Head Down, Eyes Up

Been a little while. 

Head down chasing skills for an interesting position that hopefully once I cross all the T's and dot all the I's I will get the position. Nervous and scared as the background checks found inconsistent data. Nothing like having former employers and data brokers with information that is confusing or missing the context which in my case was the fact that one company was spun out then re-acquired by the original company. So the data is just a mess as the original company has now been acquired which puts the whole thing in some more weirdness. It's one of those things where I have little control over but can try to provide explanations of the history. So I wait and hope my fate isn't screwed by this process. I understand that trust of a new employee is supercritical and fear is more of a guide post today especially in regards to hiring the wrong person. I work hard to present myself as honest and truthful to the best of my ability and yet keeping that part of the bargain on the part of others especially for faceless corporations seems difficult. I am pretty sure it isn't even honesty or trust in regards to my issues, just indifference to whether the data is correct or how it will impact someone like myself in their search.

Some days I feel are especially hard but I am grateful as a few friends have reached out and given me help and encouragement. Hopefully when I am in a better place I can return the favor to others in a similar spot as I am today. 

Continuing to follow up on my personal training (refresh python and kubernetes skills), doing Leetcode and waiting for the finalization of the severance. At least I was able to sign-up for COBRA to fill in the gap in health coverage but that is only for a few months before it becomes too expensive.

Snow Came, The Melt Has Started

Winter is here, snow two nights ago. Cold and rain with later mix of snow and temperatures in the teens.  Seems like a good night to sit in front of the computer and do some training/education.

Each ping of hope makes me wonder what is the investment to make in a possible job, or should the investment stay shallow until further into process?

So far getting lots of pings from recruiters looking for contract positions, often feel sketchy and like they are just getting paid to push resumes. I am not really that interested in  doing a contract especially as it doesn't feel like I would be a good match for so much of what I see. I will consider contracting but this seems risky in this market.

Interesting podcast was ChangeLog #573 with Justin Garrison. The basic discussion is that part of the return to office policy push is really to create a quiet layoff policy. It is interesting and certainly my prior employer certainly was making it difficult for remote staff and it will drive some staff away. I certainly would like an office for hybrid and admittedly for the social aspects but have the remote options when needed.   There is value to be in the office, and certainly the social research continues to suggest that it will benefit your career to have more rather then less face time.  Remote has its own benefits as it means lower costs, eat better food, no commute, frequently more flexible schedules and options to work from nearly anywhere with a good internet connection. Sadly my choices are not going to be fully in control by me but where and whom will employee me, yes I can make choices and certainly I can be selective but this isn't a job market any longer where the job seeker is in control.

Network, Network, Network

 Short blog post today. 

Too shy to admit I am kind of terrible with the whole network with colleagues thing. I am pretty good at building a business relationship with customers doing technical support and my co-workers generally appreciate my work and I think trust me.  But building that network of folks to pass along a resume to is just hard for me, I hate to impose even when it is my time of need to ask for help.  It is strange as once I have my ducks in a row, I don't have that same reluctance to walk over to someones desk (or slack/zoom) and ask for help when I need it.  Maybe it is that network relationship feels casual versus the peer to peer discussion of some shared work with the responsibility to my coworker to solve an issue that I am not shy about.

 

Making progress on my reviews of Python and Kubernetes.  It's amazing how much I retained even when not having used Kubernetes in two years. The Kubernetes course I am doing feels a little patched together now as the additional material that has been added since I first took the course doesn't flow as consistently as the rest of the course. It still works and feels like it covers the topics well and I certainly see the team behind the course not wanting to recreate the whole of the material just for the recent tweaks and changes within Kubernetes.     

Need to find sources for good pictures to include, maybe something with a creative commons or public domain license to give the blog posts some color. Tried some AI tools but still not sure I am getting the results I want yet...

Thanks, No Thanks

 "Thanks but no thanks", well rejection hurts especially when you know at your core you could do the job.  There is likely a lot of chance involved given that any position is being hit with hundreds of resumes, selection on a specific skill or some tangible feature of the applicant.

