job hunt blahs

[gfish]

After the Amazon failure, I've been getting somewhat depressed about job hunting. No responses since then, and I'm starting to apply to less and less interesting listings. Pretty much given up any hope of finding something relevant to my Master's work. Part of the problem is that I continue to be somewhat ambivalent to continuing programming as a career. It's all I'm really qualified for, though. I keep thinking about education work, since I enjoyed TAing so much. But to get a real job there is pretty much going to require a whole new certification process. Which I'd be up for, but this is not the time.

Mostly I just dream of finding a job that lets me work with my hands, building wonderful things. What a weird idea, being able to look back at the end of the day at tangible results! I guess ideally it would be making props or working in a shop for a research group or something. I'm not without skills along those lines, I'd like to think, but I have absolutely no professional experience. If those jobs even exist around here, I have no idea how to get into them.

So, yeah. Blah.

Comments

No! No! No!

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Do not get discouraged! I forbid it!

Do what you have to to do what you want to, though. Personally, I still love programming after thirty years. Dealing with grade-grubbing undergrads drove me batty, though.

[wazm.livejournal.com]

So, pretty much every group at Amazon is hiring. Unfortunately, my impression is that most groups don't know how to interview people, or have unrealistic expectations. I just sent an email to my manager to see if they can recycle your listing in the recruiting db over to our group. (Not sure if he can, I remember hearing that they may wait a few months before re-interviewing a candidate.)

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Cisco is hiring Windows/Mac/embedded devs in the consumer division (routers etc.). Let me know.

Also, might be worth giving your resume to Google if you haven't already.

[dianthus.livejournal.com]

Just build your own robots? Is that crazy?

[solarbird]

ROBOTS! FUCK YEA!

But yeah, don't be discouraged, it's not you. Or rather, you're gonna feel discouraged anyway, and I been there, but don't internalise it.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

You might try for smaller companies; I've found that that environment seems to have doubled my effective "programming lifetime".

Whether that's an overall good thing is debatable, of course. :)

[gorgeousgary]

Any idea what sort of "research group" you might find interesting? I have some connections in the wood industry up there. (Although most of them are either down in Tacoma or across the state at WSU.)

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

Two thoughts.

First, what kind of programming do you do? Someone Satyr is working with is looking for a PHP/SQL programmer to do some contract game development.

Second, the guy from XCOR that I introduced you to at Norwescon mentioned that he was very impressed with your metalwork, and that they're probably going to be hiring toward the end of the year.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

PHP/SQL used to be my bread and butter, back before grad school. I'd definitely be interested in contract work doing that again. Not knowing exactly what would be involved, I should add the caveat that I'm not a web designer -- it's better for everyone if I don't design interfaces of any sort. :)

[drakemonger.livejournal.com]

Have you applied at Google? When I mentioned it to you last you weren't ready to apply for jobs yet. We're a programming shop, of course, and like all large companies your interview loop could vary significantly.

But if you got a job on the Seattle side, there's a group of people there that spends a fair bit of time playing with 3D printers and making hardware - not official projects, but it'd be easy to justify spending 20% of your time on it.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Fie. That's awfully frustrating and depressing. (I have endless empathy for having basically only one career with sufficient experience to be worth pursuing, and feeling trapped.)
Given the subject matter of your master's degree, is there any possibility you could find people who are doing design/construction of machine tools or robotics intended for assembly/production equipment?

[ivy]

Have you looked at IV? That is pretty much what they do. I have a few friends in their Seattle office. Depending on your opinion on intellectual property, you may or may not consider them evil, but they may at least be worth checking out for you.