Feel the pain of unemployment. Hah. He's got nothing on me, waking up at 11am. Try 5:30pm! Hahahahahaha!

I need a job. If only to start being normal again.

¶ 239 Posted at 05.53 PM ⇒ No Comments ( linkage | (un)employment | meme | funny )

The Secret Diaries of the Fellowship.

In other news, we're getting sued. And I'll leave it at that. No good can come of saying more, and quite possibly some bad.

¶ 361 Posted at 03.00 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | linkage )

In applying for (yet another) job, I got the sudden urge to add at the end of the cover letter:

PS - I'm really smart.

I mean, that's basically what I'm trying to say in the whole cover letter, only more obliquely. I wonder how effective that tactic would be...

¶ 363 Posted at 02.03 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

I get to be unemployed again. Here's the RIAA crowing about it.

¶ 383 Posted at 09.29 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | music | bummer )

It has been one year (and approximately one and a half hours) since I got laid off from Motive. In spite of that, or possibly even because of that, all things considered, it's been a pretty good year.

¶ 438 Posted at 10.56 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | deep thoughts )

I might have forgotten to mention. I am unemployed again. I can't say I'm unhappy about it. The people I was working for seem to slowly be realizing that they have no business model. Half of the company got let go on Friday; no doubt the other half will follow in the not-too-distant future.

¶ 458 Posted at 02.05 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | me )

A job? No, of course not. Two jobs. I have two job offers in front of me (not literally) right now. They're both pretty good. It looks like I might be gainfully employed again in the near future. But I have become very cautious over the last 15 months. It's not real until I get a check, and sometimes not even then (as I learned the last time around).

¶ 479 Posted at 02.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

I have received inquiries (1) regarding the two jobs. Specifically, people (again, 1) want to know what they are. One was a contract job to implement an ecommerce site for real estate listings and what are called virtual tours. It wasn't anything fancy by itself, but the thing is, they wanted me to do everything. They wanted me to define the product, come up with a schedule, spec out hardware and software and services, design it, implement it, test it, document it, and maintain it. Everything. It was pretty daunting, but I had some good advice from friend Phil. Little of it was anything I hadn't done before. What was different was doing it all and also being completely self-directed.

The other job was a permanent position at the LBJ Foundation in conjunction with the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT and the LBJ Library. This one is a rather open-ended job, most likely being a lot more than just programming. The LBJ School gets a lot of requests for assistance from various organizations (governmental and not) to determine and implement policy. The main guy here is concerned mainly with technology policy. Part of what they're looking for from this job is someone who does research on new technologies, reads up on them, and possibly tries out the more interesting ones to see how they work. Out of that would come both useful work for the LBJ School and Library as well as the organizations coming to them for help, but also (hopefully), useful recommendations on the capabilities of various pieces of software and perhaps even useful insight into relevant policy considerations. They are looking towards a general plan of having software that they can deploy to help all sorts of organizations "do stuff." It's vaguely defined right now, but there's real potential.

Last weekend I had a lot of time to think about it. Well, I didn't really need the time. Psychologists say you decide first and then rationalize. That was true in my case. Both of these jobs came along in early December, but the contract one moved more quickly. We had gotten to the product definition, which I presented to them on Wednesday the 8th. We hashed out features, target audiences, and other non-technical requirements for the project. The following day, I met the LBJ people face-to-face for the first time after many emails and phone calls. We sat down and they described for me what they wanted this job to become. I more or less decided to take it right then, but spent a few days firming up the decision and making sure it was rational.

