6.1.2003

boo mortgage, part what???

I've lost count. These days, their domain is parked free at godaddy.com. That's a nice colorful holding page ya got there guys. Real professional... You've been trying to get off the ground since... when? 2001? Give it up already.

The Not-So-Odd Couple

I got my start doing database work on financials. Initially, I was merely running reports, some sales, others about commissions or receivables, for a Sales department. When the limited amount of canned reports were no longer sufficient, I got involved in extracting the information out of the database and creating more customized reports from that data. Later, I was able to create a system that correlated the sales data to a sales projection system. Since my job duties were now no longer administrative but technical, I was expected to (and did) perform routine IT tasks, such as installing RAM or applications. (Expectations lead to further accomplishment. As someone's admin assistant, I would never have been expected to know anything about the printers. As someone's DBA, I was expected to rip open the cover and fiddle with the guts (whether I knew how or not didn't matter).) This created a context in which I could rewrite my resume focusing solely on my technical skills. It was a much briefer resume than any of my previous iterations, but it did the trick. I was able to obtain an IT position in a call center from there, and the rest is history.

So if you did not originally obtain a degree in IT, that's not the end of the world. You can work your way back in by taking professional tech training classes yourself. You can focus on the technical aspects of your job and work them into more IT-oriented duties. You can go back to college and get that degree in IT. Please do, because you can do it, and it will be worth it.

<This piece of humor is from ComputerWorld.com's Shark Tank column. I am quoting it here in honor of my most recent layoff.>     :)

"Shark Tank: With Fridays like this, who needs Mondays?

This pilot fish gets word he's on the two-man team that is supposed to do a system upgrade, starting at 3 o'clock on a Friday afternoon.
"The users grumbled about the early start -- for about two seconds, since it was the Friday before a long holiday weekend," says fish.
Friday arrives, and fish notices that the other IT staffer who's supposed to work with him on the upgrade has called in sick.  "I later found out he had planned the next week as a vacation," fish says, "and had started his trip out of state early."
But when fish expresses his concerns about handling the upgrade solo to the CIO, CIO tells him not to worry -- he has faith in fish's ability to successfully complete the upgrade.
At 3 p.m., fish takes the system down to do an incremental backup.  An hour later, he starts the upgrade itself.
"Come 4:30 p.m., I'm right in the middle of the critical steps of the upgrade, when the HR manager and the CIO show up in the data center. They tell me that they need to talk to me."
Can we talk Monday?  fish asks.  I'm really busy right now.
No, they tell him, we need you to come to the conference room -- right now.
"When I arrive in the conference room, I'm given a pack of unemployment information and told that, due to IT cutbacks, I'm being let go," says fish.
"I explain that I'm in the middle of a system upgrade and that there is no one else around who can complete it.  I offer to finish the upgrade with the CIO watching over my shoulder.  They say no."
And fish is escorted to the door.
"I later found out that the company was down for over a week," says fish.  "And that the CIO spread the word that I caused the system outage on my last day.""

<Note from JobFairy.com: Of course you can lay off critical personnel to save money. But you'll find out REAL quick just why they were critical. To my former employer - you are about to learn an expensive lesson, the hard way. I genuinely wish you the best of luck, because you will need it, and you don't yet even know why.
Follow-up Note from JobFairy.com: Sadly, it was even worse than I predicted. One of their mission-critical systems emitted the magic smoke mere days after my layoff; its replacement still does not work properly. I keep getting desperate calls and IMs from the staff left behind who are too swamped with work to assume yet another full-time load. My heart really goes out to them. I can only wish this had all turned out differently...>