problems. I’m never just complaining - unless for some reason I decide that I’m complaining too much and should stop, which makes sense while being wrong - I’m sharpening the details of my problems - That surely calls for more complaining! I have to deal with the world, so when I say something is wrong with the world, I am inherently talking about something I might change about myself. Nothing is ever that simple, because it constitutes an interaction. I might change something about myself, I might find I can’t change that thing, and I might find a ‘third way’ to exist despite my complaint about the world. Furthermore, I might actually figure out how to change the world - or just my little corner of it in a temporary arrangement.
Posted in employment, ontology, relationship-angst | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:39:00 GMT
I was sitting on the bus this morning reading “Other Colors” when I suddenly had a thought that really annoyed me. Set this to Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” - a popular punk rock tune from my childhood.
I am trying to make use of all the lost minutes. To pack something productive into all the sequestered time. And it is driving me insane.
Because everything is a can of worms. If I start something, I hardly want to stop. And if you know me, you should be ROTFL right now. Rolling on the floor laughing because I never seem to finish anything before something else catches my attention. Well, is it any wonder why? When I can’t sit down to work on something for several hours because I don’t have hours - I only have minutes. And I’ve naively taken the advice to make the most of the little times, but that only makes everything worse. Now when I’m not sleepy, I nervous. Nervous that I’m not putting this minute to good use. Nervous that I will never know any decent stretch of time again because of the necessity of slicing it up so thin.
Is it any wonder I’d like to scrap it all and go meditate on a mountaintop somewhere?
That incessant drive to find the use in little moments has ruined all time for me - made of Time some swollen tongue or beached whale, so unavoidably flopped in the way of living. I hate movement. I hate deadlines. I hate effort. I would banish them all, forget who I am and exist in some other way. At my own pace. Secure in the knowledge of what I should be doing and what I should not be doing. But even more: Cherished by others for my wisdom… Which isn’t going to happen if I keep squashing every spontaneous good idea to be on time somewhere to a responsibility that does not help to define me.
Well, here I am. Playing chicken with a deadline to express something nobody asked for. It’s going to be a fun Thursday!
Posted in employment, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:13:00 GMT
These are listings I saw in the City Paper
Assistant Pastry Chef!! Ready for the Next Level !! START ASAP!!!!
I see a lot of restaurant ads. It’s about 50%. I’ve never worked in a restaurant as a chef or a waiter or anything. I am not interested. More importantly, I am barely qualified to be a dishwasher. I’m not stupid - I know that I would get tired of that kind of work really fast. Did I mention that I’m not a pastry chef?
Professional, DC Licensed, Massage Therapist Position
Somehow I have trouble imagining that if I were a massage therapist I would be looking for jobs in the paper. I imagine a trade journal or personal connections would play a major role.
FIRE YOUR BOSS! Start Making $1000 per sale today!
What does that even mean? Why can’t they mention what they do? Surely it’s code for cold calling. And, at $1000 per sale, I bet people don’t make a sale that often. That allows them to state the most impressive sounding figure.
But wait… Let’s examine this category further: It’s called “Business Opportunities”
Tired of Your Job? Corporate Executive Quits Job - Are you still working to maintain your lifestyle? Financial Independence can be yours too.
Financial Independence: No One Desires To Be Middle Class Anymore… Do You Have A Strong Desire To Aspire?
Inexplicable. What’s the “Opportunity” here? I guess you have to call to find out. These always seem like a waste of time to me, and it gets me even more upset because of the trend: Nobody is willing to share any information anymore. I blame the local television news, with their “Does a popular food cause your head to explode?… Find out at 11!”
Maybe I’ll put my own ad in this category just to see what the people who call are like.
GOOGLE CLICKERS NEEDED! $$$$$ Weekly. New limited time opportunity. For free information call…
This sounds like something I’m qualified for. On the other hand, it also sounds like fraud. And it’s a “limited time opportunity” because… Google won’t be around much longer? Or they’re just being overly melodramatic?
So maybe I’ve chosen a bad sample. Let me look at my latest email from CareerBuilder:
Arlington, VA - Senior Software Engineer NEW! - E*Trade Financial - 09/29
Arlington, VA - Senior Oracle Database Administrator NEW! - Centuria Corporation - 09/29
Arlington, VA - Senior Java Developer - 3 positions available ASAP NEW! - Centuria Corporation - 09/29
Springfield, VA - A Senior .Net Development Opportunity to Inspire You NEW! - The Chartwell Group - 09/29
Washington, DC - Senior Unix Administrator NEW! - L-3 Titan Ship & Aviation - 09/28
Can you please stop saying “Senior”! Does anybody think I have the credentials to be a “Senior” anything? Do companies even place ads for entry-level positions? From what I have seen, they do not. Anyway, as a “Senior UNIX Administrator” I would want these details in a delimited file, so I could ‘grep’ out what I’m looking for. It’s not as helpful in an HTML table.
And another little word of advice to companies: Don’t expect me to have a lot of experience with your obscure proprietary enterprise systems if I wasn’t able to search listings by that criteria. If I had that experience, I would surely have mentioned it upfront. I’m not willingly going to seek experience in a system that isn’t open and available, because I don’t feel like hitting a lot of dead ends.
Okay, so stop worrying about me (Mom - this includes you!), I did this to make a point. I’m upset. AND - I can’t believe that this system actually works. It’s so primitive, despite all the fancy HTML tables. THIS is supposed to represent the ‘free market’ I’ve been reading about? THIS is an efficient method for matching job seekers to job opportunities? Because so far, it doesn’t inspire much confidence in me.
On the bright side, just imagine what kind of progress we could make if we cleaned up this mess. I would bet that in most cases, the job market is not ‘open’ at all. Oh sure, there are probably laws about how the job listings have to be posted, and it’s your fault if you didn’t see the listing on the cork board in the basement of headquarters, behind the big filing cabinets.
I guess what upsets me most is that job listings don’t conform to much of a standard. This is a classic example of network effects - If everybody could agree to be on the same technical standard, then searching and filtering from one enormous pool would give me some reliable results. As it is, I might as well call random telephone numbers asking if they need anybody. After I click through to the job requirements, I find out I need ten years experience in Emu herding. Strangely, this is not obvious before.
Posted in employment, ontology, computer-interface | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:00:00 GMT
