there's no light at the end of the tunnel...

[rone]

... but i hear the train coming anyway.

My career is stuck in a bad spot, where i can't afford to work for a place whose output isn't objectionable (like a university or a non-profit organization), so i have to take a job with companies that produce abhorrent things, like social networks or online ad frameworks, and are either megacorporations ridden with politics and bureaucracy, or are minuscule startups run by delusional megalomaniacs who overwork everyone, or they're midsized companies run by decent, smart people and therefore are a target ripe for acquisition and reëducation.  And i'm still too far off my winemaking certificate to seriously enact a career change (and we're back to the "can't afford" part, anyway).  The small business is already a vanishing thing, but it's practically mythic in this industry.  I wonder whether there's anything that can be done about it.

Comments

[nothings.livejournal.com]

:(

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

I think there's always a chance that a small business offering a unique product or service can be successful. Maybe you could develop an E-meter that detects megalomaniacs with faulty business plans, and market it to venture capitalists? You'd be doing the Bay Area (and all humanity) a great service.

Best of luck on the search and keep an open mind. Things aren't always as dead-end as they appear.

[catbear.livejournal.com]

I guess the tech entrepreneurs are more focused on rock-star fame and wealth because 1/5 of their buddies got off the launch pad in the late 90s and dammit they deserve a 7-series, trophy mistress and a stilt house in a redwood forest too. There's lots of small businesses that are content to just turn a profit and be a decent employer, but they tend to be pretty quiet about it.

Hope you find something that won't drive you crazy yet pays the bills.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

> ...megacorporations ridden with politics and bureaucracy...

The interpersonal politics are worst in nonprofit and public sector. By a whole lot.

But look at the bright side - at least you're not in the midwest doing IT support for heavy industry.

Some recruiter just knocked on my inbox last week, asking me to relocate to Los Angeles to do server adminstration, DBA, application architecture, interface design, and programming for a four-man startup with a guaranteed-winner social networking concept. Apparently the guys they already have on staff are too busy contemplating their visions to implement anything. It's not often I laugh as I bin the junkmail. I'm not in the best place right now but it's better than that.

Best of luck. Keep your sense of humor - it'll help you spot the real traps.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

The interpersonal politics are worst in nonprofit and public sector. By a whole lot.

I work in academia and this is so true it's not even funny. The Noble Mission™ aspect makes up for it, somewhat; I'm still undecided as to whether it's enough.

(Though working in academia might be better in this respect if you're not faculty. Anyone who insists that American universities are hotbeds of liberalism has never sat on a faculty senate, is all I'm sayin'.)

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

Dunno what universities with endowments are like, but publicly-funded universities in my experience have worse politics than mid-sized and large companies. For lower stakes, as far as I can tell.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

The fiercest battles I've ever seen are between narrowly focused academics in a specialized, non-remunerative field of scholarship.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

I think there's a Boyle's Ideal Gas Law sort of principle at work that drives political backbiting temperature higher as the volume of the stakes decreases.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Is there a like relation that could explain your abhorrent proliferation of awful LiveJournal icons?

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Don't make me bust out the Shameless Hussar again.

[mononeuron.livejournal.com]

> volume of the stakes decreases

Orwell spoke clearly through O'brien.

When Airstrip One learned to sink everything into the sea, or smoke it into the sky, or otherwise waste any excess production, the scarcity made even a lump of horseflesh inestimably valueable.

Ditto, for successes in a success-starved company.

Any little bit of horseflesh is precious.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, you could work for a large company where different organizational units actively sabotage one another's maintenance windows. That's a BLAST. I would welcome a return to the catty infighting of academia.

[frosch.livejournal.com]

companies that produce abhorrent things, like social networks or online ad frameworks

It could be worse. You could, say, have moral reservations about working on things that kill people, and live in a town full of defense contractors. There's less and less out there that isn't encumbered with some sort of contract with Satan.

I just finished three years working on software that hires astronauts, and government bureaucrats who conspire to fling astronauts into the interplanetary void. That would facially seem to be at least not completely revulsive, but professionally speaking, they were the three most unpleasant years of my life.

The formula for career satisfaction that I've heard from happy people is: find the thing you're passionate about, and dive into it despite the looming short-term penury. It sounds like you've found that thing. Some of us are still looking for it.

