Location, Location, Location

Living in Manhattan is great.  I told Sibylle this evening that living here feels like coming home on several levels.  Through the nine months Sibylle lived here, and we were bi-residential, I got to know the city a bit.  Since she moved to Overland Park eighteen months ago, we have made regular trips back.  Manhattan reminds me in many ways of Decatur, where I grew up. It has the same small-town feel; nothing is more than ten or fifteen minutes drive away; without the rust-belt cancer that plagues Decatur.

Having a decent sized university in town adds considerable vitality to the atmosphere.  We both enjoy the coffee shops here, and are looking forward to patronizing some of the culture events.  That we already have a wide circle of friends here is icing on a very good cake.

It Isn’t About Ego

The team I have joined is proving to be wonderful. They are energetic, motivated, creative, professional without losing a sense of fun, and best of all, not caught up in their ego. Every one has been friendly and helpful, willing to explain and to answer my endless questions.

We face some challenges, and I am sure there will be tough days, but this is the first job I’ve had in a long time where I feel like I am getting paid to play.  Moreover, it is the first job in at least a dozen years where I started out conversations or questions with “How do we…” or “where do we…” or “why do we…” instead of “how do you…”, et cetera.  I felt included, and I felt like I belonged from the first day.  Something I wasn’t able to say about the last position.

In short, I am very happy with my new position, and very happy to be living in Manhattan.

I kept that 12 minute commute for most of the next fifteen years.  At one point my daily drive was short enough that my muffler rusted out in only three years; apparently I wasn’t using the car enough to fully dry the exhaust system.  Fortunately I discovered the issue before the 36-month bumper-to-bumper warranty expired.

After moving to Vancouver Washington, I still had a 10 minute commute.  However, my luck changed living in South Carolina.  There I spent nearly 50 minutes on I-26 every morning and every afternoon.  At the end of my 15 months in the Palmetto State I discovered that the stretch of I-26 I had been driving all those months was considered one of the most dangerous roads in America.

Upon returning to central Illinois my commute time was cut down to 20 minutes or so, with a slightly longer option that avoided Interstate driving at all.

The last four and a half years, living in the Kansas City area, I’ve had commutes of roughly 30 minutes every morning and evening, with nearly all of that time spent on the highway.  I currently live some 24 miles from work, and on a good day, can cover that distance in as many minutes.

After the first of the year we will be living in Manhattan Kansas and my commute will be a mere 10 minutes again.  All of it on surface streets.   The past week or so, Kansas City, like much of the northern United States, has had some wintery weather which has more than double some commutes.  Three times I’ve crept home at barely 5 or 10 miles per hour, spending well over an hour getting there.  Knowing that I will soon be enjoying a four mile, 10 minute commute has made the longer the usual travel times both more bearable and harder to stand.

Only four more days of I-35.  Only four more days of the back log at the I-435 – I-35 interchange.  Only four more days of driving 250 miles per week, just to work.

In business there are continuity plans, which are devoted to how the enterprise will continue in the face of some catastrophe, like a major storm, building fire, or other devastating event.  Unfortunately, these continuity plans rarely extend down to the individual employee level.  The team I am leaving does make good use of a “vacation plan” document, created by the person going on leave to provide guidance on projects and issues in their absence. 

We don’t, however, have a good process for employee resignations.  And certainly no process for multiple resignations and vacations at the same time.

Our business is calendar year driven, so next Thursday is a big day.  Product revisions are going live, data changes are being made, and new customers are coming on board.  Consequently, the weeks leading up to January 1 are hectic, stressful, and not nearly long enough. 

The six-person team I am a part of had a resignation that saw one team member leave last week.  My resignation is effective next Wednesday.  Two additional team members are on vacation this week; and one of those has had to be hospitalized unexpectedly and may or may not return as planned on Friday.  We are normally shorthanded, so the loss of one person plus the holiday time off schedule has crippled us this week.

