How is your career going?

[ImLawBoy]

Who sleeps in until 6:30?? And who needs an alarm clock????

Why are you still posting? Isn't it past your bedtime?

[stessier]

Who sleeps in until 6:30?? And who needs an alarm clock????

Why are you still posting? Isn't it past your bedtime?

I have 1 hour and 41 minutes, thank you very much. And with the ice storm and gym being closed in the morning, I'm seriously considering playing video games once the kids are in bed. I won't, of course, as I will pass out around 7:36pm, but still.

[Z-Corn]

And who needs an alarm clock????

Do you know anything about Bukowski? He would sleep the day away if he didn't have to go to the Post Office...

[hepcat]

...or the bar.

[Jeff V]

Who sleeps in until 6:30?? And who needs an alarm clock????

+1 to both.

[gbasden]

Who sleeps in until 6:30?? And who needs an alarm clock????

+1 to both.

The only way I want to see 6:30 is if I've stayed up all night. Morning is of the devil.

[godhugh]

Who sleeps in until 6:30?? And who needs an alarm clock????

+1 to both.

The only way I want to see 6:30 is if I've stayed up all night. Morning is of the devil.

Work night shift like me! It's 6:30am, I've been up for 22 hours, I'm exhausted, but I'd still rather do this schedule then have to get up this early every day.

[Jeff V]

Work night shift like me! It's 6:30am, I've been up for 22 hours, I'm exhausted, but I'd still rather do this schedule then have to get up this early every day.

Tried that once during a week-long contract gig where I drew a short straw and was part of the night shift for a round-the-clock laptop reimage/refresh that covered more than 3000 machines in less than 5 days. I just can't sleep at all when the sun is out -- during the summer, I'm often up by 5 am.

[RunningMn9]

I realized I was putting too much emphasis on deriving satisfaction from my job.

This is something I mull over every hour of every day.

I think I arrived where Smoove_B got a little earlier and that helped tremendously when I had the soul-crushing task of implementing something called PVD/PAMD for Intel. That stands for Positive Voice Detection / Positive Answering Machine Detection. That's the technology that allows telemarketers to call 10 people at once and to determine as fast as possible which call is answered by a live human rather than an answering machine so that you can be insta-transferred to the telemarketing agent.

It's enough to make you hate every fiber of your being. Luckily the universe took care of the problem and I got laid off back in 2010 after toiling away for a couple of years to create the technology for cell carriers to insert text ads into video that was streaming over their network.

Now I work for Army. No matter what I am doing here, it always has the same purpose - keep soldiers safer than they were. Much easier to live with that then my earlier tasks.

[stessier]

There is a supervisor position open at a plant at my current site (same company, different division). I'm thinking I'm going to apply. I've been doing engineering for 19 years and have always thought I'd enjoy management. This looks to be a decent position too - only 2 direct reports but 55-ish indirect. My biggest concerns are am I going to like it/be able to do it (really no way to know until I try) and how stable is the division (how stable is any company, amiright)?

What's the worst that happens? I hate it, do a poor job and get fired?

Yeah...

[LawBeefaroni]

My last day is today. It's been surreal, this has been the longest-seeming month in recent memory (not just because I'm leaving but also because I've had a ton of early meetings and off-site appearances).

Looks like I'll get all the work stuff squared away but haven't even started on the personal HR stuff (401K, cashouts, etc). As expected, I'll lose 249 hours of extended illness bank (old grandfathered sick time from like 5 years ago, usable only for medical leave/disability) but will get paid out for 230 hours for PTO.

One thing I regret, not taking in a week off in between. I wanted to give them as much time here and also wanted to get started restructuring ASAP at the new place. But now I realize I won't have much PTO for the first few months.

[Jeff V]

What's the worst that happens? I hate it, do a poor job and get fired?

The worst that could happen is you hate it, do a good job, and are stuck in that job indefinitely.

