Jonathan’s Universe

Archive for the ‘work’ Category

Some readers might be aware of my future loss of employment due to decisions made by my employer to essentially outsource what my current responsibilities are. Obviously if a third-party company is hired to do what I do, than I am no longer required to be around. Since I was made aware of this issue (not by my employer, but my hearsay and rumors of co-workers) I have been on a job hunt.

I’ve been all over the market. I really needed to stay in the technology field, specifically PHP programming. This was for the most mandatory for me. I didn’t want to go elsewhere (let’s say retail or customer service) and then lose my spark and enthusiasm for what I have loved doing for now more than half of my life. I’ve been on Monster.com, been on CareerBuilder.com. But there was one constant issue I kept running in. They all wanted a degree-holder. No if, ands or buts about it. Unfortunately, the little piece of paper signed by an accredited institution (or rather lack of it) caused many loss of opportunities. Many potential employers wouldn’t even speak to me once they found out I didn’t have a degree. It’s not like I didn’t want to go to college.. it’s just because of a certain set of circumstances, I was prohibited from doing so.

But then recently, I started to get a little lucky. I started getting calls from recruiters about job openings and I was really excited. My first interview was with the technology division of the staffing firm  Robert Halves. It was for a contracted term for one of their clients. I really wanted to be a permanent employee, but my time was running short and this could hold me over for the term of the contract. I went in and the interview went mediocre. The guy said that he wanted URLs of my projects that I’ve done for my current employer. Only problem is that 90% of the projects I’ve done are either intranet (locally accessible only) or are password protected. I never really followed up on this. Even before I went in for the interview they had me doing lots of paperwork. Tax forms, I-9 identification, even a consultant contract. I wasn’t a fan of this.

So the journey goes on. I’m really close to giving up hope. My time is running short at my employer (January 1), and I’m literally living paycheck-to-paycheck.

But then I get a call from another recruiting firm, Workbridge Associates. They told me that they were seeking a PHP developer with exactly my skill-set for a client in the Philadelphia area. I started looking into this right away and was very excited about this. I made sure they were aware I didn’t have a degree of any sort, and they told me that’s not a big deal. They were specifically looking for some at my experience level and my age bracket. Man, this is too good to be true!

I went in to the staffing agency for the interview. It was me and like four other guys on this day (there were others on the other days too). I connected really well with the president of the client company. He reaffirmed to me that they didn’t require a degree. He said his view on that is that “some programmers start early and know programming their entire life and they know just as much as a programmer who went to school to get a degree.” That is quite the truth and I am glad that an employer actually sees it that way. Okay, this is SERIOUSLY starting to be too good to be true. Everything’s melding and meshing just perfectly. I have bad luck, this can’t be happening can it?

I start calling the staffing agency every day and they give me new information about the client’s interview schedule. After about the third day, the agency tells me the client’s president really liked me and wanted to bring me back for seconds. They also liked another guy who they’d be bringing back. Not only that, but they feel 2 people aren’t enough, so they want to find at least one other guy to interview, so they hold another round of first round interviews. Now I’m starting to worry.

But here’s where stuff really starts turning against me. The public transportation system that I’d use to get to both the client and to get to the staffing agency just went on strike. Oh my god. I knew it. I have bad luck, of course it couldn’t be this easy to get a nice job. Well the good news is, a very good friend of mine took time out of his day to drive me to and from the interview. This man is my Non-Jesus personal savior!

Anyway, back to the second interviews. I made sure to schedule that I was the last on the list to get a second interview. I did this for two reason. First, my staffing agency contact could give me feedback on the other interviewees  and second, so I would be freshest in their minds when it came to decision-making time.

I went to the interview and felt like I knocked it out of the park. I was answering all the questions with the right answers. An example, “What Javascript libraries have you worked with?” my answer, “JQuery.” Their response, “That is exactly what we use.” Repeat this conversation a few times with a few different experience niches, and you have that interview. Suffice it to say, the interview went REALLY well.

But then some bad news came down the wire. I was told by my staff agency that the team that interviewed me were really excited about me and loved my resume and how I interviewed, but they had just one more interview to do. Except this interview wasn’t being done through the staffing agency. So now I’m starting to worry — this isn’t be done through the agency? My logic was that it could have been an employee looking to transfer positions or a relative of an employee. Uh ohhhhhh.

At this point, my hope dropped and the staffing agency did find me another prospective job that paid less than the initial company, but still well above what I’m making currently. They set up an appointment the next day for me to come in for an interview.

But as I am stepping on the trolley (SEPTA’s off strike at this point) I get a call back from Del, my staffing agency contact. He says “Hey, I know you’re on your way to the office for an interview with another of our clients.*dramatic pause*.. but would you be willing to cancel that interview if I give you a job offer with [prospective employer I was most hopeful about]?”

Of course, my answer was heck yes. I accepted the job where I receive a 106% salaried pay increase (relative to my current employer) and benefits. Wow, seriously? I’m a 20 year old guy making a fairly-low hourly rate at a school district, and I’m about to make a salary that many people in this economy will be envious of. Oh my God.

So essentially, that’s that. I’ve accepted a position as an associate web developer. It’s for a privately-owned company within the education sector, still I’m moving vertically. Sweet. My last day at my current employer is this coming friday, November 20, 2009. It’s going to be a sad day. I’ve spent just about every week day for 2.5 years as an employee and just about every week day for 3 years as a student. It’s going to be really tough saying goodbye, but It’s how this game goes, I guess. Many of these people have been mentors to me and I’ll likely never see them again. It’s all part of growing up, I guess.

