The Job Market and My Take
Well, if you listen to the Trumpkin economists and a number of talking heads on Fox Business News, if you've got a warm body, you almost have to try not to find a job in this market. I'm looking to move on from a job I left in March, mostly because of a personality conflict with a contractor bureaucrat at the facility.Literally no one likes this guy, who was the replacement for a more congenial older guy who I think took a similar position under DHS. Most government contractor positions require annual training/certification on a variety of general topics which differ locally. Some of them are very dubious; for example, in the past I've had to take classes in personnel recovery; it's one thing if you are military and can get shipped TDY overseas on short notice; in this case, my job was tied to a local facility. I could argue the issue, but the government bureaucrats don't want to hear it. A lot of these courses only take 1-3 hours, plus a test (which often asks questions not based on the training material, another irritant). So basically I'm like, "Okay, the government is basically wasting money by forcing me to do this pointless nonsense, but if that's what the contract says, well, ultimately they're paying my salary, so I'll go through the ritual." There are probably close to a dozen of these, including the inevitable sexual harassment training, which I've probably had to take literally for over 20 years coming.
[This is mostly pushing-on-a-string nonsense; I was raised Catholic with 4 little sisters, I'm a professional, and I was a nerd who never attracted many women (most rejected dates) or had any supervisory authority over them. But you go with the flow. In the last seminar I attended, the scenario my group was assigned involved a recently retired military veteran who, of all things, was to be interviewed by a female civil servant close friend of his wife. Long story short, the supervisor demanded sexual favors for the veteran to get the position. Well, that was different.]
So most of these trainings are online (the sexual harassment one also included an in-person training as I've described). So I had to take all of them when I first started before I ever touched a government server; the second year I tried to take them out early, not realizing that the training expiration was a year from the test date, not padding the original expiration by a year--so taking it early last year meant I had to renew my trainings this past winter/spring vs. summer.
In the current kerfuffle, I had to take terrorism awareness. And basically I couldn't afford to let my training lapse in the online system; presumably this might lead to suspension or termination. I was not aware of any option to substitute other (in-person) training in the system. So I did the renewal this past March.
Now, for some reason unclear to me, the local facility started doing in-person terrorist awareness training in large, remote auditoriums with limited parking and seating, say, once monthly. I heard from colleagues that it was basically the same old same old content; the basic difference was you didn't have to take a test (you would have to sign-in to get a certificate or perhaps they might distribute boilerplate certificates near the end of training). I think the training was maybe 90 minutes long.
So the new contractor program manager started pushing our doing these recently introduced in-person terrorism awareness trainings. (And, to be clear, I said in writing if the government required me to take redundant training, I would comply.) My civilian (civil service) supervisor said when I (along with others) was about to head out for the February training, "I don't know why you guys are going through all that hassle when you can do the training online." I posed the question to the program manager, and he ultimately responded with some alleged copy/paste from the government saying in-person training was required. I went to my supervisor with the email, and he said, "Well, I guess you have to do it." Now literally within days, the command we worked under sent out an email, explicitly saying that EITHER the online OR the in-person training would fulfill contractual compliance. This came out on the morning of the March in-person training. I sent an unacknowledged email, including the new discussion, to the program manager whether I should attend that morning's session.
So on my last day in mid-March, the program manager sends out yet another email edict, quoting some government official as saying, "We really, really prefer that people take the in-person training. The online requirement is really designed for those people physically unable to attend the in-person." (Just an aside, Mr. Personality had written in an earlier response, paraphrased, "Dumbass: if the government could do the training online, why would they be doing in-person training?" Seriously, dude. We are talking about the government here.) So I emailed the onsite-lead Cathy: "What is it with WB on this topic? It's like a dog with his bone; he won't let it go." Probably in hindsight something better left unsaid. But the whole point was that I had completed the online refresher, and he had an official command email saying effectively I was contract-compliant. It made no sense for him to be pushing the issue, other than the SOB didn't want to admit he was wrong.
