Downtown

I'm not much of a city boy, never worked in the "skyscraper" district of a big city before, so here are a few observations.

Most importantly, it doesn't make much sense to drive here.  You take the bus into downtown.  The company doesn't have a nice big parking lot like almost everywhere I ever worked; instead, you can park in a public lot nearby for about $30 a day.  If you work 230 days a year, that's $7,000 per year for parking, so it's not really even an option, not to mention the traffic into downtown (and out) is not pretty.  So starting day 1, I took the bus.  My Orca card didn't work the first day, so I had to pay cash, and Jackie and I probably spent an hour combined looking at bus schedules, and I haven't ridden a bus in years so I asked Lucas how it was done.  But that was last Thursday.  Today, my card works (thanks to Lucas) and I am an expert on buses.  They come every 10 minutes or so, you get on, get off where you need to.  Make sure the bus goes where you want to go.

I'm on the 19th floor of a 28-story building downtown, which qualifies as a skyscraper in Seattle, and I can see a number of the other tall Seattle buildings out the window.  It's a different look;  I'm getting familiar with all of these buildings I never really noticed before, and there are so many more than I ever imagined.  Somehow driving by or even through Seattle, it doesn't seem like there are more than about 20 or 30 big towers, but I can see that many out the window looking just one direction.  I think that normally the really tall ones (maybe 500'-plus) make you overlook the merely tall ones.

There are at least three to four restaurants per block in this area, because someone has to feed all those people working in a small horizontal space and a big vertical space.  I haven't really tried the restaurants, and don't have plans to because I'm cheap and bring my lunch, but it looks like fun if you had the budget.

The other thing I notice is the sheer number of people I encounter.  When you walk outside, you see a hundred people anywhere you go, on every corner, on every block, with constant traffic.  A lot of the people are waking fast, especially compared to me.  I am getting used to women zipping past me; people here are in a hurry.  I'm not sure why working downtown should make you hurry, but it seems to.

One other thing -- from what I can tell, people start later here than they do other places, I think because it takes longer to get here.  That means they stay late too, with the net result being that my workdays are going to contain nothing much besides work and commuting.  But contracting is about making money, and I'm doing that, so it's all good so far.

Unemployment Chronicles: Fallout from Last Week

Here's a little snippet from my last post, last week:

A third recruiter called me on Tuesday with an opportunity. That one has already been cancelled by the client.

I called a fourth contact about a job listing today, and he agreed to send my resume.

Keep your eye on those two possibilities.

I also wrote last week that three possibilities were still open, including that fourth contact above.  The other two have not been ruled out, but I haven't heard anything from the recruiters, and typically recruiters like to stay in touch if they have a reasonable chance of getting a commission, so chances are those two didn't work out.  Sometimes though, the client just takes a long time to respond, so there is still hope.

But right now, there are two good possibilities in the works.  First the "fourth contact" possibility has resulted in an interview tomorrow morning.  That one looks like a good job possibility, a small manufacturing company with a Japanese parent in Bellevue now but moving to Redmond, a decent commute for me either way.  The recruiter said that he sent the CFO four resumes, and the CFO said he just wanted to talk to me, so that's positive.  It's temp-to-permanent, so could result in a full-time job.  Both the temporary and the permanent pay are good enough for me.

The other good possibility is the "third recruiter" job.  The client uncancelled the job, so they are hiring.  This one is with a marketing firm in downtown Seattle, so the commute would be a one-hour bus ride and a short walk, not terrible.  Again it is temp-to-perm, with about the same pay as the other job.  I had a phone interview with them last night, and I thought it went well.  The recruiter listened in on the call and said she thought I did well and that the guy would probably hire me, but he wants to have a second interview with several people first, so I am waiting.  The biggest problem with that position is that the client seems a bit frantic, so I am not sure they know what they want long-term.  Even the way they asked Robert Half for help, then cancelled a day later, then were back on two days later...concerns me.

Possibilities don't always work out, so I could still end up with neither job, but this is the best things have looked since October.

Unemployment Chronicles: When It Rains

For months, even though I am in touch with several recruiters, job possibilities have been very sparse.  Since October, I have gotten almost no interest, and I have sent emails every couple of weeks, or called, just to remind people that I am still here.

