I just found out that my monthly MUNI pass is good for the cable cars too. I thought I would share this here because it is hard to find this information stated clearly.
Author: FourMajor
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Not Working is Treating Me Well
It’s the middle of my first week without a job. It is going great so far. I’ve been waking up at a decent time so far – 7:30 to 8am. And I’ve made it to the library and reached my study goal each day.
If things keep going as they are, I’ll be able to pass this first test within about 2-3 weeks. If I had a job during all this, you can guaran-damn-tee that it would take me months to be able to pass this first test. I honestly feel so much more productive without a job.
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A Good Prospect Down the Drain
So I interviewed for a position in the financial district in SF. It wasn’t a “dream job” like KEI and hotornot.com, but it did seem pretty sweet, and I was excited about it. The position was for a system administrator working mostly with Unix and working with some Windows. I got the lead through a recruiter.
I interviewed there on Friday, and the interview went pretty well. He assigned me a quiz to complete at home and I really enjoyed it. It had one question where I had to run nmap against his network and use other tools to find out as much as I could about his network. I spent a good deal of time on Friday taking this quiz.
I evidently did pretty well on the quiz, because he assigned me the next task – installing Apache and Tomcat on his Ubuntu GNU/Linux server. I didn’t ace this one, but I did well enough…
He asked me to come in today for a second interview. From the sounds of things, I was very close to getting an offer. Well, I got a call yesterday from the recruiter, who told me that the CEO now didn’t want to pay the recruiter fees…after, AFTER they had already agreed to those fees.
So here I am, missing out on a job because some big-shot CEO somewhere decides that he’s going to change his mind. It wouldn’t have been so bad except for the time that I spent completing the assignments, and going to the interview. Ten hours of my time, and I can’t even be judged by my qualifications for the job.
Oh well – several months of CCNP studying, here I come! Last day here at GuardianEdge is tomorrow.
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Thanks
Dear Guy that Peed on the Toilet Seat,
Thanks.
Sincerely,
Stuart Matthews -
I’m Coining This One
You can measure the change in your life by the change on your keychain.
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Heard From Google
Just a few minutes ago, Google emailed me about a Technical Support Engineer position. Damn it all. It would be cool as hell to work for Google, but I am putting my foot down on this anti-tech-support thing of mine.
One interesting note – the woman that emailed me used Outlook for her email client.
Update: The woman who emailed me was nice enough to thank me for letting her know I wasn’t interested, and the reason why. So I will do her a favor and let my readers know that she asked me to let others know about this opportunity. I don’t have too many Northern California readers here, but if you’re interested just shoot me an email to stu@fourmajor.com.
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$431,660.69
$431,660.69
That is what the salary of every Exxon employee would be if they split the profits evenly. Is that not enough for everyone?
OK, let’s suppose that the top 1,000 employees just have to be better than everyone else. So let’s lower the salary of 82,700 of the employees to $300,000/year. That leaves the top 1,000 employees making $11,319,999.75 per year. Really, is that not enough?
No, it isn’t, evidently. You can be damn sure that there are plenty of people working for Exxon that make $20,000-$30,000/year. I don’t even know what else to say about this.
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The Results of My Job Search
My job search was rather fruitless. I applied for one job, and had contacts with people about many others who found my resume online.
I had interviews with three companies:
KEI: Kapor Enterprises Inc.
This company is owned by Mitch Kapor, one of the founders of the EFF. The company is for profit, but they do work for Mitch’s various non-profit foundations, as well as several other cool organizations like the Mozilla Foundation. They provide IT and HR services.The position was for desktop support and system administration. Mostly Linux, some Windows. In San Francisco. I interviewed with them on the phone two Mondays ago, and he said he would get back to me in the middle of the week. The middle of the week came and went, and then the week came and went. So this week I’ve sent two follow-up emails and have not heard back.
HotOrNot.com
HotOrNot.com is a dating website that draws their visitors in by displaying non-nude pictures of people like you and me, and letting people rate them from one to ten.This job would have been sweet. This is the only one I actually applied to. I would have been the sole system administrator responsible for about 90 web servers. Very relaxed hours. Very nice neighborhood that I could have walked to. Very small company.
I managed to get an interview, but unfortunately I did not get the position. I don’t hold anything against them though; I honestly wasn’t qualified. Also, they actually got back to me on the results of their hiring process. I wish them the best.
VMWare
VMWare makes virtualization software that lets you run multiple servers on one computer. They are located in Palo Alto.The position was for Support Engineer I. The people that worked there were highly technical, and it would be a great environment for learning. I interviewed there this past Tuesday.
The interview went pretty well. I could have done much better with the Linux questions but I nailed the networking questions. I am not sure if they are going to offer me a position or not, but I’ve decided that if they do offer it I won’t take it. The office was super cool, and the people were super smart, and I think I would learn a lot, but ultimately I don’t want to go to Palo Alto every day and I don’t want to work in support any more.
So what have I learned from this process? I’ve learned that I probably could have nailed one of the two “dream jobs” (KEI and HotOrNot.com) if I had more technical experience. I also learned that there are lots and lots of jobs out there, but that I don’t want to settle for another job that I want to quit after a year. So the solution to this is to learn more, and get more certifications.
From experience, I cannot very well learn and have a full-time job at the same time. My second semester in school, when I did not have a job, I got three B’s and an A. My best semester. And it took me a long time to get my CCNA. The weekend that I crammed before the exam was the hardest I have ever studied. And I seriously burned myself out.
So if I am going to learn and improve my resume by getting more certifications, I am going to have to focus on that task alone. To accomplish this, I have decided that I am going to take 2-4 months and not work. I will just concentrate on getting my CCNP. This is my goal for these several months, and as an extra-credit assignment for myself, if I can fit in some learning about DNS, Apache, and scripting, that would be great.
But I know that the biggest risk with this plan is that I’ll not be motivated to study. So to lower this risk, I am going to treat my studying like a job. I will leave the apartment at 8 or 9 every weekday, and go to the library to study for 8 hours. And then I’ll come home and forget about studying. Also, I am very interested in the subject matter. The CCNP exams (there are four of them) cover in-depth routing protocols, remote access, multi-switch networks, and troubleshooting. If I were studying something I didn’t care about, it would be very difficult.
The next few months should be interesting. But I think I’ll enjoy them.