How is your career going?

[Ralph-Wiggum]

I think this thread and Kasey's posts caused me to dream last night about walking to work in San Francisco. It turned out great because I stopped by some tidal pools on the way that were brimming with anemones and other cool marine life.

[Kasey Chang]

Had a bad commute back to home last night. I kinda ran out of energy bars and only took one with me (I usually eat 2 during my lunch break and nothing else). So I was already hangry by the time the day ended. But there's no place I can get food on the way easily. Then on one of the stops, someone jumped on without paying, and refused to get off. And the driver decided to wait her out... while summoning law enforcement. And it took almost 30 minutes for them to arrive (this was at the local airport, so there are cops standing by 24/7! Guess it ain't a priority.) When the cops show up, she got off, but not without mouthing off about how the previous bus didn't give her a transfer, or how drivers always let her on before... blah blah blah. What should have taken me 1.5 hours ended up taking 2.25 hours.

But the bus method only involves ONE transfer and is ALMOST as fast as the bus/subway/Lyft method. The transfer point has a 15 minute gap, perfect as it's next to a 7-Eleven. Total commute cost per day: $11.00. Which I consider VERY fair.

[raydude]

The instrument scientist on the Psyche mission asked me to come into the lab today so I can see how their commanding software works. This is for the Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer instruments that APL will be putting on the Psyche spacecraft, which is run by JPL. The reason being that I'm the developer for a GUI app that will allow the scientists to build instrument commands that we can then send to JPL to upload and command our instrument during actual operations.

I had to wear an ESD jacket to keep static electricity away from the sensitive hardware, and especially the flight model hardware that will eventually go up on the spacecraft. Here's the interesting and cool part: they were running tests that day and had to bring out a "source" and put it about 12 inches away from the neutron spectrometer. Said source emits neutrons, which means there's a nice bright "radioactive" label on it. "Don't worry", he says, " the levels are much much less than what we have to worry about. Although I keep hoping that one day I'll get super powers."

Also, during the course of the test the scientist and lead engineer showed me their software and how it translates exactly to the same instrument commands my software will be generating during operations. Then he says "Do you want to send the next commands?" Hell yeah! So I sent the next sequence of commands to ramp up the voltage, start the integration (counting) of neutrons, and stop the counting after 5 minutes. And afterwards he says "Now you can say you've commanded an instrument." So cool.

[Jag]

The instrument scientist on the Psyche mission asked me to come into the lab today so I can see how their commanding software works. This is for the Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer instruments that APL will be putting on the Psyche spacecraft, which is run by JPL. The reason being that I'm the developer for a GUI app that will allow the scientists to build instrument commands that we can then send to JPL to upload and command our instrument during actual operations.

I had to wear an ESD jacket to keep static electricity away from the sensitive hardware, and especially the flight model hardware that will eventually go up on the spacecraft. Here's the interesting and cool part: they were running tests that day and had to bring out a "source" and put it about 12 inches away from the neutron spectrometer. Said source emits neutrons, which means there's a nice bright "radioactive" label on it. "Don't worry", he says, " the levels are much much less than what we have to worry about. Although I keep hoping that one day I'll get super powers."

Also, during the course of the test the scientist and lead engineer showed me their software and how it translates exactly to the same instrument commands my software will be generating during operations. Then he says "Do you want to send the next commands?" Hell yeah! So I sent the next sequence of commands to ramp up the voltage, start the integration (counting) of neutrons, and stop the counting after 5 minutes. And afterwards he says "Now you can say you've commanded an instrument." So cool.

That is just so very cool.

