From: Robert Elton Maas
Subject: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3geqbg$2g2@openlink.openlink.com>
I got straight A's in mathematics from 3rd grade through college,
placed top five nationwide in the William Lowell Putnam math contest,
programmed computers for 21 years (of which 14 years was LISP), and in
1989 I passed a Mensa qualification IQ test (top 1% on BOTH tests,
whereas top 2% on either would be enough). But nowadays there's no
employment available for me. I've been unemployed more than 3 years,
and haven't even gotten a job interview for over a year despite working
hard all these 3+ years trying to find a job. All the job openings have
specific experience I don't have, such as C++, Unix device drivers, or
MPW. None of the employers offering these jobs are willing to let me
train myself for a few days to get familiar with the new programming
environment, despite the fact that I taught myself all the the
languages and systems I've used in the past. They accept ONLY people
who have used exactly the particular programming language environment
and operating system for exactly the same kind of application or
utility. Even the LISP openings aren't for regular programming but only
for very specialized fields I haven't done, such as writing compilers
or doing specialized fields of A.I. Furthermore virtually ALL of the
current openings require at least three years shrink-wrapped commercial
product experience, wheras all my work was in-house utilities and
research and prototypes for innovative new software methods.

Will I have to be forever unemployed because of this terrible job
market?? Won't anybody give me a chance to earn some money any more??
Will my two little children (born 1990.Mar and 1991.Dec) and I have to
rely on welfare for part of our living expenses and "incur debt" for
the rest, until my ability to go deeper into debt reaches its limit (we
are currently over $25,000 in debt, and have unused MasterCard&VISA
credit limit of another $30,000, but eventually even that might run
out) and we can no longer pay the rent so we all have to vacate a
decent residence and live in the streets begging for handouts from
passersby? Can't some generous employer, or just somebody with some
extra money to spend on special information services, give a chance to
the person who compiled the toplevel meta-index to the InterNet,
recently converted to HTML format to be part of the WWW?

http://WWW.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/MaasInfo.TopIndex.html

From: ··········@DELPHI.COM
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3gf20g$r9n@news2.delphi.com>
···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas) writes:

>I got straight A's in mathematics from 3rd grade through college,
>placed top five nationwide in the William Lowell Putnam math contest,
>programmed computers for 21 years (of which 14 years was LISP), and in
>1989 I passed a Mensa qualification IQ test (top 1% on BOTH tests,
>whereas top 2% on either would be enough). But nowadays there's no
>employment available for me. I've been unemployed more than 3 years,
>and haven't even gotten a job interview for over a year despite working
>hard all these 3+ years trying to find a job. All the job openings have
>specific experience I don't have, such as C++, Unix device drivers, or
>MPW. None of the employers offering these jobs are willing to let me
>train myself for a few days to get familiar with the new programming
>environment, despite the fact that I taught myself all the the
>languages and systems I've used in the past. They accept ONLY people
>who have used exactly the particular programming language environment
>and operating system for exactly the same kind of application or
>utility. Even the LISP openings aren't for regular programming but only
>for very specialized fields I haven't done, such as writing compilers
>or doing specialized fields of A.I. Furthermore virtually ALL of the
>current openings require at least three years shrink-wrapped commercial
>product experience, wheras all my work was in-house utilities and
>research and prototypes for innovative new software methods.

Jesus, Robert.  I am really astonished.  I'm astonished because I have 
worked for about 15 years as a software engineer, more an applications 
sort, for the past several years I've worked on energy potentials to fold
proteins, and I have *never* had trouble finding a job.  Actually 
programming work seemed to be *too* abundant, it's what I did out of college
because that's where the work was.  You tend to be pushed into being a 
computer jock by the job market.

In my experience coming out of college with a BS in math, there was lots of
systems-analyst type work.  Lots of people wanted to hire math majors, not
particularly to do math but because they have good reasoning abilities.

I'm not saying this to make you feel bad.  But, why don't you teach yourself
what is needed?  I don't know what the call for Lisp is.  Why don't you 
teach yourself whatever programming languages are used most?  Is this an
end-of-the-Cold-War sort of woe?  Is what you're skilled in, mostly used
by military contractors?  Maybe you should figure out what they want out 
there.

I'm astonished because you don't sound very picky about the work you'll
take.  So why are you having a hard time?  *Are* you being picky?  Are you
focussing too much on your IQ and not enough on what is needed out there?
There are lots and lots of people who will talk about how smart they are.
I do not know that it goes very far with employers.  They like to see 
results, not just hear about it.

I'll tell you something I used to do in interviews.  Ask them what the
problems are that have to be solved, and brainstorm for answers to them.
I would *not* talk about your IQ or your Putnam scores, I doubt it 
means anything to them.

I don't buy that your woes are the fault of the job market.  I think you
are probably doing something that you could change -- talking to employers
the wrong way, not doing the job search process right, looking for a sort
of job that has gone out of style, SOMETHING.

And above all, don't sound desperate!  If you talk about how brilliant
you are and how you can't find a job, it is just going to make people wonder
if something's fishy.  

				Laura
From: author of the toplevel meta-index to the Internet
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3gttb5$e8b@openlink.openlink.com>
Gee, I've gotten several private e-mail replies since I posted my
original article (and I posted a public response to one of them just a
few minutes ago), but this article from ··········@news.delphi.com is
the first public followup I've seen. (Stanford's news filtering service
claimed there was another followup a few days ago from
····@ix.netcom.com, but when I asked the service for the article it
said the article wasn't available, and that article never appeared in
the newsfeed here via OpenLink.Com, so I still haven't seen it nor any
other public followup prior to LauraHelen's that I'm responding to
now.)

<<I have worked for about 15 years as a software engineer, more an
applications sort, for the past several years I've worked on energy
potentials to fold proteins, and I have *never* had trouble finding a
job.>>

I guess there are lots of jobs for people to work on energy potentials
to fold proteins. Unfortunately that's irrelevant to my employment
needs because nobody has ever offered me such a job so I don't have any
experience in that field so wouldn't be able to qualify for such a job
today. Fortunately you have that experience and that field hasn't dried
up yet, so you can still find such jobs. Maybe next year it'll dry up.
:-)

More likely, maybe next year the problem will be completely solved and
computerized, so anybody can just feed in the chemical structure
formula (or via macros just the list of amino acids, all cross-linking
computed automatically by computer), and all the energy potentials are
computed automatically and translated to whatever is needed by the next
program that uses that information to draw pictures or analyze chemical
reactions, and your services will no longer be needed to write new code
for the energy potential themselves. Then you'll be unemployed too,
because you'll have too much experience in one field so nobody will
want to hire you in any other field because they would think you'd
expect a high pay rate, or they'd expect you to quickly find a job back
in your original field (despite the field no longer being needed) so be
afraid their re-training of you would be wasted when you quit the
new-field job back to the old field.

<<Actually programming work seemed to be *too* abundant, it's what I
did out of college because that's where the work was. You tend to be
pushed into being a computer jock by the job market.>>

I agree, somewhat. Computer programming wasn't abundant in the early
1970's, but there was nothing else at all available (except making
Round Table pizzas for $1.65/hr; I couldn't even get a job at
MacDonalds hamburger on El Monte near El Camino because I had a college
diploma and they refused to hire me because they thought I'd jump jobs
just as they finished training me), so eventually the only jobs I got
(when the 1970-76 recession finally ended) was in computer programming,
and I did that until 1991 when this current recession hit. All that
time I never got an offer for any other decent kind of work, so I
stayed with computer programming for pay.

<<why don't you teach yourself what is needed?>>

I already did. I taught myself C programming, using Sesame C on my
Macintosh, then did some C programming on Unix. But there haven't been
any "entry level" programming jobs in C/Unix or C/Macintosh all this
time, so why did I bother, and why are you suggesting I should have
bothered?

I also read a book on C++ programming, but don't have access to any C++
compiler so can't practice it beyond just reading the concepts in the
book. (If anybody knows of a free C++ compiler that runs on a Macintosh
Plus with 1MB RAM and doesn't require MPW, please tell me where to find
it!!)

I also taught myself HTML and converted the MaasInfo files to HTML
format (URL listed in my original article of this thread, did anybody
miss it?), and have been responding to the HTML-author job ads of the
past couple months. I don't yet know if I'll get any job offers for
that kind of work.

<<Is what you're skilled in, mostly used by military contractors?>>

No, it's mostly used by research projects and for in-house utilities.
Unfortunately for me, government (NSF) and industry (IBM) funds for
such research have dried up, and for in-house use companies seem to be
buying commercial software now instead of writing their own software.

<<Maybe you should figure out what they want out there.>>

They want 3 years paid industry experience putting out commercial
shrink-wrapped products. Any other kind of work is unacceptable to them
for "experience". It doesn't matter how well I can program computers,
only the fact I haven't done shrink-wrapped products yet.

<<I'm astonished because you don't sound very picky about the work
you'll take. So why are you having a hard time?>>

Because I don't have any past experience that EXACTLY matches what any
current employer is looking for.

<<*Are* you being picky?>>

No. If it pays $10/hr or more and is near where I reside, and it's not
horribly dangerous (security guard, coal miner, prostitute with a HIV
carrier, etc.) it's fine with me. But unless it's something to do with
computers or math or information organization or technical
documentation, nobody is going to pay me $10/hr because I'm not worth
it in any other field. For example, who would pay me $10/hr to run a
cash register when the going rate is $7/hr? But I'd really like at
least $20/hr for computer programming, or $15/hr for technical writing.
But lots of people say I'm not asking enough money, that if I asked at
least $40/hr I'd be more likely to get the job, because then the
employer would think I'm worth something. But that all seems stupid to
me. If you want to find me a job that pays $40/hr, and give me $25/hr,
and pocket the differerence, that'd be better for me than remaining
unemployed.

<<There are lots and lots of people who will talk about how smart they
are. I do not know that it goes very far with employers. They like to
see results, not just hear about it.>>

I've been trying for years to find somebody to come over and see my
HyperCard demos of my prototypes for ways to teach math students how to
set up "word problems". I tried desperately to get CCC (Computer
Curriculum Corporation) to look at them, because its founder and former
owner (Pat Suppes, the founder and head of IMSSS where I formerly
worked) said they'd be interested, but they never showed any interest.
They did give me a regular job interview in 1993, but still showed no
interest in my demos. If nobody will look at my results, there's not
much I can do about what you said.

<<Ask them what the problems are that have to be solved, and brainstorm
for answers to them.>>

That's what I did in virtually all my interviews to date, especially at
Synopsys where they interviewed me for 4.5 hours (5 interviewers)
1992.Dec, then made me wait until 1993.Feb before they finally told me
they had hired somebody else in late January. I don't know whether they
liked my ideas and hired somebody else to implement them, or didn't
like them at all. They seemed to like them at the time, but it could be
they were just hypocrites trying to be polite.
From: Roger Tinkoff
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <ROGT.95Feb3150441@holmes.engr.sgi.com>
In article <··········@openlink.openlink.com>, ···@BTR.Com (author of the toplevel meta-index to the Internet) writes:

Robert> More likely, maybe next year the problem will be completely
Robert> solved and computerized, so anybody can just feed in the
Robert> chemical structure formula (or via macros just the list of amino
Robert> acids, all cross-linking computed automatically by computer),
Robert> and all the energy potentials are computed automatically and
Robert> translated to whatever is needed by the next program that uses
Robert> that information to draw pictures or analyze chemical reactions,
Robert> and your services will no longer be needed to write new code for
Robert> the energy potential themselves. Then you'll be unemployed too,
Robert> because you'll have too much experience in one field so nobody
Robert> will want to hire you in any other field because they would
Robert> think you'd expect a high pay rate, or they'd expect you to
Robert> quickly find a job back in your original field (despite the
Robert> field no longer being needed) so be afraid their re-training of
Robert> you would be wasted when you quit the new-field job back to the
Robert> old field.

This won't happen to her if she makes sure to keep up with what is new
in the industry, instead of just doing what she's doing while it's in
demand without giving any thought to what's supposed to happen to her in
the future.

Robert> so eventually the only jobs I got (when the
Robert> 1970-76 recession finally ended) was in computer programming,
Robert> and I did that until 1991 when this current recession hit. All
Robert> that time I never got an offer for any other decent kind of
Robert> work, so I stayed with computer programming for pay.

OK, so you programmed all that time and never paid attention to what was
new and would be in demand for the future?  What would you have
considered "decent work"?  I don't know.  From what you're saying, you
got into programming becuase it paid well at the time, and no other
"decent" work in your chosen field came along.  Did you program LISP for
the next 14 years becuase you were hoping for a math job to come along
and you didn't think you'd ever have to upgrade your skills to compete
in the ever-changing job market?

Robert> <<why don't you teach yourself what is needed?>>

Robert> I already did. I taught myself C programming, using Sesame C on
Robert> my Macintosh, then did some C programming on Unix. But there
Robert> haven't been any "entry level" programming jobs in C/Unix or
Robert> C/Macintosh all this time, so why did I bother, and why are you
Robert> suggesting I should have bothered?

I hate to say this, becuase I don't want to sound like I am in any way
for age discrimination.  But when employees want to hire somebody for an
"entry-level" job, they are looking for somebody with the basics of the
latest knowledge (can best be found at colleges), and well, is not going
to have a problem working long hours to learn stuff fast.  I'm not
saying that you can't do this just as well, but if an employer is trying
to choose between hiring the 22 year old fresh-out-of-school CS grad
with no big commitments, who is ready to learn (and to some degree, play
their game), and the older, seasoned programmer who has already spent
many years learning to do things somebody else's way, and has
commitments like kids, family, etc., who do you think they will choose?
It sucks, but they will most likely go for the younger candidate who is
going to work the 12-hour days and spend Saturdays in there coding away.
Somebody with kids and commitments which will make them just a
nine-to-fiver is not somebody that anybody will hire for an entry-level
job. 

I'm not trying to be harsh here, but I've been reading your posts for
the last year or so Robert, and I feel that I'm saying something here
that a lot of people are thinking, but don't want to say.

Robert> <<Maybe you should figure out what they want out there.>>

Robert> They want 3 years paid industry experience putting out
Robert> commercial shrink-wrapped products. Any other kind of work is
Robert> unacceptable to them for "experience". It doesn't matter how
Robert> well I can program computers, only the fact I haven't done
Robert> shrink-wrapped products yet.

Robert, I'm sure that you're a very smart guy, and you no doubt know a
hell of a lot more about programming than I do.  But for some reason, no
prospective employer you have spoken with in the last three years feels
that you can do the job that would be required of you.  Are they all
against you?  Maybe it has to do with the way you come off in
interviews.  I don't know.  All I see is you posting every few months or
so, a bunch of people following up saying what they think the problem
might be, and you then following up to them saying how what they're
suggesting won't help you or doesn't apply in your case.  What do you
want out of this?

Robert> <<I'm astonished because you don't sound very picky about the
Robert> work you'll take. So why are you having a hard time?>>

Robert> Because I don't have any past experience that EXACTLY matches
Robert> what any current employer is looking for.

Again, why didn't you keep up with what was new while you had the
chance?

Robert> <<*Are* you being picky?>>

Robert> No. If it pays $10/hr or more and is near where I reside, and
Robert> it's not horribly dangerous (security guard, coal miner,
Robert> prostitute with a HIV carrier, etc.) it's fine with me. But
Robert> unless it's something to do with computers or math or
Robert> information organization or technical documentation, nobody is
Robert> going to pay me $10/hr because I'm not worth it in any other
Robert> field. For example, who would pay me $10/hr to run a cash
Robert> register when the going rate is $7/hr? But I'd really like at
Robert> least $20/hr for computer programming, or $15/hr for technical
Robert> writing.  But lots of people say I'm not asking enough money,
Robert> that if I asked at least $40/hr I'd be more likely to get the
Robert> job, because then the employer would think I'm worth
Robert> something. But that all seems stupid to me. If you want to find
Robert> me a job that pays $40/hr, and give me $25/hr, and pocket the
Robert> differerence, that'd be better for me than remaining unemployed.

I don't think you can afford to be so picky, if your financial situation
is as bad as you say it is.  I would be taking what I can get.

