An Erdinger as dead as a Pubski beer oughtta be
I'm on my last week of training for my new job, 2.5 months of training. It as at least a half a month longer than it could ever possibly need to be. I'm am tired of listening attentivly. I get $2.50 raise at the start of next week and then a $5 raise in four months. It super strange to have things like that plotted out in front of me. Union certainty is swell. I just have to make it seven months to get off probation and I'm virtually unfireable if do the bare minimum for the rest of my career. I probably have about 3-5 years of night shifts ahead of me, which I'm ok with.
Full on nights? How are you handling that? I worked nights/swing for 9 months a few years back and it was a hard as hell adjustment. Congrats on where you’re at. It’s been something that’s been nice to keep up on as you’ve shared.
You operate a dredge for local government, don't you? Does that entail excavating waterways, or something else?
I work at a wastewater treatment plant. The dredge is a small part of the plant that I'm probably not going to operate very often for a few years. Regionally it's a pretty big plant at 45 million gallons a day average but maxing at 450 MGD. Nationally it's maybe a biggish medium sized plant.
You are now playing the worst version of Zork You enter the garage. It is oddly silent. You realize the pool pump is not working. CHECK DISPLAY The display is dark. While it is not likely to get below freezing again, if it does you run a substantial risk of burst plumbing under concrete, and it will be expensive. CHECK BREAKER The breaker has not cycled. CYCLE BREAKER The pump does not start. CHECK OUTLET The outlet, which you put in, is a hard-wired armored whiptail. LOOSEN OUTLET The screws are very long. You turn and turn and turn, cursing whoever standardized on slotted head screws- CANCEL LOOSEN PUMP COVER PANEL The panel is off. CHECK VOLTAGE You measure zero voltage between either leg. STARE, WOUNDED, AT BREAKER PANEL The panel stares back. It is a Leviton Smart Panel, so it stares back with intelligent malevolence. CALL ELECTRICIAN She does not answer. CALL LEVITON Leviton puts you in a call queue. REMEMBER THAT MY 2.4GHz SMART HOUSE NETWORK IS NOW LIVE It is! You could actually put these breakers on the network! Maybe that would allow you to diagnose the problem! ROOT AROUND FOR SMART BREAKER INSTRUCTIONS You find them. In Spanish. SEARCH INTERNET You discover that you have to press a button. The button is under the cover. PULL COVER It nearly falls on you. PULL ALL THE COVERS None of this is fun but you get through it. Leviton is calling. ANSWER PHONE They tell you that if the breaker is dead you should replace it. Also it doesn't matter what order you enroll these devices in. They do not make fun of you for having six of them. They mention that pulling the offending breaker and putting it back after a minute may help. PULL AND REPLACE BREAKER Nothing happens. CHECK VOLTAGE AT BREAKER you measure nothing. CHECK VOLTAGE AT SUBPANEL you measure nothing. CHECK FOR POPPED BREAKER AT MAIN PANEL You see no popped breakers FLAIL AROUND LIKE AN IDIOT FOR HALF AN HOUR Who are you shouting at, exactly? CHECK FOR POPPED BREAKER AGAIN There are no obviously popped breakers. However, you have two labeled "cooktop". Both are 60A. One is off. Perhaps this is because there's raw wire in the kitchen whose purpose was never clear. FLIP COOKTOP BREAKER You hear the sound of a pump! Hooray! You are reminded that none of the breakers were labeled logically, and when the electricians replaced the panels they transliterated a number of things! GOD FUCKING DAMMIT LET'S LABEL THEM I don't know how to do that DOWNLOAD LEVITON APP sign up for an account! SIGN UP have you pressed the button? Do you see a blinking green light? YES How big is your breaker? 42 SLOTS Would you like me to search for breakers? YES Congrats! I just found every breaker in the house! Shall I add them all to this one panel? FUCK I don't know how to do that LET ME SHOW YOU MUTHERFUCKER
