One has a lot of time to think while job hunting via the internet over a dialup. This is mostly due to the time it takes to send (and lose) packets. It also can be due to the crappy old version of firefox included in FC6 Linux crashing about once an hour. (But to upgrade, you would have to download 6 CDs worth of FC7. Why are all the odd numbered Fedora releases "good" and the even numbers "sucky"?).
Some random observations:
- I am looking for a "big city job" in a small town. There just isnt much call for Unix or Perl or firewalling. I should learn to drive a truck (Wally Thorpe school of trucking). There just doesnt seem to be much call for "Linux and Perl hacker: must provide own tractor."
- There are some terrible web sites out there. One I used to track locally, which is a company that solely designs websites, has a flash website that is so mindbogglingly irritating and so bandwidth and cpu intensive, that I cannot imagine someone would go to that site and say "these people should redesign my web site."
- Some local educational institutions have positions that will never be filled. I dont know what Sunguard Banner is exactly. (I looked it up once, but that was a long time ago.) But I do know it must be something that was outdated when the 386 was popular, because this particular institution has had an opening for an expert for well over 2 years. (Possibly longer, but that is how long I have been tracking them.)
- A local manufacturer makes you go through a whole page of "select country; select city; select department; select bosses name; select hair color of secretary" then gives you a list of every job open in the entire United States. At least I filtered out all the European jobs.
- Some idiot in New York has the wrong zip code for his home town... and every time I search for jobs in this area on LinkedIn.com, the one and only job I get is in New York City. (Get a rope.)
- The only job I have seen so far that mentions firewalls sounds like it is "Sox Audit Scapegoat." No thanks.
- I have seen a quite a few "web specialist" jobs that sound like they want a high school kid able to log into windows 98. Average salary: in the 20s.
- To be honest, the best thing I have seen is "dog catcher." Ellie Mae has advised me against this one.