With the contract job, I felt it was something that would really stretch my abilities. I was also intimidated, but I tried to avoid letting that influence anything. In the end, I don't think it did. The contract job offered (much) more money, but they were only looking at a six month gig to start. It was quite possible that it would grow into more, but given my experience, I wanted more security. Then there was some flip-flopping on their end that left a sour taste in my mouth. First they wanted to make it a contract. Then after our initial meeting, they offered a full time job as a regular employee, which took me a bit by surprise, but really appealed to me. Then after a couple days, they unoffered the job, saying they wanted to define the project better. After we defined it all, then they said they wanted to go forward, but switched back to making it a short-term contract. Needless to say, that was a little off-putting. Even so, I probably wouldn't have taken it. While that job offered more responsibility and money than I'd had in any job before, there wasn't anything fundamentally special about it. Jobs like that come up all the time. I'm not saying I could get them, but that's a relatively normal sort of job. The LBJ job was different. They wanted a programmer, a liaison, and a policy advisor. It is a unique opportunity, one that doesn't come along very often. I had to jump at it. It helped that the people I met were smart and easy-going, with the lefty liberal bent that I favor. Apparently they discovered this site and thus my incoherent screeds against the Bush administration, which actually raised my standing, something I did not expect at all. Also the run-on sentences. And the fragments. So to sum up. Job 1: money, responsibility. Job 2: security, growth, and just a better feel. The thing is, both of these jobs are better than any other job I've been offered in the past. Better than any job I've interviewed for, even the Amazon one (thanks to mute who could get me in the door, but couldn't get them to recognize my talents. Their fault, not his.). Quite possibly better than any job I've even applied for, and in my ~15 months of un-/semi-employment, that works out to a bunch. When it rains...

So. I start on Tuesday. It was going to be Monday, but apparently that is a holiday for them. One of the benefits of working for the LBJ Foundation is that, even though it is a private organization, they have the same holiday/vacation policies as the federal LBJ Library since they work so closely together. I'm going to be employed by the Foundation even though most of my work will be for the School because the UT and federal hiring practices are so byzantine and wrapped in red tape that I would never have been hired. The first project will be working with the Beaumont Foundation. Insofar as I've gathered, they are a group of lawyers wrapped around a big pot of money. There was this big class action lawsuit against Toshiba* . It was about, of all things, faulty floppy disk drives. It was finally settled for $2.6 BILLION dollars. That's a whole lot of money. Apparently, funds from the settlement that weren't claimed by some deadline (I am inferring this part) were to be allocated to a fund to help bridge the digital divide in America (that I know). Basically, my new boss will be helping the Beaumont Foundation spend $300 MILLION on Toshiba equipment that they will give away to poor and underprivileged kids across the country. It's pretty crazy. So this will be the initial source of money and the testbed for the new projects, whatever they might be. I realize how vague it all sounds. It isn't so much unknown as difficult to articulate. No doubt I will post more about it as parts get fleshed out; it's pretty exciting. Oh yeah. And one other thing: they're going to want to make all of the code that we write to be Free Software. How cool is that? The things you can do when profit isn't a motive...

As far as the real estate people go, I have directed them to my friend Phil, who I think will do an excellent job for them. The lady with whom I had most of my dealings was disappointed by my decision in a way that warmed my heart, but she also understood my reasoning. Hopefully she and Phil will come to an agreement and that will all work out.

That enough for you, Jothan?

Semi-ironically, I bought a Toshiba laptop shortly after Christmas. It was a really good deal: 14.1" LCD, 20GB HD, 1.2 GHz Celeron (PIII Celeron, not the P4 one), DVD-ROM, and 256MB RAM for $800 (real money, not after rebates). Practically everyone who sells this (1200-S123) is charging $1100 and up. I am in fact typing this on it right now. It is too cool. Plus Jessica and I have computers to use at each others' residences now. Yes, I have been a terrible, geeky influence. And it will only get worse: I will have a new laptop of my choice as part of my compensation (from Toshiba, of course). I will delay my acquisition until 802.11g (aka Wireless-G) is available built-in. And maybe those 17" LCD Apple Powerbooks will infect Toshiba. That would be so awesome.

¶ 483 Posted at 03.08 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | whoa )

Second post in the Employment category. Dates to remember:

• October 15, 2001 - Laid off from Motive.
• December 15, 2001 - Started working for Audiogalaxy.
• June 17, 2002 - Laid off from Audiogalaxy (same day as the lawsuit settlement).
• October 8, 2002 - Started at Fly Technology.
• November 8, 2002 - Laid off from Fly Technology.
• January 21, 2003 - Start day at LBJ Foundation/Library/School.