You are standing in front of a Leviton 42-inch Structured Data Center. It is full of seventeen points of CAT5e and CAT6, fiber-fed, UPS-powered, with an amp in it. You have laboriously connected this thing but it is now time to terminate everything so that it can be clean. All of your connections have passed QC with the exception of the one that read "SHORT" yesterday. CHECK AGAIN It still says "short", dumbass. What were you expecting? CUT CAT5 JACK The recently-crimped end of a CAT5 Jack falls to the ground with a satisfying "snip." RE-TERMINATE CAT5 JACK You arrange your orange-stripedorange-green-stripedblue-blue-stripedgreen-brown-stripedbrown extravaganza as you have a hundred times before. You hear a knock at the door. ANSWER DOOR It's the electrician. She wants to talk about moving a bunch of wire, per your request. TALK TO ELECTRICIAN Looks like this is all happening Tuesday. Oddly enough the breaker that popped is 100A, which is troubling. The electrician assures you that adventures will commence shortly. GET BACK TO WHAT I WAS DOING You terminate the CAT5 Jack. TEST CAT5 JACK It still says "short." EXAMINE KEYSTONE CONNECTOR Definitely not shorted there. STARE DISCONSOLATELY AT THIS MISADVENTURE TO CONTEMPLATE PULLING MORE FUCKING CAT5E The wire stares back mockingly. TUG ON WIRES The connector that is shorted is clearly not one of the ones that goes in the direction it should. TUG ON WIRES FOR ANOTHER HALF HOUR ANYWAY You have failed to transmutate the wire you need into the wire you want. Do you want to continue? TUG ON WIRE FROM THE OTHER DIRECTION Congratulations you have created 18 inches of slack. The wire you are attempting to re-run is not the one you are testing. WTF HOW I don't know how to do that. HOW CAN I CONNECT TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CAT5 CABLES AND READ "SHORT" You... ARE running a PoE to 5V Adapter one one of these bad boys, jackass. OH FUCK THAT'S WHY IT THINKS THERE'S A SHORT BETWEEN PINS 2 AND 7 Is that a question? YOU'RE NOT ZORK And you're not really playing. Shall we call it even?
You beat me to it! Thanks for posting :) My job has been real rough again lately so I'm applying pretty hard right now. Plus with my partner getting into her PhD and the income cut that's going to give I'm looking for a good raise. But the use of technology in hiring these days is awful and takes out any human factors in hiring. I haven't had even a call back since my current job 1.5 years ago. It's incredibly frustrating and disheartening. Anyone know how to play the game these days? Going camping this weekend and we got a campsite that's notoriously difficult to get so we have been really excited for it, and it looks like rain will be rolling in on our 2nd and 3rd of 3 days and if that's not planning camping in advance I'm not sure what is.
it's about 5 months until i move and i've been putting off the job search for this exact reason - i have no confidence in online job postings and my boyfriend's mom is a hiring manager that has said NEVER COLDCALL PEOPLE to us so the messaging is mixed i don't have the sauce to lie to people is part of the issue and the job dance is all lies - i am extremely confident in my ability to learn any job that i might get my hands on but i can't tell somebody oh yah eh i have 15 years experience in the Skeet workspace
Take a balanced approach: cold call places that seem like a good fit, especially if you think they're out of your league. Worst case, they don't respond and nothing has changed; best case, you land an opportunity. Tailor your resume, add a cover letter, and either email the right department or show up in person. This is perhaps too forward of me, but based on your latest post, you're a good communicator who can get your point across clearly. That's quite a skill=-especially if you didn't run it through ChatGPT or other 'polisher.' I don't think you did. Topic aside, it flows too naturally. If you come off like that in person-crisp, purposeful but personable-you definitely should try showing up at a couple of places.so the messaging is mixed
So... ...I'm sure she's a lovely woman. I'm sure she has the best of intentions. I'm sure she has been instrumental in many a storied career. BUT Hiring managers only ever get in the way. Their whole vibe is 'I know better what this company needs than the people who will actually work with this new employee." They serve the letter of the law without having the vaguest clue about the spirit - I have never not seen the selections of a hiring manager as the least interesting or applicable candidates because they're focusing on "job" as "assemblage of forms and onboarding tasks" rather than "person who is going to be spending eight hours a day in a close-knit group of people I rarely interact with performing tasks I know very little about." I'll go one better - If you can avoid working somewhere with a "hiring manager" you will be happier. Frankly find somewhere so small they don't have an HR department at all. The bigger the company the more opportunity to be inhuman to each other in the advancement of pointless metrics.
