Blackcap Blog

Published at 07:59 on 13 July 2016

Those who most need help finding employment are those new in the market for a particular line of work, either as a result of recently graduating from school or a mid-life career change. But recruiters are hired at the behest of* the employer, and candidates with no experience are common as dirt, meaning employers need no special help in finding same. The candidates employers need help finding are those with specific, specialized experience.

But recruiters lack that experience, too, which seriously limits their ability to judge and match candidates with positions. Moreover, the positions being recruited for tend to pay better than the job of recruiting for them, so this state of affairs is inevitable. Thus if you’re an experienced candidate, recruiters are still of little or no help; they’ll just pester you with false lead after false lead.

I speak from experience here, having at one time been a freshly-minted CS graduate and now being a senior-level programmer. It went from recruiters being uninterested in me to me being uninterested in the (inevitably mismatched) opportuinities recruiters pestered me about.

Given that, is it any surprise that the low road dominates in the recruiting industry? Why seek people with any knowledge at all to recruit in a field? Just hire the cheapest workers in India you can find, even if they can barely speak coherent English.† They’re fated to do a bad job anyhow, so why even try? After all, doing a good job isn’t the point. Your business model is based on both candidate and employer making an unwise decision (i.e. to use you), not on providing value to either.

This leaves out the recruiters hired by busy employers whose staffing departments are themselves understaffed, of course. But when sleaze dominates an industry, the odds aren’t good. So if I see a recruiting agency’s name on a job listing, I pass. And when one cold calls me and leaves a voice mail, I just delete the message.

* Note I did not write “paid by”. That is because they are not. To claim otherwise is to state what I call the Recruiter Lie. Does anyone think employers have an unlimited orchard of money trees to harvest for paying wages and salaries? Of course not! They budget those costs, and the cost for paying recruiters ultimately comes out of the same pot for paying wages and salaries. One will come at the expense of the other.

† Which, given they are the cheapest, will be the case; competent English speakers will seek more honorable and better-paying work.

Published at 16:23 on 9 July 2016

Recently, it happened yet again. One of my old banes, canker sores, materialized.

Those who don’t suffer them don’t understand how bad they can be. The weeks of lost sleep due to the pain is probably the worst of it. Over the years, I’ve discovered various ways of both minimizing the chances of their happening* and the pain once they do.

But that’s not a complete solution. Recently I heard about honey showing promise as a treatment, so I decided to give that a try. I was a bit skeptical: wipe the sore clean and dry, then briefly apply honey after each meal, that’s it? The exposure to honey for a under a minute several times a day can do that much?

But darned if it didn’t seem to actually work. Of course, it’s only one trial, so it could all be nothing but coincidence. Time will tell, but as of this stage it seems promising enough to be worth reporting about.

* Which means finding out which sorts of foods cause allergies to trigger the sores, then avoiding them. Plus, avoiding toothpaste that contains sodium laurel suplhate has helped.

Published at 19:38 on 27 May 2016

Well, I’ve done it. I now have a land line after a little over 10 years of being cell-phone only. Two things precipitated this decision:

1. About three years ago, I moved to Bainbridge Island. Once you leave the big city, cell coverage ceases to be so reliable. It was acceptable at the apartment I rented, but in my current home I get two bars of signal… at best. The missed and dropped calls at home eventually reached my breaking point.
2. Verizon is getting more and more intolerable. They don’t care about troubleshooting the issues I currently have. All they care about is trying to up-sell me to a smart phone, which I do not want. My cell service is less reliable than ever and I have no hope of any quick or easy resolution to that issue.

We’ll see how long this option lasts. Traditional analog twisted-pair landlines are slowly dying out, and that’s what I just got. Reason is that the electric power here is unreliable, and I don’t want a cable or IP phone that depends on some piece of equipment somewhere that in turn depends on commercial power. With plain old telephone service I can use a phone powered by the battery plant in the central office.

It would be a shame if I eventually had to settle for something less reliable, but it may come to that. It wouldn’t be the first time a less reliable new technology has eclipsed a more reliable older one. (Just think of all those fidgety electronic soap dispensers, faucets, and towel dispensers in public restrooms.)

Published at 13:15 on 15 May 2016

Yes, I was there for the action. I left early because yesterday I woke with a cold and felt the need to get back home and rest. I wasn’t planning on being arrested anyhow; my role was more of a support one. Which I did.

Given how I fell asleep at 7:30 last night and didn’t get up until 6:30 this morning and have been napping all day, I would say my assessment that I needed to get home and rest was a correct one.

Published at 08:21 on 13 May 2016

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Published at 17:55 on 4 April 2016

The title of this post describes my current job. It’s still going strong, as far as my boss is concerned (so far as I can tell), but it’s winding down so far as I am concerned, and I plan to announce this to my boss at tomorrow’s regularly-scheduled meeting.

