Blackcap Blog

Published at 13:59 on 13 September 2015

Spams me about a job in Silly Valley, despite my clearly-stated residence in the Seattle area and lack of desire to relocate:

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2015 14:28:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: Piyush Srivastava <piyush@simplion.com>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Subject: Backfill Position: Build Engineer | CA

Dear David
 
Our records show that you are an experienced IT professional
with experience relevant to one of our current open position.
Please let us know whether you would wish to evaluate one of the
open positions we have with our customer based out of San Jose,
CA.

Gotta love the mangled English on this one. Evidence that Simplion is a real sleaze outfit who not only offshores their workforce, but does so to the absolute minimum level of education (and salary) they possibly can.

Published at 11:08 on 11 September 2015

Mainly because sexuality is more than a simplistic gay/bi/straight spectrum, and I happen to be further from that line than most.

I just don’t have the sort of strong sexual urges most men do, so if I wanted to I could become an “ex gay” and put up with the ruse basically indefinitely. Attractive men would still catch my eye, but it would be trivially easy to resist any temptation to go further (because for me there simply isn’t much temptation).

It would of course still be a lie (I’d not be straight), and I have no interest whatsoever in practicing fundamentalist Christianity (or any other sort of organized religion, for that matter), and I strongly support the right of all individuals to live according to the sexuality they actually possess, so I’d never actually do such a thing.

But if I wanted to, I could. And although my sexual orientation is unusual, I doubt it’s unique.

So there exist “gay” men who are sexually active to the degree they are not because they’re gay and that’s what their deepest intrinsic desires lead them to be, but because they can be that way if they try. (They’re play-acting at being gay, in much the same way that many so-called “ex gays” play-act at being straight.)

Perhaps, like me, they were curious about sex and wanted to experience some at least once in their lives. I realized that I just didn’t fit in with what is — to me — a hyper-sexualized subculture that was continually imposing its alien sexuality onto me, primarily through the implicit assumption of others that I wanted the same sort of frequent, often casual, sex they desired. I wanted a little bit of sex, with one or two individuals I had a very close relationship to, that’s it.

I resolved the problem by basically walking away from the subculture and ceasing to identify as a member of it. Others may find that difficult to do, and want to replace the gay male subculture with another one, say that of conservative Christianity. And the world’s a large enough place that at least a few individuals probably have.

Keep that latter point in mind. Because, no matter how many “ex gays” continue to be caught in the act of lapsing, it means that somewhere there are probably some who don’t — and won’t — “lapse.” Odds are this will eventually get some attention in the Establishment media.

When it does, it in no way means that it’s possible to become “ex gay;” the individuals which will be reported on never actually were gay in the first place.

Published at 11:41 on 10 September 2015

More spam from United Software Group which blissfully ignores my very obviously stated unwillingness to relocate:

Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2015 14:35:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: Amber Srivastva <amber.s@usgrpinc.com>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Subject: Requirement of Technical Lead-Cloud/AWS in Portland, OR

Hi David,

We have an urgent requirement for a Technical Lead-Cloud/AWS.
This is a Contract position based in Portland, OR. If you are
interested in this position, please contact me / send your
updated resume.

Comparing this to the other recent bit of spam from a recruiter with this firm, it’s clear the sleaze is organization wide. Note how they both use exactly the same form letter.

Published at 10:17 on 10 September 2015

At yesterday’s interview. Which is promising, but cue Richard Marx:

Honestly, it probably will materialize, but this job search has been sufficiently weird (with signals from prospective employers that in the past were generally promising turning out to be false) that it wouldn’t be a total surprise if it doesn’t.

Published at 10:11 on 10 September 2015

Moron spams me about a job in Silly Valley despite my clearly stating unwillingness to relocate.

Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2015 12:41:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: Deepak Jaglan <deepak@simplion.com>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Subject: Urgent need:  Python Backend Developer

Our records show that you are an experienced IT professional
with experience relevant to one of our current open position.
Please let us know whether you would wish to evaluate one of the
open positions we have with our customer based out of Palo Alto,
CA.

Published at 10:41 on 9 September 2015

OK, last one of these for a while; they’re starting to clutter up this blog. It’s here to show what a sleaze outfit Net2Source is; they’re one of my main offenders. This one is local but it’s sysadmin.

Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2015 13:58:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kuldeep Yadav <kuldeep.yadav@net2source.com>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Subject: Need:::Sr Unix/Linux Systems Administrator - Bellevue, WA - Bellevue, WA

Sr Unix/Linux Systems Administrator 
6+ month contract 
Bellevue, WA 

Published at 10:38 on 9 September 2015

Bozo sends me spam about a job based in Lincoln fucking Rhode Island, on the other side of the continent from where I’ve explicitly stated I’m unwilling to relocate from:

Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2015 12:59:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ravi Sharma <ravi.s@usgrpinc.com>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Subject: Need::Configuration Management - Build and Deployment Engineer at Lincoln, RI || TCS || CVS


Hi David,

We have an urgent requirement for a Configuration Management
- Build and Deployment Engineer. This is a Contract position
based in Lincoln, RI. If you are interested in this position,
please contact me / send your updated resume.

Published at 10:28 on 9 September 2015

Another clown from the insurance industry, despite my standard preface explicitly ruling such things out:

From: "davidstubbs@lineone.net" <davidstubbs@lineone.net>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2015 12:12:22 -0400
Subject: Resume respond for David Barts

Our staffing manager has reviewed your CV in an online CV base. Based on
your background and abilities, we thought you might be interested in this
opportunity.

We are looking for a manager to join our team. We are experts in the field
of health insurance. Our company provides a high-level of financial
services for thousand people all over the globe. We suggest both integrated
and individual solutions in this field. Now you got a chance to be a part
of our company.

Published at 10:22 on 9 September 2015

Despite my posted résumé containing a preface stating I am only interested in software development positions and explicitly ruling out systems administration positions, this clown spams me about a sysadmin job. To put the icing on the cake, the job isn’t local, either (that same preface mentions that I am unwilling to relocate).

Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2015 08:58:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: Srikanth Gampa <srikanth@net2source.com>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Subject: Need DevOps Engineer  at Salt Lake City, UT for Direct client

Good Morning

Greetings!

HI,
 
Hope you are doing great…

I have an Immediate requirement for the below location with the
required Skill set for one of our Direct client.

If you are comfortable revert back to the mail with updated
resume to discuss further

Mangled grammar and multiple salutations as per the original text I received. Given the name, he’s probably not even stateside.

Note I said “given the name,” not “given the name and grammar”. I’ve met plenty of Indians whose grammar in the English language is as good as any American or Brit. If you go to the All India Radio news site, you’ll find text and audio clips which are representative of how a well-educated Indian uses the English language.

But sleaze outfits like Net2Source are interested in cutting costs to the bone. Why cut costs a lot by hiring a well-educated workforce in India when you can cut them even more by hiring a poorly-educated one?

Published at 18:58 on 8 September 2015

Had another interview today, and the way it want (not badly, but not great either) makes it pretty certain I’m not going to get an offer. Which is OK, given the next point.

The biggest catch is that the guy who would be my boss, while very smart, has fallen victim to Respected Academics Syndrome. That’s when someone with lots of formal education and recognition to their name lets it all go to their head, to the point where they can’t take any constructive criticism, no matter how valid, from someone with less of either. They have the credentials, I don’t, so therefore there’s absolutely nothing they could ever learn from me. Period.

In this case, it was about SQL. The guy wanted to design a program that sent SQL to back-end databases that was both standards-confirming (so it would be database-independent) and efficient. You can’t do that: the SQL standard is surprisingly small. A lot of the SQL syntax that one takes for granted as basic stuff for writing efficient queries (such as the LIMIT clause) are actually nonstandard extensions. But no, I couldn’t make that point without being interrupted and having my concerns waved off (never with any actual evidence to the contrary, of course).

What’s sad is that it is at an organization with a very noble mission (cancer research). So this project is going to run into all sorts of unnecessary and easily foreseeable difficulties, wasting lots of money and effort, largely because the workplace is a hierarchical and authoritarian place. If the world wasn’t largely on such principles, personality faults like that wouldn’t do nearly so much damage: he’d still be respected for his past accomplishments but the moment he tried to bluster others into doing the impossible he’d get ignored and overruled by group consensus, because there would be no such thing as a “boss”. And because such academics could get easily called on their shit, they wouldn’t let their recognition go to their head in the first place.

And that is the biggest reason I am an anarchist: because life experiences keep on underscoring to me that authoritarian hierarchies just don’t work very well.