Wait, in your comment, the “Hiring Manager” is HR?? That’s wild, granted, I’ve only been in two companies but in both places the “Hiring Manager” has been whoever the person being interviewed would be working for??
Not necessarily! they could also be a useless piece-of-shit head hunter! - The first big-boy company I ever worked for (publicly traded) required any department to put together a set of recommendations and a job description. The HR department would then write the job description. Resumes were directed to the HR department, which would meet about who best fit the description. They would then interview suitable candidates. Once you passed HR you were in a pool that the engineering department was allowed to pick from. Note that they did not have ultimate hiring authority. Fortunately for me? I was just a co-op. HR resented me. - The second big-boy company I ever worked for (startup) had one HR person who did all hiring and firing. I'm not entirely sure what their process was but I know I got in big fucking trouble for building a cubicle out of spare parts that was 6sqft bigger than a manager's cubicle (they measured). They then found the money to buy enough cubicle parts to separate my "cubicle" into three 2ft x 6ft carrels. I instead ran a 150' run of CAT5 back to the machine shop and never interacted with anyone ever again. Fortunately for me? They were all impossibly stupid and the only reason I worked there is people from the first company hired me sight unseen, much to the irritation of HR. - I next bypassed HR to interview with a company that was a Boeing contractor. When I made it to the interview I was met by a very angry woman who was clearly testy that she had not had any input into my interviewing. It didn't really matter as when I asked what the attire was I was told "what you are wearing now will do" at which point, NOPE - I then went through proper channels for a job building forklift parts or some shit and was invited to an interview. It was at a headhunter's. They told me nothing about the job, but I did have to take a filing and typing test (the job I was promised required a mechanical engineering degree and five years' experience with mechanical design). I did eventually get to go interview at the actual job - it was shit and they probably knew I thought so and the only reason I would have taken it was for the money, which I desperately needed as all Boeing engineers were on strike. The headhunter proceeded to email me job offers for receptionists for the next four years because - surprise! I type quickly. - I then bypassed HR for a job as an acoustical and audiovisual consultant. The receptionist - who had been dragooned into being "HR" for purposes of this job, was extremely salty but I got the job. I ended up lending the receptionist an aquarium which she covered in tea lights and set fire to, burning her whole damn apartment complex down, while we were at her house party. - I then bypassed HR for a job as an acoustical and audiovisual consultant. I got it through a rep, which means no hiring process was involved, which made HR salty. When I got laid off she immediately tried to friend me on Facebook and LinkedIn to make sure I wasn't talking smack about her company. I haven't had to work for a real company except through proxy since 2007. I never will again. I'm sure things have changed. But the paradigm? the archetype? The model all The Olds are clinging to? Is "hiring manager" is this appendage of HR who probably has a social work degree, a long string of useless acronyms that mean nothing to anyone and a distinct lack of understanding of the nuts and bolts of how the actual work is done. The last two jobs? I got to see the resumes they put together. And oh holy fuck.
Same story as the others. After leaving active service, I landed my first job through word of mouth and the second by walking in, saying, "Hi, I'm <name>, I think I'm qualified to work here. Mind if I leave a resume?" That alone tells an employer you've got initiative, purpose, basic manners, the ability to click print, and can handle face-to-face interaction without a mommy. That’s already 90% of what they're looking for. Also, if you're IT: get certs even if you have a degree. It's harder to flunk a college class than it is to pass most exams.