When I took it, I had my qualms that it might not be the best of matches. The screening process contained a surprising amount of front end Javascript questions (such coding is not my strong suit). Plus the more I heard about it, the more I had doubts the position could furnish the sort of engrossing challenges I need. I mentioned these concerns and was assured that my impressions were incorrect.

The past six months have served to convince me that I was in fact correct. It’s getting to the point where I dread new assignments. It’s clearly time to start thinking about moving on if things can’t change dramatically (and I frankly doubt they can).

The only real question is what kind of ending can be worked out, which largely depends on their needs (if they only or mostly have a need for someone to do the sort of work I regard as unpleasant drudgery, the end will come sooner rather than later).

Published at 00:45 on 15 January 2016

The end of the smart phone era, that is. As predicted here, albeit sooner.

Published at 08:14 on 7 October 2015

Why? Several reasons.

Just because something can be done does not mean it should be done. This reason is currently lying dormant, as ours is a technology-fetishizing society and we’re still in the stage of being wowed and dazzled by how smart phones are even possible.

Just because something can be done does not mean it is therefore fashionable and popular. Another one that is currently lying dormant due to technology fetishism, and probably a much more relevant one than the above. Eventually, the fashionable will decide not to carry smart phones. People like movie stars and politicians in high office don’t need them; they have assistants to handle such duties. Jettisoning the phone will be a fashion statement that they are powerful and affluent enough to have such assistants.

This will be much like having a suntan went from being a sign of a common farmer to being a sign of someone privileged enough to have lots of leisure time outside of factories and offices. Even if those without personal assistants still have to carry a phone with them, they will opt for phones that are as small and inobtrusive as possible.

When will this happen? Who knows. It could take another ten or twenty years. I don’t think it will take significantly longer than twenty. That’s a generation, which is long enough for a new generation to see smart phones and obsession over them as yet another dorky adult thing. At that point, the way will be paved for the newest, most fashionable entertainment figures to establish not carrying much personal technology as a fashion statement.

Does my personal bias play any part in my forecasting this? Almost certainly. Yet while I personally want the smart phone era to end, that doesn’t change how the above factors all exist and lie waiting ready to manifest themselves. And personally, I’d want the new trend to happen faster than ten or twenty years, yet I’m not forecasting it will begin soon. So it can’t be written off as purely personal bias.

Published at 10:00 on 28 September 2015

Got back from the Mount Rainier faerie Gatherette yesterday afternoon, and didn’t quite finish putting everything away from that outing. Doing so was on today’s agenda, as was planning the rest of the week.

My new job starts with the new month on Thursday, so I have three more days of freedom. The idea of going to the Staircase area of Olympic National Park struck me. I’ve always wanted to go there, yet never have. And the more I’ve thought about it, the better the idea sounds:

• One of the things on the list for this summer was doing some ham radio stuff on the HF bands while camping. I’ve finally got my portable HF transmitting antenna working properly, after spending all summer on it as mostly a “back burner” item,
• As mentioned before, I’ve long wanted to see that area of the park. As in, for decades,
• The weather forecast for the next few days is warm and dry,
• I over-prepared for the past weekend’s camping, so I have leftover supplies begging to be used this season.
• I’m really only in the mood for a quick, overnight trip, having just gotten back from a multi-night trip, and
• One night is all I really have, since I need today to tend to various things around the house, meaning tomorrow is the earliest I can leave, and I need to spend Wednesday night at home so I can show up at the office on Thursday.

I call the above process, when I get an idea and the more it seems to dovetail nicely the more I think of it, “convergence.” It’s generally a sign I really should pursue it. So unless I think of unforeseen complications or such things unexpectedly come up, that is exactly what I plan to do.

Published at 22:05 on 23 September 2015

Looking back, I can see how on one recent interview I didn’t get an obvious sub-question I should have, and how for the job I did land, the only reason I survived the whole interview process so well is that it was mostly done in the form of at-home questions, some of which I was battling the early symptoms of interview burnout on.

So what happened today was the first question (which I answered fairly well) pushed me over the edge and it was all downhill from there. Given that, it would have only gotten worse had I persevered. Ending it early was the best option.

I’m apparently in the minority in thinking this option is best. Most of the “experts” advise persevering. But really, perseverance is not always a virtue. No one thing is; life isn’t that simple. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Knowing how to recognize futility and give up is also a virtue (in moderation, of course, excessive lack of perseverance also a bad thing).

How it can be “good” to exhibit to a prospective employer that you’ll value some silly formality about “perseverance” even when it costs them money and your effort produces nothing but frustration escapes me. Me, I’d want an employee to quit a pointless task (and communicate this, of course) as soon as it became clear to him the task was probably pointless.