Category: Job Search

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What is wrong with companies these days?

Company A publishes an ad for a position.

Prospect B replies to that ad.

Months later

Company A sends email to Prospect B, “Are you still interested? If so, Respond ‘Yes’”

Prospect B responds “Yes”

Company A sends email containing several pages of screening questions to be filled out in essay format.

I found the instructions telling.

Use acronyms only after you’ve explained them.
Use correct spelling and grammar.

Really? They had to specify the blindingly obvious?

Neither parties have actually spoken to each other, human to human.

Next will be a phone preinterview

Then a Zoom meeting and attendant group interview. 

Then there will be no word at all for another few weeks or months, because the candidates are hung up in committee. A Committee it should be noted that is  made up of people who will likely never set foot in the Engineering wing of the corporation, (if they even know where it is).

Just when Prospect B has forgotten about it, Company A will reach out with additional questions from the group interview.

This is what passes for “Efficiency”.

God I miss the old days! 

This shit was so simple and direct. By step three, Prospect B had been interviewed by the hiring manager, a decision had been made, offer letter was in the mail, (as were “Thanks but no thanks letters”,) and the hired candidate already had their company access badge.

Here we are in 2025, communications at the speed of light, more email pumps across the ‘net in a minute than “Snail Mail” in a week.

We have cheap, to the point of being free, global telephone & video conferencing on a scale that was only the fevered dream of futurists 20 years ago and we have “Leading Edge” companies (because all companies are “Leading Edge”), being hobbled by…

Human Resources? Lawyers? Fear of hurting someone’s feelings?

This process should be faster, not slower.

Additionally, because of so many bogus headhunting agencies play similar games I’m always wondering if I’ve got some kind of scammer phishing for information.

So I’m perhaps unduly cautious and suspicious.

In on-line dating, the scams are played out exactly like this too.

“Hey.”
Hello
“You’re really good looking.”
Thank you
“Do you work out?”
Yes
“At a Gym”
Yeah, one here in town.
“What’s it called?
Gold’s 
“Really? That’s my gym too.”
Nice, maybe I’ll see you there sometime
“What city you live in?”
Northeast LA

It’s after 30 more inane messages. You find, the person has no car, can’t afford their rent, and wants you to pay for a Gold’s membership but would prefer a premium Equinox gym package that includes monthly massages & pedicures. Then they send you a “Picture” of themselves which is clearly a well known porn star, and ask you to Venmo them “just a little” cash to keep their phone on.

When you say “Thanks but no Thanks” they get nasty and report you to the moderation council of the dating app and you’re under investigation for not being “inclusive” in your dating preferences. At this point you can infer this person is making their living scamming people on various dating apps.

I agree, job seeking at its basic level isn’t very different from dating.

One difference is that in technology, typically the best folks have zero patience for bullshit. Hmm, that might not be a good example. 

I can speak from personal experience when I say the best technology people I’ve ever worked with, had difficulty connecting with other people. They didn’t understand social niceties, and were very easily bored and confused by human behavior. They felt that the reason a company should hire them was self evident based on their resumes and the choice was clear.

A company hired them for their abilities, to fill a particular need and that was literally all that mattered. They preferred the ultimate meritocracy, in fact they thrived in environments where feelings had no place. It was simply a matter of getting the job done.

I very much lean toward that same philosophy of working environment. I had an advantage in that I had just enough comprehension of normal humans, that I could be an interface between people who didn’t do emotion or feelings, and those who were a bundle of contradictory impulses, desires, goals, manipulation, and feelings.

My function was to provide a window into how normal humans interact with machines and software, test software, and represent Engineering / Development / QA in meetings with people, my less socially adapted colleagues considered rabid chimpanzees.

After particularly difficult meetings with normal humans, it was bliss to return to emotionless labs where all that was required of me, was to analyze binary logic. Something worked or it didn’t.

