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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Saturday, December 3rd, 2005 02:18 pm

$RECRUITER wrote, in email:

Recently on national job board you indicated your interest in jobs with the following skillset:

Java, J2EE, Linux, JBoss, and Tomcat

No I damned well did not, you lying sack of shit.  I have experience with precisely one of those, and it shouldn't be a hard guess which one.  (Hint:  It's orthogonal to the other four.)  Do you really think you're going to get my interest or get me to work through you when you start out by trying to feed me an obvious bald-faced lie?

Sunday, December 4th, 2005 10:50 am (UTC)
It'd be an interesting experiment.


Personally, I have become convinced the principal reason no-one will hire me is that at any face-to-face interview it is almost immediately obvious that I'm in more or less constant pain, and there is a natural assumption that I'm not going to be able to hold down a regular job. Naturally, no-one will SAY so in so many words, because if they did they'd be facing an ADA lawsuit.
Monday, December 5th, 2005 09:16 am (UTC)
I have gotten very, very good at masking everything, especially pain, so that nobody (*) sees anything except what I want them to see. Especially not pain.

Of course, I'm no longer interviewing for jobs, so it's a non-issue for me in that respect, but it's a useful technique. A pleasantly neutral face deflects an awful lot that I simply don't want to bother with.

It's funny, though, how many people think it's lying to have such a face. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't care. It's nobody's business how I feel, what I think, if I'm in pain. We have, many of us - especially in the geek world - gotten too far into the extreme of all blunt honesty, all the time, and lost this exact point of social masks.

Of course, if the pain's too extreme, there's nothing any mask can do for you. It's going to show through anyway. But if you're stuck living with it for the rest of your life, like I am.. it might be worth developing one.

(*) Alex sees through it for me. But he sees through me anyway.
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 05:11 am (UTC)
It might be doable if it were only a constant pain. But it spikes sharply upwards so that it can't be masked at all times. If he could find a telecommuting job then it would be much easier. Especially if he was using text to communicate instead of audio. But with audio you can hit the mute button.

I think he could do any job that he set his mind to, if he could do it as a telecommuter. But right now he can't set his mind to anything because he's clouded by depression.
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 01:10 pm (UTC)
nodders

we have a woman at work who has had multiple surgeries lately, and you know they are pissed, but cant do anything about it. I feel really bad for her, she's just a mess, but she's always at work.

Good luck... maybe you can find something that allows you to work remotely?
Thursday, December 8th, 2005 12:00 pm (UTC)
He got up with me at 0700 to take Goose to school and worked for the half hour for me to walk her to school and walk home then took a half hour break for breakfast then worked til about noon when he took an hour break for lunch. Afternoon he would take a break at 1500 once or twice a week so we could go run errands and be back to work at about 1800. Take a break at 2000 for supper and back to work at 2100 then work til 0200.

He would probably love to have such a job again. They didn't demand that he work that long but that was what he was comfortable doing. RedHat's releng group was world-wide.

His resume, if you feel inclined to help him find such a job, is at http://co.ordinate.org