I had already tempted the fates with emails to two butthurt civilians (professionally written, accurate but blunt), plus a kerfuffle from backoffice HR (I think it had to do with unannounced password expirations where you could find your account locked out, but billable hours had to be posted daily).
The funny thing is my position had been vacant for some 7 or 8 months before I accepted the offer. I had inherited a largely undocumented system, including the deployment of Oracle Database Appliances I had not dealt with in prior work. I had to deal with really bad Oracle Support issues and battling the bureaucracy on implementing STIG (database audit) compliance. I left the place better than I found it, with tons of documentation (and I'm a recognized authority on documentation). I was still getting listings for my old job as late as last week.
I really don't miss the job. (Among other things, I was making below-market and got no raise last year, despite rave reviews from my two civilian supervisors. Their biggest concern was that I might quit on them.) My Mom has been trying to get me to return to Texas for years, but I've gotten no offers from there in a long time. It's often harder to get considered if you're out of state.
One of the most annoying aspects of a renewed job search is dealing with Indian (not Native American) recruiters; I think I've occasionally mentioned these in the past. For one thing, I must have irritated some of them because I am flooded for totally inapplicable positions (I've even gotten listings for COBOL programming, which I've never done professionally and last taught 30 years ago) and/or in locations I've explicitly ruled out (like the Left Coast, Chicago, and the Northeast). A number will cold call (some will falsely claim they've emailed me), I usually have to have them repeat themselves multiple times because of bad accents paired with mispronunciations. They will dicker; they won't tell you the compensation range, then send you a low-ball figure (under-market); the other day I said "Not interested"; they then upped their bid by $10K; after I agreed, she then called me back and said they couldn't do it and split the difference. Then there's the nagging; I finally had to tell one "Stop calling me!" after 3 calls in less than one hour over trivial shit that could have been emailed. The worst part? These guys are the worst at updating you on status. They often want me to retype information (contact, education, etc.) already in the resume. The cost/benefit ratio is ridiculous; it's a sinkhole of time, and I've rarely gotten a gig using them.
But I've seen some worrisome signs I've often seen in recessionary times, like positions being canceled, delays in getting positions funded, downgraded positions/salaries, gold-plated requirements, etc. I recently had a long discussion with a recruiter, who ended it by noting her position was offering about $25K less than my last position and admitted I was worth the higher rate but I would be overqualified for her position, and she wouldn't in good conscience present me even if I was willing to take a haircut. Sometimes I suspect the overqualified label is sometimes used to mask age discrimination. What I don't like is people wanting to interview me and then saying they don't have a currently available position; they'll sometimes try to justify it saying they have contacts with other recruiters or if and when more suitable opportunities surface, I'll be contacted (but it never happens). That's disrespectful of my uncompensated time.
I hate, hate, hate resume parsing services used by certain companies and/or some Internet job boards. Now I've got some 26 years of Oracle DBA experience. Some of my work has been fragmented; I've done some independent/1099 contracts; I've worked for agencies on W-2's and a number of perm employers, including consulting or contractor companies. In some cases I've worked for companies in the last year of a contract losing their recompetes, others in the process of going bankrupt or in the process of a merger. (For example, I worked in a Chicago Oracle practice for Coopers & Lybrand before the Price Waterhouse merger. C&L dropped its Oracle practice, meaning my job went with it. I should have known when my boss jumped ship a few weeks before a higher-level manager talked to me.) One year I recall having to file 4 W-2's.. In another case, I accepted a 2-week bridge contract to do some Oracle ERP installation work. I had negotiated a perm contract with the IT company but it said it had to defer the offer until they won a project bid for a year's worth of billings. So what happened is on the last day of the bridge contract, HR contacted me and quoted an offer $15K below our negotiated contract. When I balked, I got walked off the client premises. I would later learn that the consulting company was negotiating for its employees to become client employees and the client decided the maximum it would fund its DBA position was $15K below my market compensation figure. In another case, when I worked for CSC Consulting's National Oracle Practice, the account guys didn't land one of their project bids over months. The hiring manager had assured me they had billable work for the position, but I got assigned initially to a temp staff augmentation engagement in Detroit--and they didn't have a followup assignment. I was told I would be laid off when my utilization rate fell below a certain percentage, but that was beyond my control.