I chair a monthly meeting of peers for the western half of the US (Illinois is in the west for load-balancing reasons I guess. This is an informal meeting, sometimes heavily technical, to talk about recent issues affecting management of my level. They are what some of the more formal meetings wish to be, and are typically enjoyed by those who attend. Yesterday, it was brought up that our days as a group are numbered - when the split happens, some (and everyone doesn't yet know for sure where they are landing, although some are pretty certain) this particular group will no longer be intact.

Our COO addressed the proletariat yesterday. The split is anticipated to take place October 1. Conveniently (not), the new baby is scheduled for Sept 14, meaning it will probably be impossible for me to exclusively dedicate two weeks to wife, new baby and old baby.

[YellowKing]

There is a supervisor position open at a plant at my current site (same company, different division). I'm thinking I'm going to apply. I've been doing engineering for 19 years and have always thought I'd enjoy management. This looks to be a decent position too - only 2 direct reports but 55-ish indirect. My biggest concerns are am I going to like it/be able to do it (really no way to know until I try) and how stable is the division (how stable is any company, amiright)?

We are in very similar situations right now. I mentioned this in the "Is this real life?" thread, but there's a strong possibility that we'll have a project management position open soon. My current job filled a vacancy left by the previous engineer who took the PM role. Now there's a chance he'll move into a vacant management slot, leaving his PM slot open. The natural progression would be for me to follow him up the ladder as I've done so far.

My initial instinct was "I'm not ready to do something like that," but then when I look around at the people who are in PM roles here (heck, even management roles), I realize that I'm probably more than qualified. I've been a team lead for the past four years "managing" a team of four other people - and while it's not a true management role, the duties are similar.

I've been in an engineer role for 8 years now, and while I enjoy it, I also feel compelled to move up as opportunities arise. I think worst case scenario if I crashed and burned would be getting bumped back into a technical role. There are guys here who have been engineers for 20 years, and they're perfectly content to just do that until they retire. I'm not sure I'd be happy treading water like that.

This is all speculation, and none of it may come to fruition, but I'm trying to seriously think about it now because if the opportunity comes up, I'll have to make some very quick decisions.

[killbot737]

Hey YK, I'm not sure I would call "doing the thing you're perfectly happy to do until you retire" treading water.

Maybe they enjoy quality of life intangibles and don't see a pressing need to change jobs and come to find out they hate what they are doing now.

[Isgrimnur]

Yesterday, I asked the boss who it was that I needed to yell about getting my annual review from September. He told me that he was the one that needed to be yelled at. I told him to consider himself yelled at.

[YellowKing]

Maybe they enjoy quality of life intangibles and don't see a pressing need to change jobs and come to find out they hate what they are doing now.

Oh, I don't fault them for it. I just don't think I'd be happy doing it. I did that at my old job for 8 years (that seems to be my breaking point) and got to a point where boredom outweighed job security. We shall see, though. Change is scary, especially when you're good and comfortable at what you do.

[MHS]

Boss at noon today: "I know you've worked 12-13 hour days every day this week (and drove 14 hours round-trip on a couple hours notice to give a 15 minute demo), why don't you knock off around 2 today?"

Boss just now (1:57 pm): "This RFP needs to be sent to the client by close of business today, it shouldn't take you more than a couple or 3 hours, thanks."

[tiny ogre]

I realized I was putting too much emphasis on deriving satisfaction from my job.

This is something I mull over every hour of every day.

I think I arrived where Smoove_B got a little earlier and that helped tremendously when I had the soul-crushing task of implementing something called PVD/PAMD for Intel. That stands for Positive Voice Detection / Positive Answering Machine Detection. That's the technology that allows telemarketers to call 10 people at once and to determine as fast as possible which call is answered by a live human rather than an answering machine so that you can be insta-transferred to the telemarketing agent.

It's enough to make you hate every fiber of your being. Luckily the universe took care of the problem and I got laid off back in 2010 after toiling away for a couple of years to create the technology for cell carriers to insert text ads into video that was streaming over their network.

I did something along those lines 20 years ago and it bugged me at the time. I worked for Real Networks, before the phase you're probably thinking of where pretty much everyone thought of them as evil. I started there at basically the same time they launched Real Video, so they were still the company that had pioneered streaming audio over the internet (indeed, over 14.4k and 28.8k modems) and were just starting to do the same for video. I was there for about a year, and I did a lot of interesting stuff and learned a ton. It was easily the most important experience I gained from my early career.