Then all of a sudden, starting Tuesday, the dam broke, and it seems like I am getting calls from everywhere.  Since Tuesday, it has gone something like this:

A new recruiter contacted me Tuesday and wanted to talk to me Wednesday.  After our meeting, she sent me a job possibility, and we agreed that she will send my resume.  This possibility is still out there.

Tuesday another recruiter I already knew had a possibility for me.  The next day, her colleague had another.  Today, the first one rejected me -- "overqualified" -- but they sent me a third one.  Unfortunately, I am not really qualified for the third one, but the one from Wednesday is still possible.

A third recruiter called me on Tuesday with an opportunity.  That one has already been cancelled by the client.

I called a fourth contact about a job listing today, and he agreed to send my resume.

So six job possibilities, three still in the works.  I think that's literally more than I heard about the whole time between October and last week .  At this pace, I may actually get something.

This experience has given me a bit of insight into how the recruiting firms must work.  When they aren't busy, they have some people who keep busy, and everyone else just waits.  Then, when things get busy, companies reach out to several different recruiters at once, everyone gets busy at the same time, and suddenly they need bodies, and they start going down their lists until they get to me and anyone else they can find.  It's a mad scramble, and it hits everyone at once.  Interesting.

It may still all be for naught, but it has been a positive week.

Unemployment Chronicles: I Hate Them All

Those were pretty much my thoughts when I went to bed last night, and only a little less so this morning, but today was an unusual day in a good way, so I don't hate them quite so much now.  Still, I will never really trust them.

There was an incident yesterday that is typical of too many of my interactions with the world.  I filled out a job application for a King County accounting position, a job which pays between 60% and 70% of what my last job paid, a job for which I am -- avoiding the "O" word from my last post -- more than very well qualified.  It was one of those annoying applications, where they want your resume, then they want you to repeat all of the employment information and school information and other stuff that's on your resume on the application, so it takes a long time to fill it out, but I did it.  I thought that maybe King County would be more open to hiring an overqualified person than corporations are, I'm not sure why.

I got a response yesterday evening saying that thanks for applying, but all applicants who did not meet the minimum qualifications were eliminated from consideration, better luck next time.  WTF?  Didn't meet minimum qualifications?  I went back to the requirements to see if there was really some requirement I did not meet, and there it was.  They had asked about my Excel skills, and I had answered Intermediate, because I had used all of the intermediate features they listed and only 3 of the 5 advanced features (not the Solver or Macros.)  And they wanted advanced Excel skills.

And this is pathetic, because although I do not know every feature of Excel, my skills are very good.  I have been using Excel for about 25 years most days at work, and I know what I'm doing.  Let me make a few estimates:

Odds that I would have struggled in that job due to my inadequate Excel skills:  1 in 300.
Odds that most of the people who did meet the minimum requirements are actually stronger Excel users than I am: Approximately zero.
Odds that the person who gets the job is a stronger Excel user than I am: less than 50%.

And yet I'm kicking myself for not noticing that requirement.  Stupid Dennis, you should have lied.  Everyone lies.  But I answered the question literally and honestly, and that just won't do.  And so much of my interactions with corporate America (and now even the public sector) seem to go this way.  No one even looked at my resume; a computer spit out my responses and flagged one, and that was that.  Someone wrote that requirement even though it is almost certainly more than they need, and now they can check a box and say that they eliminated my unqualified resume, and only people who overstate their qualifications, or are true experts in Excel, will be considered.  It doesn't make any economic sense.  Instead it's arbitrary, uncaring, inefficient, and just stupid.  It's what big organizations do, and it clashes with my personality.

Then today I received calls from three different recruiters, two with possible jobs that could start soon, and the other wants to meet me tomorrow.  So I don't hate them all quite so much anymore.  For the moment.

Unemployment Chronicles: Overqualified

I am starting to get this feedback, that because I can too easily do some of the jobs that are available, I'm not the best candidate.  Certainly no one has indicated that my depth of experience will help me get the type of job I want.  My qualifications are clearly a problem.