Yeah, so We have realized that employees come in "active" and "passive" types. I intend no shade to either type as people, and we have great employees, who are great people, who come in both varieties. But they are very different from a hiring perspective. Passive employees will do the task in front of them, and if they don't know how to do the task, they will stop. they will tell you they cannot do it. And they will wait for instruction. They can be lovely people, they can have incredible empathy for those around them, they can be witty conversationalists with impeccable skill at whatever it is you hired them for, but they will error out the minute they are faced with something unexpected. Active employees can be given a general lay of the land and left to run. They will encounter hardships and they will google their way around them. They will come to a place they're not comfortable making decisions and they will give you the relevant information so that you can. They will march their way through an issue until a solution is beyond their ability to puzzle their way out and in the meantime they will focus on some other problem from some other direction. We welcome passive employees but they can be exasperating. They will do Their Job and any deviance from Their Job causes a run-time error. We've had passive employees sit stunned for half an hour over their inability to unclog a toilet. We've had passive employees panic that the computer went down the minute they unplugged the router to plug in their space heater. We've had passive employees lock up over not receiving instructions on the difference between Google Docs and Microsoft Word. We welcome active employees but we also know we only have them until they find something better to do. But as long as we have them they open horizons. They broaden possibilities. They solve problems we didn't know we had because we aren't doing their jobs. And we definitely favor active employees over passive ones because fuckin' hell we didn't get into this to boss people around, we just needed the physical office in order to increase reimbursement. In my opinion, anyway, demonstrating that you are active rather than passive is the first, biggest thing you can do to interest me in finding you a position. And that definitely starts with coming at me in a way other than clicking "quick apply" on Indeed. Even if you're NOT. My wife ended up being a software architect in charge of benefits programs for 10,000-person companies because her accountant resume mentioned she'd taken a course in MS Access at Egghead Software one Sunday afternoon. It was a three hour overview but it was enough for the department head of a completely different department to bring her in for a job she didn't apply for. If I saw a 3CX certification on a receptionist applicant I would hire her sight unseen because then I wouldn't have to deal with fucking 3CX. And the only reason I deal with fucking 3CX is there's nobody else to do it.Also, if you're IT: get certs even if you have a degree. It's harder to flunk a college class than it is to pass most exams.
That's a tricky one. No doubt, as you classify, I'm the active type. But, if I ever had a boss-or at least a direct lead-who actually did their job (kept techs insulated from the non-techs, had the guts to say "no" to management or client), I'd never leave. I imagine babysitting the passive types gets old fast. Are they at least self-aware enough to appreciate the work, or do you get the worst of both worlds: helpless and entitled? How much time do you need to teach MS Access? If you walk in without understanding Venn diagrams, three hours won't help. If you do, that's plenty of time to cover syntax, templating, and data types. And if you followed that conditional, congrats-you're basically a database engineer already. For entry-level certs, I usually recommend CompTIA's. They're industry-recognized, fairly platform-independent, and if you can go from a pile of parts to a working SOHO setup, you'll pass ez-pz. Given your Zork-a-thon, I'm guessing you already know this, but hey-someone else might need the tip. I'm so sorry.we only have them until they find something better to do
MS Access at Egghead Software one Sunday afternoon
3CX
The boss that plucked my wife's resume off the accountant pile holds as her mantra that all employees should leave her employ better people than they came in. More education, more skills, more attractive to other employers. It's a contract - they give you their time, you give them your money and that contract is open-ended. If your employee has grown beyond your needs its in both your interests for them to leave and find something more suitable, singing your praises to everyone they encounter. We're still friends. My wife married her boss to her current husband 20-odd years ago. We watched the Superbowl at their house. It's a winning strategy - recognize that everyone is people but work is just a bunch of tasks. My IT experience is autodidactic AF. I took comp sci so long ago that they taught us Turbo Pascal and Fortran and I sucked bawlz at both. "Man who hack at root soon kill tree" is tattooed on the inside of my forehead. But I needed what turns out to be some seriously complex performance out of a phone system and back in 2016 you could still reasonably roll your own on 3CX. We've just completed a 3-day semiannual audit for our professional certification and apparently we blew the auditor away with our phone system. "If you sold this, midwives would line up outside your door to buy it," she said. Yeah, but then I have to deal with 3CX on behalf of other people.