[Kasey Chang]

Well, that didn't last long. Today's Friday, and 1 hour before my end of shift I was abruptly handed the paycheck for this week, and was told NOT to come back Monday. I thought everything was going fine, and I was learning quite a bit, and I did put up more than a few listings. But apparently it's not fast enough for them, and I can sorta see why, but I hadn't been disassembling laptops and whatnot for months and years like these guys. I had to resort to Youtube or Ifixit, and it sometimes slow me down. Yes, there were a few corrections, but that's because the laptop have more than one "model" number or part number and requires a QC pass. They told me to move faster, I did. They said to clean the machines better, I did. But if they hand me machines that are a nightmare to take apart just to remove the HD, or have so many stickers it took half an hour to remove them all, AND remove the glue with 99% alcohol, that's not my fault, is it? But whatever. Back to the job search. At least I got out of the house for a week.

[Kraken]

You'll miss the commute, though.

[Isgrimnur]

Meetings about bonuses on Monday and Tuesday.

[Kasey Chang]

You'll miss the commute, though.

Nah. 1.5-2 hours on the bus each way every day... Nope, no fun.

[Skinypupy]

Had a second interview yesterday for a company that does scenario-based training in VR using AI. It’s very cool technology and would be an interesting career move.

They’re focused on DoD and most of my experience is in civilian government, so that may work against me. Still, my experience matches really well (government sales, manage multi-million dollar sales territory, 15 years sales experience, learning & development background, etc.) and the same sales principles apply in civilian and DoD, so I think I’d manage that just fine.

I kinda wanted to get out of sales, but doing something like this that’s more cutting-edge feels like it would be an exciting change. We’ll see what happens next.

[stimpy]

Kasey,
any of these help you?
https://tinyurl.com/5423sn6n

[Kasey Chang]

I actually spent $12K back in 2020 and gone through full-stack training (and it's SLOWLY getting paid off). And I have a couple dozen books in various web and PC related stuff (and I can access more as I have Kindle Unlimited and there are various books in there I can "borrow"). I have plenty of books. The problem seems to be motivation... I know *most* of this stuff, I just can't find a job with it, as I can't find even a "junior" position locally. I never seem to have the right skill "mix". *sigh*

[Isgrimnur]

[Kraken]

I suspect that I priced myself out of my annual nurses gig. Last year I got $x to edit 486 letters. This year I said I'd give them 500 letters for $x, and then it's $60/hr for entries beyond that. I can do 7-8 letters/hr. Because something turbocharged nursing last year, there might be a lot more than 500 nomination letters, so I need some insurance against project creep.

I've given them a few days to digest my proposal and had no reply. Tomorrow I'll mention that it's negotiable. I'm a subcontractor, so every additional dollar they give me comes out of their own bank. At some point they're going to want somebody cheaper, even though we have a history that they're very happy with.

Even though I'm in high demand for what I do, this job is almost 15% of my annual income and I don't want to lose it.

[Kraken]

Well, the nurses boss accepted my proposal and that project officially launched today with 110 records in my in-tray already. I can do about 10 per hour when I'm fully cranking. Meanwhile, NVIDIA isn't winding down, and I have 97 records in that in-tray. Again, I can do about 10 per hour.

I'm going to be working 7 days a week at least thru March. But everybody keeps giving me more work and paying me more to do it, so I reckon my career's going pretty well. Just wish those two big jobs didn't overlap.

[Jeff V]

So this afternoon had an HR interview (seem to get those about once a month) with a growing restaurant chain that also claims to have the world's largest wine club. Was it good negotiation skills when I blurted out that I'll work for free wine?

[Jeff V]

Tomorrow I have an interview with a recruiter who approached me for an Infrastructure Director gig with the Methodist Church Investment Fund...a $24B non-profit. Philosophical differences aside, I've been avoiding director-level jobs because in times of unemployment, it's generally not good to try to level up the job title. About a dozen years ago I was angling to get promoted to director for the hospital I worked at, but that got torpedoed by the acquisition. My last job had the greatest managerial reach of any in my career -- more than 30 facilities, including 13 manufacturing plants and the main corporate facilities, but job titles aren't always equivalent between organizations and my title there was merely supervisor (my title with the company that was acquired by them 10 years ago was Regional Manager).