I understand this, in the sense that I have seen this concern in the business world.  Even at Farmers, where they knew me and knew my work, there was obviously resistance to my taking a lower job that I could clearly have done well; in fact, they never said so, but I think they just decided it was a bad idea and blocked me from doing it.  This seemed curious at Farmers, because just within Finance I knew of several cases where former managers, or people with the potential to be managers, just decided to work as individual contributors, and in every case, they were some of the very best senior accountants we had.

Not hiring overqualified workers runs counter to simple supply and demand theory.  Companies should prefer the most qualified worker.  It's like you have two TV sets for the same price, with all the same features, except one is 40" and one is 50", but you reject the 50" TV because, uhh, at that price you just expected a 40" screen.  Of course it isn't quite that simple, but almost.  Employers are worried about those overqualified workers -- will they fit in, work well with their (maybe less-qualified) managers, get bored, try to find something better?  And I did find at least one article that indicates that over-qualified workers are generally less satisfied than average.  (Probably because they are smarter, but let's not get into that.)

But what about their overall performance?  Are the concerns really fair, and are they enough to offset the strong skills overqualified workers bring to the job?  My anecdotal evidence says no, but what about more authoritative sources?  Googling "overqualified applicants" mostly leads to articles suggesting that there is no reason companies shouldn't hire overqualified employees, although it is clear that many of them won't.  From a Harvard Business Review article called The Myth of the Overqualified Worker:

"New research shows that overqualified workers tend to perform better than other employees, and they don’t quit any sooner."

"The prejudice against too-good employees is pervasive. Companies tend to prefer an applicant who is a “perfect fit” over someone who brings more intelligence, education, or experience than needed."

"This kind of thinking has tossed untold numbers of experienced, highly skilled people into the ranks of the long-term unemployed, a group that now constitutes nearly half of all U.S. jobless."

Overqualified workers perform better.  What a shock; next we'll find out that people prefer the 50-inch screen.  I anticipated this problem though, and it is one reason I wanted to go into contracting.  However, even there, recruiters are telling me that they are reluctant to send me to a job where I used to make more than the manager I would work for makes now, or where I might be more qualified for the manager's job than the manager is.

I don't want to whine too much -- just a little -- about age discrimination, but there is an element of it in the "overqualified" talk.  I applied recently, through a recruiter, for a senior accountant role that sounded really good for me and paid pretty well.  The company decided not to interview me, and the feedback from the recruiter was that they wanted someone "less seasoned" and " an up-and-comer."  Actual quotes, I wrote them down.  Those were the recruiter's words, not the company's, and I'm sure she would say that those are references to work experience, not age.  Still, have you ever met an over-seasoned 30-year-old or a 50-year-old up-and-comer?

It's something I have to deal with.  I think that I can demonstrate my value to a company if I can work there for awhile, but that isn't working out so far.  Being "overqualified" makes it harder to even get a foot in the door.

10,000 views

I reached 10,000 pageviews on my blog yesterday, which seems like a nice round number.  Anyway, for those of you who read, thank you.  It was never exactly my intention to obtain a big readership (now I feel like I have some obligation to you), but it's a good feeling to know that somebody actually reads my words.

So how did we get to 10,000 you might ask.  I know I wonder.  My oldest post goes back to June 2009, but back then I would get just a few views for each post.  A couple of things increased traffic.

Until last March, I had about 1,750 pageviews all time, and my biggest month ever was 274 views.  Then I suddenly had some time on my hands, and I started writing the Unemployment Chronicles and linked to Facebook a couple of times, and pageviews have been over 300 every month since, topping out at 1,348 last November.

The second thing that happened is illustrated by my top three posts, by number of pageviews:

What's Wrong With White People?                     952 views
Leaders                                                                 317 views
Not Quite 200,000 Miles                                      85 views

Several of my posts have gotten around 40-50 views, but those top two, particularly the top one, are off the charts.  I posted 'White People' October 28 last year, and it still accounts for more views than ony other post in January.  People are still finding it, and it will get over 1,000 views before it's done.  I do not know why.

Speaking of not knowing, I don't know know who reads my blog, and I suspect there are some readers I do not know personally, even beyond the top two posts.  This surprises me, as I am not sure how people find it or why they read.  I have never done any surveys.  But the number who I know read the blog is very small, so I am not sure about the rest.