I had always felt that the Fly job was temporary; there was just no way it was going to last. But now I finally feel like it's over.

¶ 484 Posted at 10.31 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

I just returned from Colorado Springs. My job sent me to this conference on "community networking." i.e., non-profits, municipalities, and other non-corporate institutions looking to use the Internet and technology to improve their services and offer new ones. It was more of a meet-n-greet type of thing than a "do stuff" thing. I got to stretch my schmoozing muscles. I was by far the youngest and least-qualified person there, probably because I was a sub for my "boss."

The conference was at the Garden of the Gods Club (not a hotel). It was pretty swank. My suite was bigger than my apartment. Hell, the bathroom was almost bigger than my apartment (not really). The back balcony faced the Garden of the Gods (a rock formation) and then Pike's Peak beyond. I'll upload pictures shortly. The club was one of those exclusive ones that always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Conservative money. I have a visceral (anagram of "claviers") reaction to places like that. Eh.

I got window seats on both flights back. Colorado is very brown right now. There are dry streambeds all over the place. Most of them were invisible, but it was quite clear where they were because of the threads of trees snaking across an otherwise barren landscape. As the terrain changed, there were more and more canyons carved out by these rather small streams. The brown landscape was broken up by these rugged canyons which were filled with trees. It was very fractal. On the DFW-Austin flight, I managed to figure out where we were relatively early. I think I identified I-35, then Waco. I picked out Round Rock, 620, Mopac, 183, Braker, 360, and 290 as they appeared. It was cool.

Airplanes are optimal places for LANs. What they need to do is mount 9 cameras on the bottom of the plane, looking forward, backward, left, right, and in between, which would be served via streaming media on the LAN. Airplanes would make a good testbed for a resilient network model that would be smarter about security threats (like business travelers carrying Code Red on their laptops). Then there's the coolness factor of playing Doom III against a friend, or streaming a DVD so you both could watch. Yes. Gigabit ethernet on airplanes. Genius, I tell you.

¶ 523 Posted at 08.04 PM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas | me | genius | (un)employment )

I predict that Google will move into the job search market. It's just another kind of search. It's basically a combination of Froogle and Google Local. In fact, I think they'll eventually roll out a number of specialized searches. They're crawling the web pages as it is. It'll be just like with Froogle, I think. Froogle's biggest advantage (besides being part of Google) is that its database is compiled automatically as part of the regular Google crawl. Other price engines, like Pricewatch or Pricescan or Dealtime or..., require active effort to put items into the database. That's a clear scalability problem. Ditto for the job sites. They all feed back on each other with recruitment companies spamming Monster and HotJobs and Dice and .... with the same listings over and over. I think this is something that Google could put together rather easily. They've already done most of the work. They crawl the web. They can infer location. And they've laid the infrastructure for specialized searches. I promise you it will happen.

¶ 713 Posted at 04.42 PM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | (un)employment )

First day of the new job.

¶ 780 Posted at 08.35 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

I am a net-negative dot-com thousandaire.

¶ 800 Posted at 08.38 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

Here's a slightly old article that better outlines what my company does without needing to cut through the marketing and industry jargon on the web site.

¶ 807 Posted at 12.52 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

I haven't said much about my new job. It's not because of any deep, dark, chocolate-covered secret. I'm just not into talking about work. So far, everything's going well. The people are smart and friendly, I'm getting good things accomplished, and it's a positive environment. I just thought I'd share that with you.

¶ 828 Posted at 02.49 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

In about a month, my employer is moving about 1/4 mile north of our present location. Last week, we discussed possible layouts of the new space, including plain old cube farms and slightly less typical ideas. Nobody appreciated my suggestion of Penrose tiling.

¶ 919 Posted at 10.07 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

I was discussing hiring plans with my manager on Monday. I joked, "maybe we should review the employees we have before we hire new ones," referring to my more-than-two-months-delayed review. He didn't get the reference, though, and thought I was totally ripping on my co-workers. Luckily, he magically got it yesterday, but it kind of startled me that I could have been misinterpreted like that.