But I worked on one thing that irked me even though it's really not that bad. I worked on the tech to insert ads into video streams seamlessly. Someone would write a config file that said something like "Insert ads in this video at 3:03 and 9:10". Which meant the server would insert ads into the stream directly, so the client wouldn't really even know it was an ad. But it's trickier than it sounds, because you can't just insert the bytes exactly when you feel like it. You have to resume the original stream on a key frame, otherwise you'll get all the weird video artifacts you've seen when bits get dropped (I'd say MPEG artifacts, but it wasn't MPEG, Real had their own codecs). So I had to have the server figure out where the key frames were, and pick the one closest to the time stamp that was asked for and insert the ad there.

So anyway, it was still an interesting problem to work on... whose end goal was to serve content no one wanted to watch. That's the part that bugged me about it, even though there's really nothing shady at all about this particular instance. It's just like YouTube serving ads. The content provider showing you ads directly is as old as television. We weren't forcing ads into other people's content, just enabling people who bought our servers to show ads more easily.

One result of that particular task is that I watched the trailer for The English Patient probably a couple of hundred of times, because it was one of my test clips, but I have still never seen the actual movie.

Now I work for Army. No matter what I am doing here, it always has the same purpose - keep soldiers safer than they were. Much easier to live with that then my earlier tasks.

Every job since that one (and one job before it too) has been making games. When people are using code I wrote, they are having fun, or at least they're supposed to be. The only sort of exception is that the Chinese government mandates that their citizens not have TOO much fun and makes certain design elements mandatory. I had to write that code too. I doubt I've saved any lives besides Robert Kazinsky's But people are at least entertained.

[Odin]

I don't talk about it much, but my career's been pretty hit-or-miss and I don't really know where it's going.

For the first five years in business, I worked IT for a national ins. company. I learned a ton (it was a really well-run, very large IT shop) and climbed from 1st level help-desk to project manager. The company was being bought by a much bigger ins company, though, and it seemed likely that my job would disappear soon (which it did - within a year, 90% of my PM dept was let go).

Luckily, a former PM there who I had worked with (call him Alpha Boss) had gotten a job as IT Director at a local Indian casino. And by "local," I mean 45-minutes away. But he offered me a management job with a nice bump in salary doing work I was very good at (running a helpdesk/desktop support team, with some project work thrown in), so I jumped at it. What I didn't realize at the time was that my friend the Alpha Boss was a fraud who billed himself as God's gift to IT leadership and a pre-eminent businessman, but it was all smoke and mirrors. Eight months after I started, he and everyone he'd hired was let go (probably in part because he'd annoyed the shit out of ever other executive in the place. But, like I said, I was blind to his true nature at the time. I thought he was terrific). The casino had been reinvesting profits in their physical footprint for over a decade, but they were done and didn't need A-players to keep the lights on, so out we all went.

That was my first experience with unemployment while job hunting, and I didn't like it at all. Despite my best efforts, it took me over a year to find a job. Luckily, the one I found ended up being terrific. I got hired to run the tech support team for a company's products. I wasn't in IT anymore, but because the IT team (3 guys) at this 150-person company wasn't very experienced, I ended up taking on a fair number of projects that would have been IT at most companies. I ended up as a VP there, managing repair centers and support teams on both coasts. I implemented a vastly improved phone system and helped clean up the mess when the ERP implementation went sideways. I also managed some major product field issues with key customers. I'm really proud of the work I did there. Sadly, the ~25% travel, long hours, and the fact that my desk was 90 minutes from my house really wore on me. I had a 4-year-old kid I barely knew. When somebody convinced my boss that I should work from home less (during weeks when I wasn't traveling) and be in the office more, I knew I needed to get out.