I'm not expecting anything to come of it, and I didn't apply to this position, it found me. It's probably a waste of time for the recruiter, but I'm a strong advocate of taking every opportunity to interview and she did pursue me so I'm not going to feel guilty about it.

[Skinypupy]

Have my first Zoom interview tomorrow. I'm quite excited about it, as the new company sounds amazing.

Stupid question: Wear a tie for a virtual interview, or no? It's a Bay Area, startup-ish tech company so I'm leaning towards a nice shirt and jacket, but maybe I should go a little more formal.

[Jaymann]

Wear a loosened tie, like you're ready for the zombie apocalypse.

[ImLawBoy]

When in doubt, I'd go with a tie. You might get some light ribbing for it, but roll with it and laugh at yourself with them.

[stessier]

When in doubt, I'd go with a tie. You might get some light ribbing for it, but roll with it and laugh at yourself with them.

Then stand up and show them you're not totally crazy as you're not wearing pants.

Edit: Not that I think wearing a tie is crazy - just that it's Zoom and no pants are a thing. Bah, not that funny if I have to explain it.

[coopasonic]

A polo would be over-dressed for us, but we let it slide. I guess we'd be ok with a tie.

In reality, as an interviewer I'm in a T-shirt but what the other person wears is not part of the evaluation and it's not something anyone has ever brought up in our post-interview meetings.

[gilraen]

Pyjama suit FTW!

[Isgrimnur]

[The Meal]

MHS's advice regarding interview wear: there's no downside to being the best dressed person in the room. The converse is not true.

Also,

[hepcat]

Tomorrow I have an interview with a recruiter who approached me for an Infrastructure Director gig with the Methodist Church Investment Fund...a $24B non-profit.

Lucky for you, you just happen to know someone who was born and raised Methodist. Do you need some tips?

Here’s one. If a Methodist attacks you, lay down and pretend you're dead.

Wait...no...that’s bears.

And Baptists.

[Kraken]

So my NVIDIA gig was benchmarked at editing 800 records. By the end of today I hit just under 1,100, and learned that there should be under 400 more to go. I politely denied them permission to add 75 beyond that. ('m averaging just under 11 per hour, for reference.)



I thought that their PO was limited to 50% over spec, but that was the last one. The "inflation clause" I put in this one is open-ended -- I can add a percentage equal to the % overrun. So if we get to 1,400 records, that's 75%, if math is working right tonight. I'm fully engulfed in the Salute to Nurses now, too, and there's still that pesky day job. With the NVIDIA piggybank and the nurses due at the same time I'll bill 1/3 of last year's annual income in April, if I can just keep all these balls in the air for 4 more weeks.

IDK if NVIDIA will balk when my bill is nearly double the PO amount, but they have extremely deep pockets and the team likes me. They'll pay.

[gbasden]

IDK if NVIDIA will balk when my bill is nearly double the PO amount, but they have extremely deep pockets and the team likes me. They'll pay.

They have Scrooge McDuck levels of money and you are obviously producing a measurable amount of work that they have assigned you. I'm sure you'll be fine.

[Kraken]

IDK if NVIDIA will balk when my bill is nearly double the PO amount, but they have extremely deep pockets and the team likes me. They'll pay.

They have Scrooge McDuck levels of money and you are obviously producing a measurable amount of work that they have assigned you. I'm sure you'll be fine.

Yep, and next year my fee goes up again. My skills itch their niche.

Btw, I've learned much about the GPU industry over the past 3 years. I don't need to understand the technology to know that this year is all about AI at the edge. In 2018 it was autonomous vehicles. Remember those?

[Jeff V]

Tomorrow I have an interview with a recruiter who approached me for an Infrastructure Director gig with the Methodist Church Investment Fund...a $24B non-profit.

Lucky for you, you just happen to know someone who was born and raised Methodist. Do you need some tips?

Here’s one. If a Methodist attacks you, lay down and pretend your dead.

