I’ve been interviewing with a lot of companies lately, and I recently heard a comment on the state of the industry that attracted my attention. An employer I was talking to mentioned, off-hand, that despite the economic conditions and the number of people looking for jobs, companies are having a surprisingly difficult time finding personnel [...]
Archive for the ‘workplace’ Category
The Topiary Personnel Roster
Posted in employment, job search, markets, work, workplace, tagged Career, economy, engineering, job search, management, society, work, workplace on 18 August, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The Me Generation?
Posted in current events, employment, society, teaching, work, workplace, tagged engineering, excellence, management, society, work, workplace on 31 March, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I’m 45 now, I’ve been an engineer for over half my life. Bit by bit, I have passed into the second half of my career without ever seeing the change coming. Every once in a while I run into a discussion, in person or online, about the Millenials as the “Me Generation”, about how young [...]
Career: Project management
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, excellence, management, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 23 October, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
As in many other technical disciplines, it’s a frequent career path for engineers — almost required — to move from on from pure technical work (design, analysis, number-crunching, etc.) onto project management. A long time ago as an undergrad in civil engineering, my course concentration was in construction project management. I learned the crunchy part, [...]
Career: What I changed
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 22 October, 2009 | 2 Comments »
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts this week, I’ve been reflecting on career matters, including what I’ve changed in the last year and a half. First, I read up on job search and career management, and the difference between the two (this is the theme of the week). I thought a lot about what I [...]
Career: Opportunity and stumbling blocks
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 21 October, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’m not one of those people that life doesn’t throw anything at you which you can’t handle, or that everything happens for a reason. I think that’s the kind of thing we say to other people to make them and ourselves feel better, but in reality things just happen without predetermination. History unfolds as we [...]
Career: Piloting, not drifting
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 20 October, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Yesterday I mentioned that I have noticed a cycle in my career consisting of periods of intense, feverish learning and growth alternating with slower, less focused periods. I also mentioned that my latest period of rapid growth started with my layoff in May 2008. Corollary: that must mean I was in a slow-down period when [...]
Career: Cycles and seasons
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 19 October, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Having received my first annual review at this company in early September, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my career trajectory. Looking back over the last 22 years since I graduated, I am beginning to see a pattern: periods of intense, roiling, boiling learning where I soak up information like a sponge and [...]
No, really — Fix your résumé!
Posted in employment, job search, Personal, society, workplace, tagged excellence, job search, jobs, Personal on 29 June, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Sometimes people are just so strange. In case anyone blinked and missed it, we’re in the middle of a recession, an economic downturn, whatever you want to call it. A lot of people are out looking for a job (or two) as we hit higher unemployment rates than we’ve seen in decades. And yet, people [...]
Mmmm, coffee…
Posted in local, Personal, workplace, tagged california, coffee, food, humboldt, local, Personal, workplace on 15 May, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I love the taste and smell of good coffee. When I was driving across the continent form Quebec to start my first job in the San Francisco, years ago, I remember being progressively more appalled by what was called coffee as I moved through the center of the continent. (This has held true on every [...]
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