Seems a bit too humane for most, though I'd prefer to work at a smaller, more specialized place after graduation. My former boss only confirmed what my resume already said: that yes, I worked there between the listed dates. I started clueless about tech, was expected to figure things out on the fly despite lacking any training. I had to get my skills up to using websites like freecodecamp.com, and ended up as one of the go-to troubleshooters. If you can turn it into a design document with an implementation procedure, it might just become another product that some entry-level losers get stuck dealing with. Shit. That'd probably be me.The boss [...] recognize that everyone is people but work is just a bunch of tasks.
My IT experience is autodidactic AF.
but then I have to deal with 3CX on behalf of other people.
One thing kb, ay, have touched on - if you do come across a company and role that you’re interested in, apply right away or send an email right away. If you’re looking on job boards, sort by most recent postings. More people are starting to figure that out. Not all of this is malicious on the hiring end - case in point, I work in a somewhat niche field in CPG. The last two roles in my department we’ve hired for, both hired in the last 3 months, we had to pull the posting offline within 36 hours because we get way too many applicants to reasonably sort through (we’re a place that does actually read this shit so…take that for what you will). Job 1: upwards of 80 worth-reading, not junk, applicants within 36 hours. Remote, entry level and underpaid job. Job 2: upwards of 110 worth-reading, not junk, applicants within 36 hours. Remote, entry level, and underpaid job. Great benefits for both jobs though.
So COVID really fucked up the job-seeking market. Because you can work anything remote (pretend with me here), and because you need to apply for three jobs to maintain your bennies, and because there's no way to really thin out a credible candidate from a noncredible candidate, any job posting is going to be a hive of bullshit. We had people applying for in-person work from a thousand miles away. We had people show up to interviews with their mom. We had people accept positions and not fucking show up on the first day. I've got not one, not two, but five employees who have said "I'm never leaving this place" in the past three months and we work really hard to do right by the people who trust us to keep them working and I gotta say - fucking applicants are bullshit now. I can honestly say that the human race would improve if I could euthanize every single person who applied to our lowly little receptionist position. But our receptionist is awesome, and she's been with us like two and a half years now, and she's one of the "I'm never leaving this place" people (we've learned not to ask 'where do you see yourself five years from now' during reviews because it spooks them). And that's because WE hunted HER. We evaluated back in 2022 that job postings are fucking bullshit now. You won't get a single qualified candidate. At this point a job posting is a drunk frat boy on the dance floor fifteen minutes before closing time, his fly open, swinging his dick around. If you're a girl you might think this is his extremely terrible way to demonstrate his manhood and virility. It's not. It's him swinging his dick around because he wants to swing his dick around. He's too drunk for sex and even if you make it all the way to the car with him he's going to vomit on your shoulder and pass out. He is not in the dating pool. Stop pretending he is. The last four students we've gotten have been people cold-calling us. The last three naturopaths we've gotten have been people cold-calling us. You want to figure out where you want to work, you want to figure out who you'd be working for there, and you want to ask them for a job. You want to bypass this entire miasma of makework we've created that basically serves the purpose of frustrating unemployment benefits departments and absolutely nothing else. You want to get to know every shop that might be an interesting place to work, you want to make yourself known to them and you want to completely bypass any hiring process. Trust me - if they've got work and they like you, it's your job to lose. Hiring fucking sucks. And if they don't have work and they like you, they'll tell you about their friends, or they'll tell their friends about you. Resumes have been completely fucking pointless since 2020 or before.