Robert> <<There are lots and lots of people who will talk about how
Robert> smart they are. I do not know that it goes very far with
Robert> employers. They like to see results, not just hear about it.>>

Robert> I've been trying for years to find somebody to come over and see
Robert> my HyperCard demos of my prototypes for ways to teach math
Robert> students how to set up "word problems". I tried desperately to
Robert> get CCC (Computer Curriculum Corporation) to look at them,
Robert> because its founder and former owner (Pat Suppes, the founder
Robert> and head of IMSSS where I formerly worked) said they'd be
Robert> interested, but they never showed any interest.  They did give
Robert> me a regular job interview in 1993, but still showed no interest
Robert> in my demos. If nobody will look at my results, there's not much
Robert> I can do about what you said.

Have you ever considered getting into teaching?  Or working in some sort
of educational environment where your skill would come in handy?

What it comes down to is, why should an employer hire you do to a
particular programming job given your skill set, when they can find a
bunch of people who have exactly what they want?

-rogt
From: Robert Mah
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <rmah-0402951627080001@rmah.dialup.access.net>
···@BTR.Com wrote:
)
) 1970's, but there was nothing else at all available (except making
) Round Table pizzas for $1.65/hr; I couldn't even get a job at
) MacDonalds hamburger on El Monte near El Camino because I had a
) college diploma and they refused to hire me because they thought I'd
) jump jobs just as they finished training me), so eventually the only

If they won't hire you because you have a college degree, guess what
the solution is?  Don't tell them!  Is that so hard to figure out?


) was in computer programming, and I did that until 1991 when this
) current recession hit. All that time I never got an offer for any
) other decent kind of work, so I stayed with computer programming for
) pay.

In other words, you don't enjoy doing programming.  I'll bet this
attitude spews forth by the bucketful when you interview.  Why hire
someone who doesn't enjoy the work?


) I already did. I taught myself C programming, using Sesame C on my
) Macintosh, then did some C programming on Unix. But there haven't been
) any "entry level" programming jobs in C/Unix or C/Macintosh all this
) time, [...]

This is bull -- an utter lie.  There have been lots of entry level jobs
in both specialties during the time frame in question.  There have also
been lots of jobs at higher levels as well.


) I also taught myself HTML and converted the MaasInfo files to HTML
) format (URL listed in my original article of this thread, did anybody
) miss it?), and have been responding to the HTML-author job ads of the
) past couple months. I don't yet know if I'll get any job offers for
) that kind of work.

Do you actually expect someone to hire you full time to author HTML
pages?  At present these are *contract* work opportunities.  And the
pretty good rates too.  Given that you set up the MaasInfo pages (and
if they are any good -- I haven't seem 'em) you should be able to get
between $50 to $100 per hour for your services with ease.

Think.  Analyze.  Act.  If you can.
 

) Because I don't have any past experience that EXACTLY matches what
) any current employer is looking for.

This is the employers *goal*.  In most cases, they have to settle for
someone who has worked in similar fields or sometimes only remotely
related ones.  In this case, you judge a prospective employee by how
well they are going to work with the rest of the team, how willing they
seem to be to learn and their general enthousiasm.


) I've been trying for years to find somebody to come over and see my
) HyperCard demos of my prototypes for ways to teach math students how
) to set up "word problems".  I tried desperately to get CCC (Computer
) ...

Read up a bit on sales techniques.  If you've got something to sell, in
this case yourself and your program, they YOU must take proactive steps
to close the sale.  Relying upon others simply shows to them that you
aren't all that interested.

You actually asked them to "come over" to your residence to see the
prototype?  Hah!  The sheer stupidity of that makes me laugh.

And "prototype"?  You've had years!  Why isn't it working yet?


) Synopsys where they interviewed me for 4.5 hours (5 interviewers)
) 1992.Dec, then made me wait until 1993.Feb before they finally told me
) they had hired somebody else in late January.

BFD, that's common practice at large companies.  Get used to it.

) I don't know whether they liked my ideas and hired somebody else to
) implement them, or didn't like them at all. 

Ooohh, conspiracies theories too!  I learned early that I wasn't as
smart as I thought I was.  Or rather, that it was very likely that any
idea I had was also in the heads of dozens, if not hundreds or thousands
of others around the world.  It's not the idea that counts, it's what
you do with it.  It seems you have yet to learn this.


) They seemed to like them at the time, but it could be they were just
) hypocrites trying to be polite.

P.S. They were probably just trying to be polite.


To summarize.  Either you are trolling (and doing a damn good job of
it) or you are stupid.

Cheers,
Rob
_______________________________________________________________________
Robert S. Mah        Macintosh Software Development     +1 212 947 6507
One Step Beyond         and Network Consulting           ····@panix.com
From: Alex Ramos
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h5prg$8bo@aurora.engr.LaTech.edu>
author of the toplevel meta-index to the Internet (···@BTR.Com) wrote:

> That's what I did in virtually all my interviews to date, especially at
> Synopsys where they interviewed me for 4.5 hours (5 interviewers)
> 1992.Dec, then made me wait until 1993.Feb before they finally told me
> they had hired somebody else in late January. I don't know whether they
> liked my ideas and hired somebody else to implement them, or didn't
> like them at all. They seemed to like them at the time, but it could be
> they were just hypocrites trying to be polite.

To me it really sounds like you didn't followup after the interview.

Also, some people find non-standard abbreviations annoying (e.g. 1992.Dec)
so I'd recommend not using those on your resume.


--
Alex Ramos (·····@engr.latech.edu) * http://www.latech.edu/~ramos/
From: Richard Lee
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <RLEE.95Feb6112207@nlp.vienna.itd.sterling.com>
Robert --

Unlike most (all?) of the other respondents in this thread, I've been in
your situation (or close to it), and so I will not take the negative
tone most of them did.

After a dozen years with two employers, I had dug myself into a small
DoD/Lisp/AI niche.  I got laid off during the DoD funding shrinkage in
Silicon Valley.  Lisp jobs were drying up at an incredible rate.
Despite good academic and employment credentials, I spent over a _year_
looking, and then got into a new project in northern Virginia.

It's all well and good to say "go out and learn C / C++".  Well, I could
_point_ to some programming experience (not a whole lot, admittedly) in
C, Motif, and SQL.  I expressed a willingness to work in those areas,
and left salary requirements open.  It didn't help.

Perhaps if, as others have suggested, you picked up those skills and
_offered_ to work at entry-level or close to it, employers would be more
than willing to get someone of your skills and experience at that price.
Just a guess...

Good luck.
-- 
Richard Lee   ····@vienna.itd.sterling.com   Sterling Software, Vienna VA
     "Don't take life so serious, son...  It ain't NOHOW permanent."
From: Richard Boyd
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3gf397$m7v@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com>
In <··········@openlink.openlink.com> ···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas) 
writes: 

>Can't some generous employer, or just somebody with some
>extra money to spend on special information services, give a chance to
>the person who compiled the toplevel meta-index to the InterNet,
>recently converted to HTML format to be part of the WWW?
>
>http://WWW.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/MaasInfo.TopIndex.htm
l
>


Well, I feel for you, but you know that "I'm so smart that companies 
should be lining up for me" attitude just doesn't go over well in the 
nineties.

Employers just don't give a damn how smart you are, and they don't want 
to hire somebody that is going to take several months to get up to 
speed.

You expect an employer to teach you a new language and then wait for you 
you to become proficient in it? It just don't happen that way.

You might help yourself a whole lot if you maybe took some classes in C 
or C++, and learned the language on your own. Then you'd probably have a 
good shot at an entry level spot. And yes you will probably have to 
settle for less than what you used to make, but you want to put food on 
the table for your kids, right? And if you are really as brilliant as 
you think you are, you'll be moved into the better paying positions 
soon, anyway.

rhb
From: Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3gtu66$efj@openlink.openlink.com>
I previously asked <<Can't some generous employer, or just somebody
with some extra money to spend on special information services, give a
chance to the person who compiled the toplevel meta-index to the
InterNet, recently converted to HTML format to be part of the WWW?>>
and ····@ix.netcom.com (Richard Boyd) responded <<Well, I feel for you,
but you know that "I'm so smart that companies should be lining up for
me" attitude just doesn't go over well in the nineties.>>

Who said anything about companies lining up for me? I only asked for
ONE (1) job offer in 3.5 years when I made that complaint about lack of
jobs. If you think getting ONE (1) job offer in 3.5 years would be
"companies lining up ..." you have a strange sense of English usage.

I got a 2.5 week contract a couple years ago, but that didn't even pay
enough for one month's regular living expenses (it paid less than $1500
total). For regular work of any kind that would pay even one month's
living expenses, I haven't gotten even one job offer in all my nearly
3.5 years of looking.
From: Chris Long
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3gfmqu$qam@cnj.digex.net>
In article <··········@openlink.openlink.com>, Robert Elton Maas wrote:

>I got straight A's in mathematics from 3rd grade through college,
>placed top five nationwide in the William Lowell Putnam math contest,

If I were hiring, I'd hire you based on this alone, regardless of any
other information (unless it was extremely negative, like stealing from
work).  It shows an unusually powerful talent for problem-solving, which
in my experience readily adapts to just about any task.  Of course, I
might then fire you if you turned out to be a slacker or something.  :)

The first person who hires this guy is probably going to be rather
happy they did.
-- 
Chris Long, 265 Old York Rd., Bridgewater, NJ  08807-2618
http://www.webcom.com/~clong

Score: 0, Diff: 1, clong killed by a Harvard Math Team on  1
From: Arun Gupta
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <D3Lp9H.6J3@nntpa.cb.att.com>
In article <··········@cnj.digex.net>, Chris Long <·····@cnj.digex.net> wrote:
>In article <··········@openlink.openlink.com>, Robert Elton Maas wrote:
>
>>I got straight A's in mathematics from 3rd grade through college,
>>placed top five nationwide in the William Lowell Putnam math contest,
>
>If I were hiring, I'd hire you based on this alone, regardless of any
>other information (unless it was extremely negative, like stealing from
>work).  It shows an unusually powerful talent for problem-solving, which
>in my experience readily adapts to just about any task.  Of course, I
>might then fire you if you turned out to be a slacker or something.  :)
>
>The first person who hires this guy is probably going to be rather
>happy they did.

Since I was familiar with somebody who used to hang-out in the grad.
student dorm. at the univ. where I studied; and this somebody was once
a very promising mathematician, Putnam and all, I wouldn't do what you
would.  

-arun gupta
>-- 
>Chris Long, 265 Old York Rd., Bridgewater, NJ  08807-2618
>http://www.webcom.com/~clong
>
>Score: 0, Diff: 1, clong killed by a Harvard Math Team on  1
From: Psycler
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <psyclerD35t8F.LDK@netcom.com>
Robert Elton Maas (···@BTR.Com) wrote:

: Will I have to be forever unemployed because of this terrible job
: market?? Won't anybody give me a chance to earn some money any more??
: Will my two little children (born 1990.Mar and 1991.Dec) and I have to
: rely on welfare for part of our living expenses and "incur debt" for
: the rest, until my ability to go deeper into debt reaches its limit (we
: are currently over $25,000 in debt, and have unused MasterCard&VISA
: credit limit of another $30,000, but eventually even that might run
: out) and we can no longer pay the rent so we all have to vacate a
: decent residence and live in the streets begging for handouts from
: passersby? Can't some generous employer, or just somebody with some
: extra money to spend on special information services, give a chance to
: the person who compiled the toplevel meta-index to the InterNet,
: recently converted to HTML format to be part of the WWW?

Okay. I have an idea that might just work for you. You have
$30k unused credit on credit cards, right?  Most credit cards will
provide you checks that draw off of your credit limit but 
function like checks from a regular checking account. Now,
assuming you have more than one credit account (you say visa
*and* mastercard), what you do is start using those checks to pay your
bills, including your credit card bills. Each month, you pay
your mc bill with a visa check and your visa bill with a mc check.
If you can minimize your overall spending, then your excess of 
$30k credit should last you quite a long time. Now, by
paying off the full balance each month in this method, you
will be establishing an AAAA credit history. That will aid
you when your credit of $30k is reduced to $5k and you need to
open up more credit card accounts with $25k limits to pay off
the balances of the now existing accounts. But, believe me
it's a self-perpetuating access to money that's just sitting
around not doing anything useful and in all rights, you 
deserve access to it. You can spend your life work free if
you're not afraid of debt. Go for it.
-- 
          Psycler                                        
From: Psycler
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <psyclerD3BC6A.7Bp@netcom.com>
James Nathan Durchenwald (········@icaen.uiowa.edu) wrote:
: ·······@netcom.com (Psycler) wrote:

: :Okay. I have an idea that might just work for you. You have
: :$30k unused credit on credit cards, right?  Most credit cards will
: :provide you checks that draw off of your credit limit but
: :function like checks from a regular checking account. Now,
: :assuming you have more than one credit account (you say visa
: :*and* mastercard), what you do is start using those checks to pay your
: :bills, including your credit card bills. Each month, you pay
: :your mc bill with a visa check and your visa bill with a mc check.
: :If you can minimize your overall spending, then your excess of
: :$30k credit should last you quite a long time. Now, by
: :paying off the full balance each month in this method, you
: :will be establishing an AAAA credit history. That will aid
: :you when your credit of $30k is reduced to $5k and you need to
: :open up more credit card accounts with $25k limits to pay off
: :the balances of the now existing accounts. But, believe me
: :it's a self-perpetuating access to money that's just sitting
: :around not doing anything useful and in all rights, you
: :deserve access to it. You can spend your life work free if
: :you're not afraid of debt. Go for it.

: This is NOT a good idea.  Credit card companies are not stupid.  These
: companies make money off of the interest on these cards.  When you pay
: them off everymonth by approximately the same amount, they know something
: is going on.  I say this from experience.  My brother played this little
: game for a few months until he got a nice letter from both of the credit
: cards telling him that they had revoked his cards.  So now he has some
: large bills that he cannot easily pay and he is in a worse situation than
: when he started.  Whats worse, the credit card companies continue to charge
: the normal interest on the balances.

Well, first of all, no interest is incurred if the balance is paid within
what is usually a 25 day grace period.  What you will get is a
cash advance fee varying from 1 to 4% depending, but usually
with high limits of not more than $10-20.
Read your credit cardholders' agreement-all this information
is in there. Warning: it's all very small, fine print so
just hallucinate into being an attorney and the understanding will
follow. 

I have done this on one occasion for a period of five months
with no problem. It was either that or be homeless. Someone 
emailed me that it was illegal, however I doubt it because that
would be stated in the cardholders agreement which it is not.
If someone extends you credit, by virtue, they extend you the
trust and autonomy to use that credit as you like. Another form
of this is simple bill consolidation where you have have your
bills payed by a single source that serves as a form of credit.
There's nothing illegal about that and the only major
difference between that idea and mine is the institution of
your independence from another potential bureaucracy. That is,
you are your own bank.

I do advise paying the balance in *full* however, not
by approximately the same amount, as you described.  That
little difference could cause you unwarranted investigation.
Another point-I use credit cards as a convenience, not for 
credit, and for years, I have been paying my balance off in full
every month and the only concern that has been brought
to my attention is would I like my limit increased. 
Oh, and nice letters commending me on my excellent history
and appreciation for being a reliable customer. I don't
think the credit card companies put too much time or effort
investigating *good* customers. They got too many *poor*
ones to look after.

-- 
          Psycler                                        
From: Tom Gray
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <tgray-0102950958280001@tgray.slip.netcom.com>
In article <·················@netcom.com>, ·······@netcom.com (Psycler) wrote:

> Someone 
> emailed me that it was illegal, however I doubt it because that
> would be stated in the cardholders agreement which it is not.
> ...
> There's nothing illegal about that and the only major
> difference between that idea and mine is the institution of
> your independence from another potential bureaucracy. That is,
> you are your own bank.

Don't doubt that it certainly is Fraud.  The creditors can *collectively*
sue you and prove that you *willfully* made charges on their cards with
which you had no means to pay back.  You would not be protected even if
you declared Bankruptcy.

Our Roman court system enforces the "intent" of the Law before they
enforce the "letter" of the Law.
From: Psycler
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <psyclerD3CzvD.KyM@netcom.com>
Tom Gray (·····@netcom.com) wrote:
: In article <·················@netcom.com>, ·······@netcom.com (Psycler) wrote:

: > There's nothing illegal about that and the only major
: > difference between that idea and mine is the institution of
: > your independence from another potential bureaucracy. That is,
: > you are your own bank.

: Don't doubt that it certainly is Fraud.  The creditors can *collectively*
: sue you and prove that you *willfully* made charges on their cards with
: which you had no means to pay back.  You would not be protected even if
: you declared Bankruptcy.