Enter Alpha Boss again. Bear in mind, at this point I still think the guy is awesome. He's CIO at a company 20 minutes from my house that does radar stuff for the military and civilian aviation. Once again, he needs a helpdesk/support manager who knows what he's doing and he invites me over. I jumped at it, because staying at the previous company was going to literally kill me (I was routinely falling asleep at the wheel on the 90-minute drive home, even with no-doze. Which, since I always stayed at work late trying to keep too many balls in the air, meant I couldn't get to sleep, which made me tired the next day, and so on.)

Once again, this was ostensibly a great job for me. I was making more than I'd ever made (and I'd been pretty happy with my VP pay at the last place, just not all the travel), I was home, and I was doing work I was really good at. Everything was great for the first six months, and pretty good for the rest of the first year, but I started to run into issues. My boss's problems (most of which I didn't really comprehend until I looked back on the situation in hindsight) included micromanaging everything, acting as a go-between for any manager/exec's technical issues (so he could seem involved even as he slowed everything down), endless bureaucracy (he took our old ins. company's "monthly priority" and "strategic planning" systems, built for a 5000-person company, and mandated them for his staff at this 1000-person company. It was a huge waste of a lot of time and we were all swamped as it was), and generally throwing more at me than any two people could hope to do. Long story short, after about 18 months I was completely burned out. Alpha Boss and I agreed it would be best if I left. Once again, I learned and did a bunch of good stuff at that job, but a lot of the elements Alpha Boss had promised had never materialized, including staff growth (which would have taken some of the load off me), corporate growth, a no-nonsense corporate culture (though it turns out that nearly all of the political, backstabbing, corporate nonsense I ran into was because Alpha Boss was driving everyone crazy. Again, blinders on), etc. I couldn't deal with it anymore. I'd played the corporate politics shuffle when I was a VP and I did okay at it, but I hated it. I'd hoped to avoid a lot of it with Alpha Boss, but it turns out he was causing a lot of it and all I was seeing was the blow-back. It all made me physically and emotionally sick, so I left.

My goal when I left there was to write a novel, and I took it seriously. I set up a "writing office" clear of distractions (my PC had a bare-bones vidcard, so as not to tempt me to play games on it when I should be writing) and I wrote like a sumbitch for over a year. I had a great idea and ended up producing 20-25 chapters, hundreds and hundreds of pages of backstory, notes, research, worldbuilding, character detail, and so forth. I attended two different writer's groups to get feedback. And after all of that... nothing. The story I'd started out to tell had morphed into something I didn't recognize, and I had absolutely no idea how to finish the last third or so of the book. Years later, I still haven't figured it out. This was pretty crushing, and left me depressed and despondent. So much work - on which I'd planned to build my future - and nothing came of it.

Luckily, I had two things going for me. My wife had a good job that brought in income and provided things like health insurance. Also, we had saved pretty compulsively during the 5-6 years when I was making really good money, so we had a hefty chunk in the bank to compensate when I wasn't bringing in anything. By late 2014, we'd blown through much of that, though. I needed a job.

This coincided with a local small business who needed some help. A member of their board of directors was an old acquaintance of mine who I'd done some proposal-writing for a number of years back. The business was initially looking for another customer service person who could also do some customer training. But what they desperately needed was an in-house management-level asset who had actual experience managing a company, because none of them did. My acquaintance suggested that they combine the roles (entry-level customer service, mid-level trainer, and executive) into one full-time job and hire me. Granted, it was all stuff I'm really good at, but it's a horrific mish-mash that was doomed to failure from the start. And it paid less than half what I was making at my last job. Still, I was really touched to be offered the opportunity - out of the blue, no less - to really make a difference for a small, local business. If money was no object, I'd have done the job for free because I like supporting and helping small local businesses succeed. Money was an object, of course, but even a pittance is better than nothing. We had discussed the idea that my success would help grow the company to a point where I could do more strategic work and backfill the entry-level stuff with entry-level people. Well, yeah, that didn't work at all. Doing entry-level work automatically makes it hard for people to think of you as a management leader, so I often wasn't consulted on areas where I could have really helped. Plus, it turns out that there was a TON of entry-level work to be done, and oh yeah, the existing staff who had been doing it were grossly incompetent. Meaning I not only had to do their jobs, but I had to replace at least one of them with somebody better. I did both, but it left no time for executive-level stuff unless I wanted to go back to 10+ hour days. Which, given what they were paying me, I definitely didn't. Yet from the owner's perspective, he's paying a LOT for a guy who's only doing entry-level stuff. He liked to overlook all the work I'd done to fix their laughably useless CRM/call-tracking system, streamline customer training, improve my team's productivity exponentially and, oh yeah, identify issues with their products that were about to blow up in their face and put the business in a VERY bad place with their key existing customers. All he saw was a guy doing 90% customer service for 75% more than he wanted to pay for that kind of work. Within eight months, we were both miserable and we severed the relationship while we were still on friendly terms, as the problems didn't seem to be fixable within the scope of what he was willing to do.