A decade or so back, my uncle was out of a job. He had five kids from two marriages he needed to support. It wasn’t his first time job hunting, but it was his first time without a steady income. The lesson he learned distilled down to: Narrowing in on the field. Taking the time on each company’s site of interest, and taking notes on any contact information available after reading about company accomplishments and clients. Tailor a resume to the job, then cold calling any number listed or even a cold e-mail. Anything over job posting sites. His last job, which he stuck with ended up being a lucky break by e-mailing the “info@“ e-mail address listed. Turns out the position he would be suited for opened up when a prospective hire declined last minute on an offer. Meanwhile, I’m trying to assist a friend with re-formatting his resume up until he tells me his “300 applications a week” is a mostly Easy-Applies on LinkedIn, which is the only site he wants to use because he pays for premium to talk to recruiters. If Easy-Apply is that simple for one person, then imagine how many other will click the button too (let alone how easy to sift through the noise it is for a recruiter). Needless to say, cannot recommend cold e-mails at the least enough. The last four students we've gotten have been people cold-calling us. The last three naturopaths we've gotten have been people cold-calling us.
You want to figure out where you want to work,
you want to figure out who you'd be working for there,
and you want to ask them for a job
Greetings from Tyrol. Skiing is going well, for me at least because my wife is still not recovered from a flu that knocked 3kg in a day of off her last week. (The same one I had three weeks ago.) Her recovery seemed good, but then she backslid and she has ups and downs ever since. Seems to be part of this flu because I heard multiple colleagues with the same wobbly recovery process. She’s doing better now but remains low in energy…maybe there’s a small bit of skiing for her on our last day tomorrow, if only to have tried it. It feels unfair, I’m a casual skier who’s content after a day or two, while she’d been looking forward to it a lot. At least our apartment’s really nice. It even has a 4-person private sauna which I’ve made good use of every day we’ve been here. In general I’m really happy about this break, it wasn’t that I was craving it but the mountains, skiing, family time and getting away from most news for a while feels very nice. p.s. if y’all could help a European out and help maintain NATO, that’d be nice.
Had a birthday giftcard from last year try getting a massage, and wow that actually worked wonders to de-stress the body. Helped more than I expected in incrementally regaining mental bandwidth amidst the firehose of news (as well as severely limiting in-take to certain days of the week). The most sane post-mortem on Nov. 6th I’ve found came from WA Rep. Maria Gluesenkamp Perez in a “Future of the Dems” panel. Also, the student questions are cathartically incisive. Down-to-earth chatter helped scrape back some reason in the whirlwind. Think I’ve got a good foothold to call my Rep about regarding NOAA/NWS/FEMA about since the past 3 years have been markedly destructive. Early warning for storms has not only been life-saving personally, but helped us assist neighbors with preparedness when time permits. Planning a much needed impromptu nature trip this weekend. It will be good to have time in the sun. EDIT: To add another positive, finishing up Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness”. Really enjoying the TV Shows “Common Side Effects” and “This Fool” for lighter comedy.
scheming for the summer, have some interesting mountain objectives just got back from near a week in mexico, rock climbing! first time in mexico, certainly was an interesting experience. on the branch council as safety officer for an outdoors organization now. also on a climbing committee and restarting a trail running one. have some interesting trail running opportunities this summer too. at the point in my climbing and running where im known enough to get a fair amount of invites and am fortunate enough to have a boss who gets it. I recall an argument with kleinbl00 about vacation time flexibility from a few(?) years ago - I’ve realized that I wasn’t necessarily wrong (LOL) in that conversation, but there’s a lot, lot more specificity and nuance on when and where that can be tolerated than I was willing to listen to back then. Feeling fortunate for the now in a lot of ways.