But you *did* have means, unconventional and quite creative,
but however, no less, means. Under your definition, remortgaging
a home would be illegal. Or as you so cleverly deleted from
my above post, debt consolidation would also be illegal. They
are not. People do it everyday. Come up with some better reasoning,
I might buy it. But if I'm sitting on the jury, the decision is up
to me and I say it's okay.

: Our Roman court system enforces the "intent" of the Law before they
: enforce the "letter" of the Law.
-- 
          Psycler                                        
From: Ron Graham
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <1FEB199511013637@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov>
In article <··········@galaxy.ucr.edu>, ·····@galaxy.ucr.edu 
     (christopher weare) writes...

><whinning deleted>

Is that "whining" or "winning?"  :-)

>If your so damn smart, why don't you teach yourself a useful skill?  No
>one gives a damn about your IQ and if you mention it during an interview
>they will throw your application into the circular file.  Learn c/c++, write
>a program that does something remotely useful, and go interview for an entry 
>level job. You've had three years.  What have you been doing?  Just don't
>go shoot up the unemployment office.  Thats already been done.

As long as you're coming up with such *helpful* suggestions, Christopher,
why not spell out

o  what *you* think is a "useful skill"
o  what *you* think is a "remotely useful" thing a program should do

If you do that, then your post may actually add some *value* to this 
poor sod's situation.

RG

"You're mighty brave in cyberspace, flame boy."
 -  told to Dilbert by his co-worker
From: David Oertel
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <ortD3DzEH.LIE@netcom.com>
In article <·················@netcom.com>, Psycler <·······@netcom.com> wrote:
>Robert Elton Maas (···@BTR.Com) wrote:
>
>: Will I have to be forever unemployed because of this terrible job
>: market?? Won't anybody give me a chance to earn some money any more??
>: Will my two little children (born 1990.Mar and 1991.Dec) and I have to
>: rely on welfare for part of our living expenses and "incur debt" for
>: the rest, until my ability to go deeper into debt reaches its limit (we
>: are currently over $25,000 in debt, and have unused MasterCard&VISA
>: credit limit of another $30,000, but eventually even that might run
>: out) and we can no longer pay the rent so we all have to vacate a
>: decent residence and live in the streets begging for handouts from
>: passersby? Can't some generous employer, or just somebody with some
>: extra money to spend on special information services, give a chance to
>: the person who compiled the toplevel meta-index to the InterNet,
>: recently converted to HTML format to be part of the WWW?
>
>Okay. I have an idea that might just work for you. You have
>$30k unused credit on credit cards, right?  Most credit cards will
>provide you checks that draw off of your credit limit but 
>function like checks from a regular checking account. Now,
>assuming you have more than one credit account (you say visa
>*and* mastercard), what you do is start using those checks to pay your
>bills, including your credit card bills. Each month, you pay
	[rest of credit card scheme]

	robert should leverage off of his strong intellect and his dedication
	to his kids and leave marginal financial schemes to those who have
	no other options.

	dave
-- 
From: Psycler
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <psyclerD3E3Lw.B92@netcom.com>
David Oertel (···@netcom.com) wrote:
: In article <·················@netcom.com>, Psycler <·······@netcom.com> wrote:

[...]
: >Okay. I have an idea that might just work for you. You have
: >$30k unused credit on credit cards, right?  Most credit cards will
: >provide you checks that draw off of your credit limit but 
: >function like checks from a regular checking account. Now,
: >assuming you have more than one credit account (you say visa
: >*and* mastercard), what you do is start using those checks to pay your
: >bills, including your credit card bills. Each month, you pay

: 	robert should leverage off of his strong intellect and his dedication
: 	to his kids and leave marginal financial schemes to those who have
: 	no other options.

Oh, so do you want him to just go homeless? 
-- 
          Psycler                                        
From: David Oertel
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <ortD3E8IH.CG1@netcom.com>
In article <·················@netcom.com>, Psycler <·······@netcom.com> wrote:
>David Oertel (···@netcom.com) wrote:
>: In article <·················@netcom.com>, Psycler <·······@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>[...]
>: >Okay. I have an idea that might just work for you. You have
>: >$30k unused credit on credit cards, right?  Most credit cards will
>: >provide you checks that draw off of your credit limit but 
>: >function like checks from a regular checking account. Now,
>: >assuming you have more than one credit account (you say visa
>: >*and* mastercard), what you do is start using those checks to pay your
>: >bills, including your credit card bills. Each month, you pay
>
>: 	robert should leverage off of his strong intellect and his dedication
>: 	to his kids and leave marginal financial schemes to those who have
>: 	no other options.
>
>Oh, so do you want him to just go homeless? 

	no.  maybe i'm in denial, but i refuse to believe that getting mired
	in credit-card debt is his only alternative to homelessness.  maybe
	he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until he can
	find something that leverages his brains.  i dunno, he seems to have
	dropped-out of the thread so now we'll never really know the story.
	perhaps he was chased-away by some of those mindless 'you-whiner'
	flames.
>-- 
>          Psycler                                        

	dave


-- 
From: Roger Tinkoff
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <ROGT.95Feb3103901@holmes.engr.sgi.com>
In article <·············@netcom.com>, ···@netcom.com (David Oertel) writes:

dave> In article <·················@netcom.com>, Psycler
dave> <·······@netcom.com> wrote:
>> David Oertel (···@netcom.com) wrote: : In article
>> <·················@netcom.com>, Psycler <·······@netcom.com> wrote:
>> 
>> [...]  : >Okay. I have an idea that might just work for you. You have
>> : >$30k unused credit on credit cards, right?  Most credit cards will
>> : >provide you checks that draw off of your credit limit but :
>> >function like checks from a regular checking account. Now, :
>> >assuming you have more than one credit account (you say visa :
>> >*and* mastercard), what you do is start using those checks to pay
>> your : >bills, including your credit card bills. Each month, you pay
>> 
>> : robert should leverage off of his strong intellect and his
>> dedication : to his kids and leave marginal financial schemes to
>> those who have : no other options.
>> 
>> Oh, so do you want him to just go homeless?

dave> 	no.  maybe i'm in denial, but i refuse to believe that getting
dave> mired in credit-card debt is his only alternative to homelessness.
dave> maybe he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until
dave> he can find something that leverages his brains.  i dunno, he
dave> seems to have dropped-out of the thread so now we'll never really
dave> know the story.  perhaps he was chased-away by some of those
dave> mindless 'you-whiner' flames.

I can personally attest to the sheer *STUPIDITY* of this or any other
kind of credit card juggling scheme.  No matter how you cut it, you are
effectively living off of credit, and eventually you'll have to pay.
You'll get a job and have to shell out 50% or so of your salary
for minimum monthly payments, which you'll be making for the rest of
your life.  Or if your gamble doesn't pay off and you don't find a job
before you're maxed out again and now have nowhere left to borrow from,
you'll have to declare bankruptcy.  Then you'll get a job and have your
wages garnished, you will not be able to enjoy any extra cash or
disposable income until your creditors are paid.  

I was in many thousands of dollars of debt when I got out of college
(not including student loans), and I had to deal with the harrassing
phone calls and stuff for the 3 months I was unemployed (and broke),
plus a few more months after until I was paying them regularaly again.
I was lucky,  that I had a very good friend who loaned me the cash to
pay them off, at a much lower interest rate than what the banks were
charging.  I am now  paying that debt off steadily.  My point is that
credit card companies get *very* pissed when customers screw them over,
becuase those customers are in effect, abusing their trust and stealing
money from them.  Don't piss them off.  They can make life very
difficult for you even after you are back on your feet.  Don't let the
despair and desperation convince you that "it can't get any worse, I
have nothing to lose".  You are deluding yourself by thinking that you
can pull it off, even if a small handful of people have pulled it off
successfully.  I still can't get a loan from a bank, or even get a
checking account, even though I probably make a lot more than most of
these bank employees.  I get to keep very little of what I make, because
I now must pay up where I was delinquent before.  

-rogt
From: Psycler
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <psyclerD3G8KI.LEx@netcom.com>
Roger Tinkoff (····@engr.sgi.com) wrote:
: In article <·············@netcom.com>, ···@netcom.com (David Oertel) writes:
: dave> In article <·················@netcom.com>, Psycler

[...]
: >> Oh, so do you want him to just go homeless?

: dave> 	no.  maybe i'm in denial, but i refuse to believe that getting
: dave> mired in credit-card debt is his only alternative to homelessness.
: dave> maybe he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until
: dave> he can find something that leverages his brains.  i dunno, he
: dave> seems to have dropped-out of the thread so now we'll never really
: dave> know the story.  perhaps he was chased-away by some of those
: dave> mindless 'you-whiner' flames.

: I can personally attest to the sheer *STUPIDITY* of this or any other
: kind of credit card juggling scheme.  No matter how you cut it, you are
: effectively living off of credit, and eventually you'll have to pay.

The choice here is between being homeless and paying one's bills
namely, the rent, with one's credit card and paying that off 
with another credit card. Sure it can be called stupid. But then
choosing to be homeless as a default is *MENTAL RETARDATION*.
-- 
          Psycler                                        
From: Roger Tinkoff
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <ROGT.95Feb4091324@holmes.engr.sgi.com>
In article <·················@netcom.com>, ·······@netcom.com (Psycler) writes:

> : I can personally attest to the sheer *STUPIDITY* of this or
> any other : kind of credit card juggling scheme.  No matter how
> you cut it, you are : effectively living off of credit, and
> eventually you'll have to pay.

Psycler> The choice here is between being homeless and paying one's
Psycler> bills namely, the rent, with one's credit card and paying that
Psycler> off with another credit card. Sure it can be called stupid. But
Psycler> then choosing to be homeless as a default is *MENTAL
Psycler> RETARDATION*.  -- Psycler

I personally do not think that he is in danger of being out on the
street.  If he were, he wouldn't have been posting like he has for the
past year or so.  I still say that any credit card juggling scheme would
be the biggest mistake anybody could make.

-rogt
From: David Oertel
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <ortD3HwrF.Ev3@netcom.com>
In article <·················@holmes.engr.sgi.com>,
Roger Tinkoff <····@sgi.com> wrote:
>
>Psycler> The choice here is between being homeless and paying one's
>Psycler> bills namely, the rent, with one's credit card and paying that
>Psycler> off with another credit card. Sure it can be called stupid. But
>Psycler> then choosing to be homeless as a default is *MENTAL
>Psycler> RETARDATION*.  -- Psycler
>
>I personally do not think that he is in danger of being out on the
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>street.  If he were, he wouldn't have been posting like he has for the
 ^^^^^^
	i think that i remember Robert saying that he was on public
	assistance (AFDC?).  anyway, he probably doesn't have to rob any
	banks or engage in any credit card scams yet.  it sounds like he
	simply wants to improve his lot and is confused, along with many
	of the rest of us, why he can't find a way to contribute considering
	what he has to offer.

>past year or so.  I still say that any credit card juggling scheme would
>be the biggest mistake anybody could make.
>
>-rogt
>
	dave


-- 
From: Robert Elton Maas, author of the MaasInfo toplevel-indexes
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3he548$7ee@openlink.openlink.com>
·······@netcom.com (Psycler) said: <<According to the original poster's
message, I would conclude that his problems stem beyond being
overqualified. I think he may in some subconscious way be deflecting
his own opportunities and that he is unaware of doing so. Being able to
identify and make the necessary changes to overcome his preemptions
could take years.>>

Background to my followup: Several well-meaning people have suggested
that I need to be persistant when looking for a job, contact the
employer every week about why I haven't yet gotten an interview. If I
were an employer and I posted one job ad, and got a thousand
applicants, and ONE of them kept calling me again and again
interrupting my regular work and interrupting my attempt to scan all
the resumes and plan to interview a few of them, I'd consider it
harassment to be called by that ONE applicant so often.

Now maybe I'm out of touch with the "real world" to feel that way, to
consider it harassment to contact an employer more than just a few
times in regard to an employment opening. I'm shy about talking to
strangers (I avoided posting public articles, preferring private
e-mail, from 1972 when I first got on InterNet until just recently, for
example, anyone who wants to see a more complete summary of my lifelong
shyness just ask and I'll email), I'm too considerate to do what I
consider harassment. I've been told that's why I can't find a job, I
don't get the attention of the employer the way aggressive abusive
obnoxious uncouth people such as John Draper ("Cap'n Crunch") do. So
those people are employed and I'm not.

Anyway, after the police finally took my abusive wife away (because she
injured my son DELIBERATELY, after previously injuring him allegedly
accidently several times about which the impotent police could do
nothing except tell me to get a divorce or else they'd have CPS (Child
Protective Services) take away my children from BOTH of us to protect
them from her violence, and with no money I couldn't afford a divorce
lawyer so I was stuck with no way to stop my wife's abuses until that
day), and later I got a domestic violence restraining order to keep her
away until she learns how to avoid being violent and abusive, the
second CPS worker who was helping me arrange free child-care and
checking the welfare of the kids etc., managed to discover an agency
that would help me find employment, except the only way they'd help me
was if I had a psychiatric problem. Shyness was the only thing I could
think of that would qualify (a mental disability that interferes with
finding employment myself), so I met with a psychologist who confirmed
my self-diagnosis, adding the psychological code numbers from the code
book of psychological symptoms/disabilities, so now that agency
(Mission Valley Employment) might help me.

But now they say maybe my shyness isn't sufficient disability for them
to be allowed to help me. So please anybody who feels I have a more
serious emotional/mental/psychological/psychiatric problem that is
impeding my search for employment, causing me to be unemployed since
1991.Sep.01, please FAX a brief explanation of what such disability you
think I have. E-mail to FAX is probably the easiest for most of you:

····························@14082486520.iddd.tpc.int

For courtesy, you might send a copy to me also:

···@BTR.Com

Or if you're shy yourself, and want to e-mail to me and ask me to
approve the message and forward to Cathryn's FAX myself, feel free. Be
sure to identify any such messages to me as either copy of FAX you
sent, or message you'd like me to FAX if I think it's appropriate.

<<Do you think the reason he dropped out of the thread may also overlap
with the reasons for his long unemployment?>>

"The question assumes a fact not in evidence", as the famous fictious
lawyer Perry Mason would say. I haven't dropped out of the thread, but
taking care of two little kids, scanning job ads & downloading them &
matching them with prior contacts with same company & deciding how to
respond & actually responding, doing housework, working on MaasInfo
update, and lots of other work I need to do, I can't be watching this
newsgroup every day. If I got *paid* to watch the newsgroup, that would
make a difference, I'd rearrange my priorities. But those garbage
suggestions of juggling credit cards are mostly not worth even
acknowledging, and those debates over whether I should get a sysadmin
or QA job are worthless since I don't qualify for any of those jobs
anyway (I applied to a bunch of the SQA jobs on the basis of my testing
downloaded software to see if it was worth using, and the testing of my
own code in the course of programming, and was turned down; I haven't
bothered applying for jobs that require sysadmin experience since I
don't have any such experience whatsoever), and only a few of the rest
are worth commenting on immediately upon reading them. I haven't even
had time yet to make a list of things I would like Mission Valley
Employment to consider helping me with, such as improving my resumes,
finding out why certain employers haven't hired me when I think they
ought to have, etc. (probably 20 or 30 things I could think of if I had
the spare time to think carefully for several days and compile such a
list of ideas to try)

····@panix.com (Robert Mah) said: <<If they won't hire you because you
have a college degree, guess what the solution is? Don't tell them!>>

Unfortunately it's lying if they come right out and ask if I went to
college and I say "no". I am too honest to do that. Besides, most
employment contracts say the person can be dimissed, and all wages
returned, if they discover the employee lied to get hired. I can't
afford to burn my butt doing some crappy $1.75/hr job only to have all
my wages returned to the employer because he discovered I lied on my
application.

<<There have been lots of entry level jobs in both specialties during
the time frame in question.>>

Incorrect. There have been several jobs that were titled "entry level",
but turned out to require one or two years experience at something I've
never done even for a day. As far as I am concerned, the people who
defined "entry level" to mean "less than three years experience" should
all go drop dead and return the meaning to "no specific work experience
needed, only a general aptitude and ability & willingness to learn".

