Internal headhunters?

BubbaGump · 2007-01-25T20:18:51+00:00

I'm looking for a job doing low-level work in mostly C and someassembly, the type that requires work with operating system internalsand interaction with the underlying hardware architecture. For themost part I find this type of work in products currently called"embedded".Recently I had an experience that left a bad taste in my mouth. Iresponded to an ad I saw on Dice for a position that wasn't embeddedbut was still a type of low-level kernel and device driver work. Itwas posted by someone from a real company (well-known and e-mailaddress matched the company's name), and I was surprised to get aresponse the same day. I filled out the questionnaire I was sent,then was asked to do a phone interview a few days later. Thatapparently went well, since I was asked the day after when would be agood time for an in-persion interview. While talking about that,things were good at first but then started going sour.I was asked by the recruiter (the one to which I originally responded)if I was given an offer on such-and-such date how long it would takeme to make a decision and told I shouldn't take longer than a week (is1 week from the time an offer is received normal?) That didn't seemtoo bad. I thought it was nice someone was eager to hire me. When Ishowed hesitation, I was asked which other companies I wasconsidering. This sounded like the sort of irrelevant information anexternal headhunter would ask, but this was a recruiter from insidethe company, so I didn't see a problem in telling him. When I did, heproceeded to critique my choices by saying good things about some ofthe companies and bad things about others. He even tried to make ageneral statement about how his company doesn't look highly onembedded work and doesn't usually hire many people from thatbackground. I of course responded that I didn't understand why whenlow-level operating system and device driver work is basically what isinvolved in an embedded system (unless it's predominantly implementedin...

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Brandon J. Van Every 19 years ago

Ok, how old are you? If you're in your early to mid 20s, you're forgiven.

If you're older than that, you need to GROW UP. You are not entitled to a perfect emotional universe from the people you interact with in the computer industry. You're asking for an abundance of diplomatic and communication skill out of people, that you yourself don't exercise. You want all these conversations with the various "idiots" to occur one way. YOUR way. Grow up! The world doesn't revolve around you. From other people's perspective, you don't have all the answers or behave in a perfectly desireable way either.

It's reasonable to expect professional behavior out of people. You won't always get it. That's life. Life ain't fair. Don't let the unfairness drag you into unprofessional behavior. If you want so much out of others, then set the example.

No, people aren't as smart as you are, generally speaking. Yes, you can get yourself in trouble by running your mouth *too long*. Usually this kind of advice pertains to women, but it comes up in interview situations also. You don't have to dance to someone else's tune. You don't have to answer questions, especially when they're there to trap you and incriminate you. ("Does this dress make me look fat?" Run away, no correct answer.) Take the offensive. You ask the questions of the interviewer. Don't completely shut him down; people don't like that, and will punish you for being arrogant. You need to have a conversation, and it needs to be two-way. Hold your own. Don't let interviewers push you around.

You can choose to exercise diplomatic skills. You can choose to spend time "reading" people more perceptively, to gain negotiating advantages over them. Or you can choose to whine about how everyone isn't honest and what has humanity come to.

Sorry dude, you're revealing you have a weakness. An *evolutionary* weakness. Evolution wasn't just about chucking better spears, that's extremely passe. Evolution was also about Social Intelligence - using your brain to get other people to do your bidding. All that social manipulation and machination, that's a big part of how our brains got bigger. It culminates in the City-State: massively stratified societies with Alpha Males / Females on top. And if this view of humanity is coming as a big shock to you, then perhaps you've got a techno-geek educational background. Maybe you never took History or Classics or Anthropology or Psychology or Political Science or one of those liberal artsy fartsy classes, and didn't learn how the vast majority of humanity does business. Or maybe you got the book knowledge, but haven't plowed through enough real life experience to absorb it.

Or maybe you're older and should jolly well know better and need to grow up.

"Idiots," indeed. Look in the mirror. If you're not getting what you want out of the interviews, who's the idiot?

Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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Brandon J. Van Every 19 years ago

Because you are too lazy to do your own networking. Most jobhunting websites will tell you about the importance of developing actual in- roads into companies, with engineers you meet at professional functions, conferences, or even at random social events. Do you carry business cards with you? Do you pitch your skills to people who might actually appreciate them? Have you ever, God forbid, *cold called* someone and tried to talk up your services? Well then you're not developing a network of people that are any use to you. You're being a typical a-social techie.

Consequently, you get a mediocre employment product. You talk to HR drones that are paid to be drones. They get paid because all that high quality networking stuff I talked about, is WORK. Most techies don't wanna bother. So the market has these mediocre people sorta half-assed fulfilling the need. Actually it works fine, if your skills and interests are completely cookie cutter buzzword compatible. I can't dance to the beat of that drum, myself. Consequently, I can't make much use of HR. We're not speaking the same language, and we're not likely to.