¶ 972 Posted at 07.43 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | (un)employment )

My manager has this slightly disturbing habit of calling impromptu meetings. Usually, this happens when he's in Houston, so he delegates one of us in Austin to gather everyone together to huddle over the phone. Nothing particularly bad has resulted from any of these meetings, but my heart still skips a beat every time, even though I know that if it was anything truly bad, the meeting would happen after I was gone and I wouldn't be invited. I get jumpy. I'm kind of like "Tom Ridge" with his streetlight of death." Having been laid off three times now, I'm always at yellow. Oh, sure, there are green and blue levels on the chart, but those are just for show; they're not actually used. My pal (and yours) Tom Ridge and I know those levels exist in theory, but we're never going there.

¶ 979 Posted at 10.21 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

You may have heard the term enterprise software before. Generally, they sell big software to big business. There'll be a team of dedicated sales people that works on a client for months, even years, doing demos, sales pitches, hammering out terms, etc. for and with the executives at the customer. The customer has a list of features they want that they use to narrow down the possible solutions. Eventually, if all goes well, the customer signs a contract and writes a big check. Then the professional services consultants descend, adapting the product to the customer's needs and existing business systems. After a while, there's another version of the software and the cycle repeats. There are a lot of software companies in Austin that follow the model. Tivoli was one. Motive was another. So's ROME. And that's just the companies that I've worked for.

Note that I haven't mentioned said anything about what the customers and the product do. That's because it doesn't matter. Look at the model described above and think about what sorts of behaviors it creates incentives for. There are a few biggies. First of all, you want a product that looks impressive. That's not the same thing as useful. Often those things coincide, but often they don't. When push comes to shove, the one that brings money in the door is the one that wins. Many times, sales people will demo something that doesn't actually exist. Secondly, there is no incentive to make the product simple. After all, the more complex the product, the more time it takes to install, and the more billable hours your services people rack up. Third, once you get the check, the customer no longer matters. All you have to do is a good enough job that the customer won't sue. Maybe, if you're especially forward-looking, you'll try to maintain a decent relationship so you can sell them the next version a couple of years later. Even that has a hook; you can implement a feature well enough that you're not lying when you say you can do it, but not so well that customers can actually use it. That's the next version, which is available for the low low price of $1.5 million. You can generally get away with a lot, as the people who use the software aren't usually the people who use it.

Naturally, this type of focus has an impact on development. Sales will scream for some feature they need to sell a particular client. Or they may have already sold the client on that feature and it needs to be designed, developed, tested, and documented by the end of the quarter. Services will scream that some part of the product is buggy or unusable. What matters is building something that vaguely resembles what was sold as soon as possible. Everything else is secondary. Quality is an afterthought. A well-designed architecture is too much work. One could even argue that it's bad business to focus on quality. I can't help but think that kind of business is living on borrowed time. The customers tolerate that model, and in some cases even insist on it, but I can't see a future in a company whose best customers write a seven figure check and never use the product.

So, after all that, you're probably wondering why I put up with it. Well, the easy answer is, I thought that's how the industry worked. I thought I was just being naive and idealistic. Turns out I was wrong, though, so I'm not going to have to deal with it anymore. My new job is at Works. They were one of the early dot-com cliches, selling office supplies online. 7 years and two business plans later, they have a pretty nifty product for managing payments in various organizations. The model is different. Works is what is known as an "application service provider" (ASP). The product is hosted on their servers and accessed through the web. The most well-known ASP is Salesforce.com, but you could argue that web mail is the quintessential ASP. Works gets no real money when they sign a customer. Instead, they only get paid as customers use the product. If the product isn't useful, efficient, or reliable, the customer doesn't use it and Works gets no money. The model is built from the ground up in a fundamentally different fashion that aligns their interests more closely with the customers' interests. That's the theory, at least, and what I've seen so far confirms it.

I really wanted the ROME job to work, as I've had more than my fill of employment volatility. I did my best to improve things, but there was only so much I could do, and only so much frustration I was willing to deal with. To be fair, things aren't that bad, but given the opportunity for something that is better in nearly every respect, how could I possibly turn it down? It's quite possible that the enterprise software model has many profitable years ahead of it. It's quite possible that I'm turning my back on lots of money, but it isn't 1999 anymore; options are nothing more than lottery tickets. What matters more is a demonstrably sustainable business and a positive environment. Baby needs cash and a content father.