In all these 3.5 years I've found only ONE (1) "entry level" job for
which I was qualified, for RSA (the folks who make one-way encryption),
for work on one-way encryption, something I did myself (for free)
shortly after the Scientific American article came out way back when
(late 70's if I recall correctly). I didn't even get an interview
despite actually having experience in that area. I was so mad I posted
a bitch about them on the net, and sent them a complaint by e-mail
also, and they changed their mind and interviewed me, and it went well,
then they told me they had decided not to hire for that position but
for another instead, and I am not qualified for the new position that
was open, so crappity crap it was all for nothing once again.

<<Do you actually expect someone to hire you full time to author HTML
pages? >>

Nope. Anything part-time hourly would be fine.

<<Given that you set up the MaasInfo pages (and if they are any good --
I haven't seem 'em) you should be able to get between $50 to $100 per
hour for your services with ease.>>

(1) Well, go look at them now!! I finished including about 80% of the
backlog of new information, so they're pretty much complete now. Feed
this URL into whatever WWW browser you have or can TELNET to:

http://WWW.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/MaasInfo.TopIndex.html

(2) Shit, I'd be pleased if somebody paid me $10/hr for HTML authoring.
After you look at the MaasInfo indexes in WWW, how much do you think my
HTML ability is worth? (Hmm, you don't know how long it takes me to do
some particular HTML writing task, but you can guess, right?)

(Anyone offended by that "obscene" word used for emotional expression,
feel free to replace with "Curses" as in the silent-movie melodramas,
or "Darn" as in the Disney movies of the 50's, or "Gosh oh golly" as in
Gomer Pyle, etc. Then watch the PBS program "Scared Straight" and
realize what true abusive obscenity really is, a thousand times worse
than what I said above, I'm not exaggerating.)

I said previously <<Because I don't have any past experience that
EXACTLY matches what any current employer is looking for.>> and Robert
Mah replied <<This is the employers *goal*. In most cases, they have to
settle for someone who has worked in similar fields or sometimes only
remotely related ones.>>

Yup, that has been said to me several times before, and that's why I
even bother to collect 99% of the job ads I collect, and why I bother
to respond to them, asking if they'd accept somebody who has never used
MPW but has used Think C, asking if they'd accept somebody who has
never used MCL 2.0 but has used MACL 1.2.2, asking if they'd accept
somebody who has never worked on shrink-wrapped products, only in-house
utilities and NSF demos, asking if they'd accept somebody who has never
used C++ but has used Object Think C and twenty other programming
languages and can easily learn another, etc. Universally I don't even
get an interview (well, about 8 interviews in the first 2 years and not
a single interview in the past year, almost universal anyway), either
because "your excellent qualifications but no exact match" or "we
really need somebody who already knows MPW and can land running".

<<Read up a bit on sales techniques. If you've got something to sell,
in this case yourself and your program, they YOU must take proactive
steps to close the sale.>>

I regard such methods as immoral disgusting annoying etc. I wish all
the sales people would just go drop dead, and the companies wishing to
sell things would just put out machine-readable catalogs instead of
harassing people all the time and repeatedly sickeningly.

<<You actually asked them to "come over" to your residence to see the
prototype? Hah! The sheer stupidity of that makes me laugh.>>

What else can I do? I don't have the money to buy a new computer to
upgrade to System 7.x so I can't upgrade my prototypes to run under
System 7.x, and HyperCard 1.3.2 (what I'm using on System 6.0.3 here)
won't run on their System 7.x so if I came over to their site they
wouldn't be able to run my prototype and I couldn't give any demo. I
tried installing system 6.0.7 here and doing the auto-conversion from
HyperCard 1.3.2 to HyperCard 2.0, and it trashed all the text layouts,
causing text to extend past the right margins of just about every field
in the demo, causing nearly every line to have one word broken to the
next line, totally ruining the demo. It would take months to manually
fudge all the text fields to make things fit under 6.0.7, and then
under 7.x they still might not fit. The best thing is to run the whole
demo under System 6.0.3, and it'd be a pain to install that on the
employer's computer just to run a demo, and the fonts might be
different there causing the same sort of field-overflow I had with
6.0.7.

<<And "prototype"? You've had years! Why isn't it working yet?>>

It's awful hard to develop educational (CAI) software without any
student guinea pigs to work out the pedagogical bugs. The software
works fine in regard to technical stuff, demonstrating some new
methods, some ideas I had, but putting it together into a full
education program would require some feedback from students or at least
some educators with a different viewpoint from mine. It'd be a waste to
spend months putting it together into some complete program if I have
no feedback from anyone and no show of interest that anyone would be
willing to look at it after I go to all that work. I have better things
to do with my time, like trying to find somebody to look at what I have
already and tell me if it's even worth pursuing at all, or hire me for
something else.

···@netcom.com (David Oertel) said: <<he can't find a way to contribute
considering what he has to offer.>>

I'm contributing just fine, by working on the MaasInfo indexes. I get
lots of thanks for that work. But what I don't get is money for my
contributions. Nobody with money thinks my work is good enough to pay
me for my work. (One exception: About two years ago somebody sent me $5
shareware fee for the MaasInfo indexes, but failed to include his
e-mail address with his cheque so I haven't been able to contact him by
e-mail to thank him. Someday I'll find that empty envelope with his
return address, and feed his full name into the UseNet WhitePages and
see if I can find his e-mail address, but that's quite low on my list
of priorities currently. I gotta find some REAL income, like a real
job, or else hundreds of $5 shareware fees linked to something I did
during the same month so the welfare people will count it as earned
income instead of gifts.)
From: Carol Dayton
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <D3LAxw.2op@news.ess.harris.com>
OK, here goes... 
	1. the guy is a whiner. No doubt he has many capabilities, 
but getting along with people is most likely NOT one of them.  
If he spent half the time he spends feeling sorry for himself, and
trying to get sympathy in using those skills to:
   a) write a share-ware utility and post it (i.e, get a name for writing tools)
   b) Offer to tutor students at a high school in math, or in numerical
      computing
   c) learn a new skill
then he might get somewhere.
	2. Others have said it before -- look outward, see what the 
consumer ( your prospective employer)  needs and get that skill.
	3. Per the credit card debt...long term unemployment issues.  
You are not the only one in this position.  I know of one person who had
responsibility for millions of dollars of the defense budget, yet has not
 been able to find a job since "retiring". ( Oh, and he's qualified as 
a MENSA .999er..)  He could whine, but instead
 he's volunteering and helping others -- and His contacts will eventually
 land him a responsible position In the meantime, he does what he has to..
	4. Remember that people's impression of you is made in the first
 3 seconds after you meet. What impression are you giving? 
	5. Is your resume posted in one of the areas, or just the whining?
	6. Use a credit card to get Zig Ziglar's SEE YOU AT THE TOP. then
 read it with an open mind.
From: David Oertel
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <ortD3LKwz.Bz8@netcom.com>
In article <··········@news.ess.harris.com>,
Carol Dayton <·······@harris.com> wrote:
>OK, here goes... 
>	1. the guy is a whiner. No doubt he has many capabilities, 
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

	there have been a lot of posts saying this and i'm not sure what it
	means.  if robert is having a rough time finding a job inspite of
	his qualifications, then why shouldn't he come here and tell the
	world about it so that we can all be as informed as possible; maybe
	somebody can help him and the rest of us might be a little more
	cautious about saving money for a rainy day/year/decade.  why should
	anyone condemn him for airing this; it's an important issue and it's
	clear that a lot of people are interested in it.

	dave
-- 
From: ········@wmich.edu
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <1995Feb6.212127.27597@wmichgw>
<Lots of people writing lots of different things, pro/con>

*amazing*  It's been 2 _years_ since I last looked at
Misc.Jobs.Misc.  I've been through 2 positions and three contracts and
I still see RMaas writing about how it's impossible for a genius like
himself to get a job.  I tend to lean toward the
comments that this *cannot* be a serious case.  How could someone support
the kind of volume on the net "he" does without any serious means of support
over the span of several years?

I think I am a better than average CS person, but learned long ago that
you don't get ahead in life by wearing an attitude for a jacket....

"Robert", if you are really as good as you claim, there is no way you
could not have gotten a job, unless you are being extremely picky
about opportunities.

Well, off to another contract.  Maybe I'll stop in again in a couple of
years....  :)

Karl
······@cs.wmich.edu
From: Psycler
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <psyclerD3HM0u.F6M@netcom.com>
David Oertel (···@netcom.com) wrote:
: In article Psycler <·······@netcom.com> wrote:

: >Oh, so do you want him to just go homeless? 

: 	no.  maybe i'm in denial, but i refuse to believe that getting mired
: 	in credit-card debt is his only alternative to homelessness.  maybe
: 	he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until he can
: 	find something that leverages his brains.  i dunno, he seems to have
: 	dropped-out of the thread so now we'll never really know the story.
: 	perhaps he was chased-away by some of those mindless 'you-whiner'
: 	flames.


[I posted a followup to this two nights ago and netcom seems to
have misplaced a myriad of posts which may never become found
and put on usenet, so I'm going to repost to best of my memory
and likely, my original post will show up in a couple of days.]

According to the original poster's message, I would conclude
that his problems stem beyond being overqualified.  I think
he may in some subconscious way be deflecting his own
opportunities and that he is unaware of doing so.
Being able to identify and make the necessary changes to
overcome his preemptions could take years.  I don't think that
by applying for a less qualified position will solve his problems
because I don't think people will hire him at all-to put it
rather bluntly.  I commend the other followup posters that
have hinted at this in a more kinder manner.

Do you think the reason he dropped out of the thread may
also overlap with the reasons for his long unemployment?

-- 
          Psycler                                        
From: Pat Wilson
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h0js3$51d@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>
···@netcom.com (David Oertel) writes:

>	maybe
>	he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until he can
>	find something that leverages his brains.  

Excuse me?  "A grubby sysadmin job"?  *Until* he can use his brains?
Wake up and smell the espresso, Dave - systems administration is
neither easy nor a job that just anyone can do.  True, it's one of
_the_ growth industries at the moment, but good admins are in demand
precisely because it requires talent and no small amount of expertise.


--
Pat Wilson
···@coos.dartmouth.edu
From: Richard Boyd
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h0ou5$6ev@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com>
In <··········@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> ···@coos.dartmouth.edu (Pat 
Wilson) writes: 

>
>···@netcom.com (David Oertel) writes:
>
>>	maybe
>>	he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until he 
can
>>	find something that leverages his brains.  
>
>Excuse me?  "A grubby sysadmin job"?  *Until* he can use his brains?
>Wake up and smell the espresso, Dave - systems administration is
>neither easy nor a job that just anyone can do.  True, it's one of
>_the_ growth industries at the moment, but good admins are in demand
>precisely because it requires talent and no small amount of expertise.
>

I second that!! Network administration is the most demanding job in 
computing. How many programmers are expected to know the intimate 
workings of the hardware, operating system, and applications to do their 
job? Few, if any. A sysadmin worth his salt must know all this, and deal 
with dumb-shit, whiney programmers, who can't figure out how to use a 
new compiler or word processor, too.

"Grubby sysadmin job", indeed!!

rhb
From: Harold Stevens
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h0qv6$gqu@mksrv1.dseg.ti.com>
In article <··········@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com>, ····@ix.netcom.com (Richard Boyd) writes:
|> In <··········@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> ···@coos.dartmouth.edu (Pat 
|> Wilson) writes: 
|> 
|> >
|> >···@netcom.com (David Oertel) writes:
|> >
|> >>	maybe
|> >>	he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until he 
|> can
|> >>	find something that leverages his brains.  
|> >
|> >Excuse me?  "A grubby sysadmin job"?  *Until* he can use his brains?
|> >Wake up and smell the espresso, Dave - systems administration is
|> >neither easy nor a job that just anyone can do.  True, it's one of
|> >_the_ growth industries at the moment, but good admins are in demand
|> >precisely because it requires talent and no small amount of expertise.
|> >
|> 
|> I second that!! Network administration is the most demanding job in 
|> computing. How many programmers are expected to know the intimate 
|> workings of the hardware, operating system, and applications to do their 
|> job? Few, if any. A sysadmin worth his salt must know all this, and deal 
|> with dumb-shit, whiney programmers, who can't figure out how to use a 
|> new compiler or word processor, too.
|> 
|> "Grubby sysadmin job", indeed!!
|> 
|> rhb

Boys, boys! Do you not take umbrage also at the "QA" association? I find
it rather hilarious, myself. "Those who can code, do so..." etc.

                                                Regards, Weird

Standard Disclaimer: TI is wise not to assume responsibility for what I
say, although they are intensely curious about the content of my urine.
In addition, the TI QA crowd probably does not share these opinions, etc.
From: Jon W{tte
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <AB5C6F9396684B9BA@klkmac006.nada.kth.se>
In article <··········@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com>,
····@ix.netcom.com (Richard Boyd) wrote:

>I second that!! Network administration is the most demanding job in 
>computing. How many programmers are expected to know the intimate 
>workings of the hardware, operating system, and applications to do their 
>job? Few, if any. A sysadmin worth his salt must know all this, and deal 
>with dumb-shit, whiney programmers, who can't figure out how to use a 
>new compiler or word processor, too.

As someone who does both, I'll say that programming is harder, 
because most sysadmin solutions are small, focused, and work 
thereafter. Programming, on the other hand, has effects 5-10 
years down the road.

Other than that, I agree: every programmer should do some real, 
large-mixed-site system administration, it gives a lot of 
healthy experience.

Gee, what a wonderful opportunity to feel elitist! I even know 
what a router does (and LOOKS LIKE! :-)

Cheers,

							/ h+
From: John Zachary
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h0rvf$48o6@unix1.sncc.lsu.edu>
In article <··········@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>,
Pat Wilson <···@coos.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>···@netcom.com (David Oertel) writes:
>
>>	maybe
>>	he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until he can
>>	find something that leverages his brains.  
>
>Excuse me?  "A grubby sysadmin job"?  *Until* he can use his brains?
>Wake up and smell the espresso, Dave - systems administration is
>neither easy nor a job that just anyone can do.  True, it's one of
>_the_ growth industries at the moment, but good admins are in demand
>precisely because it requires talent and no small amount of expertise.



Whoa, Pat. I think David was implying a little sarcasm in his post.
Certainly, if one were to read the above line attributed to him, one
might think that David was serious. But given the self-proclaimed
intelligence of the original poster, I think David was trying to make
the point that there is work out there for computer professionals
and this guys problem of unemployment might be a result of his 
hubris ...



... or maybe I'm wrong.

-- 
 John Zachary (·······@bit.csc.lsu.edu) 
 "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." - SweetPoly
From: David Oertel
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <ortD3Hy9p.H4J@netcom.com>
In article <···········@unix1.sncc.lsu.edu>,
John Zachary <·······@bit.csc.lsu.edu> wrote:
>In article <··········@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>,
>Pat Wilson <···@coos.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>···@netcom.com (David Oertel) writes:
>>
>>>	maybe
>>>	he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until he can
>>>	find something that leverages his brains.  
>>
>>Excuse me?  "A grubby sysadmin job"?  *Until* he can use his brains?
>>Wake up and smell the espresso, Dave - systems administration is
>>neither easy nor a job that just anyone can do.  True, it's one of
>>_the_ growth industries at the moment, but good admins are in demand
>>precisely because it requires talent and no small amount of expertise.
>
>
>
>Whoa, Pat. I think David was implying a little sarcasm in his post.
>Certainly, if one were to read the above line attributed to him, one
>might think that David was serious. But given the self-proclaimed
>intelligence of the original poster, I think David was trying to make
>the point that there is work out there for computer professionals
>and this guys problem of unemployment might be a result of his 
>hubris ...
>
>
>
>... or maybe I'm wrong.

	no.
>
>-- 
> John Zachary (·······@bit.csc.lsu.edu) 
> "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." - SweetPoly

	dave

-- 
From: Mark Wiley
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <D3ovA8.Gx1@ncube.com>
In article <·············@netcom.com> ···@netcom.com (David Oertel) writes:
>
>	no.  maybe i'm in denial, but i refuse to believe that getting mired
>	in credit-card debt is his only alternative to homelessness.  maybe
>	he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until he can
>	find something that leverages his brains.  i dunno, he seems to have
>	dropped-out of the thread so now we'll never really know the story.
>	perhaps he was chased-away by some of those mindless 'you-whiner'
>	flames.
>
>	dave
>
>
>-- 

Thoes of us that have done both system administration and QA (in addition to
system maintenance and new product development :-), really appreciate those
kind words Dave, its people like you that make the effort worth while (NOT).