Wait...no...that’s bears.

And Baptists.

I'll keep that in mind when I next find myself in ecclesiastical combat with one.

As expected, that gig would have been too much of a stretch. While most of the job are things I've done before, none were ever day-to-day duties and a lot date back a dozen years or more. One of the responsibilities was enterprise cyber security, something we had very smart PhD's in charge of at my last job. I'd imagine a religious organization with that much assets would be a pretty hefty target for infidels around the world.

[The Meal]

Also,

Okay, I've got a minute to breathe. It's been a crazy, emotional week. But first let me catch you up:

My third stint with Hard Drive company "W" ended in June of 2017. I was, with two other coworkers, the last of a skeleton crew left in a local satellite office. Fully staffing up a program required about a dozen mechanical guys, and I was part of that for many years at company W, but folks started leaving (or being RIFed) and not being replaced and once we lost critical mass they shut down the local lab and a guy who was primarily a lab rat now had to do a 90-degree turn and become a component designer (doing 3D modeling, generating prints, working with the factory and Asian suppliers, etc.). I felt as if it made me more marketable (90% of mechanical engineering positions are for designers) but it was not my passion. I did that role for about 5 years before the big whack (and ceasing of mechanical design work in the local office) came in 2017.

We were facing down MHSs impending organ transplant and I was a bit aimless with regards to what comes next in my career. A poker buddy who owned a business needed someone to help do some software-development-inappropriate-for-software-developers (i.e., creating a browser-based front-end accessing the underlying ancient database), and armed with Google, Stack Overflow, and an archived version of the filePro manual (from the mid-eighties), I was able to do that work, mostly from home, for a couple of years. Along the way, the owner sold the company to a big conglomerate, and what had already been an uncomfortable office experience for me turned into a hellish experience for everyone there. When they started scaling back my work to less-than-40hours-a-week, I gave 'em back their laptop at the end of the summer of 2019.

The family then took advantage of MHS's airline miles and hotel points. We hit: La Croix in the Virgin Islands (with another couple), Florida, Mexico, and Hawaii. It was a fun stretch of time. But I had to put my big boy pants on and figure out seriously what was up with me and my career. Right about when I was heating up my resume-sending spree the hiring managers of the world conspired to stop accepting new positions due to some virus thing floating around in the skies. Timing was bad.

Timing was really bad. There were loud voices and tears. There were also serious conversations and big hugs. And more tears. Getting out of the house would've been nice.

I hit up my network of friends, old friends, former coworkers, and eventually branched out sufficiently to include as much as friends-of-spouses-new-hire-coworkers. The resume underwent some serious modifications and updates. (There were virtual tears here, too.) There was a discovery by the smarter person in the Meal/MHS couple, that a guy who had been a 1099 contractor would actually be eligible for UI benefits because of the virusy-thingie floating around the skies. I think the tears all dried up with that discovery. But there was a shitload (and I do mean shitload) of electrons flowing out of our home containing resume-like information into a lot of companies' /dev/nulls (apparently).

Friends went to bat. I got to talk with some humans. I went through a lot of rejection. (I wasn't always unhappy about it as two separate candidate positions would have put me either 3 hours from my home, still in the same state; or two-states away from my home, and potentially involved some very-serious-tears of a permanent nature—not all options are necessarily wonderful, or beneficial). Lots of friends were unable to really find me any sort of foothold, but thanks for trying. A few of my resumes managed to get in front of the right person, but never for the right role. I had a couple of really really uncomfortable phone interviews for some really really dumb jobs. But talking to someone enthusiastically about doing stuff I wasn't interested in doing became some sort of validation that not everything was going into /dev/null and my years-out-of-date engineering career wasn't completely toxic.

Still, we talked about other careers. Folks say you can put words together. Can you make money by writing? (Ha!) You've always mentioned wanting to teach someday, at the end of your productive career. Is now the time? (No, I need to be productive.) Maybe Uber? (Maybe the virus-y thing isn't something to bring home?) How about a timeline to get your shit figured out before we have to sell the house and pitch tents under a bridge somewhere? (Let's discover I have UI benefits, and kick that can down the road a bit farther.)

