I have a job again!
It’s actually in the productive sector of the economy. I’m writing software for tracking construction documents. There is only one semi-parasitic aspect, which is the paperwork that gets filed with the State. Most of the documents are handled by builders and architects and construction businesses.
It’s kind of amusing. Of all the interviews I went on, this was the one where they had a tangible useful product. That forces the interviewers to be less insane.
The rest of the interviews were for financial software and for web startups, where it doesn’t matter if you have good software or not. The financial industry thrives off the firehose of free State money, and merit is mostly irrelevant. For web startups, it’s more important to find a VC to finance your stupid idea, than it is to actually be able to execute on that idea.
It’s nice to be working again. They seemed decent, but you don’t know until you’re there awhile. They had a disaster where they hired a big tech team that produced nothing, so they should appreciate me. I’ll probably get more done by myself in a few months, than their team did in 2 years.
That’s the benefit of going on job interviews, rather than wasting time protesting. It helps that I have useful skills.
Congratulations! You’re going to have fun – there are so many ways revisions can drop through the cracks and not get to the people who need them.
I had one job where our installer called from a store that was supposed to open in two days to tell me we had a problem; the stockroom he was standing in did not look anything like the room on the drawings. Doors were in different places and the entire shape of the room was nothing like his drawings.
Turns out the client had completely redesigned the store after our stockroom layout had been submitted and approved but forgot to forward us the new set of drawings. I spent a frantic hour and a half figuring out how to fit as much of the material on-site into the room (got about 70% to fit), the installer put it together and shipped the leftovers back and the construction manager went home to change out of her soiled clothes.
Construction gets pretty darn exciting sometimes.
FSK,
Congrats on the new job. I’ll be excited to hear updates about this job as I work in the mechanical contracting business and we are currently working with some shit software. I’d be curious to hear more details and would love to exchange some ideas with you. Feel free to email anytime.
Once I get started, I could give you their information. I’m still not 100% sure what it is. It seems like a version control system specialized for construction.
Congratulations! and Good luck.
Congratulations on the new job man!!