Markw
-- 
===============================================================================
Mark S. Wiley                                            Email: ·····@ncube.com
Sodium free, yep we don't charge for it
Senior Software Test Engineer                            nCUBE 
From: John Woods
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <D3qv4F.Gwt@proteon.com>
·····@ncube.com (Mark Wiley) writes:
>In article <·············@netcom.com> ···@netcom.com (David Oertel) writes:
>>	no.  maybe i'm in denial, but i refuse to believe that getting mired
>>	in credit-card debt is his only alternative to homelessness.  maybe
>>	he simply needs to take a grubby sys admin or QA job until he can
>>	find something that leverages his brains.
>Thoes of us that have done both system administration and QA (in addition to
>system maintenance and new product development :-), really appreciate those
>kind words Dave, its people like you that make the effort worth while (NOT).

Perhaps the associativity in his statement was not "grubby { {sys admin or QA}
job}" but rather was "{{grubby sys admin} or QA} job".  A good grubby sys
admin can command a high price these days.

:-)
From: Rod Hanks
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3htdlj$2q6@internet.posc.org>
I'm a few days late on this thread.  I've been busy lately.

I do think there is a problem with the way in which corporate America hires
people.  The model they work under is Eli Whitney's assembly line.  You know,
"You got your two gunsmiths, Smith and Jones, at benches right next to each 
other...".

The problem with this model is that it doesn't fit producing software.  A better
model would be "you got your two authors, Hemingway and Faulkner, right next to
each other...".

The point of this model difference is that for the gunsmiths all you gotta do
is teach them how to use the tools and they can produce a pretty good gun.  But
you can teach someone how to use text editors, compilers, linkers, case tools,
etc. and you have not yet taught them how to produce software.

Therefore, when hiring programmers, it is vital to hire somebody who has
something to say.  They will learn to use the tools pretty fast once they get
going.  The tools, after all, are pretty danged simple compared to the actual
problems they need to solve in order to design and build useful software.

Corporate America has two problems with this fact. 

(1) You cannot measure whether or not a person has something to say

    This causes people hiring programmers to want to make an unassailable
    decision, so if they turn out to be wrong in their intuition they can
    CYA by citing figures to prove they made the right decision.  This leads
    to a mindless sort of accounting whereby a person with 3 years of C++
    experience is considered better than a person with 3.25 years of C++
    experience regardless of the quality or type of code produced during that
    period.

(2) If sofware developers show the same lognormally distributed ability curve 
    that authors do (which they do) then they aren't interchangable.  That means 
    if your key man exits the company suddenly you cannot just go out and get 
    another one off the street.

    The basic response to this one is try to pretend it isn't a problem, and in 
    some extreme cases to avoid attracting talented help (this part is easy, just
    don't pay much) so that the lackluster people you get really ARE a dime a 
    dozen.

If you find yourself caught behind the eight-ball with this situation, my advice
is:

(1)	Stay away from any company with a human resources department.

	The criteria they use do not measure the actual talents required for
	the job, so you won't get hired.

(2)	Do consulting.

	If you are really good you will get a lot of follow-on work and after
	a couple of initial breaks (where you do good work for people who
	actually need a lot of help over the next couple of years) you should
	be able to support yourself by word of mouth.

(3)	Start your own business.

	And when you hire programmers, don't make the same mistakes everybody
	else has been making with you.

Thanks,
Rod

=========================================================================
Rod Hanks                   Please excuse the crayon.
······@benchbuilt.com       They don't allow us to use anything sharp here.
From: Jochen Wolters
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3go2mm$avo@news.rwth-aachen.de>
···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas) writes:

>I've been unemployed more than 3 years, and haven't even gotten a job
>interview for over a year despite working hard all these 3+ years trying
>to find a job. All the job openings have specific experience I don't have,
>such as C++, Unix device drivers, or MPW. None of the employers offering
>these jobs are willing to let me train myself for a few days [...]
>They accept ONLY people who have used exactly the particular programming
>language environment and operating system for exactly the same kind of
>application or utility.

I don't want to sound rude, but obviously you know almost exactly what 
potential employers expect from applicants for those jobs that you are
interested in. Why, then, didn't you spend part of those three years to
get into the languages, dev environments etc. that the industry guys
are looking for?! Sounds to me -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- as
if you were waiting for the company that is looking for what you already
know, but that you don't want to gain extra experience you could offer
them. I'm afraid it won't work that way, though.

L8R,

Jochen.

--
Jochen Wolters - ·······@POOL.informatik.rwth-aachen.de - cand.ing. EE 
----*-*-*  PowerMacintosh: 100% less Gates, 100% more POWER  *-*-*----
"You've never seen a picture of 'a picture is worth a thousand words.'
It takes words to express that idea, or any idea."  ---  Michael Swain
From: Arthur L. Rubin
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3grdko$f7g@gap.cco.caltech.edu>
In <··········@news.rwth-aachen.de> ·······@akela.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Jochen Wolters) writes:

>···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas) writes:

>>I've been unemployed more than 3 years, and haven't even gotten a job
>>interview for over a year despite working hard all these 3+ years trying
>>to find a job. All the job openings have specific experience I don't have,
>>such as C++, Unix device drivers, or MPW. None of the employers offering
>>these jobs are willing to let me train myself for a few days [...]
...

>I don't want to sound rude, but obviously you know almost exactly what 
>potential employers expect from applicants for those jobs that you are
>interested in. Why, then, didn't you spend part of those three years to
>get into the languages, dev environments etc. that the industry guys
>are looking for?!                                                      

The section quoted looks like each of the employers has a different additional
requirement that he does not meet....it's hard to prepare for that sort of
thing.  Besides, the employers want experience.   I'm actually taking some
additional training before I fully activate my search for new employment, but
I had some advice as to what additional training to take.

-- 
Arthur L. Rubin, PO Box 9245, Brea, CA 92622 (USA)
······@alumni.caltech.edu ········@mcimail.com ·········@compuserve.com
   Computer expert with 24 years programming experience looking for
   gainful employment. 
From: Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3hao7n$711@openlink.openlink.com>
·······@akela.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Jochen Wolters) said:
<<obviously you know almost exactly what potential employers expect
from applicants for those jobs that you are interested in. Why, then,
didn't you spend part of those three years to get into the languages,
dev environments etc. that the industry guys are looking for?!>>

Each employer wants a particular combination of past experience, it
must contain at least three years paid industry work putting out
successful commercial shrink wrapped products. There's no way that by
working on my own I can gain such experience. Even so, several job ads
were for C programming, and after much searching I found a shareware C
compiler that runs on my Mac Plus and taught myself C programming with
it. Later I read some 'man' pages on BTR.Com and taught myself some
Unix system calls and wrote a PCNET (dialup packet protocol) server
which I've been using for about two years.

But I haven't found any C++ compiler that will run on my machine, and I
don't know anybody who will loan me several thousand dollars to buy a
new machine and all the software (MPW, C++ itself) just to practice C++
on.

I need my Macintosh every day, so I can't afford to fool around
teaching myself how to write device drivers and have to re-install the
system and restore all my files several times a day when I totally wipe
out the file system due to bugs in the device drivers I'm toying with.

I don't have permission to meddle with the device drivers on BTR.Com
(public-access Unix) of course, and I don't know anybody who will loan
me enough money to buy a Sun workstation or other similar machine plus
all the software for SunOS. So I can't practice writing Unix device
drivers.

Perhaps Jochen Wolters will volunteer to loan me his machine and loan
me all the software needed for C++ or device drivers and let me crash
his machine several times a day, and he'll restore the system each time
while I take a nap?

<<Sounds to me -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- as if you were
waiting for the company that is looking for what you already know,
...>>

I want to find a company that wants somebody to program computers, or
organize information, or write technical in-house documentation, and
will allow me to use their system for a while to teach myself the
technical details of whatever particular programming or informaition or
documentation system they happen to want me to use, and then will hire
me as soon as I'm "up to speed". Or they hire me at some low rate to do
simple things that don't take any re-training, while I teach myself the
next stuff on the side, and they increase the pay each time I move from
doing N to doing N+1 in the sequence of increasingly skilled tasks. Or
they don't care what language is used so long as the input/output
behaviour is correct, so I can use a language I already know to do the
task instead of having to use their particular language.
From: Warren Kinninger
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3hcpq0$h1m@crl6.crl.com>
···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming) writes:

>Each employer wants a particular combination of past experience, it
>must contain at least three years paid industry work putting out
>successful commercial shrink wrapped products. There's no way that by
>working on my own I can gain such experience. Even so, several job ads
>were for C programming, and after much searching I found a shareware C
>compiler that runs on my Mac Plus and taught myself C programming with
>it. Later I read some 'man' pages on BTR.Com and taught myself some
>Unix system calls and wrote a PCNET (dialup packet protocol) server
>which I've been using for about two years.

>But I haven't found any C++ compiler that will run on my machine, and I
>don't know anybody who will loan me several thousand dollars to buy a
>new machine and all the software (MPW, C++ itself) just to practice C++
>on.

Macs are nice machines to use but to maximize your job choices, I'd go 
with an IBM PC platform. You can scrounge old 386s at flea markets and 
amateur radio hamfests for a small number of $$$. I know of a 386 with 
40 MB hard disk that sold for $100 a few weeks ago. You may want to 
upgrade to 4 MB for program development which costs about $40/MB. I've 
scrounged older PCs and XTs out of garbage cans for free. 

Older versions of C++ compilers can be had for a low cost from the 
aforementioned hamfests or from Surplus Software. In a recent Computer 
Shopper magazine they had Microsoft C++ v7.0 for $66 and Quick C for $20. 
And once you have an older version of a C compiler you can get an upgrade 
version later on of a more recent version like Borland's C++ 4.0 for about 
$200, which has a full set of development tools and libraries for 
professional software development. So for a few hundred $$$ (not thousands)
you can have a workable system.

The recruiters/consultants I've talked to recently seem to want someone 
with a related "set" of skills such as: operating system, language, 
database, GUI (for example Unix/C++/Oracle/Powerbuilder). I just got a 
masters degree and they didn't seem very interested in that. To learn Unix 
you can get Linux, a free version widely available on the net. As chance 
would have it, Oracle is releasing the personal PC version of their database 
program on the Internet for FREE (check comp.databases.oracle for details). 
There is an Oracle GUI type tool called CD2 available, which is possibly 
free also. I'm not sure how to break into the Powerbuilder market right 
now. Perhaps you could purchase the personal version later on for a few 
hundred $$$, or get your foot into the door of GUI client/server 
programming by buying Visual Basic (the cheapest version is <$100). 
You could start working with one skill and add the others later.

With this combination of skills there are a LOT of $50K level programming 
jobs available. I'm pursuing a similar type of route right now oriented 
towards the scientific programming area, but most jobs are in the 
business/data processing area.
----
Warren Kinninger   ········@crl.com
From: Joe Wisniewski
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <D3pxL8.3J7@indirect.com>
Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming (···@BTR.Com) wrote:
: ·······@akela.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Jochen Wolters) said:
: <<obviously you know almost exactly what potential employers expect
: from applicants for those jobs that you are interested in. Why, then,
: didn't you spend part of those three years to get into the languages,
: dev environments etc. that the industry guys are looking for?!>>

: Each employer wants a particular combination of past experience, it

   I have gone around with Mr. Maas a long time ago also. But with all of the
   well-meaing suggestions that have been offered, there is one whole 
   "category" of solutions that he obviously hasn't/won't consider.

  That is obtaining a contracting position doing something less than
  his skills would warrant. There are a gazzillion contracting 
  positions available EVERYWHERE in the country. For many/dare I say
  most contract testing positions, a minimal amount of "interviewing"
  takes place. I'm in a rather boring testing slot right now, but
  the money is more than good. He could get testing jobs anywhere in
  the country for
  $35/hr right now, if he wanted it. There will be an excuse though,
  count on it. (No, I am not going to waste any more time generating
  your leads for you. They are out there.)

  And I promised myself I wouldn't get back into this discussion again.
 
  Joe
From: Brad Andrews
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathemati
Date: 
Message-ID: <1995Feb9.223638.21473@chemabs.uucp>
> From ···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming)
>
> I need my Macintosh every day, so I can't afford to fool around
> teaching myself how to write device drivers and have to re-install the
> system and restore all my files several times a day when I totally wipe
> out the file system due to bugs in the device drivers I'm toying with.

Why?  If you are not presently employed and you are not doing contract
work this would seem an excuse for not developing your own skills rather
than a valid concern.

---

Brad Andrews
········@cas.org
All opinions are strictly mine
From: John Selhorst
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <johns-1002950645010001@net24.efn.org>
In article <··········@openlink.openlink.com>, ···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton
Maas, 21 years experience programming) wrote:

> 
> Each employer wants a particular combination of past experience, it
> must contain at least three years paid industry work putting out
> successful commercial shrink wrapped products. There's no way that by
> working on my own I can gain such experience. Even so, several job ads
> were for C programming, and after much searching I found a shareware C
> compiler that runs on my Mac Plus and taught myself C programming with
> it. Later I read some 'man' pages on BTR.Com and taught myself some
> Unix system calls and wrote a PCNET (dialup packet protocol) server
> which I've been using for about two years.

That is the lamest excuse I have ever heard.

> 
> But I haven't found any C++ compiler that will run on my machine, and I
> don't know anybody who will loan me several thousand dollars to buy a
> new machine and all the software (MPW, C++ itself) just to practice C++
> on.

Oh no.  Now that is the lamest excuse I have ever heard.

> 
> I need my Macintosh every day, so I can't afford to fool around
> teaching myself how to write device drivers and have to re-install the
> system and restore all my files several times a day when I totally wipe
> out the file system due to bugs in the device drivers I'm toying with.
> 

Here we go again.  That is even lamer than the last one.  Are you trying
to get a job or not?  What do you need your Macintosh every day for? 
Flame on:  Stop f*cking around.  Print out your resume, make 200 copies
and go out and get a job.  :Flame off

> I don't have permission to meddle with the device drivers on BTR.Com
> (public-access Unix) of course, and I don't know anybody who will loan
> me enough money to buy a Sun workstation or other similar machine plus
> all the software for SunOS. So I can't practice writing Unix device
> drivers.
> 
> Perhaps Jochen Wolters will volunteer to loan me his machine and loan
> me all the software needed for C++ or device drivers and let me crash
> his machine several times a day, and he'll restore the system each time
> while I take a nap?

Oh my God.  Two more incredibly lame excuses.  Take a nap, hunh?  I think
you could probably quite successfully take a nap without the help of
Jochen Wolters.

> 
> <<Sounds to me -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- as if you were
> waiting for the company that is looking for what you already know,
> ...>>
> 
> I want to find a company that wants somebody to program computers, or
> organize information, or write technical in-house documentation, and
> will allow me to use their system for a while to teach myself the
> technical details of whatever particular programming or informaition or
> documentation system they happen to want me to use, and then will hire
> me as soon as I'm "up to speed". Or they hire me at some low rate to do
> simple things that don't take any re-training, while I teach myself the
> next stuff on the side, and they increase the pay each time I move from
> doing N to doing N+1 in the sequence of increasingly skilled tasks. Or
> they don't care what language is used so long as the input/output
> behaviour is correct, so I can use a language I already know to do the
> task instead of having to use their particular language.

You're going to have a hell of a time finding some company like that,
especially given your attitude about work.  I wouldn't hire you.  You
would be a huge pain in the ass to work with.  Every time the going gets
tough, old Robert Maas takes a nap.  I feel sorry for your kids, but you
need to come to grips with the reality of making money.  People are only
going to give you money if they think you have something to offer.  If you
can't make them think that, then you're out of luck.  Give McDonald's a
try.

Johnny

·····@efn.org
From: Richard Ottolini
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3go75v$c5h@unogate.unocal.com>
I might also suspect that one of Mass's problems is age discrimination.
From his resume, he sounds 40ish.
Unless you've had project management experience at that time or are
in some technology niche, you're going to have problems competing
will hoards of 20-somethings in the newer technologies.
From: Paul Milligan
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3gr8bj$60m@parsifal.nando.net>
> All the job openings have specific experience I don't have, such as C++, Unix device drivers, or
> MPW. None of the employers offering these jobs are willing to let me
> train myself for a few days to get familiar with the new programming
> environment, despite the fact that I taught myself all the the
> languages and systems I've used in the past. They accept ONLY people
> who have used exactly the particular programming language environment
> and operating system for exactly the same kind of application or
> utility.