Normally when you resign the amount of work you are assigned undergoes a dramatic reduction.  You start handing off responsibilities to other people and begin transitioning out of the daily process so your departure isn’t an abrupt halt.  Due to the circumstances described above, I am busier this week than I’ve been in two years here, with no time to think about transition, and no one present to transition to.

People outside of my immediate team are still unaware of my status, and the demands being placed on me through their ignorance are putting the continuity of this position’s responsibilities at risk.  Indeed, a non-trivial portion of the new-for-2009 processing is at risk simply because I won’t be available the day it goes to production.  Ideally a company would have a process for transitioning responsibilities away from a departing employee; one that didn’t rely upon 100% commitment from someone who has published their intent to leave the company.  I’m willing to do the work, but their reliance upon my character and integrity ultimately hurts them, as the transition won’t happen until after I leave.  

It’s funny when you find a continuity gaff in a movie, it could be financially harmful to not ensure continuity when employees resign and move on to other pursuits.

I am very excited by this turn of events, and both Sibylle and I are looking forward to completing our move to Manhattan Kansas at the end of the month.

During the first six months of this year there were a couple of discussions about potential future paths for me to take, however no movement towards those options ever happened.  The meeting at HR in July was to inform me that my current position had been eliminated,  and that I was being placed in an internal job placement program. DST and Argus recognize that sometimes people become displaced, but that they might still have value to the company.  The placement program was put into place to try and retain people rather then just terminate them.

The program was initially slated to run through August 22nd.  If at that time no new position had been found for me, I would have an exit interview and be terminated.  In the last week prior to the deadline, I finally started getting interviews, and ultimately was looked at by four managers.  Since the HR process around an offer takes time, my deadline date was extended to August 28th.

Wednesday morning I was made an offer by one of the managers, fortunately the one I had hoped would approach me.  I will finish this week at my current job, and report to my new position in mid-September, after returning from vacation.

I will be working as an Application Analyst Consultant for the CMS Program Office at Argus.  Application Analysts work directly with the users of automated solutions, they gather and present requirements, influence design, manage projects, et cetera.  Part of the changes that Argus has been experiencing the last 18 months has resulted in increased responsibility for the Application Analysts.  Many of the activities that were in the Architects realm before have now moved to the AA realm.

One of my long-term projects here involved the CMS Program Office (CPO) so I know the manager I’ll be working for, and several of the people on his team, already.  I also have worked with my new manger’s supervisor, who is the head of CPO.

CMS, or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is the government agency overseeing, among other things, Medicare Part D. The group I am joining is responsible for several of the CMS mandated communications between insurance companies and their members. Explanation of Benefits letters, Transition letters, and Direct Member Reimbursements are all part of these communications.

My new manager has told me that he values the technical expertise I bring, and the contacts I have within the IT organization. My role will, in part, be a liaison between the CMS Program Office and IT.  It will be less nuts-and-bolts technical, but still heavily involved with technology solutions and management.

Obviously, Sibylle and I are hugely relieved to have this placement process end successfully.  Until Wednesday, canceling or postponing our Europe trip was a very real possibility.  With a transfer in hand, we will be leaving, as planned, for our European vacation.  And when we return, I’ll start a new job.

Sometime this week, or early next I will be presented with one or more opportunities to accept a new position.  The choices as they stand today are, in no particular order:

* Software Engineer doing COBOL/JCL/DB2 development work
* WebSphere Administrator in a production support role
* Sr. Project Leader for a business unit (i.e., non-technical)
* Project Leader/Supervisor for a large established product

Like shopping for a new car, each of these seems like a good idea in isolation.  Fresh from the test drive of an interview, I’ve been satisfied that I could do the job, that I would like the job, and that I wanted the job.

With the passage of time, or another interview, doubts begin to creep in to my thoughts.  That job would have me working in a completely brand new area, technology would change.  I’d be in a different building. Adding to the doubt process is the selection process.

Any offers that these interviews generate will come to me on a first come, first served basis.  And I have to say yes or no, not knowing if there are others waiting in the wings.