The fragmentary nature of my employment has caused issues with recruiters who are used to seeing "more stable" work histories: maybe 10 years here, 5 years there. They don't understand the context. In one case, I agreed to a 5-week assignment in Santa Clara, which I later extended to over 3 months and a perm offer; in another case, I took a 2-week assignment to 2 months. And then one day your boss calls you in and says that he doesn't have the budget and has to let you go. A lot of times you take short gigs because you want to get a certain skill on your resume or maybe get a sponsored government background check. My last gig was almost 2 years long, one of my longest.
For government paperwork, it's torture. You have to provide tedious details going back up to 10 years. The last time I printed it out, it was over 55 pages long. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I once went through a 5-month background check (unfinished; I took another job), and the government investigator reported that he found an employer's address vacated. It took a Google search to find out my employer lost the recompete contract and I later found the CEO's resume on Linked-In, where he mentioned having to cease operations about 2 years after I left. So much for government investigators being able to surf the Internet! Not to mention the primary investigator discovered (talking to my landlady?) I spent the first week on the job in West Virginia staying at a hotel (at my expense) and accused me of omitting material details from my application! She now had to interview the hotel manager about me in person; give me a break! I got checked in and out by clerks. More recently I had to explain a typo in entering a date on a form to a government employee.
So this is all context for explaining my latest pet peeve. Some employers/job boards are using this one vendor's resume parsing software. Now I have roughly an 8-page resume which has evolved over dozens, if not hundreds of employer or recruiter contacts over the years, based on follow-up questions, etc. I don't use fancy fonts or other gimmicks, bur it's fairly unique in organization and detail. (Even that can be an issue; for example, in working for the government, I'm limited in discussing activities, so I've had to make details fairly generic.) I've had recruiters write rave reviews of my resume. Occasionally a few recruiters want me to redo a resume on customer preferences. That's generally a "no". If an employer wants me to do it on the job, it may be a different story--but not when you don't have an interview or offer on the table. I'm not going to spend hours on my own time working on a one-time resume without a payoff. It's hard to explain the changes I've done over the years (although the detailed discussions remain consistent). I've mostly done FTE work, but I've sometimes I've worked hourly for agencies, and occasionally I've worked on a 1099.
I recall one company in Annapolis Junction, MD where initially I worked for an agency. I was there for 2 months until my manager ran out of budget. (He in the interim showed me in effect they were marking up my own rate by 100%, which was a ripoff at my expense.) My agency wanted me to do an interview in downtown Baltimore. I specifically asked for driving directions to the client and finally resorted to Google Maps, which was wrong: they discussed a T-intersection off an exit, but the exit led to a coastal road merge. The agency was pissed I didn't show up and dropped me. Months later, our original client's DBA had screwed up, costing a company outage for days (he was an older Russian immigrant and a developer, not a DBA). This was an issue I had specifically alerted them to and had documented a solution they never implemented. So I got called, and they were trying to talk me into being their new FTE DBA, that the Russian DBA would be reassigned to a QA type position. (Just to explain: the owner was a Russian-American lady and others of Russian descent in powerful positions--so this DBA often used his connections over our boss' head.) I knew the Russian DBA hadn't documented anything--his version of "job security". Concerned about sabotage, I explained I would be open to a CTH during a transition period. They chose this option, choosing to implement it on 1099 (basically I was responsible for self-employment taxes and quarterly tax payments, had to file a self-employment schedule with my tax return). They would later on not convert me to perm for budget reasons, saying they had to spend money that the government wouldn't reimburse, they failed to pull in expected additional revenues during the end of fiscal year "use it or lose it" period, etc. So long story short, years later during some background search, I got accused of lying about my background, that my former client said that I didn't show up in their W-2 data. Well, that was true but misleading--I worked for them on 1099, not W-2. My resume did not claim I worked there as an FTE. So, among other things, I later went into more explicit detail in the resume on nature of the work relationship, end-user clients vs. agencies, consulting companies, etc.
