Category: Modern problems

So as has been stated, I’ve been looking for a job for 2 years. I was laid off from my previous job due to outsourcing in Aug of 2019. Just in time for COVID Yea!

Throughout 2020 I applied for various jobs in my field that process has continued into 2021, with no positive results.

With over 30 years experience in technology and software testing I’m apparently unemployable. That’s not whining, it’s just a statement of fact.

Way back in the day, I demonstrated that I had a high aptitude for technology and computers. I was literally hired out of a junior college and never went back to finish a degree. That’s on me I admit it.

The fact is most of what was being taught in colleges had zero relevance to what I was actually doing because the colleges were teaching technology that was already 5 -10 years out of date and I consistently found myself on the bleeding edge of new technology.

There was little incentive or indeed value to paying for knowledge that was irrelevant. You see, my pragmatism dictates that knowledge is useful, a piece of paper proving my indebtedness, less so.

New hardware, new software, new languages, new technology was coming out every month. It was all most of us could to just to keep up within the companies we were working for.

While all this was going on, there were the innumerable layoffs, mergers, and acquisitions that made someone like me have a resume that looked like I couldn’t keep a job.

That assumption is completely false, but as time moved on and younger HR people came into the industry, they were applying all their college knowledge to my resume and frankly there was a significant disconnect.

Over time it got harder and harder to find a job, but I persevered and remained gainfully employed.

In my career, I have been a technician (back when we actually repaired machines at a board level), I’ve been a technical instructor (teaching others how machines worked and how to repair them), I’ve been a regional representative (supporting corporate product sales, and solving problems of product implementation and repair), I’ve been a technical support representative (explaining very technical issues to non-technical people to solve their problems), I’ve also worked in retail and warehousing.

All of this experience is useless today because I don’t have a degree. I ask you what function a computer science degree would serve since that degree would include FORTRAN-77 or COBOL, parallel communication, or RS-232? Virtually none of these skills have any relevance today.

To be sure, subsequent technologies that grew out of the aforementioned do have relevance and those technologies would have been learned on the job over the intervening years.

Which is to say, I’m on an equal footing with anybody coming out of college today with the possible exception of those educated in C# or some of the later languages. That being said, the core logic of computer languages is still the same. High level languages compile down to an instruction set that commands the processor to carry out specific actions. That hasn’t changed since computers occupied entire buildings.

The language simply provides a more human readable and therefore easier mechanism to create software. You can still bypass all of those higher languages and write software directly in assembly code. (The instruction set specific each processor. Before you ask, there are still people who earn really good money doing exactly that. Those folks, I respect immensely. Coding at that level is tedious and abstract beyond belief. I’m a little too ADD, or not ADD enough to do anything more than ‘tinker’ in that realm.)

As an aside, the folks that code at that level, are the folks ALL the sexy high level languages rely on. Assembly coders are an interesting and unique bunch. It’s not unusual for them to be socially challenged and challenging to more “normal” people. Assembly coders, deal in absolutes, mathematics, and the purity of silicon switching. Right and Wrong are terms which have no grey areas 2+2 in their world always equals 4. Something works and is therefore “right” or it doesn’t and is therefore “wrong”.

I haven’t met any coders who work in the new field of quantum computing. I would guess that they are a completely different kind of duck. Quantum theory being somewhat less determinant and the underlying math is so far beyond me I can’t begin to visualize it. I’m quite content to take it on faith that they know what they’re doing.

I digress…

The point is, I actually like computers and technology. I like testing it, and verifying that the code does what it’s supposed to do. It’s a puzzle to me. My job in the last decade or two has been to test the software coders create. I’ve mostly looked at this as a cooperative effort where I’m a fresh set of eyes working on code that the actual programmer finished working on weeks before. They’ve moved on to other parts of the project and are being productive. I’m making sure they didn’t miss anything and if they did, I’m the one who captures the errant behavior and shows them how I induced the error.

In this capacity, I’ve learned so much and been blessed to work with some truly amazing people. I earned the nickname “Demon” and wore it proudly. My “Demonic” tests, helped to produce a wide variety of award winning and useful products, of which I am also proud.

Now I’m dealing with having all that taken from me. It was hard enough to deal with human HR folks and get myself, or my resume in front of a hiring manager. Most hiring managers look at my resume and think, “This guy has been around. I’ll bet he knows all kinds of things that I could leverage.” That’s how I’d get hired.

But that was when humans actually read a resume. Now, folks like me are lost in the filters of HR databases. Databases I might add, that are controlled exclusively by the priesthood contained in the bureaucracy of layers of HR.

The hiring manager writes out a list of ideas about the kind of person they’d like to fill a position. HR passes the requirements up level after level of representatives ultimately getting the request to one or two people who actually enter the requirements into a database. However, by the time the data is actually presented to the hiring system the requirements are absolute and glacial.

The hiring manager wrote the initial requirements in a fuzzy way. “This or this would work for the position.” HR enters the requirements as “THIS AND THIS MUST BE PRESENT.”

That’s how you end up with tons of people out of work, and corporate HR saying there’s no-one available for a particular requisition. This is also how you end up with corporations not capitalizing on workers within their own ranks for internal openings that could be promotions, and why so many workers leave a company after a few years.

I’ve personally witnessed newly minted Baccalaureates applying for open positions within the company they were already working for and being ignored. After 6 months or so they’re tired of being passed over and they go to work for the competition in the position their new degree qualifies them for.

Then I’ve also gotten nasty looks from HR when I laughed in their faces as they lamented that workers had no loyalty and how difficult it was to ramp new hires up to being productive. When asked what I find so funny, I’ve told them exactly why people in my department left. It wasn’t the pay, it wasn’t anything other than HR locking them into a particular position and having no hope of advancement.

As a side note HR people really hate having their noses rubbed in their own poo.

All of this is what workers deal with every day. This is one of the reasons the hiring process is such a royal pain in the ass, for employers and prospective employees.

But along comes Joe Biden… With his imperial decrees about mandated vaccines, and what do we have?

Now we have companies adding “Must Be Vaccinated” to their job openings.

And in HR’s usual moronic fashion, they’re making the vaccine mandate apply even to people who are applying for remote only positions.

So now there’s another hurdle to surmount. It’s not enough that the remote position is on the other side of the country and a prospective employee will never darken their corporate door. A remote only worker cannot transfer any disease to any other employees via a zoom teleconference. There is zero risk or threat of contamination.

Yet, corporations will demand that a worker be vaccinated simply because they can. Their HR departments will fall back on the excuse, “We’re in compliance with The President’s mandate, and the law. After all it’s for your protection…”

Translated: “We’re protecting the corporation from any/all liability. We’re doing our bureaucratic duty…”

So thanks President Biden, you’re batting 1000 at screwing everyone. Good job!

The trouble with career politicians is that they’ve never had to consider unintended consequences. That fact coupled with greed and elitism is why politicians always fail.

If good ol Joe keeps up the pace of failure, I suspect that Washington DC will very soon look like The Vatican. The question will be, are the walls keeping the angry population out, or the shitty politicians in?