I know that these people DO read, or have in the past and may still:  Jackie, Mike, Lisa, Pat, Susan, Raul, John, Chuck, Luis.  That's nine.  I have six followers, but I'm not sure they all read my posts still.  Anyway, I can't account for the other 20-30 views I get on some posts.

Thanks to the nine.  Thanks to everyone else.  I'll try to post an Unemployment Chronicles segment tomorrow.

Les Miserables

We have a tradition now of going to see movies on Christmas Day, and this year we went to the very first showing of Les Miserables,which opened that day.  So this is my review of the movie, but bear in mind that I have seen the musical and know the music, so my perspective is definitely different from someone who was not already familiar with the material.

The movie was some good, some not so good, so let's start with the worst and move forward to the best.

Worst:  I called this "movie malpractice" on the way home from the theater.  Many, many, way too many of the camera shots are extreme close-ups of the actors as they sing, leaving us to ponder their nostrils, facial stubble, teeth, skin imperfections, etc.  That is not exaggeration -- I noticed all of those things and more during the movie.  This works early in the film with Ann Hathaway; although I was already tired of it by the time she arrived, she redeemed the technique temporarily. As this goes on and on throughout the movie, it seems like a terrible choice.  Perhaps being in the third row of a large theater didn't help.

Second worst:  The lighthearted scenes are poorly done.  When the prostitutes sing "Lovely Ladies," it's a comic moment during the stage production.  In the movie, the prostitutes looked like ghouls, making the song mostly horrifying.  Worse than that are the Thenardiers and especially "Master of the House," which is one of the most entertaining numbers in the musical.  Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't do much with the song, and the number is just unfunny as depicted onscreen.  For example, the Thenardiers are shown as pickpockets, but among the things they steal is a glass eye, out of the wearer's socket.  When he sings "Charge 'em for the lice, extra for the mice," Cohen is shown actually adding the charges to someone's bill.  When Helena Bonham Carter as Mme. Thenardier sings "Thinks he's quite a lover, but there's not much there," the camera centers on Cohen's crotch, with him looking down and women pointing to him.  Subtle.  Actually, it's not subtle; it's way too over-the-top, and it looks like an attempt at humor from someone who doesn't know what is funny.

Third worst:  Russell Crowe can sing, but his voice is high and quiet, and he just doesn't come off very menacingly as Inspector Javert.  Still, he isn't terrible by any stretch.

Fourth best:  You may have heard, the actors actually sang their parts as they acted them.  In most movies, they record songs in a studio, then lip-sync them during the filming, but the director decided to change that.  The result is that the music is not as clean as you would see in a stage production, but the acting really shines through in some parts, so it creates an interesting version of the musical.

Third best:  Cosette is fine.  Eponine and Marius are really good.

Second best:  Hugh Jackman is good as Valjean.  You need a good Jean Valjean to carry this show, and Jackman is up to the task, both as actor and as singer.  At first, it seemed that he was going to "act" his way through some of the songs, but he demonstrates his singing abilities as the movie wears on and he has to deal with more challenging numbers.

Best:  Nearly every review of this movie seems to praise Ann Hathaway as Fantine, so I'm just piling on.  However, I think she earned the praise.  Her version of "I Dreamed a Dream" is heartbreaking, and she can sing and act and do both at the same time, even while the camera appears to be inches from her face.

Overall, I think there is enough to the movie to make it a worthwhile take on Les Miz.  The movie provides more emotion to the material than a stage version likely could; however, if you just love the music, stick with the stage production soundtrack.

College Essays

The deadline for Lucas's last college application was yesterday.  I helped brainstorm and edit his essays, so it's good to be done.  Just for the latest round of schools, we had two for the common application, one for Cornell, three for Stanford, and two for Olin College.  That is in addition to earlier ones for MIT, University of Washington, and Berkeley, although we used some of them at least twice.

