Brief Pause For Commercial Interuption
Can you help me with my homework?
I have a flurry of posts that I've been meaning to do Real Soon Now -- and now have some time to turn these from vaporware ideas to actually typed up.
I am between jobs. My former position was restructured out of existence on November 12th.
This is not altogether a bad thing -- my blood pressure went down 20 points after the announcement.
My immediate boss went Above and Beyond in Doing The Right thing, and got the company to give a far more generous goodbye package than they were legally required to (and despite having crazy-making aspects in the corporate culture, the company also has a strong streak of Nice in it. It grew from owner's dorm room to billion dollar company, and has continuing "we're all friends and family here" aspects.)
So, in a good position to look carefully at next job rather than just leap into the nearest currently lukewarm and cozy frying pan that looks good at the moment.
One of the nifty benefits is continuing use of an "outplacement" career counselor who is someone it would be good to have as a neighbor. More about her some other post.
I have a "homework assignment" to let *** everyone *** I know, or even kinda sorta know, about my job search.
I think of my work as "computer-enhanced papershuffling." I know a lot of
software and techie stuff relative to the average office worker, but way
little compared to a real computer science graduate rather than someone who
learned haphazardly on the job.
One of best jobs was at University of California, Santa Barbara in the Geography
Department, when we converted a hundred poorly-maintained Lotus 2 spreadsheets
on 5 1/4" floppies onto a networked database. Much learning, both of
software, university fund accounting and umpteen different agencies fine print
on what expenses were O.K. for each research project.
Unfortunately I turned into a dead end doing far too many years of word
processing at a technologically conservative insurance company (3 blocks walk
from home!) and need to update my skills. Little demand for Dbase II, III or
even IV, or WordStar or WordPerfect. I have Microsoft Office, and have done a
little SPSS and a little Geographic Information Systems mapping .
I've also liked geography and would eagerly take more classes. Becoming a
geographer when I grow up would help me do real cool game maps.
At the moment I'm taking d2 classes/semester to fill in some of the awkward
gaps in my self-education, and would like to find "work my way through
college" work. It will probably have an "administrative assistant" job title
or some permutation of that (though have had Research Associate and Report
Specialist as titles.)
Resume (in Word) is at
www.dragonriddle.net/resume
Looking for work in West Los Angeles area, though I'll do widening spirals of
searches as the week goes on.
Places I'm applying to on my own are Universities (UCLA and USC and Cal State
Los Angeles), Getty Museum, Symantec, Psomas Company (www.psomas.com) and
engineering, scientific, environmental and education companies.
So, if you just happen to have Los Angeles, California job leads please let me
know.
Thanks.
(later this week I'll have a Surprisingly Good Response that I got from a PBEM email-pal in British Columbia).
I have a flurry of posts that I've been meaning to do Real Soon Now -- and now have some time to turn these from vaporware ideas to actually typed up.
I am between jobs. My former position was restructured out of existence on November 12th.
This is not altogether a bad thing -- my blood pressure went down 20 points after the announcement.
My immediate boss went Above and Beyond in Doing The Right thing, and got the company to give a far more generous goodbye package than they were legally required to (and despite having crazy-making aspects in the corporate culture, the company also has a strong streak of Nice in it. It grew from owner's dorm room to billion dollar company, and has continuing "we're all friends and family here" aspects.)
So, in a good position to look carefully at next job rather than just leap into the nearest currently lukewarm and cozy frying pan that looks good at the moment.
One of the nifty benefits is continuing use of an "outplacement" career counselor who is someone it would be good to have as a neighbor. More about her some other post.
I have a "homework assignment" to let *** everyone *** I know, or even kinda sorta know, about my job search.
I think of my work as "computer-enhanced papershuffling." I know a lot of
software and techie stuff relative to the average office worker, but way
little compared to a real computer science graduate rather than someone who
learned haphazardly on the job.
One of best jobs was at University of California, Santa Barbara in the Geography
Department, when we converted a hundred poorly-maintained Lotus 2 spreadsheets
on 5 1/4" floppies onto a networked database. Much learning, both of
software, university fund accounting and umpteen different agencies fine print
on what expenses were O.K. for each research project.
Unfortunately I turned into a dead end doing far too many years of word
processing at a technologically conservative insurance company (3 blocks walk
from home!) and need to update my skills. Little demand for Dbase II, III or
even IV, or WordStar or WordPerfect. I have Microsoft Office, and have done a
little SPSS and a little Geographic Information Systems mapping .
I've also liked geography and would eagerly take more classes. Becoming a
geographer when I grow up would help me do real cool game maps.
At the moment I'm taking d2 classes/semester to fill in some of the awkward
gaps in my self-education, and would like to find "work my way through
college" work. It will probably have an "administrative assistant" job title
or some permutation of that (though have had Research Associate and Report
Specialist as titles.)
Resume (in Word) is at
www.dragonriddle.net/resume
Looking for work in West Los Angeles area, though I'll do widening spirals of
searches as the week goes on.
Places I'm applying to on my own are Universities (UCLA and USC and Cal State
Los Angeles), Getty Museum, Symantec, Psomas Company (www.psomas.com) and
engineering, scientific, environmental and education companies.
So, if you just happen to have Los Angeles, California job leads please let me
know.
Thanks.
(later this week I'll have a Surprisingly Good Response that I got from a PBEM email-pal in British Columbia).