And here I am, five months later, not really sure what's up next. I'm job-hunting, but not even getting interviews for jobs I would be really good at, so something's wrong somewhere (somebody's given me a verbal black eye in the community, or the gaps in my resume are off-putting, or the market sucks worse than I thought, or something. I dunno). Granted, 80% of them are jobs I'd likely be miserable at anyway (mostly PM stuff, which I'm good at but don't enjoy at all).

I have plenty of other novel ideas I could work on, but I'm a bit gun-shy after the last time. I should probably work on that while job-hunting, but I'm having trouble getting myself to do it.

If I could think of something that I'd be good at, that there's a demand for, that I'd LIKE, and that would bring in $1,000 a week, I'd jump at it, but I don't know what that is. Most of the stuff I've done previously really left a bad taste in my mouth. And I've got 10-20 more years of this shit? Ugh.

So, yeah, that's how my "career" is going.

[Jeff V]

If I could think of something that I'd be good at, that there's a demand for, that I'd LIKE, and that would bring in $1,000 a week, I'd jump at it, but I don't know what that is. Most of the stuff I've done previously really left a bad taste in my mouth. And I've got 10-20 more years of this shit? Ugh.

And this is why I'm still in IT. I too dabbled in writing, mostly part time but I did make an effort at doing so full time while between IT jobs. The key to being a successful writer, however, is to also be a good salesman (or have a good pimp I mean agent, which you only get if you establish yourself the hard way). The numbers state that 70% of the writing business is sales, and I really, really don't like sales. Prior to the .com crash, there was a lot of writing work to be had and much of what I did just sort of fell into my lap. When those sources dried up, however, I had no desire to hit the virtual pavement looking for more writing work and now it's been maybe 10 years since I was last paid for my words.

[Holman]

As another struggling writer, I've long accepted that fiction writing isn't a reliable substitute for a job. For every John Scalzi there are 1,000,000 unknowns, and for every successful writing career there are 10,000 one-book wonders.

I live near one of the most successful living SF writers. He has won the Nebula and a pile of Hugos along with everything else, and he works constantly. His house is nearly as modest as my own.

[Odin]

Yeah, the new "self-publishing/ebook" paradigm has really shaken things up quite a bit. The likelihood of "striking it rich" as an author is probably as low as it ever was, and as hard to predict (I mean Twilight? 50 Shades of Grey? Who'd have guessed, right?), but if you're a capable writer and you're willing to write full-time, I suspect you can make a living selling ebooks for $1.99. If I decide that I have enough of my mojo back to try that route, I'll need to read up on the ins and outs of it - as with anything, there's a handful of ways to do it right and a million ways to do it wrong.

I'd also need to come up with a more reliable way to get feedback about my writing. The writing roundtable I was going to was as harmful as it was helpful. Fully half (or more) of the attendees were not very good writers and it was hard to filter the (often contradictory) feedback to figure out what to heed and what to dismiss. I've actually connected with one of my favorite new e-authors, Chris Fox, and he's got a lot of experience and info to draw on (much of which he's published in "how to ebook" ebooks). I'd likely start there if I decided to go that route.

[GreenGoo]

Lost mojo sucks.

[Grundbegriff]

Lost mojo sucks.

Yeah, but it doesn't suck as bad as it used to.