Lucas's preference for colleges seems to go like this:

1. MIT (understandable)
2. Olin.  It's an Engineering school, and their graduates get jobs or get into grad school
3. Stanford, 'cause it's Stanford
4. UW, because he can maybe graduate in two years
5. Cornell
6. Berkeley, because the area around campus isn't all that appealing

Not bad when an Ivy League school and Berkeley are your last choices, although I think there is a non-zero chance that he will not get into any of them.  If I had to guess, I think he will get into UW, won't get into MIT or Stanford, and will probably be admitted to a couple others.  Olin, for example, has been practically begging him to apply, although they still may not accept him.  None of these schools is really easy to get into.

Jackie and I prefer UW, because it may be the cheapest per year, and they will accept the college courses he has already taken, so he might start as a junior.  However, they are all good choices.

So that is how I started my New Year.  It's a very big thing to get done.  Now we wait, until March 15.

The Story of Mike, Part 3

There are parts 1 and 2, and you should read those first.

Well, I said that I would wrap this up, so I will.  Mike last year with the company was not a pleasant one.  His boss refused to make any changes and stopped talking about doing anything about Mike's situation.  Mike began to realize that, even though everyone had once been in agreement that he could be an excellent employee in a different position, that there was never going to be a different position, and that it was unlikely that he could keep the one he had in the long term, having told everyone that he really didn't want it numerous times.

As a result, Mike's relationship with his boss became outwardly hostile.  He made it clear that he thought his boss was incompetent.  Mike went to his boss's boss to try to straighten out the situation, then went to HR with documentation of the many (at least nine) times that Mike's boss had said that something would get done, then nothing got done.  There were stupid corporate conversations about Mike not being "engaged," with no sense of awareness from his boss that maybe it wasn't Mike's fault if he wasn't thrilled with his boss's ineptitude.  Nothing happened.  Mike started to look for something else.

Year-end reviews came around, and Mike's review was leaked to him by accident.  It was average -- not bad, considering -- but with some words about being on the low side of average.  Mike didn't really believe it, but he was just looking to hang on until a position came available, either internal or external.

Then Mike met with his boss regarding the review.  He agreed with his boss that extreme multitasking was not his favorite thing.  He did not argue with the review.  Then his boss told him that individual contributor positions would be posted soon, but that the company was trying to upgrade positions, and that multitasking was critical to any position, really super extremely critical, and that as a result Mike was not going to be considered for any position that might open up.

Mike asked if this was serious, if his boss was saying that he was incapable of handling a senior accounting position, despite 11 years of average and (mostly) above average reviews at that level and above, and his boss assured him that this was the decision.  At this point Mike slammed the table between them and yelled "Bullshit!", and there followed a short and loud discussion in which Mike stated twice that this was irrational, then suggested that they continue later.

Mike went back to his desk, wrote a note to his boss and copied his boss's boss and the head of HR, and accused his boss of various wrongdoings, and stated that his boss was "personally despicable," and that this should never be in doubt.  Mike told me that he wanted to let his boss know that, when you act like a piece of shit in a work environment, you are still a piece of shit. Work is not a license to be a jerk.  Then Mike went home.  He has never spoken to his boss since.

The next workday, Mike met with his boss's boss and the head of HR for about an hour.  They suggested that, even then, Mike could possibly keep his job if he apologized.  Mike refused and insisted that his boss apologize instead.  Interestingly, neither of the two others said a word in defense of what Mike's boss had said to Mike; instead, they insisted that she would never have said such a thing.  Mike reminded them repeatedly that he had actually been there, and they had not, and that he had asked his boss to repeat what she said just to be sure, and that he understood English perfectly well and knew what was said, and that they did not.

There were claims of impropriety, threats of legal action, and in the end, Mike was paid a lot of money to go away without suing and with a confidentiality agreement.  He came out fine.

Still, it's quite a story.  If there is a moral to the story, it is this:  outside of a company setting, I doubt that Mike's superiors would treat anyone the way they treated Mike.  They probably have at least some minimal standards of right and wrong that would prevent them from such detestable behavior.  But in a corporate setting, they jettisoned any sense of decency and thought it was OK, because hey, it's business.  But it's not OK.

The Story of Mike, Part 2

There is a Part 1, and you should read that first.