But a funny thing happened in the world. The big mean hurricane random and hahaha what do you mean "plan for the future?" guy in charge of the country was tossed out. And then it became clear that we really meant it when we tossed him. And at the same time some really really smart people started making headway on tamping down the stupid thing floating around in our skies. And Holy. Shit. it was night and day in terms of what sorts of jobs started becoming available. No longer did it seem that my best hope was pretending to be so radically excited about my ASME Y14.5 GD&T skills (zzzzzzzz...). There was legitimately exciting work out there! PLEASE someone, give the guy who took dates off his "Education" section of his resume a chance. (And actually, I did a secret squirrel thing what that section of my resume entirely, removing Education as a header while still prominently including the importantest part of that info "above the fold". It's pretty glorious, actually.)

And then I get a phone call. Is it from a head-hunter? No. From a HR department who's received 50 resumes and enough of my cover letters to be able to recite those five paragraphs from memory? No. From any of my former managers or directors or drinking buddies or poker folk or friend-of-spouse's-new-hire-coworker-of-questionable-integrity? No no no and no. It was from the admin assistant of company "W" who's now a facilities manager at that site, looking to fill a technician job for a guy who's retiring (because the job sucked so bad, he decided that not working during a global pandemic was the better option), and they want a turnkey solution ASAP and she had heard (through the persistent rumblings of my extensive networking) that I was available and would I be able to do that job? I would. But more importantly, they'd be able to pay me. Hourly. In a company that laughed at the concept of employing workers for a mere 40 or 45 or 50 hours every week. A phone call with the manager confirmed that he needed someone ASAP and my resume looked way beyond what he needed, but I have extensive experience with company "W" (this'd have been time number 4 of getting a new badge photo for me), and he confirmed that the number of hours of 1.5x $$$ slot on my weekly marker would have typically had an 8 in it, and are you really in position to not take a job dangled in front of your face?

I was not. I have developed skills not only in cutting my own hair (well, thankyouverymuch), but also at drumming up enthusiasm around the concept of people paying me to do things I really don't want to do. Honed actually. Sharp. Too sharp. That train pulled out of the station and someone was putting more and more shovelfuls of coal into the boiler.

But then the phone rang again. And don't you have ten minutes to talk to a nice HR lady? I've received applications from you for all sorts of designer positions, but also this test position. I've been hiring new people like crazy (I brought ten new ones on board last week alone), so which sort of these jobs that you've applied for so many times is what you really want to be doing? TEST! THE TEST JOB!! I REALLY REALLY WANT THAT TEST JOB AND GOOD LUCK FILLING THE CAD JOCKEY POSITIONS (though I've got friends who may be interested), BUT ME ME ME TO DO YOUR TESTING!!! Oh, she likes my enthusiasm. Let's set up a panel discussion with some of our best technical people. Yeah, lets!

And let's also hear back from company "W" who's train tracks had to go around the Mountains of Delaying Creating Reqs Because the BigWigs Can't Be Bothered During Lunar New Year, and stop off at the Station of We Don't Know Which Recruiter Can Push This Position Forward and maybe stop off for the night in the Tar Pit of We're A Really Big Company That Can't Generally Do Anything Quickly Even When We're "Supermotivated" to Bring In A Turnkey Solution. But eventually that train hits opens up the "Okay, let's schedule a WebEx interview day with no fewer than nine individuals spanning from 9 am to 3 pm for this hourly position" buffet in the dining car. And they set that up for the day after the TEST panel discussion, just to maximize drain (and soul sucking) from our potential applicant.