So going back to the resume parsing software, you would upload your compatible resume and then have to review the parsed results. There is this one-page summary of my employment history and education. And so it would identify close to 40 parsing errors, typically involving job title, employer, or dates (and they would garble my education history). So you probably end up spending an hour correcting all this--and it's ludicrous. Why does something need that level of detail going back 20 years? I have a very sharp memory, but why would I remember a job title during a temp gig years back? There wasn't even an obvious way to go from one error to the next. So on multiple occasions with this software, I would find one remaining error that somehow I skipped past (the software would not let you proceed without correcting all parsing errors) so you had to repeatedly scan the form to find it.
I think I've encountered this software 3 or 4 times to date. I don't think I've gotten a single interview based on the parsed resumes. I just don't think I should have to spend time accommodating their candidate databases beyond uploading a meticulously written resume.
Not to mention job skill matrices or summaries of years using this technology or performing that activity. Seriously, dude: I'm a 26-year Oracle DBA with an MIS PhD. I've worked for IBM, Oracle Consulting, etc. I've solved problems Oracle Tech Support can't or won't address. I've single-handedly turned around failing projects. I have extraordinary communication skills, world-class documentation. I've mentored countless DBAs and developers over the years. There should be bidding wars to recruit me. But people have stupid rules. For example, I haven't upgraded yet my 10G DBA OCA to 12C. Ask me how many companies have listed this as an issue. (Only that company.) Seriously, dude. you are making hiring decisions based on taking a 90-minute multiple-choice test?
Bruce Breeding
I discussed Bruce in this recent post. So briefly, my best friend from UH (we shared an office together as PhD students) had 2 strokes a couple of weekends back, the second, more massive in the hospital. I think in part his wife Susan has had to deal with some pessimistic doctors and nurses at the ICU suggesting that Bruce will never recover to a functional lifestyle and perhaps the best course would be to let him pass. I know in one case she referred to the loss of her children's father (to the point some people at the website started leaving sympathy messages on her loss.) I sent her a message on Facebook, and she replied to the effect, "Bruce is still alive--if you can call it that with all those tubes attached." A second thing this rambling discussion about how her minister-to-be-ordained son-in-law and she were combing through Bruce's book boxes (we have something in common, except most of his are in Protestant theology) to be donated or sold. I'm not sure why she was doing this while Bruce is still alive; maybe it was the stress.Everyday to date Susan or one of her grown children has posted an update to the blog. There have been ups and downs. The biggest issue has been waiting for brain swelling to go down, which would be a prerequisite to his coming out of a coma. She really hasn't said that has happened, but more recently she's described various elements that demonstrate signs of awareness: she mentioned his being able to wiggle toes at her suggestion, then blink his eyes, or similarly respond to a friend's voice, his eyes might follow someone walking around his room, he might open his mouth as if to join in fellow churchgoer prayers, a squeeze of a hospital staffer's hand. One day she pointed out that he was now able to breathe on his own. More recently she's talked about minor procedures basically to transition from the ICU to a recovery/rehabilitation facility, e.g., a tracheotomy, feeding tube, removal of staples, shunt, etc. The staff thought given reduction of his brain swelling, he should be showing more progress in limb movement, but a recent MRI hasn't revealed any obvious physical issue.
So I think over the next few days, Susan expects Bruce to be moved to the care facility; at last report, they were waiting for insurance company sign-offs. The last time I saw them I think was the early 90's when I lived in Irving and Bruce was building a house in the Plano area, where one of my sisters lives. I know several years later Bruce moved to Georgia for some nonprofit position; I know Bruce was alienated by some impropriety he had become aware of and quit. Susan and he had relocated to the southern suburbs of Austin. Now I know Bruce had started/relocated his own business in the Plano area (I can only speculated due to access to the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan area, but he had lived in the Houston area for years). I don't know much about his current position, but Susan made a passing reference to a visit from his boss and his being a workaholic. Ironically I've been in contact with recruiters in the Austin area but things haven't progressed to the interview stage to date.
