transitioning – (v) the present progressive tense of “to transition” which is a noun with “to” stuck on and pressed into service as a verb. State of being in a transition. Brought to you by the makers of other fine made-up words like relevancy. (Have I mentioned that verbing weirds language? well, so does nounation :)
Well, that’s the other shoe dropped. We’re being fired in exremely slow motion.
It looks like I have 178 days to go in this job, so I will soon be looking for some other place where I can go be a sysadmin or manager. Strangely, I have approximately the same amount of severance and vacation saved up (177 days), so if I were to live off of the residuals, I could probably go to next October without tapping into savings. Not that I would want to… I want to work.
Ideally I would *love* to find a place where I could fight spam, that would really rock. I wonder if there are any anti-spam companies out there that need 1000 unix machines running like clockwork and a team of 4-8 sysadmins well-managed. Anyway, I will keep my eyes open over the next 6 months but I probably won’t start really stressing about it until well into the new year.
[strangely, I found out that relevancy is actually a word according to Merriam Webster, it was published in 1561. Of course, it means exactly the same as relevance. So they were nouning some perfectly good nouns back in those days too! ]
Eek! So sorry to hear. Is this the final wave? Is everyone going, or are they “just” getting rid of the last of the spam defense people?
And I just heard on the news yesterday, Goggle is hiring folks, including system admin. However the report also said that they’re (unsurprisingly) getting flooded with resumes, so maybe get one in ASAP?
Good luck!
Thanks. It looks like most of what was AV will be going away. I expect a lot of people will get picked up by Yahoo, but it’s kind of sad to learn the pile of products and services we have worked on for 5+ years is going to be dismantled.
Anyway I will probably wait until next year to start shopping in earnest.
When last I spoke to Yahoo, they said that even when hiring from another search engine, they’d only hire people for entry level positions. I hope this has changed, as it was a rather stupid rule…
I dunno about the number of machines, but SpamArrest is up here, and they were looking for a sysadmin (and may still be); alas, they’re looking for one, and the ad’s a month old, and it’s contract-to-hire. It’s at http://seattle.craigslist.org/sad/16734059.html.
Thanks for the well-wishes. I will probably wait until next year to start the job-shopping in earnest, but I will keep all leads in mind.
Bummer – sorry to hear this.
If what you want is spam defense, I can hook you up with people like Kee Hinckley (messagefire.com) and Barry Shein (theworld.com). They’re both East Coasters, but they should be able to point out some of the more promising folks on this coast.
Habeas wanted a sysadmin, once. Check in with on their current state.
Good luck. It’s better than it was, but it still ain’t good.
Thanks. I will probably wait until next year to start the job-shopping, but I will keep all leads in mind.
At least with an April date I have 6 months to do something about it – I might as well wait since the job hunting will probably be difficult over holidays and January anyway.
Be sure to brush up on your resume anyway – get it spruced, and why not, float it – the perfect job might come along next week.
And as someone who’s watched it happen, I have to admit being concerned about the ‘wait until after the holidays’ approach. Because IMHO, in some ways, that might be the best time to look, considering lots of folks have the same idea.
-Traveller
spam defense
Is Phil still working at mailblocks? He contacted me some time back about a position. At the time, they were only offering equity, not salary.
I thanked him for thinking of me, but I turned it down. I had my hands full with AV, plus I wasn’t sure I was up to going to a startup with no salary, especially for something like spam defense, which (imho) is a problem for which there is no clear technical solution. In such a situation, you can burn yourself out trying to do what you think is right, what makes engineering sense, but loses out due to economics, or politics, or because some bigger company buys the technology and lays you off.
I’m sorry to hear about this. Should I ask to see if Sandia needs anyone? They have a branch in Livermore CA as well as their main campus in Albuquerque.
Thanks.
*hugs* Sorry to hear that Greg. I hope you find something you’ll enjoy quickly!
Thank you.
Brightmail up in San Francisco is doing well. Tim Pozar isn’t there any more, unfortunately, so I don’t have a good reference, but they’d be worth checking out.
It’s sad to see the old gang go. :(
Thanks. I will be starting the job hunt in earnest after the new year, but I will keep track of all leads ;)
If you had a chance to be one of the founders, would you be interested in the job? As for me, maybe … depends …
Perhaps, it would depend on the opportunity. But for the most part, I have been there/done that with the startup thing… It’s a lot of hard work. It was well worth it at the time but next time around I think I will go for something a bit more stable.