[Jeff V]

As another struggling writer, I've long accepted that fiction writing isn't a reliable substitute for a job. For every John Scalzi there are 1,000,000 unknowns, and for every successful writing career there are 10,000 one-book wonders.

I live near one of the most successful living SF writers. He has won the Nebula and a pile of Hugos along with everything else, and he works constantly. His house is nearly as modest as my own.

I first thought I wanted to be a writer when I was in college, but a salary survey published in the early '80's listed "Writer" at the bottom of all professions ranked by salary. The average person claiming to be a writer by profession was earning approximately 1/2 minimum wage. For every Stephen King that breaks it big early on (like he did with Carrie), many, many others will languish in obscurity. And while today's environment makes getting published a little easier, making money is even more difficult. A colleague of mine published a dreadful romance novel through a small e-book publisher, and when I last spoke with her, she was still waiting for sales to exceed the $25 advance she was given.

Breaking in as a novelist is perhaps the most risky and time-consuming path to a writing career. Everything I was paid for was either magazines, websites, or things such as game manuals. I did some ghost writing for a book, but was paid directly by the "author" with no contingency (I believe their was already a publishing agreement before that book project started). Overall, the pay wasn't horrible (I estimate I averaged around $50 per hour, which is still a lot less than my contract rate for IT services). I probably lost $4000 to accounts that never paid up, and the work could be tedious at times. I would have needed probably 10 times the number of paying customers to comfortably consider it a profession, and most certainly I would have needed to work more than 40 hours per week to maintain that work load.

I'd also need to come up with a more reliable way to get feedback about my writing. The writing roundtable I was going to was as harmful as it was helpful. Fully half (or more) of the attendees were not very good writers and it was hard to filter the (often contradictory) feedback to figure out what to heed and what to dismiss. I've actually connected with one of my favorite new e-authors, Chris Fox, and he's got a lot of experience and info to draw on (much of which he's published in "how to ebook" ebooks). I'd likely start there if I decided to go that route.

Getting good, useful feedback is tough. Friends are more likely to just pander to you. A no-nonsense editor is best - I had two that I highly respected in this regard, one with CG Mag (the rest of the editors there just told me how great I was -- not her though!) and the other my first editor at The Wargamer, from whom I learned a lot about writing and editing. Both of these editors seemed to get genuinely pissed off when they read something they didn't like, and were not shy about telling me. And sometimes my initial reaction was to get pissed off too, and that's okay. Just don't send any knee-jerk replies until you've cooled off and considered what they said.

BTW, after reading that crappy romance novel written by my colleague, it was apparent that the only input she ever received was of the pandering sort. I sent her a lengthy email of the constructive criticism sort -- no point busting her over what was already published, but I had a list of suggestions that would improve things should she ever try this again. She was actually flattered that I had read it that closely and took the time to consider such things. If this had been an anonymous exchange, however, I probably would have been inclined to be more ruthless. FTR, she admitted this was a one-and-done thing, she had no plans to write another.

[Jeff V]

Lost mojo sucks.

Yeah, but it doesn't suck as bad as it used to.

Does not suck.

[Smoove_B]

If I had the skill, I'd absolutely write books in the same vein as the Sasquatch romance novels. Just totally out of nowhere, published on Amazon and making a ton of money -- like $4,000 a month in royalties. That's absurd. I have nothing but respect for anyone that can sit down, avoid distractions and just hammer out a novel (or whatever).

[Jeff V]

Even better if you can outsource the work and rake in millions and millions every year (ala James Patterson).

[RunningMn9]

Whoever did this is awesome. An AI bot designed to thwart and then annoy telemarketers using PVD/PAMD technology to annoy people during dinner.

[GreenGoo]

(directed at Jeff V) Do you have your notes still? Is it possible to show us or link to them?

[LawBeefaroni]

Early impressions...
OO is websensed.
I can get on via the wifi so there's that.
Learning a new hospital maze sucks.
My office is indeed in the basement. I already ordered Fox Mulder office stuff. We're moving in March though and they've already started on the new suite.
Oh, also thank Thor for Google Fi. Zero reception down here but with Fi network I can call and text no problem.