Last headhunter I talked to, a "good" one, said I should be pursuing the entrepreneurial circuit. Chase the startups. They need people who aren't cookie cutter. Still haven't done it. Why? Realities of moving, housing, finance, and housemates got in the way this month. Now signature gathering season is upon me, and at least it's a job I know how to do. I might actually make money on it this time. Enough money to fund my re-entry into the computer industry. On the terms I want to do it, instead of talking to these HR drones.

Here's more free advice. IMO there are 3 ways people make money:

1) people are in an industry where it's falling out of the sky. Example: the dot.com boom. 2) you have a product that extracts money from the public. Typically takes money to develop such products. 3) you know people that have money and are willing to patronize your skills.

(3) is the kind of thing you figure out in a bad economy. A boom economy doesn't make you try very hard. Why do some people do fine during a bust? Because they know someone who's loaded, that's willing to pay them. The point is, a lot of money is tied up in social relationships. Probably most of the money. People often talk about "the hidden job market" but it's way deeper than that. It's the hidden oligarchy.

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And when people find a watering hole, THEY DON'T SHARE THAT INFO. Not enough money to go around, get it? That's why all those job offers you hear about all over the place, are mediocre and exploitative. Everyone advertizes the bad jobs. People hoard the good opportunities. That's your leverage, your survival advantage. Once acquired, most people will not give up that advantage, unless either (1) you can benefit them in some way, (2) they really, really like you for some reason.

I don't know anybody. But I have figured out that I don't know anybody, and why. What remains is to change the situation. It promises to be tons of work.

Meanwhile, there's signature gathering. Actually, that's what tipped me off. Signature gathering is not the kind of job that people hear about. I heard about it by word of mouth; some gal really, really liked me. The farther I've gone with it, the more I've realized, "If I tell other people about this job, that's less signatures for me." The industry can't support tons of people making money at it. So, most newbies fail, get frustrated, and leave the industry. Those with environmental luck, aptitude, or in my case sheer perserverance and desperation, stick with it. I hope this is the season I finally see the big $$,$$$. No other reason to be doing it.

Final advice: you can check out books from the library on how to network. I did that during the dot.com bust. Learned what a "Software Consultant" actually was. I thought it was just a way of saying, "Ha, I am no longer an employee. Now you will pay me more money!" True during a boom, but in an ordinary or bad economy, you have to offer more than that. I don't think we're going to return to the simpler age, where anyone who knew anything about programming was inherently valuable. Too many well-trained college students, and too much foreign competition.

Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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Brandon J. Van Every 19 years ago

So work for yourself. And accept full responsibility for all the burdens that entails. You will be needing those "Software Consultant" books.

Why work 40 hours a week for someone else, when you can work 80 hours a week for yourself?

Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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Brandon J. Van Every 19 years ago

Hey I'm as starving artist or starving programmer as the next guy; actually moreso. But if you're not going to sully yourself with mundane concerns, you're going to be exploited by people who do.

Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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Brandon J. Van Every 19 years ago

"It is easier to be a bad boss than a bad worker." The whys are left as an exercise for the reader. Hint: the boss has authority and the workers don't. Stare at that for awhile and you may turn into a Marxist.

Why do leaders exist?

Because leaders exist.

Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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Brandon J. Van Every 19 years ago

Google is your friend.

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Brandon J. Van Every 19 years ago

That's why I don't believe in religions.

I'm agnostic about gods, though. I don't know enough about the universe to assume that they've never evolved anywhere. A super- powerful alien would be indistinguishable from a god. If there are any amazing supernatural beings out there, I have my doubts that they do anything at our level, the way the scriptures talk about. It's like how we deal with ants or amoebas. We can be "kind" to an ant, but the ant has no idea what's going on. (Er, obviously I'm biased against Hindu notions of reincarnation!)

Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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Chris Hills 19 years ago

In article , BubbaGump writes

The answer is it depends on several things

1 what sort of air is in the tyre : warm dry air behaves differently to cold wet air..... so the tyre can go down a bit even without a leak. F1 cars use an air/nitrogen mix with the water vapour filtered out. AFAIk . 2 As happened to me this week with alloy wheels and tubeless tyres you can get a leak between the wheel rim and the tyre under certain circumstances. This shows like a VERY slow puncture. IT will cause wear on the tyre if you drive it whilst under inflated. As my tire was almost new 9and obvioulsy badly fitted the first time, they just took it off cleaned the rims and used liquid rubber onthe joint.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ \/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/ /\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org www.phaedsys.org \/\/\ \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

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