My plans on my new salary is pretty much save, save, save. I plan to treat myself to new things very rarely. The only thing I can see treating myself to is the Droid phone that just came out, but that won’t be until my T-Mobile contract expires in march, so there’s still some time for that. I want to save up for a car so I can stop having 1-hour-eachway commutes to my new job, and change to 20-minute-each-way commutes. Additionally, I do want to start going to school next semester. I want to go to night classes at a local college and get my associates degree.

My career will have officially started as a web developer on Monday, November 23rd, 2009. I’m excited.

My employer (which has remained nameless, thus far) has chosen to go ahead and dissolve the physical position (and by extension, my employment) of web developer.

A certain high-powered person has made the decision to sub-contract a company (for now, nameless) to take care of the work for them. Completely. This will obviously render the posistion of staff web developer completely pointless, which is why I will be shown the door.

I think it’s a pretty dangerous thing when you start empowering third-party entities to control your assets, which is exactly what my employer is doing.

The way I found out about this master genius plan is what really gets me. I was sitting at work minding my own business when a teacher I know asked me “Hey, so I heard they are taking the web-site away from you. What happened?” — you see, this guy likes to joke around, so I didn’t take it seriously. Then a teacher came into my office asking for A/V help. I told her I could not help her since “I’m just the web guy.” Her response was, “oh are you that new web guy they just hired?”… my response.. “just hired? new? I’ve been here.. for 2 years.” At this point I knew something fishy was going on.

Apparently, this huge decision was made by one man, who then proceeded to petition for approval from the board of directors…. and because this man is among the most powerful persons with the company, he has inherent leeway with things he wants to do. Assuming the board is comprised of people that aren’t up to par with today’s technology, which does not enable them to make informed decisions about something as severe as this. Does the company not realize they are forfeiting majority control of their biggest public relations asset? Whenever they want something done, they have to submit that and it’ll get done “when it get done.” They won’t have things instantly done when and how they want. Anytime the director of public information had something for me, it was up within minutes. If it was something more involved, it was up within a day. I surely hope this company knows they are in for.

What also ticks me off is now this explains why they kept blocking my projects. I had a project in place that could have theoretically saved the company quite a bit of money per year. I already had the stuff started off, but the implementation of it would’ve required policy change in each building within the organization — which is more work than its worth if they knew for a while they were planning on getting rid of my work. Which is exactly what they are doing. Everything that I have worked on will be meeting the recycling bin and go down the drain.

When I took this job, the website was a barren waste land. I turned it around and developed a brand new innovative content management system specifically for the district. I took the liberty of setting up a testing/development environment server to take care of the development/code changes before they get rolled to the production public server — something that was never down before — something that known of the previous web developers knew/bothered to do. I fixed up errors and the “growing pains” that occured with moving the website to a new server that was due to shotty code written by the first group of web masters. All by myself. What do I get? Nothing. Not even benefits. No paid time off. Just crappy treatment from my co-workers and continous obstacles that are placed to prevent me from doing what I need to do.

I should have honestly figured this out sooner. The company is not taking my employment seriously, because I made myself into an expendable asset by not fighting for what I deserve. I work full-time hours for this company, but they insist on having me officially labeled as a part time employer, which legally means they have less responsibilities — they don’t have to give me benefits or any honors and treatment they give to full time employees. You remember the black mold issue and how long it took them to fix that.. and how much office-political bull crap I had to put up with just for THEM, my employer to deal with a severe health concern in the workplace. Seriously, they knew about the incident before I was an employee here, and I sent my own  requests in (filed them with the building administrator’s secretary) Obviously, I was not important to them, but I should have figured this out back then. But I guess hindsight is always 20/20.

As for my timeline — I have no idea. They still need someone to maintain the website right now. The contract is not finalized, and it will take a bit of time for them to construct the new webpage. But see, any new enhancements I make will all be done in vain… as by the time it’s implemented the system will be erased from existence. I was working on a YouTube-style video system  that would’ve been very innovative for my company’s website.. but now I don’t see the point in exerting myself. But hey, it’s their company. Whatever the hell they want.

See this is what happens when companies choose the easy way out of things and make it someone else’s problem. The little people get screwed.. while the big people get six figure salaries and sport cars can sit back. Niccceeee.

So, that black mold issue I had? It’s now fixed.

It involved one of my coworkers going to the highest ranking manager of the department. He had a little looksie and found my original work order dated July 1st and my coworker’s followup work order dated September 16. So how come the high school level manager decided to let the work orders that concern toxic material sit around for months? Curious. Oh probably because he’s incompetent.

This reminds me of how about two months ago my direct supervisor and another supervisor sent several requests for a key to be made for my door. His response to me when I followed up with him about it was to the effect ‘When I get around to it.’ You know how we fixed it? The second supervisor (who I see more than my supervisor) went to the same guy who fixed the black mold problem.

So I wonder.. what does this high school level manager actually do?

• OSHA does not render assistance to employees in a public school.
• You’re supposed to ask your union
• If you’re not in an union, good luck trying to get safety & health concerns addressed.
• When you’re tired of waiting.. after months of waiting.. for a work request to be handled, it probably means your employer does not care about your health.
• Even though black mold is linked to respiratory damage and headaches, getting daily (only during the work week) headaches and having upper chest discomfort doesn’t matter.
• When you ask the maintenance lead directly to help (of course after you already made the original work request months prior), and replies asking “WHAT SCHOOL ARE YOU IN.”, it’s not so he can dispatch someone to your building, it’s so he can bitch to the right building principal about you wasting his time.

UPDATE: Problem has been fixed. See this entry.