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 [...]
Posts Tagged ‘work’
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 [...]
Kicking off a new decade
Posted in Personal, site, work, tagged ceqa, economy, engineering, environment, impacts, local, natural resources, nepa, water quality, work on 1 January, 2011 | 1 Comment »
2010 was a difficult year for most people I know, and for me personally. I was sick, our car was stolen right out of our driveway, I lost a beloved cat to illness, I had unexpected (and unentertaining) expenses, work has been very slow, etc. I stopped writing on my blog early in the year, [...]
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 [...]
Garbage list
Posted in Personal, tagged communications, work, writing on 26 May, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Many years ago, as part of a technical writing class, I was introduced to The Garbage Lists, an nth-generation photocopy of a typewritten booklet created by some identified only as “J.G.” in the fall of 1973. I believe the author was a technical writer or editor at U.C. Berkeley; he or she compiled lists of [...]
I just realized this morning that it will be a year tomorrow night since I was laid off from my previous job. Wow. I hadn’t seen that anniversary creep in! Even though I’m still disappointed of the way the layoff was handled, I still think it was the best thing that could happen to me [...]
Meta
-
Today's Most Read
-
Categories
Tags
February 2012 S M T W T F S « Aug 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Archives
-
Recent Comments
Kym Kemp on Disconnected Kym Kemp on Kicking off a new decade Johnny Giles on Answer me this, LinkedIn… Leonard on Sequoia Park Zoo in troub… Edmund Metheny on Comfort food Pages