Reporting that to a really good developer had zero emotional charge. It simply was a fact and the developer would accept it as such, perhaps ask clarifying questions, then put it on their “To-Do” list as a high priority to fix after they were done with the feature they were currently implementing.

Most of the developers I worked with, appreciated my ability to stand in with the “Normies” for them. Equally, they understood that dealing with the cacophony of “Normie” feelings and demands in meetings was exhausting and could intuit my status with a glance. They left me be until I’d recharged in the protected and rarified energy of the engineering labs.

Engineers and developers aren’t ignorant of emotional cues, they simply don’t live every waking moment in emotional discord. They’ll generally protect one of their own or someone like me. It’s not about friendship, or Machiavellian plans. Protection is extended because persons A or B serve a vital function. Clean, impersonal, simple, direct… Binary.

As HR departments have become more interested in psychology, employee engagement & happiness, they’ve alienated developers and people like myself who lean more toward a non-human mindset.

HR departments hate engineering departments. HR creates a party atmosphere for a company event, they have streamers, and BBQ food, give out little trinket awards, expect everyone to enjoy over amplified music in a corporate parking lot and they call this team building.

Engineers and Developers see it this way. Parking is not possible in our usual spot. Will be late to the morning status meeting. Free food > food in lunch bag. Cold packs in lunch bag will not last the entire day. Alternate cold storage will be required, lunch bag will serve as dinner tonight. 11:30 HR function, most of development pod will file out, grab free food & drink, then go back to desks where there is adequate seating and temperature is optimal. Suboptimal music playing in parking lot will be a distraction, headphones required. Metallica playlist available. Fourth order equations for project must be programmed in C or Assembly to be effective. Consult with Alan to determine which path is likely to produce best outcome.

When the “Team Building” event begins, HR expects, and I’ve seen in some cases, demands that all employees remain in the designated party area. Their “logic” is to promote interaction between all departments.

The reality, is that the engineers and developers congregate with each other, plates and drinks in hand conversing about the daily work, project issues, and do not interact with other departments.

Often the software QA group forms a protective picket line between the “Normies” and the Engineering / Development staff. It’s sort of a QA thing, we like our Engineering / Development colleagues and know them well enough to understand social interactions may not be comfortable or pleasant for many of them. We’re tribal and protect our own.

QA & Engineering / Development interact well with each other, but are “strange ducks” in comparison to the rest of the departments. Sales people often attempt to breech the QA picket line in an attempt to gain future product development knowledge that they can sell as “current product” to enhance their sales numbers for the month.

Most, if not all, are intercepted by QA and distracted with questions about the latest sports teams or how their children from various wives are doing in various sports.

Obligatory “Time Present” value expires, Engineering / Development / QA refills plates and drinks then retreats to Optimal seating and temperature inside their labs.

HR is disappointed that engineering was not engaged, but consoles themselves with handing out reward trinkets to Sales/Marketing and Executive staff.

HR then begins planning next company event with further goal to force Engineering / Development / QA to participate.

In this, HR utterly fails to understand that Engineers / Developers / QA are completely different creatures. We’re the kind of people that figure out how to build atomic weapons not because we want to blow shit up or for wars. We do it, because it’s interesting and we’re curious if we can actually make it work.

As a side note, we’re the people that are often guided by a principal loosely attributed to Robert Oppenheimer & Albert Einstein: “Yes, we can do this thing… But should we? Can we be sure that this won’t be misused or cause irreparable harm?“

I’ve been at companies where HR mandated Engineering / Development / QA participation at 2 or 3 consecutive corporate functions. Typically by the fourth mandated function, the Engineering / Development / QA department leaves the corporate campus 1/2 hour before the scheduled event.

During the mandated corporate event, Engineering / Development / QA are all at  the local microbrewery enjoying beer, food, camaraderie, and discussing resume refreshes because the company has come to appear more interested in “cross department team building” than giving them raises greater than 1% or actual completion of new products or projects.