Like a gambler who sits down at the table knowing exactly how much he can wager, and under what conditions he will withdraw from play, I need to have some yardstick, some set of parameters that will allow me to navigate the choices ahead of me.  And, like a cautious gambler, I need the resolve to stick to my parameters in the heat of the moment.

I’ve ordered the positions from choicest to least desired in my mind.  The ranking was a combination of emotional and intellectual, subjective and objective, factors.  But what I haven’t yet come to terms with is the tremendous roll of the dice, should I chose to pass on the first offer made if it is lower in my preferred ordering.

My preferred outcome is that choice number 1 makes the first offer, and that the compensation is within my range.  Then the decision is easy.  There really aren’t any clearly defined 2nd or 3rd choices as there are too many variables, variables well beyond my ability to control, to list all the combinations.

If my 2nd choice makes the first offer and their compensation is within my range, I think it’s a go.  If the compensation is outside of my range, then I don’t know.  What if no other offers are made?  If I say no, then I have well and truly let go of the bird in the hand for one in the bush – one that got away.  What if my least favorite option makes an offer that is in the right compensation range?  Even the least desirable position is better than unemployment.

Try as I might, I don’t think there is a strategy that leads me through this process without an element of emotional uncertainty.  Each choice has merit, each has some risk, and each has a potential downside.  In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks at length about the power of making a decision in an instant, relying on instinct and your subconscious, over spending lots of time weighing your options.  I think sometimes the best decisions are made with a combination of weighing and instinct.  By weighing my options I’ve given my subconscious the data it needs to decide.  Now I just need an offer to trigger that instantaneous yes or no reaction.

The most difficult thing is how offers are presented.  Assuming that an interview results in an offer I have to accept that position or decline.  Should I decide to decline, the position is gone, removed from consideration permanently.  If more than one offer should be made, I will only know about the first one, as they are filtered through Human Resources.

In other words, we are playing a form of “Let’s Make A Deal” with my career.  At some point I may have a job offer in my hands.  And the internal dialog, with my doubts and curiosity playing the part of Monty Hall, will be saying, “Hm.  But I had that other interview that went really well, I wonder if they will make me an offer?”  If I let go of the first offer and take a chance on their being another one behind door number one, I may strike gold, or I may find myself unemployed come the end of the placement program.

This facet of the program has required that I do some serious evaluating about the merits of potential outcomes.  The positions that I am interviewing for are somewhat varied: IT project leader, non-IT project leader, server administration, and mainframe developer.  Two are at my present employer and two are at the much larger parent corporation.  There is simply no way to compare them, and in the end I think comparing and contrasting them is fruitless.  Having a favorite or favored position does me no good unless I receive an offer for that position first.  

Twenty years ago I went to work for a utility company, and in the course of the nearly nine years that followed I held a number of positions within that organization.  Some were more to my liking than others, but ultimately I was employed and liked my employer.  I feel some of the same affinity for my current employer.  I’d like to stay, and if that means my title and day-to-day responsibilities change occasionally to something new, then so be it.

No, I don’t care for the “Let’s Make A Deal” aspect of the offer process, but I do, very much, like that I am being given a change to make a deal at all.

The best processes are the ones that you don’t see, that fade into the background.  The worst are ones that constantly jar and batter you as they run counter to your goal.  Most fall in the middle ground somewhere; they work well enough to not require updating or change, but they are at times cumbersome or annoying.

One pitfall a number of processes seem to fall into is what I call the “two minute warning syndrome.”  American-style football is played for 60 minutes, and with just two minutes remaining on the game clock a warning is sounded.  Many teams shift gears into a hurry-up offense, or “two minute drill” at this point in the game, trying to catch up or win the game.

To my way of thinking this is wrong.  Why wait until the last two minutes to catch up and win?  Why not come out and play the first two minutes to win, and then the next two, and then the next, and so on? 