There is a lot of work to do here but they're giving me whatever I need to turn things around and I'm looking forward to the challenge. I think I can make some big changes and the new CEOsays that's why we were brought in.

[Cortilian]

There is a lot of work to do here but they're giving me whatever I need to turn things around and I'm looking forward to the challenge. I think I can make some big changes and the new CEOsays that's why we were brought in.

Good luck man. They really need to make some serious changes at my wife's hospital since they got a new CEO 1.5 years ago. They have had 75% turnover in the OR and 100% (really) turnover in the ER in that time. 3 administrators have quit/retired. It's been nuts. My wife is a saint. She has 25 years at the hospital and is taking the attitude that they will move the CEO sometime and things will get better so she is part of the 25% in the OR.

[Jeff V]

(directed at Jeff V) Do you have your notes still? Is it possible to show us or link to them?

Not sure which sort of notes you are referring?

[LawBeefaroni]

There is a lot of work to do here but they're giving me whatever I need to turn things around and I'm looking forward to the challenge. I think I can make some big changes and the new CEOsays that's why we were brought in.

Good luck man. They really need to make some serious changes at my wife's hospital since they got a new CEO 1.5 years ago. They have had 75% turnover in the OR and 100% (really) turnover in the ER in that time. 3 administrators have quit/retired. It's been nuts. My wife is a saint. She has 25 years at the hospital and is taking the attitude that they will move the CEO sometime and things will get better so she is part of the 25% in the OR.

Fortunately the planned changes are all in rev cycle/managed care/finance. Clinical shouldn't be directly impacted except for private practices. Al least with the stuff I'm working on. Getting financial side of the house in order before making big clinical changes.

[GreenGoo]

(directed at Jeff V) Do you have your notes still? Is it possible to show us or link to them?

Not sure which sort of notes you are referring?

On your friend's mediocre one-off romance novel.

I think it might be interesting to see what sort of mistakes were made (with the chance that they are common first time writer mistakes) and what sort of improvements you suggested.

While I realize some of it will be content specific, I'm curious if any of it would help new writers (I'm not, nor do I intend to become a writer) think about these issues. before getting horribly crushed by rejection letters.

[Jeff V]

(directed at Jeff V) Do you have your notes still? Is it possible to show us or link to them?

Not sure which sort of notes you are referring?

On your friend's mediocre one-off romance novel.

I think it might be interesting to see what sort of mistakes were made (with the chance that they are common first time writer mistakes) and what sort of improvements you suggested.

While I realize some of it will be content specific, I'm curious if any of it would help new writers (I'm not, nor do I intend to become a writer) think about these issues. before getting horribly crushed by rejection letters.

Hmm...I just searched Gmail and didn't find a record of the exchange. I can't think of any other way I would have communicated with her, but let me search my home computer and see if anything comes up. Among things I remember mentioning was over-use of uncommon words (it bugs me when otherwise good writers do this too...I remember Stephen Jay Gould using the word "canonical" to the point I wanted to choke him if he ever used it again!) and way, way too many adverbs. The cringe-worthy plot wasn't as intolerable as the stylistic issues. It didn't help her case that her publisher asked her to "ratchet up the sexy" and that clearly isn't a position of strength for her.

Also, I had just finished reading Stephen King's "On Writing," which has a lot of excellent tips for would-be novelists. I referred that book to her, and probably paraphrased a few of King's suggestions that I thought particularly applied to pulp fiction.

It should be noted I've never published or even edited a work of fiction although I've studied the subject (fiction writing) somewhat. Some of the stylistic issues are the same between fiction and non-fiction, however.

[hepcat]

My angry, short tempered coworker made a mistake in an annual rollover database script for a client that he had me run last week. Now it's causing them some issues. Unfortunately, I'm the one that has to tell him.

[Smoove_B]

I've found that interpretive dance can sometimes help in sharing difficult messages.

[hepcat]

I'm contemplating a Stripper Gram to deliver the message.

Anyone have the number for Hot Cops?

[Jeff V]

I'm contemplating a Stripper Gram to deliver the message.

Anyone have the number for Hot Cops?

On speed dial. I just put in *911.