Job hunting in a down economy

For the past few months I've been actively job shopping. Due in part to a demotion and a pay cut. But times are tough, but not as bad here in the mid-west, unless you work in aircraft. I've had a couple of job offers that I've frankly had to turn down. They were good offers with good companies.

Some wives are great at holding up mirrors and keeping their husbands somewhat in check. Mine is one of those. I'm normally a rational and pragmatic guy. I have to be, I work with computers. Computers don't care if I hope that a piece of code will work or not, either it does or it doesn't. Systems are the same way. Life in IT is generally a two-state system. Either the computer/system/program works as it should, or it doesn't. But I'm an emotional creature too with a bit of an ego.

Yes, being offered a position is a bit of an ego booster, and being handed the "thanks, but no thanks" letters is a bit of a let down. I just got another one of those too. So why turn down a position?

The answer is not as simple as it would appear. It is not always about the salary or the position. Benefits and stress play a huge portion of the equation too. Some benefits are tangible, 401(k) contributions, paid time off, vacation time, etc. Others not so much, the boss, coworkers, challenges within the job and overall stress. And, I'm not getting any younger. Not that I'm slowing down, but my direction on life is in a much different place than it was 10-15 years ago.

Salary and title are not the single most important items on the list. What is important? Stress, relationships with coworkers, bosses, and the mission of where one works. Taking a step back the latter seems to be more important than the former.

Overall where I work is still a good place to be. The benefits beyond the salary seem to out factor just the salary alone. Some would say that I'm lucky to have a job. Luck is the law of probability taken personally, I don't believe in luck. I know that I'm talented and frankly I just need to calm down a little and all will be okay. Irrational fear is not a good thing. Always look at things objectively keep focused and things will be okay in the end.

The laws of unintended conciquence

I wrote earlier about not having a smart phone and life without it. To help understand where I was, I had a Palm Treo 650 for two years and a BlackBerry Curve 8330 for another year. So, all told I had a smart phone glued to my body for about three years. Help desk tickets came to my phone, personal and business e-mail, calls, network monitoring pages, news, etc. I was one connected (to work) kinda guy. I thought that I enjoyed all of this connectedness and that it made me a more valuable employee. Or, was that simply a perception of mine?

As a former boss of mine once said "perception is everything." How true that statement has turned out to be over the years. My perception of being glued to work 24x7 I thought would make me more productive and a more valuable employee. I could respond quickly to questions, emergency's, I could even secure shell into some of the Linux boxes from my smart phone. Working while enjoying a high school football game.

I kept up on personal stuff too. Twitter, Facebook, gmail, news, stocks, the list goes on. The joys of a smart phone.

That perception has been shattered now that I don't have that stupid little thing. As one moves through life and the changes that come with it, we should learn from everything. Life is a fluid one-way event that we have to enjoy along the way. Some areas of the path are rocky, dark and sometimes downright ugly, but I digress.

Liberation should be the word of the week. The realization hit me that all of that connectedness didn't help me out at all. It added to my stress level and frankly people can wait if they send me an e-mail. My BlackBerry isn't chiming each time a new e-mail hits my inbox. In fact, Outlook is closed as I write this post. I've resolved to only open Outlook twice a day, respond to e-mails and keep it close the rest of the time. If there is an emergency people can call my cell phone.

So, yes, perception is everything, but we should closely evaluate our own perceptions of ourselves and what we need and what causes stress. I'm feeling more productive and I have fewer interruptions.

Liberation.

Life with and without a smartphone

I'll have to admit that I do miss my Blackberry Curve. I had the phone for over a year and they are very addictive. Work was paying for it, they bought the phone too. But, budget cutbacks happen. The business has to survive and so what to do?

Cutting back is not always fun. It's easy to point to someone else and say "you don't need that" but I'm like everyone else and I don't like it when it happens to me. But I'm flexable and so what to do?

I enjoyed the calendaring aspects of the phone to keep me on track and at meetings. The integration with Exchange 2007 was great. As I like to point out, it was like having Outlook in my pocket. Contacts, tasks and e-mail were also super handy to have right there.

It's been nearly a month without the phone and the world has not come to an end. My wife is not dissapointed that I'm not checking the dumb thing every few minutes and I'm liking not being bothered with all of the e-mail that comes in.

But, I do miss the calendar. I've started moving a lot of my personal items, e-mail, contacts and calendar off to the cloud, namely Google. Now, I have Google voice and I'm looking forward to using that service. Google calendar offers the ability to SMS text my phone when I have an appointment. This will help me with my temporal issues and keep me at some of my personal meetings. Work, well Outlook is more than happy to bug me.

Thank goodness for the cloud and even with a "dumb" phone, I'm still able to keep my meetings and stay productive.