My Next Job?
The bad news is, I am no longer with my employer, effective this morning. The good news is, I think I finally have thought of some things that fall in the center of a Venn diagram of:
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...what I want to do.
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...what I'm good at.
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...what people will pay me to do.
I need to avoid tasks that computers are good at and humans are bad at. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that I would be more useful designing software and user interfaces. The fact that my mind goes in those directions is suggestive of a career change.
Lately I have come to feel for the first time that a career for me (not just a good enough job) might actually exist in this world. Designing the Lojban RPG over the holiday vacation struck home to me that I enjoy designing software systems that motivate and educate users, or less specifically, figuring out what software should do and specifying it to programmers. I've received a lot of feedback from the Lojban community saying variants of "I wish you were my tech project manager", "You should be in marketing", "This system is genius of baroque and intricate subtlety", and "You'd make an excellent edutainment software designer." That last one was originally 's suggestion, for which I thank him. When the software gets to a sufficiently finished stage to start producing results that I can show (which should be in the next couple of weeks at this rate), I'll put the project on my resume.
Regarding marketing: The problem with marketing is anything that doesn't market itself doesn't impress me and therefore I won't prostitute myself for its lies. OK, that's putting it strongly, but you get the point. I didn't motivate people to write Lojban sentences. I created a game design that they crave so dearly that they are willing to volunteer to program it, and the system involves writing Lojban sentences as a parasitic side-effect. There's a difference.
If a software system can metabolize human enjoyment and excrete the side-effect of my choice, I can design one that excretes money.
In the meantime, my "job" will now be to draw samples for a Manga comic that a writer I know wants to propose.
On a related note, another Lojbanist is a Catholic who, not knowing my background, advised me to join a monastery. While I'm not interested in spending my life praying, the part about a life of poverty doesn't bother me. I feel like the things I do without being paid are the things that make a real difference in the world. If there were a "monastery" arrangement that let me focus on that in exchange for room and board, why not join it? It would be better than being enslaved to the need to earn an income.
Oddly enough, that dovetails with another thing said when I saw him last: if he were rich and also had a time machine, he'd travel back to 1991. He'd pay Linus Torvalds and his team in exchange for the requirement that, when they write anything for Linux, they hand if off to somebody else and make sure they understood it; he's pay this other person to write a graphical front-end that nontechnical end-users can understand. Sounds like a worthy goal to me. Did you hear about the desktop environment software that One Laptop Per Child is going to use? Software that is totally free so that the disadvantaged can afford it; and yet so easy a child can use it. That's philanthropic Hacktivism at its finest.
Comments
stormgren on Jan. 4, 2007 8:33 PM
He'd pay Linus Torvalds and his team in exchange for the requirement that, when they write anything for Linux, they hand if off to somebody else and make sure they understood it; he's pay this other person to write a graphical front-end that nontechnical end-users can understand.
This is not an insurmountable goal, even today.
Some may say this has happened with OS/X already.
blue-duck on Jan. 4, 2007 8:43 PM
I'm sorry to hear that the security of the steady job is going away. On the other hand, you have a *lot* of intelligence, creativity and drive that it sounds like your day job wasn't tapping at all. My hope for you is that you'll use this as an opportunity to launch into doing something that makes you happier, suits you better and makes use of your considerable talents. It sounds like you're attempting to go in that direction. So congratulations, in a way, and good luck!
dawnwolf on Jan. 4, 2007 9:11 PM — URGENT!! Do. Not. NOT Resign.
...unless they're offering you an attractive buy-out package. If you resign you can't get unemployment compensation. If they lay you off (and if they're asking for a resignation, that means they aren't firing you for cause) you will get unemployment compensation.
It's not much, granted, but it's your due.
dbvanhorn on Jan. 4, 2007 10:19 PM — Re: URGENT!! Do. Not. NOT Resign.
GOOD point!
I do think you're underloaded there, but don't let them take anything away from you that you've earned.
Personally, I'd be glad to have a venn diagram that overlapped :)
tlatoani on Jan. 5, 2007 12:12 AM — Re: URGENT!! Do. Not. NOT Resign.
I didn't tell him that, because it sounds like he already did it.
In some cases, you can get a forced resignation treated as a layoff -- but it's more work.
thatguychuck on (None)
trav13369 on (None)
drkelso on Jan. 5, 2007 12:26 AM
Get your resume online at the job boards if you haven't already. Recruiters are you best friends when it comes to stuff like this. If you already have, log in and make a small update to get your resume bumped to the top of the pecking order.
I have a feeling you'll have a harder time finding the "ideal job" than you will at finding a decent job. Don't forget to stick all your volunteer work on the resume. That is just as good as regular work experience and shows you are motivated and take initiative.
And changing jobs is a good thing cause you'll get exposed to different technology in the process and learn faster than being stuck at the same company.
matt-arnold on Jan. 5, 2007 5:32 PM
Yes, it's interesting that even though I'm not a tech person, exposure to new technologies as a user is fruitful too. With enough such exposure I can observe which ones I might enjoy learning what's under the hood. It's preferable to know which technologies would drive me up the wall, before committing to a career change that would require the wrong ones.
treebones on Jan. 5, 2007 6:30 PM
Gah about the job loss, and whee about the epiphany.
However, as an interim solution, what job keywords should I be looking for, for you?
matt-arnold on Jan. 5, 2007 7:41 PM
See my next post!
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