Tech jobs in the midwest?

[vraptor at employees.org]

On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, David Wolfskill wrote:
>On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 11:23:41AM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote:
>>> Disclosure:  I count myself as both "reasonably talented" and
>>> "significantly underemployed."
>>
>> I just don't see it.  Maybe two or three years ago it was a bit tight,
>> but the past year or so has
>> been great.
>
> I'm happy for you.  Your experience is apparently rather different from
> mine.

Perhaps getting out of the Bay Area would help?  Frankly, it's 
amazing to me that talented people are still having employment
difficulties, given the knuckle draggers I see passing as "Senior"
in many East Coast positions.

>> Good people are good people, they just need to find a
>> way to  connect with good job leads, which isn't always easy.
>
> Indeed.  And perhaps BayLISA can help with this...?
>
>> We need an anonymous, un-logged, un-archived mailing list to share
>> opinions about some of these job postings & companies, because I've
>> seen some really frightening ones get posted.

This is what networking with your peers is for.  My personal
observations, given my own trials with getting employed post-
bust, as well as observing people I know, suggests to me that
folks who are still having issues getting employed seem to
have trouble breaking through three walls:

a) Lack of confidence due to long-term un-/under-employment--
    depression breeds lack of confidence; lack of confidence
    is evident to the people you interview with, even if you
    think you are hiding it.  Likewise lack of enthusiasm for
    a potential position (see b).
b) Filtering themselves out due to fear of yet another "no" or
    non-response--people get rejected often enough, they look
    for rationalizations not to even apply so as to avoid another
    "no". (see a)
c) Failure to network (social, not IT :-); this is an art that
    few IT folks are good at--and the ones who are generally are
    successful consultants and make more money than the rest of
    us :-).

[on talking about crappy companies and bogus job listings]
> And without an archive, a given subscriber will only see the messages
> that are sent after the subscription takes effect.
>
> I'm becoming less certain that a "mailing list" is wanted for this
> application, vs. (e.g.) some Web-based forum.
>
> Folks who are sufficiently interested in implementing something like
> this should start communicating with one another.  There's a mailing
> list, services-tf at baylisa.org, that is intended for folks implementing
> services for BayLISA.

Perhaps getting F*ckedCompany to set up a separate forum for this
type of discussion?

The most ironically amusing thing I see is my continual bombardment
from recruiting co's in India b/c the word "India" shows up in my
resume.  I keep asking about relocation but I never get replies.

=Nadine=