The most recent example of this “two minute warning” thinking I have seen is a placement program I’m in at work.  My position has been eliminated and the organization is searching for a new assignment for me that matches my experience and compensation level.  The program is six weeks in duration, with a possible extension should there be a placement pending when it expires.  The announcements sent out to over two dozen managers made no mention of the deadline involved.  Few, if any, response trickled in during the first four weeks.  Now, in the middle of the fifth week, HR has started calling managers to inform them that the opportunity to interview me ends next week.  Suddenly there have been several inquiries about me, and I have three interviews lined up, with one or two more potential interviews pending.

When HR sounded the “two minute warning” on the placement program everybody shifted gears and the placement process actually started to move.  Had that kind of motivation been brought to bear in the first week, I would have been placed weeks ago, and all this stress and confusion these last minute efforts would have been eliminated.

The two minute warning may make for good football games, but it is a lousy paradigm to model (consciously or unconsciously) your process after.

This week I am re-experiencing this kind of activity as I am sifting through the numerous job descriptions my employer has, looking for a new position.  My current position was created for a project that died over a year ago.  Momentum and some rather extensive organizational changes have sheltered me until now, however, without the project I was hired for, my position has become superfluous.  Fortunately my company is part of a very much bigger company, and transfers between organizations is not only quite possible, it is encouraged.

Starting next week I’ll be working with a specialist in the human resources department, sifting through the job descriptions and openings looking for a match for my particular set of talents and desires.  Today I took some time to look at all the titles within the organization, and printed out all of the ones that intrigued me.  When I told Sibylle about printing them all off, she remarked that having them, and looking through them was a bit like looking at the college course catalog for next semester.

I think it’s going to be a good next semester, and I am looking forward to it already.

Some Background

As an Information Technology professional I have maintained a current copy of my resumé online, both on sites of my own as well as on Dice.com, for more than a decade.  Technology placement firms and recruiters traverse the web and catalog all the resumés they can find.  Each resumé is indexed by keywords, allowing the recruiter to automatically send out emails soliciting interest in new positions they are trying to fill.  Post a resumé that is buzz-word compliant online and you too will start getting “Urgent Opening – Respond with Rate Immediately” emails.

Are these messages spam?  Not in the strictest sense; placing your resumé online for all to see is advertising and contains an implicit offer.  The recruiter is responding to that offer.  However, these messages are still in a bit of gray area.  They are unsolicited, and often are wildly off base with regard to the alignment of the opening they tout and your actual experience or interest. How the sender of these messages responds to requests to cease sending the emails, is the final criteria that determines if they are spam or not.

Most recruiters understand relationship management is their true business; can they develop a cordial, professional relationship with me that is mutually beneficial to all involved?  Unfortunately, some feel that high-pressure and a lack of common courtesy is warranted, even acceptable.  Who cares if we trample the sensibilities of one or two or even a hundred people we blindly email?  After all, there are lots of IT professionals out there, we’ll focus on the ones who aren’t squeamish about integrity or ethics.  This descent into used-car-sales techniques is not an endorsement.

S.1618 Title III and H.R. 4176 § 301

The disclaimer that Talentberg, and others, use to claim their message isn’t spam is Senate bill 1618 or House resolution 4167.[1]  Both of these bills contained language outlining what was or wasn’t spam.  The disclaimer looks like this:

In accordance with Bill S.1618 Title III passed by the 105th U. S. Congress, this letter can not be considered spam as long as we include: (1) Contact information and (2) a way to be removed from future mailings. To remove yourself email us at remove@somebogusdomain.com and type “Remove” in the “subject” line. Under the provisions of U. S. Bill S. 1618 Title III, this letter is not spam and no further action can be taken by the reader against this company/person. Any report of this letter as spam to any independent agency or site is a violation of this law and will be dealt with promptly.

Unfortunately it is completely false.