It does not go un-noticed by Engineering / Development / QA that they’re driving shitbox cars while Sales / Marketing / HR are driving new Porsche’s, Teslas, Corvettes, Mercedes, BMW, or Range Rovers and wearing 125K Patek Phillippe watches.

Which leads back to job searches

Company A publishes an ad for a position.

Prospect B replies to that ad.

Months later

Company A sends email to Prospect B, “Are you still interested? If so, Respond ‘Yes’”

Prospect B responds “Yes”

Company A sends email containing several pages of screening questions to be filled out in essay format.

And you wonder why, many Engineers / Developers / QA people are somewhat antisocial.

Well, I must now apply my time to answering essay questions. I wonder if I could get an AI to do it? Perhaps I could, but should I? Sure! I don’t see any irreparable harm…

Posted on

Okay, I’m liking the new resume revision.

I’ll give this another whirl. 

The suggestions the Grok AI made do improve the way the resume reads. In fact, it’s much better than that “Hack” I paid to rework my resume.

These changes are clear and make sense. It’s not just a bunch of BS keywords strung together. I’ve begun work on several of the suggested certifications. Oddly, the courses themselves come easily. Perhaps because they’re kind of intuitive and align with the way I’ve always done these sort of things. I can see the years of experience that I have, playing into grasping the materials presented for the certifications themselves.

The latest version of TestRail is 1000 times better than the version I worked with years ago. Jira, likewise makes a lot more sense than it used to. I’m amused in a way because these certifications are just a way for someone to make money.

I always fought against paying for someone to certify that I knew stuff. I remember being able to outright buy a Microsoft or Netware certification.

Back in the day, everyone did it, then put the little logo on their resumes. In the end the certifications were so devalued lots of employers stopped caring, and the fad died off. 

These days some of these certifications have become a necessary evil. As long as the cost for training and certification doesn’t get out of hand, having these listed on my resume and actually brushing up on my knowledge isn’t a bad thing.

It’s also possible that going through the course work will help to reintegrate me into the current terms and methodologies. That might make me more hire-able and more easily blend into extant corporate cultures.

I don’t know if that’s true but it’s relatively cheap to find out.

Ideally, what I want is a simple testing job, I don’t need a ton of money coming in. I’d be really happy if I could work remotely 100% of the time. I don’t want to have to sit on the freeway, and should I move, it wouldn’t necessarily mean changing jobs.

As I was working on the resume, it occurred to me that I might need to get a fast external drive for my computer.

I did a quick investigation of some of the testing tools and software. I’d need to build a dedicated test rig, these tools put crap deep into the OS, and some of the changes may not be easy to reverse.

It would be nice to have a bootable external device to keep work stuff on, that never touched my core personal system.

Fortunately, those kinds of devices are pretty cheap and my computer is dang fast. But that’s a purchase that wouldn’t come until I had job in hand, and perhaps the company would provide a machine on their dime. If they don’t, I could have a device delivered in a day.

I’m oddly optimistic. I haven’t liked my resume for the past several years. But I was stuck and couldn’t see how to improve it.

It’s interesting that a dispassionate AI could give me clarity.

Posted on

Well that goofy email turned out to be a real job inquiry.

It was a legitimate job.

When I responded they sent me a little 15 question quiz, which to answer properly would have been at least a 15 page response. 

That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the further I went into the answers the more I realized they didn’t want just a person to do a job. What they really wanted was a manager or a lead role.

The more I thought about that, the more I remembered why I’d stepped away from management roles. Then I thought about managing people in today’s workforce and everyone’s feelings and pronouns and gender identity and racial identity, how much politics has permeated the business world, and how easily offended people are…

Still further into the quiz, my stomach knotted, the pounding in my ears grew, and after wondering why I was in such a foul mood, it dawned on me the mere thought of being in management again was triggering me.

