Re: The odds of finding work through job ads

Subject: Re: The odds of finding work through job ads
From: guy <guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 15:51:11 -0800


First, four jobs across 17 years as a programmer

1. From posting at my college placement center: job with an aerospace company, doing applications in FORTRAN.

2. Through a Mensa connection to a computer manufacturer: implementing compilers, text formatter, etc, and serving on ANSI programming language standards committee for BASIC.

3. From an ad in the Communications of the ACM, to another computer manufacturer: implementing compilers and getting involved in COBOL standards.

4. Through a BASIC standards committee friend who worked for another computer manufacturing company, I got an information gathering interview, in which I explored the possibilities of programming, QA, or Tech Comm, with no actual intent to apply. Shortly thereafter, a co-worker got a call from a recruiter on behalf of "company 4" about a job implementing a COBOL compiler. My friend was not interested, but pointed the recruiter to me. Got in there.

As I read company 4's documentation about their COBOL, I kept finding things that needed correcting, so I reported them to the doc team. Soon, I decided to move from implementing to explaining. I moved from software developer to software developer within "company 4". It had its own architecture, OS, implementation language, and home-grown documentation tools.

Eventually, I heard of STC, but the senior folks in the tech doc community at "company 4" informed me that it was a bunch of humanities types who'd come to get rich off technology, and I'd not learn anything useful there.

After about 10 years of documenting languages and tools for "company 4," just as we were making the move from home-grown doc tools to MSWord, I was laid off in 1992. I had no Unix skills, no FrameMaker skills, rudimentary MSWord knowledge, and no STC network of contacts.

I connected with a recruiter who used to work for "company 4" on contract. She was recruiting for "company 5" and I got in, documenting database tools. I immediately sought out STC, joined my local chapter, and networked.

After about 3 years on that job, I got a cold call from a recruiter who had apparently seen my messages to news groups and/or TECHWR-L, and asked if I'd like to interview with "company 6" (OK, Netscape, right after their IPO) to document their server API. Of course I did. I never met the recruiter in person.

When it came time to leave Netscape, I contacted a recruiter well known to the STC community in the SFBay area who specialized in TechComm folks and really knew the market. He set up an interview with "company 7." It turned out that the manager of the doc team was the person whose work I had taken over at Netscape (she had been there on contract), so we were already acquainted. I set to work documenting their enterprise version of an IDE (integrated development environment) for Java.

When it came time to leave "company 7," I went back to the same
recruiter, and he linked me up with "company 8," my current position.
[Two weeks later, "company 7" had layoffs and the position I had been in was eliminated. Whew!] Now, here I am--documenting several APIs, addressing the C, VB/C++, and Java audiences.

So, only 2 of 8 were from ads, and some of the connections could be tallied as both recruiters and networking because I already knew the recruiter either from one job or through STC.

--Guy K. Haas guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com or gkhaas -at- usa -dot- net
Software Exegete in Silicon Valley


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RE: The odds of finding work through job ads: From: Rob Writer

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