S.1618 does exist, and contains this language:

Title III: Spamming – Requires a person who transmits an unsolicited commercial electronic mail message to include at the beginning of the body of the message: (1) the name, physical address, electronic mail address, and telephone number of the person who initiates transmission of the message or who created the content of it; and (2) a statement that further transmissions of such mail to the recipient by the person may be stopped at no cost to the recipient by sending a reply to the originating electronic mail address with the word “remove” in the subject line.
(Sec. 302) Empowers the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with regulatory authority over such unsolicited electronic mail, including authority to conduct investigations, commence civil actions against individuals, and impose fines, penalties, and injunctions. Requires the FTC to take appropriate action within two years after the transmission of such electronic mail.
(Sec. 303) Authorizes a State to bring a civil action on behalf of its residents against individuals or entities transmitting electronic mail in violation of this Act. Requires such State to notify the FTC of such action.
(Sec. 304) States that this Act shall not apply to an electronic mail transmission by an interactive computer service provider unless the provider initiates the transmission or the transmission is not made to its own customers.
Authorizes actions by such providers to enforce the sanctions under this Act. Requires such action within one year after receipt of the transmission.
(Sec. 305) Requires a person who receives from any other person an electronic mail message requesting the termination of further transmission of commercial electronic mail to cease such transmissions to the individual. States that a person who secures a good or service from, or otherwise responds electronically to, an offer of unsolicited commercial electronic mail shall be deemed to have authorized such transmission.

The House of Representatives also had a measure that spoke to spam, H.R. 3888 § 301, which was pro-spam.  However, public outcry caused the offending section to be removed from the bill, and replaced with section 201:

Section 201 sets forth a sense of the Congress resolution regarding the practice of sending consumers unsolicited commercial electronic mail (or “e-mail”), often in bulk. This practice, commonly referred to as “spamming,” has been a serious concern to the Committee because spam congests the Internet and other electronic networks. In addition, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) charge users based on time spent on using their network. Time spent by consumers deleting and preventing spam costs consumers money.
Thus, the Committee, for now, seeks to reduce the practice of spamming without imposing government mandates on the Internet and other electronic networks. Accordingly, the sense of Congress outlined in section 201 calls on the private sector to adopt, implement, and enforce measures that prevent and deter spam. The Committee expects that the private sector will view Congress’ charge as a useful opportunity to reduce spam voluntarily.

Since it requires both chambers of the Congress to make law, and given that the Senate didn’t approve H.R. 3888, nor did the House approve S.1618, there is no law that protects some emails from being spam merely by including an unsubscribe link.

Some email may alternatively quote H.R. 4176 § 101:

This message is being sent to you in compliance with the Federal legislation for commercial e-mail (H.R.4176 – §101).

Again, a bill, not a law.  In short, there is no legal protection for mass emailing simply by quoting a bill, and providing an unsubscribe link.

Talentberg

The Talentberg emails I get are frustrating on many levels.  One, they rarely coincide with my professional goals, career direction, or geographic restrictions.  It it painfully obvious that the sender hasn’t taken the time to actually review my resume to see if the keyword match is in fact good fit for the open position.  My stated desire to not relocate or travel is ignored in every single communication they’ve sent me.

Two, the erroneously quoted S.1618 is usually incomplete.  It appears that their email template truncates the notice.  Either they don’t know how to configure their own outbound email, making them incompetent, or they are deliberately trying to make it hard for people to unsubscribe to their messages, making them unethical.  Either way, I am not interested in putting something as valuable as my professional life into their hands.

Three, their absolute refusal to remove my address from their mailing list despite numerous, repeated request from me to do just that.  I have finally caved in and added rules to my mail server and client to “mark as read” and “delete” all messages from their domain.

In researching this “company” several inconsistencies appeared.  Their web site was only registered in February of this year, yet they claim a longer history than that.  Their site lists only a vice-president as part of the management team.  Furthermore, while you can find at least two people associated with the company on LinkedIn, one seemingly has two names, on American sounding and the other Asian in nature.  All of which adds up to a fly-by-night organization.

[1] Source: Spam and the Law – S. 1618 and H.R. 4176