There's not that much out there that you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO go to school to do. Bill Gates STILL doesn't have a bachelor's degree.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there was a time when I was just out of school that I figured I'd be forced to work on something weapon-related to pay the bills. To this day my dad keeps telling me to dive into the fountain of money that is Homeland Security, and considers me strange for objecting even though in an abstract sense his politics aren't that far off from mine.

As it is, I work on consumer products that are often marketed in shameless ways, but aside from the objections you could raise to any activity short of dropping off the grid to milk goats, in general they do nothing worse than help kids do the weird social things that kids do anyway. I figure that if I can make them work properly, I'm not doing that much damage.

[benchilada.livejournal.com]

I'm lucky to be working at the University library.

I've had some pretty abhorent jobs in the past, including doing layouts on instruction manuals (in Chinese) for army telecommuniation equipment that was being sent to Taiwan.

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

I recently took my first-ever position at, God have mercy on my soul, an ISP.

Still, I did get to clickety-clock a couple hundred thousand users today. Cheered me right up, that did.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

I recently took my first-ever position at, God have mercy on my soul, an ISP.

Ah. Welcome to the funny farm, where life is b club.

Still, I did get to clickety-clock a couple hundred thousand users today.

ARGH BASTARD. We've nowhere near that many, and I'm still supposed to not use them as chew toys.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

There are worse things than social networks, whose end product is presumably to help high school and college students with questionable aesthetic sense get laid, or something like that. For example, there's the finance industry, where one can expend one's life in the service of helping the fuck-you-rich get fuck-you-richer.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Their end product is to get a bunch of people to sign up so they can be targets of advertising, or in Visible Path's case, so they can be targets of sales and marketing.

[mononeuron.livejournal.com]

> Their end product

That's so 30-year-fixed. Quaint!

The real end product is massive overextension, huge securitization collapse, world-wide financial uncertainty vis-a-vis american banking and monetary stability and general mayhem of the "Evil Liberal" [dm] brigade.

But it could be worse.

(It can always get worse.)

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

There are worse things than social networks.

I figure as long as I'm not actively contributing to harming people, I can put in my time, collect my paycheck, and go about enjoying my personal life.

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

Any chance that one of those abhorrent social networks can help you find your next job?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Well, my best lead thus far is LinkedIn. As it is, the only social network that's truly helped is the one i've formed with friends, coworkers, and other acquaintances, and not via any online representation.

[loosestrife.livejournal.com]

the only social network that's truly helped is the one i've formed with friends, coworkers, and other acquaintances

That's how I've found every job I've had for the last fifteen years. (During which time I think I've been unemployed for not quite three whole weeks.)

Some of those friendships were formed or at least greatly facilitated online, and until recently the work was all the academic or non-profit kind you don't want, but your point still stands.

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

FWIW, the chap whose email address I sent you this evening is an old friend from university, but who I only happened to get back in touch with via LinkedIn.

[reddragdiva]

Notice it's recreated itself on the other social networks. This is a good thing.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, i wouldn't say it's a good thing, but it's certainly not a bad thing, either.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

...minuscule startups run by delusional megalomaniacs who overwork everyone, or they're midsized companies run by decent, smart people and therefore are a target ripe for acquisition and reëducation...

The game my cousin is playing is to find the least objectionable of the former that's also the most likely to turn into the latter over the course of the next year or three, and then when they get all re-education-ey, blow out of there in a flurry of receipts for dumped stock options and share buyouts.

If he wins two more rounds of this game, he's gonna have enough money to retire. ...in his forties.

Me, I don't gamble, and I don't mind soul-destroying stupidity all that much so long as the mortgage gets paid. That's why I work for the government.

[ltempt.livejournal.com]

Not quite remembering exactly what your niche is, but thinking it was a general Solaris bofh, you have considered working for a telco?

Okay, finish the shuddering, but if you consider things in terms of end product being interesting comms services rather than bloodsucking death, they typically have massives budgets, all the good toys, reasonable job security and don't mind paying people properly. The politics etc exist, but I got three good years out of a telco before I got particularly annoyed.

I found my career niche working for a Sun reseller handling deployments, design and general 'doing things' type work. Minimal politics, maximal variety of workload and the pay isn't too shabby.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

As soon as I can afford to buy 10 irrigated acres down in SLO, I will hire you as my winemaker.