I thought I’d pull the references to my career into my own post. I’ll let someone else worry about the Japan comments. ;)
Yesterday I went to an interview with a startup in New London. It sounds like they’re planning on offering me the job. I’m hoping I can get the weekend to think about it. They’re working on the issue where small businesses have a bunch of pieces of software, like Quickbooks, and zero integration with their other software and their web sites. The “bastards” are working out of a building right on the water. It would be more code than general web development, but using PHP, what this site and most things I write are in.
I’ve also been thinking about what a couple you mentioned, as well as I’ve heard from others, about striking out on my own and doing contract and freelance work.
Last week I met a few people up in Boston, including an Irish boy (well, descended, like me) who owns a place looking for a developer.
The issue that I’ve found, and touched upon already, is that I have no idea what I want. I think I used to have some ideas, but they were all young and foolish. Nowadays all my concentration has been on things to do outside work, like traveling. I’m not certain if its my current job burning me out or what but let’s just say whenever I’ve been getting the question, “Where do you see yourself in five years, career wise?”, I have no answer.
This is just another rambling as I’ve done in other places, talking out loud so to speak.
I think I’ll try Kate’s idea of making a list this weekend. Hopefully that’ll help me get my head around this.
So to summarize, I can do one of the following; Go freelance, take general time off (Kate doesn’t seem worried I’d have no money), move to Boston and try to get a random developer position up there, take another local job (seems startups like me), unknown…
PS. Andy, if I went anywhere with you I’d only have a problem with the Frisbee Summer League Tournament being on the 11th of August.
Sound off [6]Moo,
Well, Maxtor made me an unofficial offer that I’ve unofficially accepted. (They’ve kept everything hypothetical for legal reasons – this way, if I had hypothetically declined, I would still be eligible for my severence with EDS – if it came to that.)
In any long-winded case, in about two weeks or so they will be giving me an official written offer. As far as I understand, the contract with EDS is being extended through the end of December, then we’re all starting as Maxtor employees (well, OK, not all) on Jan. 3rd. This’ll kinda be cool for tax and benefit reasons.
Anymoo, yay… I’m going to stay employed. Whoot. JOY.
OK, sarcasm aside, yay. I’m not very psyched about this industry anymore and hope that I’ll be able to escape it shortly, but having continous pay until then is exciting.
Hey, TyTy… how the heck is the new job-o?
Comment [2]So I stumbled upon two more pages about RSS.
The first is a whole section of CNET discussing the technology and a few programs to do the feed reading.
The second is just an article on Techdirt and on that one they talk about some new developments. Some people have done cool things involving screen scraping (where you read a web page and only pull out specific things) and you can do fun things like read comics, track FedEx packages, etc. I’ve been playing this weird web/text based game where you’re a vampire. It’s not very pretty like Doom 3 or anything, but it doesn’t require a lot of effort or time wasting. I was thinking about scraping my pertinent stats and feeding it up so I know when my movement points max out, etc.
I wish it was news for Yimmy about the D200 but it is interesting camera news nonetheless for anyone curious about this type of stuff. The first medium format digital camera.
And while at Franni Alberti’s wedding on Saturday (now Franni Monk), watching Cout’s band play, I noticed that the two wedding photographers were using Nikon D1x’s. And supposedly are very popular (the other member was at a party some famous person was throwing) in the area because they jumped to digital while everyone was still testing it. I don’t remember the name of the studio sadly, but my mom might as the we had a relative of the owner sitting at our table and you know my mom and talking.
Comment [1]Hi-diddly hidee ho!!! Word to your momma. How is my fine white brothas?
Umm, yeah.
So anyway, this is probably most aimed at TyTy, but I’m an equal opportunity employer. Sarah and I have a very large need for a vector logo and business card for our photography.
I’m in this catch-22 cuz I’m worried about spending too much money, but not having a good logo and business card is not helping me to make money. So, what would you estimate it would take to design a simple vector logo for me and possibly a matching business card? And how much would you want for it? (Sexual payments would have to be deferred until I next time I saw you.)
I can give you a rough (and shitty) example of approximately what we’re looking for. We’ve tried to make our own, but as always, my own personal inadequacies in design are crippling us. Every time we think we have a decent looking logo, we end up breaking it down and thinking “bleh, this one sucks too…” I think third party involvement will be critical.
Anyblah, I’d like to get this done within a month’s time frame or so, so responses would be appreciated.
I love you all!!! But not in that way… I mean in the way that most guys love April.
Comment [7]Well, since I know that you’re all on the edges of your seats wondering… ;) The continuation of my employment is somewhat promising.
Maxtor pulled us in for a meeting and informed us of their plan. They’re going to in-house a bunch of the IT. The breakdown so far puts my team into a position of 9 people competing for 6 slots. Although that sounds a bit tight, it’s not as bad as you might imagine. We have two people on our team that have years of proven service as techs. that only moved to our team recently, so our assumption is that they’ll be offered jobs back as techs. Then, we have one guy that, unfortunately for him, has spent 4 years digging himself into a hole and probably won’t be offered a job.
That leaves me in a decent position. Of course there’s no gurantees other than taxes and death, but I’m hopeful. My “interview” is scheduled for Monday with Maxtor and they’re claiming to want to have this all wrapped up by the end of the month. They’ve also stated that they’re not going to look outside unless they can’t staff it from existing people, so it sounds like they probably already know who they want.
Anyway, so there ya go. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up being able to continue with Maxtor. The continuation of my paycheck will be welcome.
Jim
Comment [3]Congratulations Johnny boy and TyTy on your new jobs! Apparently this summer (or is it fall yet—I can’t tell around here) is the time for job activity.
In mid western news, my job life has been like a room full of monkeys with diarrhea. (Hey, on a fun note, you ever looked at the definition of diarrhea?)
About a week and a half ago, our management pulled us all into the afore-mentioned room and informed us that Maxtor had officially notified them that our account was terminated. Due to a 120 day contractual agreement, that put us at a termination date of December 17th. To make the day even better, they proceeded to tell us that there was no transition plan yet and that they basically had no idea what was happening. The only “gurantee is that we don’t have jobs as of that date.”
Strangely, however, Maxtor put up signs in our area on Tuesday inviting us to a Maxtor benefits meeting. We interpreted this as, quite literally, writing on the wall. EDS responded by sending out a request for a meeting on Wednesday to inform us that they still didn’t truly know what Maxtor was going to do with their long term IT, but that all of the contractual wrinkles of trying to get a job with Maxtor had been ironed out. This was good news, but still left us feeling like abandoned, used condoms.
With seemingly no internal EDS jobs in the region and no idea what Maxtor is planning, it was been a damn fun couple of weeks, needless to say. My sourdough starters are the only things keeping me sane. We may have a light at the end of the tunnel today; Maxtor sent out a meeting request this morning to go over their future IT plans at lunch, so hopefully I’ll have an update.
-Jim
Comment [2]