Sat 23 May 2009 – 1.33
I never stated it outright, but I basically stopped doing the podcast. My initial ambition was to do a weekly show. Then bi-weekly. Then monthly. Then 10 episodes per year. And in 2008, I only produced 3 episodes. So far in 2009 I haven’t even attempted the podcast.
The reason I stopped seems rather selfish but it’s also quite practical — too much effort for virtually no feedback. If anyone out there has ever tried to produce a podcast, you know where I’m coming from. And doing the operation by myself requires me to be the producer, host, webmaster, engineer, editor, and PR guy. That’s a lot of work for something that very often gets zero comments and downloads numbering something around 12. It’s hard to stay motivated when everyone has abandoned me.
But I was just randomly listening to selections from previous episodes, and these things are funny as hell. Maybe I should start recording more conversations in my life and posting them randomly. Fuck editing, fuck bookmarks. Just conversations. No topics, no re-dos. What do you we think?
posted by Scott in podcasts,this website.
What that Job Description REALLY Means
Thu 21 May 2009 – 11.04
It’s no secret that job applications use their own tricky language. Whether hiring managers are trying to trick us, or simply trying to be as formal and vague as they can, it’s a unique code that requires deciphering.
But very often the job descriptions can mislead. Many young people, especially straight out of school, find that there exists a gap between the initial description and the true day-to-day. Obviously this leads to dissonance and ill contempt. So here, now is a list of popular job description phrases and what they truly mean.
motivated team-player — looking for someone who needs a job badly enough that they’ll put up with lots of unmotivated, annoying people from whom you’ll have to get buy-in on almost everything you do.
high achiever, driven to succeed — must be a complete brown-nose whose sole mission in life is to please and impress management.
customer-focused — can take a lot of abuse from clients AND management and still act pleasant.
resourceful, independent self-starter — since we have absolutely no time or resources to train you, we expect you to figure everything out for yourself…quickly.
attentive to details — we have strict policies and procedures and won’t hesitate to blame you for everything if you make a mistake.
flexible, enjoys multi-tasking — we are unorganized and change corporate directions daily, so you’ll need to be able to clean up our messes and do jobs that A) you weren’t told about in the interview, and B) aren’t trained to do properly – all on a moment’s notice.
agent of change — you’ll be responsible for implementing a bunch of stuff we’ve been unable to make happen with a group of people who are digging in their heels and refusing to convert.
works well under pressure — our management team considers everything urgent and is going to micro-manage you daily.
solution-oriented — we are going to give you lots of messes to clean up and expect you to figure out how to handle them without our direction and with a big smile on your face, even though we aren’t going to give you any resources or support to get it done.
via CareeRealism »
posted by Scott in careers.
Fri 01 May 2009 – 14.35
Oh how I wish that were true as a general statement, but this time it’s really only to do with the computer science and engineering field. An article in the New York Times reveals the shamefully, and underrated, short half-life of a software or hardware engineer.
According to a survey … six years after finishing college, 57% of computer science graduates are working as programmers; at 15 years the figure drops to 34%, and at 20 years — when most are still only in their early 40′s — it is down to 19%. In contrast, the figures for civil engineering are 61%, 52% and 52%. As one industry executive stated a few years ago at a stockholders’ meeting when asked about corporate downsizing, ”The half-life of an engineer, software or hardware, is only a few years.”
While this may seem like a troubling trend within the computer science field, it is good news for recent graduates who are hungry to find work in this bizarre-o economy.
I have observed a similar trend in the field of graphic design, which is my own field. While there may be a number of designers in their mid-to-late twenties, the numbers dwindle as we age. Are people leaving the profession for other professions? Or is everyone simply working from home and thus hiding themselves from my surveying eyes.
Perhaps it’s like this in every field. You could argue that half the reason so many middle managers came into being in the mid 20th century is to accommodate the aging workforce who would ordinarily have worked on a farm or simply died at a younger age due to some infectious disease. That’s one theory.
posted by Scott in careers,life.