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Adrian Tymes wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:543599.92072.qm@web81608.mail.mud.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">--- On Fri, 6/4/10, Tom Nowell <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:nebathenemi@yahoo.co.uk"><nebathenemi@yahoo.co.uk></a> wrote:
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">If these jobs do exist en
masse, they're not hiring anywhere near where I live
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
Moving may sometimes help with finding new jobs. For
example, it is much easier to find work as a software
engineer, or almost anything having to do with biotech,
in Silicon Valley than in most rural areas in the US.
(It is somewhat easier than many other urban areas,
too, but most of the time if this advice applies, the
one being advised is living in an area that does not
have much employment at all - though often just enough
to offer a slim, and often false, hope of maybe
finding a job locally.)
The relative ease of finding work in cities is a
large part of why urbanization happened, and is
continuing to happen. ("Relative" must be emphasized,
though: that can be 50% odds of finding a job vs. 15%,
or 5% vs. 0%. Either way, it's higher.)
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">Adrian also wrote in a different message on the same topic
that if people find themselves without marketable skills,
they will retrain themselves until they do have marketable
skills. Again, my reality shows this requires a lot of work
and no short-term prospects of a new job.
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
This is true. I was refuting the concept of permanent
unemployment (as in, you'd never have a job again, not even
in 10 or 20 or 100 years, no matter what you did). While
there is short term unemployment, people can and do
eventually retrain themselves given a long enough drought of
work. Sorry if this was not clear.
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">For all you may
study subjects, there's no qualification employers like more
than recent experience in a similar role, so skills without
work experience will put you behind people with experience
in the interview shortlisting.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Trick: claim recent experience doing X for a non-profit
operation, that you've been doing on the side while looking
for work. As it happens, said non-profit is also a sole
proprietorship, and you are your own supervisor. (Without
the corpspeak, this is "I've been doing X as a hobby". The
corpspeak shows that you can think of X as a formal,
organized project, compatible with being done in a business
environment.)
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<br>
In software, create or join an Open Source and get a bit of a name as
at least a contributor. You hone skills, have references and build a
reputation. <br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:543599.92072.qm@web81608.mail.mud.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">Also, employers prefer formal qualifications to informal
study.
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
Software engineering in the dot-com era - which, granted,
was about 10 years ago. But still, one can get into
industries without formal study when there's a need.
</pre>
</blockquote>
Actually, employers prefer someone that can demonstrate some skill in
an interview and have a reference or two. They may not pay you as much
as someone with more experience if you are new to the area but they
will be delighted to have someone with half a demonstrable brain.
There are tons and tons of people with great formal credentials and
years of experience who fail miserably in the interview to convince
anyone they have what it takes for the job. The only trick is getting
to the interview for a newcomer.<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:543599.92072.qm@web81608.mail.mud.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""></pre>
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<pre wrap="">Furthermore, qualifications that are
obviously commercially valuable tend to be priced more
highly - look at how much it costs for Microsoft's MCSE
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA...
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<br>
Not worth the paper it is written on. These things are not going to
convince a savvy interview team you can do anything but collect
credentials.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:543599.92072.qm@web81608.mail.mud.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">MCSE, like most vendor-provided qualifications in the
software industry, is bullshit and worthless. Few
employers I know care about it, except for low-wage jobs.
The only "formal qualification" that counts is a college
degree - BS or higher - in Computer Science or a
relevant field. Granted, that does cost money to get,
though there exist scholarships and student loans for
precisely this reason.
</pre>
</blockquote>
I don't even care about a college degree in software. I care about
experience of any kind including open source. I care much more about a
burning passion to create and demonstrable skill (in the interview) at
software design and implementation. I have interviewed countless MS
and higher people who can't demonstrably think, design or code their
way out of a paper bag and don't demonstrably know even the most
fundamental of algorithms well enough to use it in a toy problem much
less bend and mutilate it a bit. I have interviewed countless
experienced people who have done some good even great thinks in the
past but are burned out and are only looking for a paycheck for
investing as little of themselves as possible. They are too bored or
something usually to actually do well with interview questions. If
they do reasonably well but that spark is low then I may recommend them
hoping it can be reignited. <br>
<br>
<br>
- samantha<br>
<br>
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