Project Management
As said in a comment to the last entry, I have great experience in project management. But many different things are meant by the term. For instance, when I was hired with my current employer it turned out to mean "customer service dispatcher who is responsible for watching the financial bottom line of employees and customers."
My only successful project management experiences involved no business model whatsoever. (Sal Sanfratello disagrees. After thinking it over for months, I am convinced that although his observations were intensely insightful, he has a category error in this case.) I have been working with almost no budget, recruiting labor entirely from volunteers with an inherently slacker ethos who are motivated by something other than money, and always letting somebody else worry about financial return. I realized in the past few months that as soon as the end goal is maximizing financial profits, I get completely lost. Why do you think I avoid being conchair? Conchairs have to work with budgets and hotel contracts.
That's also why, although I am incredibly good at customer relationships, and fiercely awesome at presentation and explanation, I lack the aptitude for making a business deal that is involved in sales. I don't detect the financial strategies that would work for my prospective customers, and have difficulty understanding them when they're explained to me. I also have too much transparency for "social engineering", and too much empathy to accept the fact that business is war and strike a tough deal.
Honestly, even though I try to maintain a good attitude when I have to do it, business has always set my teeth on edge anyway. If I were capable of increasing anyone's money, why did I spend thirty years without showing the slightest interest in increasing my own? If I could manage finances, why would it take me by surprise that I owe over two thousand dollars in taxes, which has effectively doubled my debt?
I have a positive attitude but also favor no-nonsense appraisal. So, the bottom line, being totally candid. My only "victory" resulted in egoboo but not an actual sale, there are no web clients for me to work on, and I'm not good at attracting new ones. Because I like my coworkers so much and they like me, we're currently operating under a polite "consensus reality tunnel" in which my horizontal movement in the company was not the result of failing and being internally fired every couple of weeks. Unless I get this new job, I'm essentially jobless.
Hopefully Frank Hayes will be able to help me get my article published which was in the back of the Penguicon program book. But there's no salary in that, and I need a salary to avoid being in business for myself and requiring that I have a business model. You know what would be an awesome job for me? Giving software classes. I wonder how to get into that. If anybody sees such a job, please drop me a line.
Comments
tlatoani on Apr. 26, 2007 3:51 PM
Call your local community college and ask.
If you're in a county that also offers Rec/Ed classes, call them and ask too.
phecda on Apr. 26, 2007 5:59 PM
Hmmm, maybe you need to focus on doing training? Any successful educator knows that it's 50% knowledge and 50% entertainment. If you can't keep your students from falling into MEGO, then you need another career.
Perhaps talk to Jer about this...
zifferent on Apr. 26, 2007 8:42 PM
Software classes? There's hardly any money in it. Think, life extension courses where you would get a stipend and that's it. If you could somehow get an accredited degree you could substitute teach, maybe. That pays decent money.
If you're good at managing volunteers, volunteer organizations need people like that and it is a real, paying job.
I think I sent you the job description for the Monroe Evening News gig. The position has been open for a bit, but it's worth a try and they are always looking for good people there.
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