So last Wednesday happens and I turn into the Babe Ruth of technical panels. Faux enthusiasm skills translate really well into real enthusiasm skills when the right opportunity comes along. The TEST TEST TEST job folks are blown away. The hiring manager asks me if there are any concerns with me getting a TS/SCI clearance and I say no, as long as the occasional trip to Vegas for poker is okay (a Google search of my name has very prominent results on page 1 indicating that is a thing I do). He said he knew that'd be fine, as that's a thing he likes to do as well. They are impressed that I've spent the previous two days working my way through a 100-page (not an exaggeration) white paper on the relevant topic to what I'd be doing. The position is even more exciting than I originally thought. What a day!

Then last Thursday happens. 9am to 3pm of me interviewing with a motley crew of people who clearly don't know what to do with me for more than 15 minutes at a time. Only one session goes the full 45 minutes intended, and that's because he's from my alma mater and is a new hire and wouldn't he like to sit back and let the old guy (me) talk about effective interviewing skills and how's our hockey program doing? Even the guy on the panel I'd worked with for years couldn't fill up 45 minutes with catching up with each other. I honestly think company "W" hadn't interviewed someone in so long (they only have reqs to fill positions that folks are leaving, no new open reqs) that they wanted to use my interview day as practice for a buncha their employees. It was pain distilled into the essence of a 1920 x 1080 pixel window.

But then Thursday evening happens. TEST TEST TEST company loved me. That position, [Job Title], I interviewed for? Would you be interested joining us at [Job Title +1] instead? We'd love to have you, and wouldn't you and your organ transplant wife really enjoy our 100% benefits package on top of our very competitive salary structure? Wouldn't you like to test things in a way that you'd done for the first fifteen years of your engineering career, directly in line with the specialized skill you spent 10 years developing in college. Wouldn't you like to work for a smallish company with way more customer opportunities than capability to sign-on for, creating little (< 200kg) satellites to go up in the sky, and spin around our planet (low or high, or even stationary above one particular point) alone or in clusters, or maybe spin around the moon, our sun, or even that big red planet next door (we've got birds in all those locations and here's a list of the next 80 or so projects we have in mind involving all that cool stuff and more). Does that have any appeal for you?

Or how about waiting for monolithic entity "W" to get back to you? They really really really needed to bring someone in ASAP as a turnkey solution to an intractable position they don't know how they're going to fill. The type of job people are intentionally leaving even in the midst of not-quite-ideal job switching opportunities (I actually reached out to the guy who's retiring as he and I worked together five companies ago, and he quit because he squinted hard enough and convinced himself he probably mostly really could begin his retirement a year earlier than he had been planning for).

So here I am. I let the hiring manager at "W" know my situation and that he should probably cast a wider net because it sure looks like after five years I'm back to having a freaking CAREER again. And after a lot of sleep deprived nights, it's actually going to be a career which holds excitement and non-faux enthusiasm for yours truly. I've spread the thank yous to all the folks in my network who attempted to help me find what's next for me and it's been the amazing outpouring of happiness (and what's the link that that company's career page again?). A few of those folks did help me hone in brushing up my resume to 2021 best practices, and I have been getting rave reviews from many different quarters, but other than that, this position came to fruition for because I disseminated enough electrons carrying the relevant information into every little nook and cranny I could find. This may be only my third job ever (and I think I'm counting around 30 jobs here) that I've got without any effect of networking or knowing the right person.

Oh, and OO, one last request: If someone reaches out to you about that TS/SCI clearance thing, please don't give them the good dirt.

[Jeff V]

Wow, I actually read all that (house is quiet this morning, nobody else is up yet). Great news, Meal!

My wife agreed to expand her second job to full time and got a 10% raise for doing so (she's been there a little over a month. So now she will be home even less but likewise more tolerant of me being Mr. Mom. This makes WFH even more attractive, especially something with flexible hours (the latter is unlikely unless I start writing/editing again).

[The Meal]

Jeff, so many parallels in your journey that hit me in the feels. I so hope the right thing comes your way.