I have been somewhat lucky in that I have had one interview in the last 6 weeks. I thought I did fairly well with the remote interviews until the final in-person interview.  I needed more preparation and a better travel plan as I was super tired by the time I started the interviews. Lessons learned I hope and  I continue my learning. I still feel confident that I could have done the role and been good in the position. 

I probably need to work on the cover letters and tighten them up with better focus on the position.

Resume still feels like it is missing something or just not yet refined.

There is maybe that I am looking at mid-level positions and I am probably being viewed as a senior engineer. But really I have broad depth of experience (cloud, AWS, devops) but what I consider senior skills isn't really critical to most employers which is GemFire and Concourse CI both of which are niche in data and CI/CD tools. 

I continue to be open as I am at heart a generalist software engineer and so I look to jump in, learn fast and solve problems, deliver solutions. Be the role software engineer, devops or technical support, I enjoy and love it all.  

Courses selected.

 

I have selected two initial courses for improving my Python and Kubernetes skills.

"Kubernetes Certified Application Developer (CKAD) with Tests" by KodeKloud, Mumshad Mannambeth - Did this two plus years ago on UDemy and found it generally good with good labs to validate skills. There is also an admin course as well that I might try once I complete this one. Unlikely right now that I will take the certification exam ( even though I would like to do so) as the requirements for a room/space to do the exam seems difficult and I don't see a testing center option.  I need to check and see if there is a proctor space at a city college that will work but looking online on social media suggests lots of folks have issues with the online test proctors and so it would be a waste of money to sign up for test if you just fail it for issues with finding a space that meets their fairly stringent requirements and not on technical merit.

I read "Python Crash Course" a couple of months back. Generally liked it and thought it was a good introduction to the language.  I have done Python on and off as part of my devops work for years, mostly to glue bits together or script some Google Cloud API to manage resources, but not much formal application Python. I selected another UDemy course "100 of Code: The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp" by Angela Yu because it looks to focus on building lots of practice examples and some projects to reinforce the learning. 

Trying to do a LeetCode problem each day, just to practice and get exposure to these kinds of interview questions. Trying these in C# right now to practice as I was learning C# prior to my layoff to help the team I was supporting with development tasks such as building examples.  I might switch to Python but I generally like the everything and the kitchen sink approach in C# as a language and it is mostly cross platform.  There is a lot to learn in C# and LeetCode questions probably won't help much in getting further depth there.

Laid Off November 2023

 I was laid off right after the Thanksgiving holidays. Emotionally I haven't fully come to grips with how this will effect me and my family given that this is my first time after over 20+ years of working in the software industry. Worse yet I am now looking for a new position in a market that really has contracted in the last 12 months, so there are positions but finding a match looks like it will be more difficult than ever. To make matters worse my job hunting skills in the current market are more than a little rusty, so the initial challenges will be to educate myself on what I need to appeal to requiters and companies be it resume, cover letters, interviews or social profile.

The second step is to assess my skills and background to ensure it is what the market is looking for and can meet the requirements that companies want to hire me to build the solutions that drive customers and revenue.

Things that mostly concern me looking for a new position is ageism in the market, it is well documented that older developers simply aren't getting positions or offers even when we bring experience that likely would be a benefit to the team and company. I started my career 10 years later than many and so don't know how that will play out with recruiters or interviewers,  or how my present experiences will be reviewed. 

What kinds of positions should I chase in the short or long term? I have a variety of experience with a bulk of it in enterprise technical support, but also devops, code maintenance along with working with cloud vendors like AWS, Google Cloud and cloud frameworks like Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes. 

First steps improve, 

• Improve LinkedIn profile
• Update Resume
• Create cover letters for 2-3 types of roles
• Update Python skills - I have used Python but mostly for small glue code
• Update Kubernetes admin skills - been two years since I did much so time to add some focused learning here