It’s not that I can’t do lead roles or management. It’s that when I’d stepped away, people were already more interested in all the bullshit distractions than actually doing the job.

Being labeled a manager or lead had become only a title and the manager was nothing more than a fall guy when something didn’t work. But that person had no real authority to control the outcome. 

The role was a placeholder to insulate upper management whose poor decisions could potentially lead to project failure.

I can’t begin to imagine how horrifically screwed up being in one of those roles would be today.

What became crystal clear was that I not only wanted no part of that, but that physically it wouldn’t be healthy.

I made a decision. 

Much as I want and need a job. It is still as true today, as when I exited from management, I choose to be happy, healthy, and want to be able to put the day behind me without worry.

I spent too many years worrying about my job, doing the job well, dealing with problems, (project and personnel related,) missing out on vacations, time with Jerry, and in the end I did all this for very little reward or even recognition.

I sent a polite but direct “Thanks, but no thanks” email. 

I’m breathing easier, and the stress is leaving.

It might not have been the wisest decision, but it was the correct one.

Posted on

Ahhh, Is it a SCAM or isn’t it a SCAM? That is the question.

I got an email yesterday. It appears to be a response to a job application.

The English is good. 

Had it showed up in my normal inbox, I’d have been giddy. But for some reason it was in my junk mail folder.

Hmmm. Why would that be?

It’s possible that the reason was that all CAPS subject line. That might have tripped the junk filter.

I’d have ignored it except that the rest of the message looks like a standard business email.

Hmmm.

Then, because I’m desperate for a job, and I have nothing better to do, I looked at the routing and header information.

That’s not exactly true, I have better things to do it’s just that those things aren’t things I actually want to do. In other words, I’m procrastinating and engaging in a bit of sophistry with myself as to the importance of determining if this is a real response.

So I looked up the originating domain. It was registered the same day as the email was sent. Well, that’s suspicious but the originating domain could just be a way for the company in question to separate recruiting email from the main corporate email.

The company is a global enterprise, as such, I could see the logic in keeping the two separate. The newness of the domain registration could have tripped the junk mail filter. It’s possible that said domain’s registration had not propagated to whitelists yet.

Inconclusive.

I looked at the originating email server’s IP address. It’s in Helsinki Finland. Weird!

Also associated with that IP are a number of complaints claiming that a lot of spam / scam email was coming from that particular email server. The most recent  complaint email was 3 years old. It’s possible that the junk mail filter was tripped by this older data and associated black list information.

Still inconclusive. 

Things happen fast in the IT world and 3 years is an eternity. 

The IP address could have been cleaned up, or reallocated, the owner might simply have misconfigured the email server and corrected the problem that was allowing SPAM mail to pass through it.

The Domain is registered in Germany. It could be that they’re using an email server in Finland. Although why not an email server in Berlin or Munich?

Still inconclusive.

This email has an X-Spam score of 12.5. Anything above a 5 is considered spam, that’s probably why the junk mail filter reacted.

However the X-Spam scoring system is based on previous behaviors, complaints, & reliability data. This is why it’s vitally important that email servers be configured properly such that unauthorized users cannot use them to send spam. It’s a pain in the behind to regain your reputation after a billion spam email have been sent through your server.

More conclusive.

The X-Spam system isn’t bad, but it can make mistakes.

Oddly, I can’t find any evidence that I’ve applied to this company. That being said, if they were using a recruiting firm I wouldn’t necessarily have a direct link. The position description in the message looks very much like something I would have applied to.

So, after all of this, it comes down to faith. Not faith in the email itself but faith that my defenses are strong enough to repel an onslaught of spam from some nefarious person or persons, attempting to rip me off.

There is one thing that caught my attention. There is IPv6 data in the email header. That makes me think the email may be legitimate. IPv6 is not something I’d expect to see coming from a spammer. Not that it’s impossible. I just wouldn’t expect to see it coming from a teenager in their mom’s basement.