¶ 1030 Posted at 01.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( software | (un)employment )

I find it fascinating and startling how little time we actually spend thinking about whether to take a particular job offer. Think about other life choices of significance. Taking a new job is less important than whether to get married or to have kids, but it's more important than whether to buy a new car or house, and about as important as which college to attend. We spend far more time thinking about those things, on the order of months or even years, but job decisions often are made in less than a week. That's just bizarre.

¶ 1033 Posted at 10.28 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

There's something sad about leaving a job, even when it's by choice.

¶ 1039 Posted at 09.08 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

Jessica has submitted her resignation to PRG. We decided long ago that we both wanted to have one of us parenting full-time. Given the economic landscape and our differing levels of satisfaction with our careers, we decided that she should be the one to stay home and I should be the one holding a full-time job. We hope that she will be able to do freelance work to earn some extra money, keep her resume current, and just allow her some adult interaction. The field of textbook publishing employs many freelance writers and editors, so it shouldn't be hard to find work. We're not against day care, we just didn't want to put our child in day care permanently and full-time, especially when she was very young. We certainly expect to use day care either full-time for a short period, or part-time for a longer period, depending on the publishing cycle, my job's flexibility, and availability of friends and family (ahem). It's hard enough for me to leave her at home, and that's when she's with Jessica. I can't imagine how hard it would be for us both to leave her.

¶ 1070 Posted at 06.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( us | (un)employment )

IBM has joined Microsoft, Intel, and other large technology companies in claiming there will be a critical shortage of IT workers in the United States in the coming years. These companies bemoan the decreasing numbers of students interested in math and science. Is it any wonder? How many people has the tech industry laid off in the last 5 years? Employment is only now getting its legs under it and they're claiming the sky is falling.

I have a solution to their problems: pay more money and offer more job security. Do that and the rest will solve itself. Why haven't they done that? I think it's pretty obvious: they don't want to. The cynic in me says this is just laying the groundwork for increasing those H-1B allocations. Now, don't get me wrong; I think free trade is a fine idea. H-1Bs aren't free trade. H-1Bs are temporary. The workers come in, work for a few years, gain skills and experience, save their money, and leave. At the end of 5 years (or so), we end up with 5 years of work for the employer while 5 years of experience and a big chunk of money permanently leave the country. I think our government should encourage companies to give jobs to Americans. That can mean hiring someone who is an American today, or it can mean hiring someone from another country and turning them into an American. At the end of 5 years, the employer has gotten the 5 years of work at a somewhat higher up-front cost, but the 5 years of experience stay in the country and the money goes back into our economy. Immigrants will displace American workers when they arrive. That's inevitable. Over time, however, they contribute to our economy and we end up with a stronger economy than we would have had otherwise. The emphasis is over time. If those immigrants leave after 5 years, then we pay the up-front cost of displacing an American worker without reaping the long-term benefit of gaining an American.

The H-1B program was originally intended to allow companies to hire workers who had unique skills that could not be found domestically. My extra-rectal estimate is that there are about 1,000 people in the world who are that special. Obviously, with an H-1B population numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the imported workers are a little less unique than that. This is all work that many Americans could potentially do, assuming the market was allowed to operate the way it should. Temporary immigration is government intervention into the market that short-changes the labor side, and thus the citizens and permanent residents. Eventually, that will come back around by reducing the number of domestic customers, and thus retarding the growth of those same companies and the US economy as a whole. It's not like they can switch to another country, either. The United States consumer is currently (and irresponsibly, but that's another topic) driving the global economy. China and India are growing fast, but they are so large that it will take decades before the world economy is sufficiently diverse that the US couldn't drag it down. In other words, I'm against short-sightedness, not capitalism.

