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shifuimam · Jul 9, 2007, 04:17 PM

My last day is friday. The 13th. o.O

Now what? I mean, I'm going to start looking for jobs and stuff, but seriously. I've got about six months' of money saved up in case I don't find anything.

I haven't been unemployed since I turned 16. This is weird.

Anyhow, just thought I'd share.

Chuckit · Jul 9, 2007, 04:18 PM

Congrats. What kind of stuff do you do, out of curiosity?

bstone · Jul 9, 2007, 04:23 PM

How did your boss take it?

shifuimam · Jul 9, 2007, 04:24 PM

Well, I was a project manager. But I really, really sucked at it. I did it for a year, and it was making me miserable.

I want to do website design or development - you know, what everyone and their brother wants to do. I've done a couple internal sites as an intern at the same company I just quit, and I did an external site for them (https://www.pdm.cummins.com, for those interested) in order to save money (cheaper and faster to use me than to hire a contractor or intern).

I'm really interested in cross-browser compatibility and accessibility guidelines for sites. I know a couple VPs where I live - one at a corporation and one at a bank, so maybe they can help me out or give me some contacts. Otherwise, who the hell knows what's going to happen...

<edit>
I have the best boss in the world. He apologized to me for not being more involved in my projects and not being aware that I was so stressed out and distraught over what has been going on in my work. He said he blamed himself and regrets not making himself more aware.

Seriously. Best boss ever. I will miss him a ton.
</edit>

selowitch · Jul 9, 2007, 04:37 PM

Originally Posted by shifuimam

I have the best boss in the world. He apologized to me for not being more involved in my projects and not being aware that I was so stressed out and distraught over what has been going on in my work. He said he blamed himself and regrets not making himself more aware.

If he were really sorry, how about offering to make things better for you so you'll stay? How about a raise and/or a different job description? Without deeds to back them up, it could be little more than mere words.

shifuimam · Jul 9, 2007, 04:42 PM

Originally Posted by selowitch

If he were really sorry, how about offering to make things better for you so you'll stay? How about a raise and/or a different job description? Without deeds to back them up, it could be little more than mere words.

Nah, I know him pretty well. There's not really any opportunities for me here. It's a big corporation - anything related to web stuff is contracted out because it costs less to hire someone to design a site and then end their contract than to hire someone to design a site and then either have to fire them or be stuck with them until they quit.

There's just not much that he could do.

GSixZero · Jul 9, 2007, 04:45 PM

Maybe you can work for your company doing what you want to do, but as a contractor?

mdc · Jul 9, 2007, 04:50 PM

I agave my 3 weeks notice this past Friday.
My boss is okay with it and I will be doing the webdesign part of my job freelance for them.

shifuimam · Jul 9, 2007, 04:57 PM

Originally Posted by GSixZero

Maybe you can work for your company doing what you want to do, but as a contractor?

Company's too big. All of our IT contractors are from Indian contracting firms.

I'm going to start with my upper eschelon contacts and go from there. The bank VP I mentioned earlier likes me a lot. His wife is my mom's best friend, and I have done a lot of tech support for them (they got some malware that was bringing up porn ads, so she thought her gradeschool sons were looking up porn; their hard drive catastrophically failed - I opened it up later and there were radial scratches around most of the single platter; etc.). He has a lot of contacts in the business world in Indianapolis, so hopefully he can help me out. Unfortunately, he's on a family vacation this week, so I won't be able to get in touch with him until Monday.

IceEnclosure · Jul 9, 2007, 05:10 PM

I got suspended from work on Saturday.. a full week off. Oops.

:catches rays:

andi*pandi · Jul 9, 2007, 05:29 PM

3 more days, then 3 months off. Kinda.

good luck shifuiman.

SirCastor · Jul 9, 2007, 11:04 PM

Well, if you do get into Web Development, you're going to become extremely uninterested in Cross-Browser Compatibility very quickly. It is the biggest headache of doing anything on the web, making it all work the way it's supposed to.

That said, do you want to do design, or development? A lot of people (I've found) mix these up, they say they want a designer, but they really want a programmer. There are tons of people who can design, but don't know the first thing about code. There are tons of people who can code, but can't make a good looking site to save their lives (This is me really, but most of my work doesn't come in the form of design). If you can learn to do both very well, you're a rare commodity (becoming less rare I suppose.)

Learn PHP, and Javascript. Learn AJAX type things (I've rarely seen true AJAX), and DHTML, because this is the kind of stuff that people say they want when they don't really know what they're talking about. Learn what Web 2.0 means because people will say they want it, when they don't know what it means. Buzz words suck, but learn them.

