On Mon, 11 Jun 2012 09:17:22 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> Given that we were discussing my next career move, don't you think if
>>> she knew who I need to speak to, she might have mentioned this exact
>>> fact?
>>
>> Not necessarily.  In fact, if she were to get a referral bonus, I'd
>> expect her not to tell you, but to take your info and submit it
>> internally herself.
> 
> Well, she didn't offer to do that either. She just said "you should
> totally apply here".

Then you should do that.  Or ask her if she might be able to help/gets a 
referral bonus.

>>> I assumed it's just that I'm not worth hiring...
>>
>> We've talked about this before, Andy.  If you go through the front
>> door, you're on the same level as everyone else applying for the job. 
>> One way to get an advantage - and to show initiative - is to find other
>> ways to get your info in front of the hiring manager.
> 
> Given that I don't even really understand the correct procedure for
> getting in the front door, it seems unlikely that I'd succeed trying to
> talk my way in through the back. And, at the end of the day, if I'm not
> worth hiring, they aren't going to hire me, no matter what I do.

You'd probably do better with the back door rather than doing the same 
thing everyone else is doing.

>>>> You know someone at Unisys, you said.
>>>
>>> I don't think I did...
>>
>> Um, not the person that you above said "I don't think she knows anybody
>> in a hiring position."?
> 
> No. Network Rail.

That makes no sense to me.

>> What do you /like/ doing?  You might be surprised at what people will
>> actually pay for.
> 
> Nobody is going to pay me to write a ray-tracer. [...]

You didn't answer my question.  What do you /like/ doing?

>>> If I can't convince anybody to hire me to write Java (pro tip: Java is
>>> popular), then nobody is ever going to hire me to write Haskell.
>>
>> Wrong, wrong, wrong.  If you're competent in Haskell and that's what
>> they're looking for, then being one of a smaller number of developers
>> who write in a language that they're using is far, far better than
>> being one of the billion people (yes, hyperbole, but there are a /lot/
>> of Java programmers out there) who can write code in Java.
> 
> It puts me in a smaller pool of employees, but it also puts them in a
> smaller pool of employers.

It's not the size of the pool of employees or the size of the pool of 
employers, it's the relative sizes of each and whether there's *one* 
opportunity that's a good fit.

And unless you're willing to take the time to *look* and *do* something, 
you'll never know.

>>>> If the language were that unpopular, it would cease to exist.
>>>
>>> For twenty years, it /was/ that unpopular.
>>
>> Yet it still exists.
> 
> See, the thing is, when you're not making a product for profit, it
> doesn't /matter/ whether it's popular or not. It doesn't /need/ to be
> popular in order to exist.

*sigh*  It's survived for 20 years.  It hasn't died out.  People use it 
for stuff.  Corporations use it for stuff.  Corporations pay people to 
program in it.  That means YOU CAN GET A JOB DOING IT.

>>> Sure, but nobody works for AT&T or Facebook. (Actually, given our
>>> earlier discussion, I wouldn't /want/ to work for Facebook...)
>>
>> "Nobody works for AT&T or Facebook" - are you /serious/?  AT&T is one
>> of the larger companies in the world.  Facebook has a fairly
>> significant sized staff.  Those server rooms don't take care of
>> themselves, and people don't do it for no pay.
>>
>> AT&T:  https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:T
>>
>> Number of employees:  252,330
>>
>> Facebook:  https://www.google.com/finance?q=fb
>>
>> Number of employees:  3,539
>>
>> Far from "nobody".
> 
> OK, so let me get this straight: Out of all the people IN THE ENTIRE
> WORLD, only three thousand of them work for Facebook? And only a quarter
> of a million of them work for AT&T? Yeah, those are some huge
> percentages...

*sigh*

How many people work for the company you CURRENTLY work for?

One of the companies I worked for was about the size of AT&T.  I was one 
of about 2 dozen systems engineers when I was hired.

And one of about 600 in the IT department as a whole (which included a 
lot of developers).

It's not about the percentage of the global population that works for the 
organisation.  Again, it's about finding a position.

You can continue to despair that nobody's going to hire you and just give 
up, or you can put the effort in to try to find something.

The latter is more productive.  It takes time, it takes rejection, but 
eventually, YOU WILL GET A BETTER JOB IF YOU WORK AT IT.

>> But all the people I know in the UK also seem to really enjoy what they
>> do.  Now I don't know everyone in the UK, probably not even enough to
>> constitute a statistical sample - but of the ones I know, you're the
>> only one who actively /hates/ his job.
> 
> I guess when The Bangles sang "Manic Monday", nobody could relate to
> waking up on Monday morning and dreading going to work, which explains
> why the song sold to well.

Of course people sometimes don't want to get up in the morning and go to 
work on Monday.  *Some* people even do that every Monday.  I know people 
who love their jobs who don't want to work on Mondays.  That doesn't mean 
they don't love their jobs.  It means they're human.

It also doesn't mean there aren't days that they don't bounce out of bed 
in the morning and look forward to what they're going to do.

>>>>> You say "adwords", but I've yet to see it...
>>>>
>>>> m-/
>>>>
>>>> Do you use an ad blocker?
>>>
>>> Not until recently.
>>
>> Then you must not use Google a lot.  Oh, wait....
> 
> Alternatively, maybe there aren't many adverts actually related to
> "transfinite cardinal numbers" or something...

You'd see other types of ads.  They don't just display ads related to 
your searches; if your searches are frequently things that they don't 
advertise for, you'll get generic ads.

Jim

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