I have a funny (at least in the right circumstances, hopefully this is one of 'em) "second job" story. I was out of work in 2011 and paying the bills from playing poker in the local casinos. I was the youngest regular in the "day shift" of codgers who'd all regularly get together (and hand their pension checks over to me in a round-about sort of way). One day after about eight months I solemnly announce to my crowd "Bad news everybody. We're back up to being a two income family." They groaned and asked where I was moving on to.

"Yep, my wife went out and got a second job."

(She had, too, but only a temporary position dealing poker at one of the other casinos.) That unemployment stretch ended with Company "W" put me to work for my third stint with them...

[Skinypupy]

My interview yesterday went as well as it possibly could have, I think. I was surprisingly relaxed for it being my first Zoom interview, and the Sales VP and I got along really well. My skill set is a really good match, and he commented multiple times during the interview that I'm "exactly what we need in this role". He seemed to love some of my ideas as we were spitballing about the role, and one of his last comments was "regardless of what happens, this discussion has been incredibly valuable". He's bypassing the usual next step of a panel interview and sending me directly to the CEO to interview early next week. He's already asking how quickly I'd be able to start. Those all felt like very positive steps, but I'm really out of practice with this job hunting stuff, so I could be reading too much into it.

And I ditched the tie, for those wondering.

Now comes the big question. My current job is with one of the top L&D training companies in the world. I have an incredibly strong brand name behind me, I have an established territory with a long track record of success, and I have a ton of support from the broader organization (i.e. marketing, lead gen, product development, etc.) In short, while I have my frustrations and concerns about being there so long (nearly 16 years), I do truly love what I sell, it's about as safe as a sales job can be, and it pays extremely well.

This new opportunity would be with a startup-ish company (been around 6 years) that is selling a very new, innovative, high tech, AI driven, scenario-based training solution. My role would be to set up a sales team to sell that product into the federal government. My primary concern is that I'm not entirely sure there's the appetite or technology base in the government to use it, outside of some very, very specific applications. Professionally, this would be an incredibly risky move, but one that could pay off big if I could get even just a couple agencies to adopt the tech. If not, it will flame out spectacularly.

I would be standing up this entire territory completely from scratch (which has both positives and negatives) and I would be in charge of operations for the entire government services division for this org. It would pay very well for the first year, and after that would be entirely dependent on performance.

In short, it's a "big risk, big reward" opportunity I would have jumped at in a heartbeat...before I had kids. Now that I'm a) staring down the barrel of college funds and feeding twin boys (not sure which is more expensive) and b) entering my "prime earning years", I'm having some second thoughts. Partly due to the risk, and partly because I'm not entirely sure I have the mental energy and drive to essentially start up my own brand new company right now.

Will know more after interviewing with the CEO next week. And who knows, it's also entirely possible that I'm completely misreading the situation and I won't actually get considered.

[The Meal]

I’d think you’re still super marketable if this opportunity flames out. Plenty of time to recover before college funding fears kick in. Bet on yourself and go for it!

[Kraken]

I'm glad you not only landed on your feet, but sprouted wings and are ready to soar again, Meal. Nice to read success stories.

[hepcat]

Jeff, so many parallels in your journey that hit me in the feels. I so hope the right thing comes your way.

I have a funny (at least in the right circumstances, hopefully this is one of 'em) "second job" story. I was out of work in 2011 and paying the bills from playing poker in the local casinos. I was the youngest regular in the "day shift" of codgers who'd all regularly get together (and hand their pension checks over to me in a round-about sort of way). One day after about eight months I solemnly announce to my crowd "Bad news everybody. We're back up to being a two income family." They groaned and asked where I was moving on to.

"Yep, my wife went out and got a second job."

Congrats on the new job!

[TheMix]

Congrats, Neal!

[Zenn7]

Grats Meal!

[stimpy]

I got a job.

Damn.....are you long winded......lol

[Madmarcus]

Congrats Meal!

I'll even ignore the dig at teachers being non-productive!