Sounds just like the situation I was in ten years ago, except that
the details were that I has very strong RPG, and everyone wanted
COBOL.  I had 12 strong years in RPG, self-taught,never touched COBOL

> Will I have to be forever unemployed because of this terrible job
> market??

Not if you choose not to be.  It is up to you, not the world.

> Won't anybody give me a chance to earn some money any more??

Won't you make a decision in your life that _you_will_earn_money_?

> Will my two little children (born 1990.Mar and 1991.Dec) and I have to
> rely on welfare for part of our living expenses and "incur debt" for
> the rest,.......

It's up to you.  Don't blame the world, because the world isn't your
mama.  Do you have a responsibility to your children to 'make it work'
or not ?

	I say this not to flame you, but to talk to you as someone who
has been there.  My solution ( found stumblingly and painfully ) was
to get out of computers.  I am now a licensed Electrician and HVAC
mechanic ( also self-taught OTJ ).  I can get a good job anywhere,
anytime.

	I was one of those programmers that the others in the local
community called when they had a problem they couldn't figure out.
The local S.E.'s from IBM routinely referred me to the design team of
the particualr machine I was on, because when I had to ask a question,
it usually meant that the answer was not an easy one.

	I made that machine do things ( in terms of size of database
handled and speed with which it was handled ) that IBM said " No, you
can't do that on this machine, you need a 4301 to do that".  I said
"come on over for a visit and see".  When they did, they didn't say
much.  In fact, they were speechless.  I'm not bragging here, this is
ancient history, but you can understand my background.

	The career change was rough, real rough.  But now I have
work security ( everyone needs an electrician sometime ).  It was a
major kick in the ego.  What, me, a lowly blue collar worker ?  Well,
guess what, the world is cruel, and it doesn't give a shit about you.
Get over it, and do something with your life.  No on else will. 
From: Malcolm Taylor
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <020695111724Rnf0.78@taylor.manawatu.planet.co.nz>
Paul Milligan <···@nando.net> writes:

>> All the job openings have specific experience I don't have, such as C++, Unix device drivers, or
>> MPW. None of the employers offering these jobs are willing to let me
>> train myself for a few days to get familiar with the new programming
>> environment, despite the fact that I taught myself all the the
>> languages and systems I've used in the past. They accept ONLY people
>> who have used exactly the particular programming language environment
>> and operating system for exactly the same kind of application or
>> utility.
>
>Sounds just like the situation I was in ten years ago, except that
>the details were that I has very strong RPG, and everyone wanted
>COBOL.  I had 12 strong years in RPG, self-taught,never touched COBOL
>
>> Will I have to be forever unemployed because of this terrible job
>> market??
>
>Not if you choose not to be.  It is up to you, not the world.
>
>> Won't anybody give me a chance to earn some money any more??
>
>Won't you make a decision in your life that _you_will_earn_money_?
>
>> Will my two little children (born 1990.Mar and 1991.Dec) and I have to
>> rely on welfare for part of our living expenses and "incur debt" for
>> the rest,.......
>
>It's up to you.  Don't blame the world, because the world isn't your
>mama.  Do you have a responsibility to your children to 'make it work'
>or not ?
>
>Get over it, and do something with your life.  No on else will. 

	Good point. but you do not neccesarily have to leave the field. 
Have you ever thought of teaching yourself C++, UNIX etc. I know that for 
myself it only took a year to teach myself the whole thing (muliple 
inheritance, virtual functions, abstract bases etc...). But don't leave 
LISP for dead. There are new languages that are of the same type coming 
out into the mainstream which a well experienced LISP programmer will find
easier to learn and use. These are a few years away yet but are somthing 
to look forward to.
--
From: Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3harcf$7ko@openlink.openlink.com>
···@netcom.com (David Oertel) said: <<maybe he simply needs to take a
grubby sys admin or QA job until he can find something that leverages
his brains.>>

The only sysadmin experience I have is my own personal Macintosh, which
doesn't qualify when the job wants experience managing Unix or managing
LANs of hundreds of mixed Macintoshes and IBM-PC clones. I've applied
for lots of QA jobs but they always turn me down because the only
testing experience I have is testing my own software and testing
freeware/shareware I download for my own use. They want formal training
with "test plans" and formal experience testing commercial products.
Recently I've just given up applying for QA jobs since it's not worth
my time to waste. However if I ever find time to write up a formal
document summarizing the stuff I've downloaded and tested for my own
use, I may submit that to a bunch of Macintosh QA jobs and see if
anyone thinks I qualify despite lack of formal experience.

I previously said: <<Will I have to be forever unemployed because of
this terrible job market??>> and Paul Milligan <···@nando.net> replied:
<<Not if you choose not to be. It is up to you, not the world.>>

I think you misunderstand the situation. I have offered my services for
pay, and nobody wants to accept my offer. I have NOT been offered pay
for my services. It's up to some employer to accept my offer, or
equivalently to make me an offer. I can't choose for some employer to
pay me (except with a gun at somebody's head, which is illegal,
immoral, unethical, unpleasant, and not within my capabilities anyway).

<<on't you make a decision in your life that _you_will_earn_money_?>>

Like what?

<<I made that machine do things ( in terms of size of database handled
and speed with which it was handled ) that IBM said " No, you can't do
that on this machine, you need a 4301 to do that". >>

Aha, you were a "hacker", just like myself. I made computers do things
that the "experts" said were impossible with the given operating
system, but I found a hack to get the task done anyway. My previous
girlfriend in 1988 (Jean Conner) was a hacker too. (Damn the FBI and
Congress re-defining the word "hacker" to mean some sort of vandal who
merely tries to break into computer systems and do mischief, rather
than somebody who accomplishes useful tasks by nonstandard unbelievable
means, so if we put on our resume that we are hackers the companies
don't want to hire us. Damn Damn the FBI and Congress!!)
From: John Woods
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <D3qw1t.H89@proteon.com>
···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming) writes:
>···@netcom.com (David Oertel) said: <<maybe he simply needs to take a
>grubby sys admin or QA job until he can find something that leverages
>his brains.>>
>I've applied
>for lots of QA jobs but they always turn me down because the only
>testing experience I have is testing my own software and testing
>freeware/shareware I download for my own use. They want formal training
>with "test plans" and formal experience testing commercial products.
>...However if I ever find time to write up a formal
>document summarizing the stuff I've downloaded and tested for my own
>use, I may submit that to a bunch of Macintosh QA jobs and see if
>anyone thinks I qualify despite lack of formal experience.

Uh, a long list of software that you've compiled and tried once or twice is
*not* formal experience in quality assurance (regardless of what industry
practice might seem to be ;-).  Genuine QA work includes designing formal
tests, determining code coverage of tests, regression testing, and a bunch
of subtle things that all too often are forgotten.  (Of course, to all too
many QA *managers*, the important deliverable of a QA effort is not the
test vectors, but is instead the project plan, with b*tt coverage being more
imporant than code coverage.  Genuine QA experience will enable you to know
how to deliver *that* while also doing some useful testing, too. :-)

><<I made that machine do things ( in terms of size of database handled
>and speed with which it was handled ) that IBM said " No, you can't do
>that on this machine, you need a 4301 to do that". >>
>Aha, you were a "hacker", just like myself. I made computers do things
>that the "experts" said were impossible with the given operating
>system,

I'm sorry, I have difficulty accepting the credentials of someone who
refers to IBM's analysts as "experts"...    :-)

But in terms of advice that might help, remember to focus on that "grubby"
word in the suggestion David gave you; if your sole experience with 
administration is 1 (one) Macintosh, there are probably several small
businesses in your area where that is still 1 (one) Macintosh more than
anyone else has a clue how to operate.  Don't barge into IBM's personnel
office and tell them they want you to be their System Administrator; barge
into Joe's Plumbing Fixtures Store down the street, especially if the 
receptionist is currently banging on her IBM PC in frustration, and tell
*them* they want you to be their System Administrator...

Sometimes, SOMETIMES, going for a small job may get you a larger one; when
I was a freshman at MIT, I interviewed for a job testing some software, and
they gave me a job *writing* that software.  But I emphasized that SOMETIMES,
because it rarely works out and the process can be immensely frustrating;
I was unable to duplicate that trick at home over the summer and wound up
doing office temporary work...

Good luck.
From: Jerry Kuch
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <D3rnIL.G80@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>
In article <··········@proteon.com>, John Woods <···@proteon.com> wrote:
>···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming) writes:
>>···@netcom.com (David Oertel) said: <<maybe he simply needs to take a
>
>I'm sorry, I have difficulty accepting the credentials of someone who
>refers to IBM's analysts as "experts"...    :-)
>

Don't knock it.  I've always found it pretty entertaining when their 
service guys show up with their "Choose your Own Adventure(TM)" 
maintenance manuals.  "If the drive doesn't spin up and you enter 
the spooky cave, turn to page 68; if the drive doesn't spin up but
you turn to fight the knight in shining armor, turn to page 69, etc."

Quite something to watch, whether it works or not.

-- 
   Jerry Kuch  				EMail: ······@neumann.uwaterloo.ca 
                   "GAMERA - DAIKAIJU KUCHU KESSEN" will be released  
  IMPORTANT NEWS:   in Japan on March 11th, one week earlier than the 
		    original March 18th release date.
From: Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h1s7i$8tv@openlink.openlink.com>
······@dmsoproto.ida.org (keith green (simctr)) said: <<One thing that
KEPT being brought up was: GEE! YOU'VE BEEN OUT OF WORK FOR OVER A
YEAR! THE TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED SO MUCH! This is the biggest load of
crap ... Hell, technology doesn't change that fast. It's far, far
better to understand how to think than to understand the details of a
particular technology.>>

If only the people doing the hiring understood that and would give us a
chance. But they keep saying "if we have 500 applicants for one job,
and 5 of them already have done exactly what we want, why should we
bother re-training one of the other 495 applicants?" and I wonder if
it's even worth ever trying to find employment again.

<<I've only ever twice gone out to look for a job ... The other jobs
I've had, I've gotten from some friend saying, "Hey, Keith..." They
call it networking.>>

That's how I got my jobs from 1977 to 1991. Somebody would tell me
somebody was looking for somebody and had asked if I'd be available as
soon as my current job was done, and I'd then get the job. But that
hasn't happened from 1991 onward. It depends on the other person. I
could sit here until I die of old age waiting for somebody to come to
me again like that, or I could spend the rest of my life responding to
job ads like I've done for nearly 3.5 years and still not get a job, or
... what?

<<You need to project that you know what you're doing without coming
across as an arrogant knowitall ...>>

My self-evaluation is that I express opinions strongly when I've
thought for many years about them and despite those years of
reconsideration I have become more and more convinced I am correct, but
otherwise I express ideas like brainstorming rather than like
know-it-all. For example, I am convinced that people of the world need
convenient affordable access to organized information on demand, and
that such service will eventually replace a lot of what passes for
'education' ('schooling') nowadays, and I don't back down from that
belief for anyone. I'm not willing to accept the view that information
isn't good for people, that it'd be better for them if they were denied
all information except what the government and the commercial
advertisers and the schools thought was really necessary for them to
learn. But for other topics, such as whether dinosaurs were
warm-blooded, well I sort of lean toward yes they were, but am open to
contrary evidence, and whether tardigrades ("water bears") could
survive being blown to space and drift back to Earth, such as after a
comet crash, and thus survive the mass extinctions, yes I currently
think they really could, but I'd like to see some experiments to test
that theory before I declare it a sure thing, and whether information
organization is best done by pre-conceived fixed named categories as
Brad Templeton (ClariNet) believes and UseNet is currently designed, or
by automated clustering without any fixed categories as I believe and
as some parts of WAIS and WWW are heading, I think we really need to
develop both methods and see how many people get better results with
one or the other for what kinds of information
retrieval/browsing/exploration tasks. I just think most of my ideas are
worth considering, even if not all of them turn out to be correct.
(More accurately, per Isaac Asimov's "the relativity of wrong": even if
a good fraction of the turn out to be more wrong than the currently
prevailing viewpoints, and thus turn out to be dead-end directions of
research that merely need to be proven wrong so they can be dismissed,
but the remainder are less wrong and thus productive directions of
research yielding scientific/engineering advance.)

<<In the mean time, you might consider doing contract work.>>

Apparently you aren't aware that I've been looking for W-2 employment
and 1099 contracting about equally for nearly 3.5 years. It doesn't
make any difference to me which I do. In fact I've done more
contracting then employment these years (3 weeks of contracting, and
zero employment). So your advice above is obsolete.

<<Benefits are nonexistent, but you can score big bucks quickly ...>>

How?

<<The big things right now are: GUIs, real-time control, databases, and
communications.>>

That doesn't do me any good. They want formal work on GUIs, not what
I've done; I have no real-time experience at all; The only databases
they care about are formal relational databases, such as Sybase or
Oracle or DB2, none of which I've ever seen much less used; The only
communications they want is TCP/IP drivers and routers, which I haven't
done. There are no entry-level or re-train positions in ANY of those
areas. They all require at least three years experience in those
specific areas, for both employment and contracting. 21 years general
computer-programming or networking or data-structures experience counts
as NOTHING for those types of jobs.

·····@galaxy.ucr.edu (christopher weare) said: <<If your [sic] so damn
smart, why don't you teach yourself a useful skill?>>

As Perry Mason would say: "That question assumes a fact not in
evidence."

For your information, I have taught myself a lot of useful skills.
Considering only the past 3.5 years: FORTH programming, C programming,
Macintosh OS/ToolBox traps (from FORTH, LISP and 68000 assembler), Unix
system calls from C, using lots of new network tools such as Gopher &
WWW & UseNet WhitePages, writing HTML documents, and a bunch more.

<<Learn c/c++, write a program that does something remotely useful, and
go interview for an entry level job.>>

I already did. I wrote a demo of my data compression invention using
Sesame C on the Macintosh, and I wrote a PCNET server in C for Unix
which I've been using on a regular basis for the past two years. I've
been looking for an entry-level job and haven't found one yet that
didn't require experience I don't have. (Funny how you think "entry
level" means it doesn't need experience. No, it means that it needs
less than three years experience. Check the guidelines for
misc.jobs.offered.entry if you don't belive me. Anyway, if the "entry
level" job needs two years Unix device drivers, and I've never touched
a Unix device driver in my life, then obviously it'd be a waste of my
time to apply, right?)

<<You've had three years. What have you been doing?>>

A whole bunch of things which either were useful in themselves (such as
that PCNET server, or the program that compiles an index to my SeekJob
contacts, or the system of programs that creates a recursive index to
my diskettes and compiles an inverted index and tells me which files
have too many versions and aids me in generating a list of obsolete
files no longer needed as backup and automatically runs the purging of
such obsolete backups) or which I thought might help get a job (such as
learning C, and my data-compression demo, and reading a book on C++ in
case anybody ever gives me access to a C++ system to practice on, and
writing about fourteen resumes).

Somebody using the account of ·····@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU (Donald
Tsang) said: <<I found I got a lot more response to my resume when I
emphasized my communication/writing skills; it's not what you know,
it's how well you can explain it.>>

Well, some of my MaasInfo documents can be considered samples of that
ability. What do you think, those who have bothered to start from
MaasInfo.TopIndex.html and check out some of the pointed-to documents
that I wrote? Is my writing/communicating skill worth emphasizing when
I'm being considered for a job writing Macintosh device drivers? Or is
it "OK for MaasInfo but not really good writing skill" and hence best
unmentionned when applying for anything other than a WWW/HTML authoring
job?

<<Is there any law that you have to get paid to learn C++?  Offer to
work for six months, without pay.>>

I've been asking for a long time but so far nobody has offered me
access to C++ to practice on for free. If anybody wants to offer now,
feel free to do so.

<<try to remember that each day you feed and shelter your children is
another victory.>>

Yeah, but it's nearly all due to my good credit rating, being able to
borrow and borrow and keep borrowing to keep off the streets. But every
day it's like that song Tennessee Ernie Ford sang, need I say which
one, you all remember it, don't you? Just that one line "another day
older and ..." The older I get the less able I'll be to survive being
impoverished while trying to raise children, due to physical disability
that worsens with age.