Well, Hell.

I guess I’ll check my defenses, run another header analysis and respond.

I hate that I’ve been kicked enough that I’m so suspicious. But after a 5 year job search where so many scammers have wasted my time and had me jumping through hoops trying to get my personal data it just makes sense.

Posted on

I admit it, I hate looking for a job, and have come to hate editing my resume.

Employment signs.I miss the days of simply having a resume that represented my work history.

Back in the day, because of my industry a resume could be cut & dried. We didn’t need to jazz it up or modify it for each application. We chiseled our history into a document that didn’t change.

We’d write a cover letter explaining that we’re appreciate the opportunity to interview and we’d interview with the hiring manager, not a committee of people from unrelated departments.

I’ve never understood the philosophy of Edna from accounting participating in an interview for a dude who was going to be slinging solder in the board repair department.

Unfortunately, the hiring process, over time, became more like a sorority rush, or the election of prom king & queen. Or perhaps more like the example provided recently by congressional confirmation hearings.

I’ve been in interviews where the hiring manager didn’t actually get to ask relevant questions or the answers “Timed-out” because the other unrelated departments needed to ask their irrelevant questions.

Point of interest… the troubleshooting procedure for a $50,000 high speed dye sublimation printer is radically different from changing toner in your desktop laser printer.

That troubleshooting procedure is not something that can be described in 5 minutes. However, to a hiring manager, the description of that process can tell him if the candidate has done the work and is qualified to do the job.

As a hiring manager, I’ve been overruled when requesting a small number of interviewers. HR’s explanation is, “Larger, more dynamic interview processes allow for determination of the candidates ‘team player’ abilities.” Trouble is, most of the people in my field are introverts. Many are just one step shy of being hermits. The really qualified, super smart, radically capable folks in my field are great in one on one, or one on three interviews. But put them in front of a crowd of 6 or 8 people asking them irrelevant questions and they freeze completely.

Not that HR departments ever listened to a hiring manager’s reason for keeping the interview small.

I digress. 

Several years ago, I’d been laid off, I was struggling with my resume, not because it didn’t represent me and my work. But because it wasn’t “Hip & Modern”. It wasn’t getting the attention it used to get because the HR departments dumped it into a database. The hiring manager didn’t see my resume unless someone in HR thought it was worthy.

It used to be, you mailed your resume directly to the hiring manager & they handed their selections to HR to schedule an interview. Way back in time, the hiring manager was on your phone themselves asking when you could come in for an interview.

Anyway, my resume was tailored to answer a hiring manager’s initial curiosity and provided enough technical data to peek interest.

That wasn’t working anymore. HR saw information that they couldn’t make heads or tails out of, and didn’t have the ability to do anything but robotic searches for keywords.

I’ve related the state of HR pre-screens.

HR: Do you know networking?
ME: Yes
HR: Do you know IP?
ME: Yes
HR: Do you know Ethernet
ME: Yes
HR: Do you know MAC address?
ME: Yes
HR: Do you know packet?
ME: Yes

All of those questions are encompassed by the answer, “Yes” to the first networking question.

A full and complete answer which doesn’t allow them to fill in check boxes is this, “I’ve been in the industry since RS-232 terminal connections were MUXed at 9600 baud to Super Mini computers like the Nova 1200 series.

I’ve worked with both token ring and the common star networking topology in use today. I’m certified in the operation of several network sniffing tools and therefore am familiar with the OSI networking model.

Now can we please move the fuck on?

That doesn’t work if you want an interview. Just so you know.

After talking with several people about my resume, I decided to get “Professional” help with a rewrite.

I was not pleased and didn’t get my money’s worth. This professional made my resume a word salad of meaningless drivel worthy of Kamala Harris.

I hated it, and guess what? As an experiment I submitted it to a couple of job application requests and got LESS response than using my old monolithic resume.