Bad enough that we lose a skilled potential American. What's worse is that our loss is another country's gain. I think free trade is a fine idea, and India and China and Eastern Europe need to develop sophisticated, domestic economies. We can encourage their success without shooting ourselves in the foot. In the long run, we prosper from their prosperity. I would prefer, however, that it happen by them gaining their own advantages rather than us giving away ours.

It's good politics in the United States to speak in favor of improving the educational system. Sending jobs overseas is bad politics, so US corporations want to appear as though they care about domestic fortunes. If American tech companies really believed what they say about a worker shortage, they would offer more money and more security. That they haven't indicates that they don't believe it after all. That is unfortunate, because they would reap dividends for decades if they invested in America.

¶ 1092 Posted at 02.02 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | (un)employment )

Here's another article on what my company does. FYI, a purchasing card is a way to handle business payments using a credit card. It's broadly similar to a corporate credit card, purchase orders, and the like.

¶ 1144 Posted at 01.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | fyi )

I daydream from time to time about having my own business. One of my daydreams today was imagining negotiating with a potential employee:

Me: What kind of salary were you seeking?
Candidate: I was looking for a competitive salary of $x.
Me: We're prepared to offer you $(x+n), and we're going to make you earn it.

I have no interest in producing an inferior product, and quality more than pays for itself. I don't intend to let my decisions on pay be driven by the herd, but rather by actually thinking about what the work is really worth, and how to make sure a person is producing in quality and quantity.

¶ 1165 Posted at 11.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

My employer has been bought out by Bank of America. This is now the biggest company I have ever worked for, after IBM, and by far the biggest in the last 6 years. It's a little ironic that, when I was considering whether to take this job, I was worried that a 60-person company was too large. I've had some time to get used to the idea, though, and I think it's for the best. Given my poor luck in the working world over the last 5 years, the idea of working for a relatively stable company with good benefits is pretty appealing when I am sole support for a family of three. It won't be forever, though; I've got the startup bug in me. Still, I could easily see myself working here for as long as I've been working for anybody full-time, which is a weird feeling. To date, the only job I've held for more than 17 months was my paper route in high school. I look at people who've worked for the same company for 5 years like they're from another planet.

On a vaguely related subject, I've dropped the idea of going to graduate school for Operations Research. This isn't a choice imposed on me by external forces, but rather the realization that it's not for me. It's too abstract a field, with too great a focus on numerical analysis. It's also a field where you're almost always working for someone else; it's not a company where you can found a startup, unless you're in the consulting business, which doesn't interest me at all. I'm starting to give thought again to the Master of Software Engineering program at UT. Bank of America seems to be pretty flexible and accommodating with respect to continuing education. I've learned a lot on the job and independently, but I think some things are best learned in a structured setting like that 1 . I've also grown increasingly convinced that the type of reasoning that software encourages is more broadly applicable than just writing code.

So. I have a new plan. I'm going to work here for the next 5 years or so 2 . During that time, I'm going to be building up what I think of as potential energy: experience, knowledge, ideas, contacts, good will with my employer (for a safety net), etc., and letting it all stew and ferment. At some point, the stars will align. I will take a 4-month leave of absence (hence the note about goodwill above) and devote myself to building out one of the ideas. Of course, I won't be starting from zero at that time; there's a lot of preparatory work that I'll can and must do while still gainfully employed so as to require the minimum amount of time effectively unemployed taking this gamble. I don't expect success in those 4 months, of course; rather, what I hope to do is figure out whether that business plan is sufficiently viable as to devote additional time to it, or whether to scrap it and try again at some later date. More and more, I am looking at my current career track and long-term investment strategies (retirement, etc.) as being a plan B. They're an excellent, satisfying plan B, but B nonetheless.

So what exactly is plan A? I dunno yet. I've sketched out some requirements. The core idea is to take maximum advantage of the situation. That means focusing on things where one guy working alone 3 has an advantage. It means focusing on things where there is little up-front investment required, and, ideally, where an abundance of financing might blind you to a possibility. It means taking my excessively analytical nature, my sensitivity to minor inconveniences, and my belief in the importance of quality and finding a business plan where those things are compelling advantages. There are many ideas in the world, after all, and ideas can be easily copied. Me, though... I'm hard to copy. Ideally, even if you know exactly what I'm doing, it will be hard to compete with me because you'll have to be able to look at the problem the way I do, with the same insights and ignorance that I bring. That's a lot harder. I've come up with an outline of an outline describing the shapes that fit, but it's not in an easily-published form 4 . I've also come up with some half-baked ideas, many of which are clearly ridiculous, and a few that make me think I'm pretty smart 5 .