My $1.50

shifuimam · Jul 10, 2007, 07:07 AM

I can do both, but I enjoy the UI/design part better. I've done several sites in the past for school, work, and fun, and I don't mind at all spending the time to make sure it looks right in every major browser.

I know some PHP and even less Java. Object-oriented programming is a major stumbling block for me. I can do a little classic ASP - basically, any of the languages that let me insert code within my HTML work for me. ASP.NET is a whole different story.

I'm not really a programmer, though. I can use a language to do what I need to do, but not to its full potential. I did a couple sites in PHP during a summer internship in 2005. I hadn't touched PHP or MySQL before I started that job, and it took me maybe two weeks to learn what I needed to do to get the job done. I'm sure it was badly-formed code or whatever, but it worked out perfectly for me. Same goes for the Java - that site that I linked to in an earlier post uses a little Java...just enough for what I needed.

I'd rather be one of those people involved in determining the user interface guidelines for web applications/sites. My company did that before I even started working there, so that's not an option for me there.

At the very least, I'm not naive enough to think that I can just go out there and become a web designer and make a living as a freelancer. I've got a friend interested in starting a business venture with me - he's currently in IT support at IUPUI. He knows Linux and Windows servers and clients inside and out and can do small business networks, and I've got a pretty solid OS X background and the web and graphics stuff...there are enough small business in Indianapolis that we could possibly start up something where we do everything, from the setup to the IT support to the website design and support. But that's likely also a silly notion.

So we'll see. I'll let my MacNN buddies know when I get a job, before I tell any of the unimportant people in my life - you know, like my mom and my boyfriend.

Y3a · Jul 10, 2007, 08:07 AM

Take some classes.

Kevin · Jul 10, 2007, 08:26 AM

Read a book niggaaah

shifuimam · Jul 10, 2007, 08:29 AM

Originally Posted by Y3a

Take some classes.

I did - my degree is CIT. I took a semester of ASP, two semesters of ASP.NET, and a semester of Visual Basic (pre-.NET). My ASP.NET prof - same for both classes - was terrible. Unfortunately, I can't afford to take any classes at IUPUI or a local community college until I have an income again...

Powerbook · Jul 10, 2007, 09:14 AM

Originally Posted by shifuimam

Company's too big. All of our IT contractors are from Indian contracting firms.

<derail>
What are your _alltogether_ experiences with those? I had a larger software project once with an Indian developer team. In the end, you could just dump it into the garbage bin. Yeah, the folks are cheap, yeah they are fast - but what if they run cheap and fast into every wrong direction? Communication including time difference wasn't helpful either. Not to speak of their pissed behavior when we pointed them to the same bugs over and over again.

PB.

shifuimam · Jul 10, 2007, 10:25 AM

Originally Posted by Powerbook

<derail>
What are your _alltogether_ experiences with those? I had a larger software project once with an Indian developer team. In the end, you could just dump it into the garbage bin. Yeah, the folks are cheap, yeah they are fast - but what if they run cheap and fast into every wrong direction? Communication including time difference wasn't helpful either. Not to speak of their pissed behavior when we pointed them to the same bugs over and over again.

PB.

Well, we outsource for all kinds of things. Our IT helpdesk is outsourced to Indians in India, and it's painful most of the time to get stuff fixed. I usually end up submitting my own Remedy tickets (our problem reporting system - anyone who's done tech support has probably used it) because it's such a pain to talk to them.

But I've also got developers working on applications for which I'm the PM, and most of them are amazing. They have great communications skills (sometimes I find grammatical errors in hastily-written status update emails, but that's easily forgivable), are hard workers, and generally do exactly what I need them to do. I've got a guy working on a search engine that nobody here knows anything about, and he's picked up on it really quickly.

My boyfriend works at this same company as a network engineer, and they have Indian contracted resources to do things like port openings in firewalls, security exceptions, DNS changes, etc...he has a terrible time with them. They don't know enough to do the work, so he either has to take time to teach them or just do it himself.

I think it depends on the contracting firm. The guys that I work with daily are excellent. The guys that my boyfriend has to work with are contracted through a different company, and they're not so great.

turtle777 · Jul 10, 2007, 11:03 AM

Good luck with the job search.

I've been looking for a new job in the last 2 months, but found that the summer time is extremely slow. Things just don't move ahead fast because you always have someone on vacation holding things up.

Well, I hope to find something new till fall.

-t

MindFad · Jul 10, 2007, 11:10 AM

Originally Posted by Kevin

Read a book niggaaah

R-E-A-D-A-B-O-OOOOO-KKKK!

IceEnclosure · Jul 10, 2007, 11:44 AM

roring at the book booty bounce.

Kevin · Jul 11, 2007, 05:47 PM

Yes that is some funny shiz yo.

ya heard.