However, seeing what this professional had done, I tried to hybridize, incorporating some elements from the so called “professional”. It hasn’t helped.

I’ve also noticed that the resume rewriting services aren’t being pushed on LinkedIn as they were in 2019 – 2021. I’m guessing that enough people expressed their dis-satisfaction that LinkedIn decided it was a bad business model.

Since I’m actively looking for a job again I’ve been re-evaluating my resume. I’m not even pleased with the hybridization. There are too many strained sentences that fail to make the point. It looks like hyperbole and oversell. It feels like I’m telling lies.

I guess that’s the bottom line. It feels like the only way to get ahead, or in this case, just to get a freaking job is to dishonor myself by being what I am not.

It comes down to how much am I willing to give up in order to retain my honor?

Why can’t I just be who I am? Why can’t I apply for a job, without having to retool my resume again and again to highlight skills for each particular position? What does this do to my resumes already floating around out there? Are those the lies, or is this new one I’m sending, the lie?

I left management instead of continuing to slug my way up the corporate ladder. Apparently that was a no no. It always creates questions and my truthful answer many people take as a lie. 

I didn’t like what management at my level was becoming, and I didn’t want the whole corporate thing. I just wanted to do my job, then go home at the end of the day. I didn’t want to be on call 24/7 or deal with employees calling out sick then giving me excuses and having to sit in judgement. I just wanted to sit at my desk, produce good results, and be at peace.

To HR, this appears to have been a demotion, a failure in my ability. For them, the mad scramble to ascend to the heights of corporate infrastructure is the only measure of success.

For me, success was sleeping in my own bed at night, next to the person I loved, having enough money to pay the bills, and to not remember or care about the political machinations going on at work.

I truly wanted all the Machiavellian shit to be well above my pay grade.

HR and in some cases hiring managers don’t get it.

I’m no threat to anyone’s career because I’m not interested in politics. A lot of older hiring managers get it. But the gatekeepers in HR who, to be honest, are mostly female can’t process that way of thinking. 

They view everything as a means to an end. They’re always processing through the lens of breaking the glass ceiling. In that mode of thinking there is never an equilibrium between satisfaction and income.

The other thing that is really weird about job searching these days is that some recruiters only want the last 10 years, others want your full job history. The former say 10 years is good enough and demonstrative of your most recent experience. They’ll also say that no-one is going to read a long resume.

The latter say, having your whole job history is valuable and that interested hiring managers will read it all.

I’m not sure which is the right answer. Honestly I’m not sure that anyone really has the “Right” answer. I have come to realize that most people have zero respect for experience. 

I used to resent that. Now I look at it as a function of their education. The 20 to 30 year olds (myself included when I was that age,) always think they know best. When I was in school I was taught the value of history and on my first jobs I learned that experience often trumped book knowledge.

The elder mentors I was so fortunate to have in my career would say things like, “You can do it that way, which is by the book, and it’s gonna take 4 hours to assemble and disassemble. OR we can unbolt the unit, turn it on its side and access the broken part through an assembly access panel on the bottom. We’ll be done in an hour and can go have lunch. Your choice sport.”

I think a lot of the 20 & 30 year olds these days don’t have plain spoken mentors. They might not be getting the benefit of a mentor because there’s a lot of fear about thinking outside the box, so to speak. Someone is always going to raise a stink if you don’t do everything by the book. These days, the stink raisers can really fuck up a situation, and they manage to drag everyone down to their very limited view of any situation.

I guess that’s why I’m reworking my resume yet again. It’s why we have committee interviews that only muddy the waters about every candidate. It’s possibly why interviews these days feel like “The Dating Game” or Prom elections.

Oh well, back to the resume…

P.S.

If you’re looking for a worker that’s happy to do his job, show up for work every day, be trouble free, non political, and no threat to your position. Send me a message. If you’ve got a remote position available, let’s talk because if I don’t have to drive anywhere or deal with people, I’d work pretty damn cheap.