One thing is clear, though: I must persevere. I must expect to fail the first time. I must expect to fail the second time. I must even expect to fail the third time. It's not about finding one excellent idea and riding on that, but continuously generating a steady stream of decent ideas and executing well on the most viable one when the stars do align. I don't think I have better ideas than other people, but I definitely think I have more ideas, and I'm more ruthless about unsentimentally shooting holes in them before they see the light of day. As long as I make my choices wisely, retain a safety net, work hard, and focus on continuous improvement, success is inevitable.

¶ 1175 Posted at 03.15 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

I'm tempted, in the very distant future, when I am applying for a job, to send in my resume hard-copy on the reverse side ofa head shot.

¶ 1182 Posted at 09.39 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

It is dizzying to reflect on the fact that I have only been continuously employed for just over 3 years.

¶ 1207 Posted at 02.38 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | (un)employment )

Last month I hit 17 months in my current job. That is the longest I have held any job except my newspaper route during high school, which lasted 3 years. My previous tenures were (in order) 16½ months, 6 months, 1 month, 17 months, and 9 months. I guess graduating just before a recession can be a little dicey.

¶ 1371 Posted at 12.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

Every now and then, I wonder about the possibility of getting some company to pay me big bucks to write software in India. I'm not sure why they would, besides that there will apparently be a shortage, but it'd be pretty cool to live there for a few years.

¶ 1391 Posted at 01.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | india )

I'm not too motivated by money these days. What I hope for from my career 5 or 10 years down the road is more about whether what I'll be doing will be interesting. That wasn't true when I started out. Back then, I cared more about how much money I'd be making later. I certainly like money, of course, but it's not something I look forward to the way I used to. Maybe it's because I make more now. Or maybe it's because I'm starting to get a little jaded. Or maybe, just maybe, it's maturity.

¶ 1581 Posted at 08.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | deep thoughts | money )

Two months of paid paternity leave. Two months of paid paternity leave. Two months of paid paternity leave. Two months of paid paternity leave. Two months of paid paternity leave. Two months of paid paternity leave. I'm feeling some warm fuzzies towards Bank of America, that's for sure.

¶ 1691 Posted at 08.09 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

Tomorrow I return to work. I barely remember what I do. I'm very grateful to Bank of America for letting me have this time. I don't understand why they're so nice; the benefit is so far and away beyond what they needed to do to be competitive. Bank of America is not perfect, but they really seem to be trying to do the best for their employees. I like my co-workers, enjoy the environment, and work on something genuinely useful, but I'm dreading going back.

The last 2 months have been the best 2 months I can remember. A long time ago I said (not here) that I wouldn't mind being the one who stayed home. I didn't know what I was talking about then. I spent the last 2 months learning, and I've reached the same conclusion. My paternity leave hasn't been for Kieran. It hasn't really been for Jessica, either. I've been on leave for Uma.

She is such a sweet girl. She's the one I'm worried about. She's going to feel abandoned. I tried to prepare her for my return to work. She started crying. "I'll be sad when you're not here." I don't get it. I'm not very nice to her. Must be biology, I guess. I can't make her understand. In at least this way, it would have been easier of my employer hadn't been so generous. Then we wouldn't have found a regular, stable, Daddy and Uma routine. Now, though, she's going to have to deal with a lot less attention and time. I can make things easier for myself by reminding myself how much better and easier it is for me than for most people, with generous leave and vacation, as well as flexible working hours, one day working from home per week, and good pay. Uma doesn't have that perspective. All she knows is that I'm not going to be around as much anymore. And that will make her sad.

¶ 1742 Posted at 09.55 AM ⇒ No Comments ( us | (un)employment )