·······@gcr.com (Mark W Winstead) said: <<With these qualifications of
yours, you must be doing something terribly wrong and shooting yourself
in the foot, ...>>

Probably. But when I was sending a reverse chronological resume I was
criticized for emphasizing the obvious fact I've been unemployed,
because there's no employment listed back to 1991.Aug, which is obvious
in such a resume format, so I switched to a skills resume, and now
employers are complaining it's not a standard format, so I just can't
win.

<<Read *What Color is Your Parachute?* by Richard Bolles.>>

I already did. It sucks. It assumes I have lots of friends. I don't. It
assumes I'm gregarious. I'm not.

<<Contact your alma mater's career placement center and ask how they
might help you.>>

They refuse, unless I pay them money up front, and they have NO
guarantee they can do anything whatsoever to help me even after I've
found a way to borrow that money and paid it to them.
From: Martin Dowd
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h5hof$c5q@news.service.uci.edu>
In article <··········@openlink.openlink.com>,
Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming <···@BTR.Com> wrote:

>For your information, I have taught myself a lot of useful skills.
>Considering only the past 3.5 years: FORTH programming, C programming,
>Macintosh OS/ToolBox traps (from FORTH, LISP and 68000 assembler), Unix
>system calls from C, using lots of new network tools such as Gopher &
>WWW & UseNet WhitePages, writing HTML documents, and a bunch more.

You think you've got problems.  I spent the last two years with a part time
job in the UCI ECE department because the math department wouldn't give me
a job as a math/CS guy, even though I'd consider myself top-rated.  Hell, my
Ph.D. thesis qualifies me for that, and I've got a couple of good reviews in
the Math Reviews.  My new skills include multicomputer networks, vector CPU
design, DNA clone mapping (I've just written 2000 lines of C with lots of
combinatorial subroutines like Booth-Leuker and Ford-Fulkerson), genetic
algorithms, etc. etc. etc.  Like I say, the software industry in this country
might be a bunch of fascist crap but the university isn't any better.

  - Martin Dowd
From: Karen Kay
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <karenkD3LCCn.Enw@netcom.com>
Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming (···@BTR.Com) wrote:
: I could sit here until I die of old age waiting for somebody to come to
: me again like that, or I could spend the rest of my life responding to
: job ads like I've done for nearly 3.5 years and still not get a job, or
: ... what?

Ummmmmm....actually go and meet new people? There are dozens of
meetings every month for programming groups in the Bay Area. You go
to the meetings and talk to people. I did this for several months, and
the contacts I made are still paying off. Networking means *talking*
to people, it doesn't mean waiting for them to phone you. I've found
applying for jobs just about the most useless way of actually getting
work. 

: Anyway, if the "entry
: level" job needs two years Unix device drivers, and I've never touched
: a Unix device driver in my life, then obviously it'd be a waste of my
: time to apply, right?)

Depends on the job.

: Probably. But when I was sending a reverse chronological resume I was
: criticized for emphasizing the obvious fact I've been unemployed,
: because there's no employment listed back to 1991.Aug, which is obvious
: in such a resume format, so I switched to a skills resume, and now
: employers are complaining it's not a standard format, so I just can't
: win.

Huh? I don't understand that. But what works for a lot of people is a
chrono-fuctional resume--a hybrid of the two. I use that, because I'm
43 and changing careers.

: <<Read *What Color is Your Parachute?* by Richard Bolles.>>

: I already did. It sucks. It assumes I have lots of friends. I don't. It
: assumes I'm gregarious. I'm not.

Then you're doomed. Unless you can force yourself to network, you're
fucked. No one is going to hire you. WCIYP is particularly useful wrt
what he says about HOW people get jobs. All that is true.

Karen
  ······@netcom.com
From: Des Courtney
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <dcourtn-0602951416240001@m248-33.bgsu.edu>
In article <················@netcom.com>, Karen Kay wrote:

) Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming (···@BTR.Com) wrote:

) : I already did. It sucks. It assumes I have lots of friends. I don't. It
) : assumes I'm gregarious. I'm not.
) 
) Then you're doomed. Unless you can force yourself to network, you're
) fucked. No one is going to hire you. WCIYP is particularly useful wrt
) what he says about HOW people get jobs. All that is true.

gre*gar*i*ous adj. 1. fond of the company of others; sociable.  2. living
  in flocks or herds, as animals. ... 4. pertaining to a flock or crowd.

EWWWWWWWW!  Yuck!  If this is what it takes to get into computer science
  now, the career just lost some of it's appeal to me...  I don't want to
  make groupthink and herd mentality part of my lifestyle.  I've already
  tried personal networking to some success, but the cost of doing it is
  almost beyond my ability to cope.  Robert, we're probably going to be
  in the same boat...

Des Courtney

-- 
This message was written by the one and only ·······@opie.bgsu.edu,
  or known to his friends as "Des Courtney."  This is a test .sig.
  If this had been an actual .sig, you would have been bombarded by
  dozens of lines of ASCII graphics which would shamelessly waste
  bandwidth and your time.  (I let the message do that. (-:)
From: Joseph Weinstein
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <D3LLEE.7F6@sybase.com>
|> 
|> gre*gar*i*ous adj. 1. fond of the company of others; sociable.  2. living
|>   in flocks or herds, as animals. ... 4. pertaining to a flock or crowd.
|> 
|> EWWWWWWWW!  Yuck!  If this is what it takes to get into computer science
|>   now, the career just lost some of it's appeal to me...  I don't want to
|>   make groupthink and herd mentality part of my lifestyle.  I've already
|>   tried personal networking to some success, but the cost of doing it is
|>   almost beyond my ability to cope.  Robert, we're probably going to be
|>   in the same boat...
|> 
|> Des Courtney


Well, how silly of an employer to want a sence of 'groupthink' in his/her
employees. Schedules and a common goal are retro tools of oppression.
If you don't want to part of a 'herd' you shouldn't expect any attention
from 'herders'. There are some folk whose contribution is so valuable that
they can tune and tailor their interaction with their consumers with complete
discretion, but for most folks this is an impossible conceit. We must reconcile
our value with our market, not our ego.

-- 
Joe Weinstein   ···@sybase.com   Sybase 1650 65th st.  Emeryville Ca 94608
							      510-922-3620
Say a prayer for all the fine young men who go down to the chips in C...
From: Pat Wilson
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h6hbf$lk9@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>
·······@opie.bgsu.edu (Des Courtney) writes:

>In article <················@netcom.com>, Karen Kay wrote:

>) Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming (···@BTR.Com) wrote:

>) : I already did. It sucks. It assumes I have lots of friends. I don't. It
>) : assumes I'm gregarious. I'm not.
>) 
>) Then you're doomed. Unless you can force yourself to network, you're
>) fucked. No one is going to hire you. WCIYP is particularly useful wrt
>) what he says about HOW people get jobs. All that is true.

>gre*gar*i*ous adj. 1. fond of the company of others; sociable.  2. living
>  in flocks or herds, as animals. ... 4. pertaining to a flock or crowd.

>EWWWWWWWW!  Yuck!  If this is what it takes to get into computer science
>  now, the career just lost some of it's appeal to me...  I don't want to
>  make groupthink and herd mentality part of my lifestyle.  I've already
>  tried personal networking to some success, but the cost of doing it is
>  almost beyond my ability to cope.  Robert, we're probably going to be
>  in the same boat...


You've made a mistaken attribution (WCIYP doesn't say that, that's Maas 
again).

It's not necessary to be gregarious; it _is_ necessary to cultivate 
colleagues and others in the industry you prefer.  Failure to do so
can wind you up in the situation that Mr. Maas describes - no contacts,
and (apparently) no clue about how to make some.

I believe I made the (fruitless) attempt to give suggestions to Mr. Maas
a year or two ago - I believe that I suggested he volunteer his skills
at some non-profit (non-computer) agency, and try to leverage the contacts
there to get a Real Job(TM).  It's amazing how many mom'n'pop shops
have the need for one small bit of programming or another, and you'd
never think of it until you knew the proprietors.  No, Mr. Maas, I
do _not_ know the names of any such folks in need of services - you'll
have to find them yourself.  Remember, that's *not* where you start,
though - you start by donating some time to a non-profit which does
work that interests you.  No, it doesn't pay, but neither (apparently)
does your current tactic.

As for "herd mentality", I know *plenty* of very gregarious people
who are *extremely* non-standard.

--
Pat Wilson
···@coos.dartmouth.edu
From: keith green (simctr)
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h7qlh$912@dmsoproto.ida.org>
Pat Wilson (···@coos.dartmouth.edu) wrote:
: ·······@opie.bgsu.edu (Des Courtney) writes:

: >In article <················@netcom.com>, Karen Kay wrote:

: >) Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming (···@BTR.Com) wrote:

: >) : I already did. It sucks. It assumes I have lots of friends. I don't. It
: >) : assumes I'm gregarious. I'm not.
: >) 
: >) Then you're doomed. Unless you can force yourself to network, you're
: >) fucked. No one is going to hire you. WCIYP is particularly useful wrt
: >) what he says about HOW people get jobs. All that is true.

: >gre*gar*i*ous adj. 1. fond of the company of others; sociable.  2. living
: >  in flocks or herds, as animals. ... 4. pertaining to a flock or crowd.

: >EWWWWWWWW!  Yuck!  If this is what it takes to get into computer science
: >  now, the career just lost some of it's appeal to me...  I don't want to
: >  make groupthink and herd mentality part of my lifestyle.  I've already
: >  tried personal networking to some success, but the cost of doing it is
: >  almost beyond my ability to cope.  Robert, we're probably going to be
: >  in the same boat...


: It's not necessary to be gregarious; it _is_ necessary to cultivate 
: colleagues and others in the industry you prefer.  Failure to do so
: can wind you up in the situation that Mr. Maas describes - no contacts,
: and (apparently) no clue about how to make some.

  Very well said.

  It is stupid and childish (not to mention illogical) to say or imply
that anyone who gets along with others is guilty of 'following the herd'.
No one would would say that about me -- ear ring, long hair (bald in the
top and front) sometimes in a mini-tail, fairly left leaning views on
many things, anti-religious -- working with a very conservative (suit
and tie guys), VERY right leaning (actual prone might be a better
description), church-going, whatevers.  I more than get along with these
guys.  I LIKE them!  I RESPECT them!  I ADMIRE them.  Not all of them.
I've met a few morons.  But not many.  And more than that, I've met
some who I thought were morons who turned out to be differently
intelligenced.  Now some of them show me no respect whatever (actually
the PhD guys are real charmers, it's usually the rare associate degree
guy in here who feels he has to make a point of degrading others who
irk me), but generally I have to say that these guys are really cool
and open to suggestions.  (They joke about me being a communist sometimes,
or a radical or some such hooey, but I can live with it.)

  Getting along with people does not that one has to be a weasel or
sell out or any other childish notion.  Getting along just means being
decent to people and expecting others to be decent to you.  If I'm
not treated well, I leave.

  I remember when I co-opped for a for a gov. agency when I was
still a sophomore.  First non-manual labor job I'ld ever had.  I was
working my butt off and people were really rude to me:  talking behind
my back, insulting me in front of whole room fulls of people, talking
about my 'stupid' programs that never worked (I was by far the best
programmer they've ever had there and my stuff worked, I assure you).
I just couldn't understand it.  Every night I went home and cried.
I had no friends at that time.  My family didn't want me to go to
college, so I couldn't talk to them.  Several times I was just going
to go to my boss and say, "Sorry, I just can't do this.  Bye."  To
this day, the only reason I can think of as to why I didn't do this
was just ego.  I was more scared of having my family tell me "I told
you so" for the rest of my life than I was of being a pariah for a
few semesters.

  I tell you I have not worked that hard before I got to that job or
since.  But things just kept getting worse.  Finally, I got into a
computer war with the senior co-op and really pasted the crap out
of him - after that even the other programmers were scared of me.
Finally one engineer guy starts talking to me.  He's really old - close
to retirement - and unmarried.  He just starts filling me in on all
this old-people's crappy philosophy.  Only I start realizing he's
actually telling me things I need to know to understand what's happening
to me.  (I know - it's just like some stupid movie - but it happened.)  
I start getting jobs that everyone else said was impossible or would
take man-months to implement (and finishing them in a few weeks).  And
I also get the job of cooperating with other departments.  Started like
this:  I was in planning department's computer group.  They sent me
to MIS dept to get tapes through them (which they buy in bulk for much
less than we pay for them).  I'm there and there manager listens quietly
to me, then very rudely tosses me out of his office.  By the time I
get back to my boss to report failure, this honcho has already called
him and told him that I forgot to pick up my first batch of tapes.
From there, I start developing procedures and writing code to reduce
work across departments (3 different departments had secretaries coming
in and working overtime to type in the same set of thousands of cards
per week.  I just told them the obvious, that maybe we could send the
next department a tape instead of giving them the stupid cards to retype).
Oddly enough, when I left (they asked me to stay an extra semester and
offered me a regular job), they threw me a party.  Everyone told me
I got the biggest party they'ld ever seen.  (Yes, being liked is important
to me.  Well, sortof -- actually not being despised it sufficient.
I just don't wear well in that sort of hostile environment.)
[oh, btw, I got along GREAT with my boss even though I was an atheist
and he was a born again christian.]

Whatever, the point is that it is absolute malarky to insinuate that
one can't be one's self and still work with other people.  But there
are ways to express polite disagreement.  Maybe even some of your
successful respondents haven't learned this simple lesson.

In short, working with other people is important.  And I personally
would never work on a job where I felt uncomfortable ALL the time.
It's simply not necessary.  Work can be and ought to be a pleasant
experience.

When I interviewed at one company, the personnel person asked me,
"Well, why are you leaving your current company?"
"Uh...well... uh...<think fast>...uh...I'm just looking for change, I
guess."

"What ARE you looking for in a company?"

"I'm looking for some place where - one day out the week - I can wake up
in the morning and I just can't wait to get to work, even if the other
four days are total shit."

<yes, I really did say 'shit' in an interview. This is a true story.>

I really thought I'ld had it, but a few weeks later, she called me back
for a tech interview -- and I got the job (with BBN).

That's all.  I just wanted to rant on this silly notion that you can't
be polite and opinionated, or self-determining at the same time.

However, since I've lingered let me state a philosophical difference I
have with a great many people.  Some people like to send out hundreds
and hundreds of resumes.  I've never sent out more than seven.  I ONLY
send out resumes to companies that look interesting.  I don't waste
time with places that don't 'sound right' to me.  I usually get 7/7
interviews with 2 offers.  The guys who send out hundreds usually get
7 interviews and 1 or 2 offers.  I usually spend about a month going
over my resume before I send the first one out.  I get several friends
to review it (I NEVER tailor a resume to a job, that's what the cover
letter is for).  But I don't like wasting time on places I'm pretty
sure I won't like working.  [They can tell that in the interview.]
Find some place where you can go in and say to yourself, "Man, I could
make a home here."

I know a mensan who is very similar to you in some respects.  He's got
a BS in biology - is LETHALLY LOGICAL (all to uncommon - even for
mensans) - but he can't get anything but manual labor jobs.  His problem
is that he just HAS to give his unsolicited opinion on things to other
people.  He's really thick skinned about the effects his remarks have
on other people (correcting a boss's pronunciation in front of the whole
company, for example), but extraordinarily thin-skinned about criticisms
that anyone gives him.  He'll plead for my advice on things and then
goes on to criticize that advice as something he's already tried (but
only half-heartedly in my opinion) and then goes on a long diatribe to
belittle me and my success at work.

  Look - the work is out there.  There are contract jobs that pay
what I consider a lot of money.  I don't do contract work any more -
it just doesn't agree with me.  But there are jobs, if you can do them.
There ARE some companies that are willing to let you figure things out
on the job - I know because I've switched around several times.  But
you have to be able to build up a personal relationship with the
interviewer.  It's a rapport sorta thing - a sense of trust between
you and her.  These interpersonal skills are not things that anyone
is born with.  They're the sorts of things that we have to develop -
sometimes very painfully.  But to say (or imply) that these things
are not important (or that they are symptoms of selling out) is just
plain ignorant. (That's 'ignernt' where I come from.)

--
My employers don't tell me what to say,        keith green, NaN
and I don't tell them where to stick it.       ······@ida.org
From: David Phillip Oster
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <osterD3nDs8.Hx0@netcom.com>
A cute side light on this thread is the following:

I originally posted, saying that my background was similar to Robert Maas's,
but my employment history was so dissimilar that I wasn't interested in
employment, but in starting successful companies.

