Re: The odds of finding work through job ads

[guy <guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com>]

First, four jobs across 17 years as a programmer

1. From posting at my college placement center: job with an aerospace 
company, doing applications in FORTRAN.

2. Through a Mensa connection to a computer manufacturer: implementing 
compilers, text formatter, etc, and serving on ANSI programming language 
standards committee for BASIC.

3. From an ad in the Communications of the ACM, to another computer 
manufacturer: implementing compilers and getting involved in COBOL 
standards.

4. Through a BASIC standards committee friend who worked for another 
computer manufacturing company, I got an information gathering 
interview, in which I explored the possibilities of programming, QA, or 
Tech Comm, with no actual intent to apply.  Shortly thereafter, a 
co-worker got a call from a recruiter on behalf of "company 4" about a 
job implementing a COBOL compiler. My friend was not interested, but 
pointed the recruiter to me.  Got in there.

As I read company 4's documentation about their COBOL, I kept finding 
things that needed correcting, so I reported them to the doc team. 
Soon, I decided to move from implementing to explaining.  I moved from 
software developer to software developer within "company 4". It had its 
own architecture, OS, implementation language, and home-grown 
documentation tools.

Eventually, I heard of STC, but the senior folks in the tech doc 
community at "company 4" informed me that it was a bunch of humanities 
types who'd come to get rich off technology, and I'd not learn anything 
useful there.

After about 10 years of documenting languages and tools for "company 4," 
just as we were making the move from home-grown doc tools to MSWord, I 
was laid off in 1992.  I had no Unix skills, no FrameMaker skills, 
rudimentary MSWord knowledge, and no STC network of contacts.

I connected with a recruiter who used to work for "company 4" on 
contract.  She was recruiting for "company 5" and I got in, documenting 
database tools. I immediately sought out STC, joined my local chapter, 
and networked.

After about 3 years on that job, I got a cold call from a recruiter who 
had apparently seen my messages to news groups and/or TECHWR-L, and 
asked if I'd like to interview with "company 6" (OK, Netscape, right 
after their IPO) to document their server API. Of course I did. I never 
met the recruiter in person.

When it came time to leave Netscape, I contacted a recruiter well known 
to the STC community in the SFBay area who specialized in TechComm folks 
and really knew the market.  He set up an interview with "company 7." It 
turned out that the manager of the doc team was the person whose work I 
had taken over at Netscape (she had been there on contract), so we were 
already acquainted. I set to work documenting their enterprise version 
of an IDE (integrated development environment) for Java.

When it came time to leave "company 7," I went back to the same
recruiter, and he linked me up with "company 8," my current position.
[Two weeks later, "company 7" had layoffs and the position I had been in 
was eliminated. Whew!] Now, here I am--documenting several APIs, 
addressing the C, VB/C++, and Java audiences.

So, only 2 of 8 were from ads, and some of the connections could be 
tallied as both recruiters and networking because I already knew the 
recruiter either from one job or through STC.

--Guy K. Haas    guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com    or  gkhaas -at- usa -dot- net
  Software Exegete in Silicon Valley


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