So Mike and his boss had agreed that Mike could move out of his manager role and become an individual contributor again.  But months passed, and again, nothing happened.  And Mike saw that nothing was going to happen, again.  And Mike told his boss to forget it, that he would stay as a manager.  Not because he wanted to, but because his boss wasn't going to do anything anyway, so it made her life easier if he just told her he would stay, so he did.

Year end came, and again, he got a good review, as always.  But mid-year, his company decided to reorganize the department again, and his boss asked Mike to think about what role he wanted in the new organization.  Mike thought about it and said that he wanted to be an individual contributor.  A restructuring seemed like the perfect time to make a change.

This time, Mike's boss discussed it with her boss, so the word began to get out.  When months passed and again there was no progress, Mike began to get agitated.  At this point he was becoming concerned that he had essentially walked away from his manager position to the promise of another postion, but the new position wasn't happeneing, leaving him in limbo.  He still had his manager job, but having said repeatedly that he did not want it, he was losing credibility in that position.

Meetings between Mike and his boss began to get very tense, but toward the end of that year, his boss told Mike that he could inform his staff that he was not going to be their manager after the reorganization, and he did.  Mike's boss's boss also informed the management team that Mike was not going to remain as a manager.  All of this happened about 17 months before Mike finally left the company, still in exactly the same manager position with the same staff and most of the same duties, and with no plans in place to make any change.

That year end, after years of getting above average reviews, Mike got an average one, and no raise.  His attitude was cited.

Concluded in Part 3.

The Story of Mike, Part 1

The story of Mike may have a short shelf life, so read up while you can, if you are interested...

This is a true story about corporate stupidity and malevolence.  It happened to a friend of mine, we'll call him "Mike."  His name is not actually Mike, but he is bound by a confidentiality agreement, so I can only tell his story if I keep everyone anonymous.

The essence of Mike's story is that he was a very good employee, but he got stuck in a job that he didn't like, so he requested that the company find a different position for him, one that he could do very well and that would help the company he worked for.  Instead, they slowly destroyed his career with that company, for reasons that Mike still finds baffling, as they clearly hurt their own company.  It is a story of people doing very bad things to someone else without cause and excusing their behavior by hiding behind the bureaucracy of a big company.

Mike was a manager with a big company.  They went through a large reorganization, and Mike saw his duties increase substantially at the same time that his best employees were moved to a different manager, and the work was less familiar to him and so more difficult, but he took it all on.  He was also told that he would swap duties with that other manager within one year, back to employees and work he was more comfortable doing, so there was a time limit on the whole exercise.

Because of the timing of the change and the prevailing economic conditions, Mike's reward for his efforts was nothing.  Literally nothing whatsoever, unless you count keeping his exact same job grade for the same pay as something.  No certificates, no lunch, forget about opportunity or a bonus.  As nothing as nothing can get.  The reorganization saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.  At the end of the year, Mike got a good review, same as he had gotten every year for several years.  Raises were very small due to the economy.

In time, other people higher in the organization were rewarded.  Mike never was.

In anticipation of the switch of managers, Mike and his fellow manager got together to make some adjustments to the reorganization, because it was becoming clear that the new arrangements were not working well.  They laid out a structure for their work after the switch, in detail, including all duties for each manager and which staff would report to whom, and they took that to their boss.  Their boss agreed that the current situation was not working, and the discussions included possible promotions and potential hiring of additional managers.  The boss set aside all of the ideas for additional consideration.  None of it was acted on.

The time came for the job switch with the other manager, and the switch did not happen, nor did anything else change.  A few more months went by, and Mike began to realize that nothing was ever going to happen -- no promotion, no help, no structural changes, not even the job switch.

Now Mike is not the sort of person to sit still and whine privately when he thinks things are not working for him, so instead, he proactively worked out a solution.  He went to his boss and asked for a demotion.  He would give up being a manager and go back to being an individual contributor.  Mike did not need the money so badly that he had to stay in a job he didn't want; let someone else deal with the headaches of his job, stuck with a boss who would not do anything to improve the situation.  And his boss agreed that he could make this change and would do very well, but that it would take some time to make it happen.

Mike was very relieved, but he also made this comment:  "Now all I need is for [my boss] to actually do something."

It took nearly three years, but that was the beginning of the end.

The story continues in part 2.