As a result of that posting I received e-mail from four separate kind people
saying, something like: "We'd like to hire you."!

Surely Robert Maas must have received even more, since he is the one who
is actively looking.

-- 
--------- <·············@netcom.com> ----------
There is no sight finer than that of the planet Earth in your rearview mirror.
From: Chris Jacobs
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP
Date: 
Message-ID: <q4L0Zc2w165w@ps2.xs4all.nl>
·····@netcom.com (David Phillip Oster) writes:

> 
> A cute side light on this thread is the following:
> 
> I originally posted, saying that my background was similar to Robert Maas's,
> but my employment history was so dissimilar that I wasn't interested in
> employment, but in starting successful companies.
> 
> As a result of that posting I received e-mail from four separate kind people
> saying, something like: "We'd like to hire you."!
> 
> Surely Robert Maas must have received even more, since he is the one who
> is actively looking.
> 
> -- 
> --------- <·············@netcom.com> ----------
> There is no sight finer than that of the planet Earth in your rearview mirror
> 
> 

But what is Robert Maas then supposed to do with even more Email stating:
"We want to hire D.P. Oster" ???

--
Chris Jacobs <·······@xs4all.nl>
http://www.xs4all.nl/~cjacobs/ for pgp key
From: Christopher B. Browne
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h8dj7$lbl@ionews.io.org>
In article <························@m248-33.bgsu.edu>,
Des Courtney <·······@opie.bgsu.edu> wrote:
>In article <················@netcom.com>, Karen Kay wrote:
>) Then you're doomed. Unless you can force yourself to network, you're
>) fucked. No one is going to hire you. WCIYP is particularly useful wrt
>) what he says about HOW people get jobs. All that is true.
>
>gre*gar*i*ous adj. 1. fond of the company of others; sociable.  2. living
>  in flocks or herds, as animals. ... 4. pertaining to a flock or crowd.
>
>EWWWWWWWW!  Yuck!  If this is what it takes to get into computer science
>  now, the career just lost some of it's appeal to me...  I don't want to
>  make groupthink and herd mentality part of my lifestyle.  I've already
>  tried personal networking to some success, but the cost of doing it is
>  almost beyond my ability to cope.  Robert, we're probably going to be
>  in the same boat...

"Groupthink" and "Herd mentality" may not be the nicest ways of describing
things (and aren't universally true), but...

"sociable" is a pretty basic requirement for *any* job of *any* kind.

There are relatively few jobs out there where one can sit in a back room
and avoid human contact altogether.  This has *nothing* to do with computer
science; indeed, if one is un-gregarious, CS is probably an optimal "career"
as it probably requires less socializing than most others.  (e.g. - a minimal
maximum required face-to-face interfacing with other human life units, to
be obscure.)

The tough reality is that if you are *so* antisocial that "networking" is
something you can't cope with, then *you are in trouble.*  McDonalds
may not care very much if people are sociable, but anything higher up on
the scale *does* require that people communicate with people.  That's how
people figure out what needs to be done.

Giving up on "Computer Science" really isn't going to help, because there
aren't very many alternatives that are "better" from the anti-gregariousness
point of view.
-- 
Christopher Browne - ·······@io.org
Fatal Error: Found [MS-Windows] System -> Repartitioning Disk for Linux...
From: Pete Gontier
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <gurgle-0602951853180001@foo.bar.baz.quux>
In article <··········@openlink.openlink.com>,
···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas) wrote:

> I am convinced that people of the world need
> convenient affordable access to organized information on demand, and
> that such service will eventually replace a lot of what passes for
> 'education' ('schooling') nowadays, and I don't back down from that
> belief for anyone. I'm not willing to accept the view that information
> isn't good for people, that it'd be better for them if they were denied
> all information except what the government and the commercial
> advertisers and the schools thought was really necessary for them to
> learn.

It's great to believe this and even to post it on the net. But I've got a
clue for you when it comes to expressing opinions not directly related to
the job during a job interview:

        LIE

Or, in words which may suit you better: BACK DOWN. In this particular
case, people don't like to be told their education was a waste of time. By
and large people are proud of their PhDs. Sure, I've met any number of
PhDs who are useless with respect to being productive contributors to the
industry. But DON'T TELL THEM THAT! So what if it's a lie? Do you want a
job or not? If you want a job, you'll go so far as to admire the stupid
diploma hanging on the PhD's wall, even if you you think it isn't worth
the paper it's printed on.

> <<The big things right now are: GUIs, real-time control, databases, and
> communications.>>
> 
> That doesn't do me any good. They want formal work... There are no
> entry-level or re-train positions in ANY of those areas... 21 years general
> computer-programming or networking or data-structures experience counts
> as NOTHING for those types of jobs.

Don't get that kind of job, then. Here's how I got my first job (although
you're not looking for your first, judging from the rest of your story, it
might be reasonable to pretend you are):

Graduation was imminent. I was graduating with a BA in Philosophy, which
of course is utterly useless as a resume item even for a dronish
brain-dead job shuffling papers in some administrative office somewhere.
My prospects were bleak, but I knew I loved building Macintosh software
(hey, students have a lot of free time, despite what they claim) and I
knew I wasn't quite qualified to do it right away, but I also knew I would
never get to do what I wanted if I didn't try.

This bit is true in addition to being colorful: I put on a pair of blue
jeans and rode my skateboard to the nearest Macintosh developer, and I
said, in effect: "I want a job here and I don't care what it is." (I later
learned that Guy Kawasaki, Mac culture guru, recommends this for people in
my situation.) I had a couple of Macintosh applications to show. They were
useless, of course, but they gave some clue that at least I had the
requisite interest. I started out answering email from beta testers, and a
few months later all the engineers quit right before a release deadline
and the management made a quick decision to promote me into engineer-hood.

Was I lucky? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I put myself in the right place and simply
waited for the right time. They knew I had at least some idea of how to
proceed just based on idle chit-chat near the water cooler (figuratively
speaking -- we relied on tap water :-), and they knew I was familiar with
the way the company worked, so they promoted me.

None of this stuff was mysterious or tricky. To be honest, I didn't really
think I was being quite so mercenary about it at the time. In fact, I
really *would* have answered phones or swept floors or cleaned out garbage
bins for that company, so I wasn't lying. But I also knew I aspired to
something more, and I knew I was putting myself in a position to get it.

> <<Is there any law that you have to get paid to learn C++?  Offer to
> work for six months, without pay.>>
> 
> I've been asking for a long time but so far nobody has offered me
> access to C++ to practice on for free. If anybody wants to offer now,
> feel free to do so.

With a name like openlink.openlink.com, doesn't your system have a copy of
'gcc' lying around? It's not great, but it implements more C++ than most
programmers who claim to know C++ will ever use. (Industry secret: if you
know C really well, you can claim you know C++. Half the idiots who list
it are doing this.)

______________________________________________________________________________
 Pete Gontier -- MacZealotry, Ink. -- ······@dnai.com

 "It's great to work for a company that lets you build good software 
  and doesn't give you any shit..."
             -- John McEnerney, Metrowerks PowerPC Product Architect
From: [Invalid-From-Line]
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <rohwerwdD48Ewu.95s@netcom.com>
In article <·······················@foo.bar.baz.quux>,
Pete Gontier <······@dnai.com> wrote:
>In article <··········@openlink.openlink.com>,
>···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas) wrote:
>
>> I am convinced that people of the world need
>> convenient affordable access to organized information on demand, and
>> that such service will eventually replace a lot of what passes for
>> 'education' ('schooling') nowadays, and I don't back down from that
>> belief for anyone. I'm not willing to accept the view that information
>> isn't good for people, that it'd be better for them if they were denied
>> all information except what the government and the commercial
>> advertisers and the schools thought was really necessary for them to
>> learn.
>
>It's great to believe this and even to post it on the net. But I've got a
>clue for you when it comes to expressing opinions not directly related to
>the job during a job interview:
>
>        LIE
>

     I disagree.  Lieing is a cardinal sin in my book.  When one lies,
one shows that one does not have integrity.

>Or, in words which may suit you better: BACK DOWN. In this particular
>case, people don't like to be told their education was a waste of time. By
>and large people are proud of their PhDs. Sure, I've met any number of
>PhDs who are useless with respect to being productive contributors to the
>industry. But DON'T TELL THEM THAT! So what if it's a lie? Do you want a
>job or not? If you want a job, you'll go so far as to admire the stupid
>diploma hanging on the PhD's wall, even if you you think it isn't worth
>the paper it's printed on.
>

     I am now in the process of attempting to find a software engineering
job.  If the interviewer asks me a question and I don't know the answer,
the I will say "I don't know.".  If a company brings me in to interview
for a software test/QA job and the interviewer(s) ask me what my long
term goals are, then I will answer truthfully, "I want to go into the
front part, analysis, design or programming, of the software engineering
process."  If the interviewer(s) don't like that answer and that
disqualifies me from that job, then I feel that I am better off because
I kept my integrity and I know that company would not be right for me.

     In conclusion, I think that one must keep to one's guns by not lieing,
and telling the truth.  One must keep one's integrity.
From: Dr. Richard Botting
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3i80on$l2b@news.csus.edu>
········@netcom.com wrote:
: In article <·······················@foo.bar.baz.quux>,
: Pete Gontier <······@dnai.com> wrote:
: >In article <··········@openlink.openlink.com>,
: >···@BTR.Com (Robert Elton Maas) wrote:
: >
[snip]
:      I am now in the process of attempting to find a software engineering
: job.  If the interviewer asks me a question and I don't know the answer,
: the I will say "I don't know.".  
The will hire the candidate who doesn't know it, doesn't bluff and says
	"I can learn that if its needed for this job".
The doctrine on hiring is to look for signs of flexibillity and "can do".

And those that mean what they say in the inerview
will probably do better in the job...
: If a company brings me in to interview
: for a software test/QA job and the interviewer(s) ask me what my long
: term goals are, then I will answer truthfully, "I want to go into the
: front part, analysis, design or programming, of the software engineering
: process."  If the interviewer(s) don't like that answer and that
: disqualifies me from that job, then I feel that I am better off because
: I kept my integrity and I know that company would not be right for me.

This answer also lets them come up with a supplementary:  "We don't
have an oppening like that now.... would you be willing to do SQA
until we had such a post...".  Its possible your other qualities
make you the best candidate anyway.

:      In conclusion, I think that one must keep to one's guns by not lieing,
: and telling the truth.  One must keep one's integrity.
Yep.  But demonstrate your intelligence by finding positive, selling 
ways of saying things.  (If they want to hire someone dumb...who wants the
job!).

I speak as one who only failed one job interview (BASIC programmer) and
has interviewed candidates many times.

Exercise:  You are a poor student and are applying for a programming job.
The job is in London and involves a strict dress code.
You prepare the night before by washing your only white shirt and ironing it
with your landlady's iron.... this leaves black tar spread around the
collar.  All the launderettes are closed and the landlady has no
washing machine.  Niether can you wash the shirt by hand.  How do
you impress the interviewer in your business suit while wearing a dirty
shirt? 

--
····@·······················@wiley.csusb.edu.
Disclaimer::=`CSUSB may or may not agree with this message`.
Copyright(1995)::=`Copy as long as you include this copyright and signature`.
From: Lee Perkins
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3i8pvi$q5d@news1.digex.net>
Dr. Richard Botting (····@silicon.csci.csusb.edu) wrote:
: You prepare the night before by washing your only white shirt and ironing it
: with your landlady's iron.... this leaves black tar spread around the
: collar.  All the launderettes are closed and the landlady has no
: washing machine.  Niether can you wash the shirt by hand.  How do
: you impress the interviewer in your business suit while wearing a dirty
: shirt? 

      You paint over the black parts with SnoPake, White Out or equiv.

--
Ms. Lee Perkins                                                UDC
Center for Research in Information Systems           ········@UDCVAX.bitnet
From: Robert Worsnop
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <D4AI1o.uG@parallax.co.uk>
> 
> Exercise:  You are a poor student and are applying for a programming job.
> The job is in London and involves a strict dress code.
> You prepare the night before by washing your only white shirt and ironing it
> with your landlady's iron.... this leaves black tar spread around the
> collar.  All the launderettes are closed and the landlady has no
> washing machine.  Niether can you wash the shirt by hand.  How do
> you impress the interviewer in your business suit while wearing a dirty
> shirt? 
> 

Cover your suit with a substance of a similar colour and pretend you
have fallen over drunk on the way to the interview.
From: David Oertel
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <ortD4BCG2.Et@netcom.com>
In article <·········@parallax.co.uk>,
Robert Worsnop <····@parallax.co.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> Exercise:  You are a poor student and are applying for a programming job.
>> The job is in London and involves a strict dress code.
>> You prepare the night before by washing your only white shirt and ironing it
>> with your landlady's iron.... this leaves black tar spread around the
>> collar.  All the launderettes are closed and the landlady has no
>> washing machine.  Niether can you wash the shirt by hand.  How do
>> you impress the interviewer in your business suit while wearing a dirty
>> shirt? 
>> 
>
>Cover your suit with a substance of a similar colour and pretend you
>have fallen over drunk on the way to the interview.
>

	i didn't want to post this too early and spoil everyone's fun but the
	answer is to go ahead and wear the dirty shirt.  if they hire you
	anyway because they like your expertise and they're indifferent to
	your clothes, then you've just found a cool place to work.  if they
	throw you out of the interview, then they've saved you a lot of
	dress-code-type grief that's bound to come later.

	dave
-- 
From: Ethan Solomita
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3ib681$nah@monk.mcl.cs.columbia.edu>
In article <············@netcom.com>, David Oertel <···@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>	i didn't want to post this too early and spoil everyone's fun but the
>	answer is to go ahead and wear the dirty shirt.  if they hire you
>	anyway because they like your expertise and they're indifferent to
>	your clothes, then you've just found a cool place to work.  if they
>	throw you out of the interview, then they've saved you a lot of
>	dress-code-type grief that's bound to come later.
>
	In that case, you should've gotten the hint when the
interview required you to dress formally. If they didn't care
about your appearance then they wouldn't care that you appear in
a suit.
	-- Ethan


-- 
R.A.D. Host

"Oh no! They've all become giant Swiss lederhosen-clad dancing yodelers!"
	The Brain
From: Angi Long
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3hm45d$3r1@bach.seattleu.edu>
Robert Elton Maas, 21 years experience programming <···@BTR.Com> wrote:
>I could sit here until I die of old age waiting for somebody to come to
>me again like that, or I could spend the rest of my life responding to
>job ads like I've done for nearly 3.5 years and still not get a job, or
>... what?

Or you could start building yourself a better network. 

><<Read *What Color is Your Parachute?* by Richard Bolles.>>
>I already did. It sucks. It assumes I have lots of friends. I don't. It

So make some.  Get on some local BBS's.  There you will find lots
of computer geeks just DYING to teach you useful stuff.  People 
with C++ compilers they'd LOVE to invite you over to use as long
as you coo over their cool hardware setups and maybe swap a couple
.gifs.  

I have a friend who just got hired at Spry a couple months ago 
(the "Internet in a Box" people).  He went to interview for a "tech
support" position -- a job answering phones and fielding costomers'
questions for not much more than minimum wage.  While he was in the
office, the information came out that he runs a FAQ for a newsgroup,
which he has connected to his own WWW page, which he set up himself.
That he has Linux installed on his home PC.  That he's been teaching
"intro to the internet" classes now and then at a community college.
He showed that he is able to speak fluent Unix AND English :)  They
decided they wanted him, they created a position for him, and hired
him on salary at $24K.  He didn't have anywhere near the "official"
experience they would have advertised for such a position.  
From: Jim Hewitt
Subject: Re: No employment available for mathematician/genius/programmer(LISP)
Date: 
Message-ID: <3h4cbn$muv@diamond.sierra.net>
·····@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephani Ann B. Solina) wrote:
>
> =>I recommend Scientific Placement for a head-hunter.
>    
>    Could you give an address/phone number/email etc. for them?  Thanks!
 


David A. Small, President
Scientific Placement, Inc., Box 19949, Houston, TX 77224
713-496-6100   713-496-0373 (fax)
Internet: ···@Scientific.com
Compuserve: 71250,3001, AppleLink: D1580, AOL: DaveSmall, eWorld: spi