Day 81: I'd Make a Deal With God
Jul. 10th, 2023 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebeOne way or another, I *should* be employed by the end of this week.
On K.'s suggestion I emailed TSS on Friday asking about next steps. It had been at least 10 days since the decent interview I had with the hiring manager, and hadn't heard anything back since. I let them know I'm still interested but I'm pretty far ahead in the process with someone else. About an hour later I received an official offer letter from them!
If I accept, I'll be a Quality Control Analyst at IC2 (individual contributor 2 of 4). I'll be paid $23/hr, non-exempt, which means I do have the opportunity for overtime. It's completely work-from-home and I get a small stipend for building my home office; it's a growing company with a lot of room for advancement; and it looks like one of those positions where you have a lot of leeway as long as the work gets done. All in all, not a bad set-up.
But it only pays $23/hr. With a standard 40-hour week, that comes out to less than $50,000/year -- which is a pretty big cut for someone who had been making $95,000/year at his previous job. There's 401K matching, which is better than I had at Udacity, but...at that compensation I'm not sure I'd match my previous contribution even WITH company matching. There's only one option for healthcare and it's...surprisingly expensive. Just a terrible health package. It's a completely new career, my third one in five years, with no guarantees that I'd stick around for the long haul.
Don't get me wrong -- at this point, any job is a blessing. But considering I have two other strong possibilities this would definitely be the bronze-medal offer.
My ex-manager from Udacity gave me a heads up about an opening at Instacart -- two, as a matter of fact, both for Customer Success Associates. I'm pretty sure this is just the modern title for "Account Executive", which means I'd be managing business clients and coordinating with internal departments to make sure they're happy. I'm not sure that's what I want to do, but everyone at Udacity assures me I'll be good at it, so it's worth a look.
I've submitted my resume as an internal referral there, and I think the ex-manager would be willing to spend some capital to fast-track me into the position. If I strapped my jetpack on, I'm pretty sure I could get an offer from them before the end of the month. It's a good position, working with at least two folks I knew from Udacity. It'd be another work-from-home position and the pay would be a LOT better than TSS. But it's also in SV tech which is not where I was hoping to land after this. The feast-or-famine work cycles, the constant disruptive changing, the grind of optimizing your own sphere of influence while coping with a broken system...I realize this isn't a tech-specific list of problems, but the way these problems pop up in tech is just wearying.
Best-case scenario, I land the one-year temporary position at Stanford. Even with all the problems in higher education these days, working for a university is unquestionably a net-positive for society. I'm also not really looking to move around to another job either, and the job security at Stanford is potentially career-making. I could retire there if I get a permanent position, and that's the dream.
So, after nearly ninety days of famine it feels like I suddenly have a great problem on my hands. Three viable positions to choose from, with one (the least desirable) guaranteed. I should at least feel pretty good about celebrating my birthday this year. ;)
Fairly sure I've kicked COVID at last, but just to make it official I'll take a test as soon as they're delivered. The congestion is gone, thank goodness, and my head feels pretty clear! Not that R. is done with his vacation (and illness), it's back to work for both of us.
This week, it's all about re-establishing the routines. Writing, job searching, reading, cleaning, the whole bit. I'm forgoing Adderall as well, just to rely more on my willpower and mindfulness. I realize this means I won't be as productive and focused as before, but it feels like a better way to go about things. This way, if the Adderall shortage leaves me without pills for an extended period of time, I can muddle through.
I did put in another order for the prescription last week only to be told by my psychiatrist that I would need to have an in-person meeting (due to post-COVID regulations) AND submit to another urine screening. That means another break from marijuana, which I'm not too upset about. I realize that I'm...dependent on it, so taking a step back to have a more mindful relationship with it is a good idea.
Right now the plan is to abstain until my birthday weekend on August 6th and see how I feel then. In the meantime, I'll be drinking a lot of water and exercising as much as I dare to purge the THC in my system. Then I'll hit the lab and we'll see what's what.
Lots to do this week; good things are coming, but I do have to make sure I'm well-prepared to receive them.
On K.'s suggestion I emailed TSS on Friday asking about next steps. It had been at least 10 days since the decent interview I had with the hiring manager, and hadn't heard anything back since. I let them know I'm still interested but I'm pretty far ahead in the process with someone else. About an hour later I received an official offer letter from them!
If I accept, I'll be a Quality Control Analyst at IC2 (individual contributor 2 of 4). I'll be paid $23/hr, non-exempt, which means I do have the opportunity for overtime. It's completely work-from-home and I get a small stipend for building my home office; it's a growing company with a lot of room for advancement; and it looks like one of those positions where you have a lot of leeway as long as the work gets done. All in all, not a bad set-up.
But it only pays $23/hr. With a standard 40-hour week, that comes out to less than $50,000/year -- which is a pretty big cut for someone who had been making $95,000/year at his previous job. There's 401K matching, which is better than I had at Udacity, but...at that compensation I'm not sure I'd match my previous contribution even WITH company matching. There's only one option for healthcare and it's...surprisingly expensive. Just a terrible health package. It's a completely new career, my third one in five years, with no guarantees that I'd stick around for the long haul.
Don't get me wrong -- at this point, any job is a blessing. But considering I have two other strong possibilities this would definitely be the bronze-medal offer.
My ex-manager from Udacity gave me a heads up about an opening at Instacart -- two, as a matter of fact, both for Customer Success Associates. I'm pretty sure this is just the modern title for "Account Executive", which means I'd be managing business clients and coordinating with internal departments to make sure they're happy. I'm not sure that's what I want to do, but everyone at Udacity assures me I'll be good at it, so it's worth a look.
I've submitted my resume as an internal referral there, and I think the ex-manager would be willing to spend some capital to fast-track me into the position. If I strapped my jetpack on, I'm pretty sure I could get an offer from them before the end of the month. It's a good position, working with at least two folks I knew from Udacity. It'd be another work-from-home position and the pay would be a LOT better than TSS. But it's also in SV tech which is not where I was hoping to land after this. The feast-or-famine work cycles, the constant disruptive changing, the grind of optimizing your own sphere of influence while coping with a broken system...I realize this isn't a tech-specific list of problems, but the way these problems pop up in tech is just wearying.
Best-case scenario, I land the one-year temporary position at Stanford. Even with all the problems in higher education these days, working for a university is unquestionably a net-positive for society. I'm also not really looking to move around to another job either, and the job security at Stanford is potentially career-making. I could retire there if I get a permanent position, and that's the dream.
So, after nearly ninety days of famine it feels like I suddenly have a great problem on my hands. Three viable positions to choose from, with one (the least desirable) guaranteed. I should at least feel pretty good about celebrating my birthday this year. ;)
Fairly sure I've kicked COVID at last, but just to make it official I'll take a test as soon as they're delivered. The congestion is gone, thank goodness, and my head feels pretty clear! Not that R. is done with his vacation (and illness), it's back to work for both of us.
This week, it's all about re-establishing the routines. Writing, job searching, reading, cleaning, the whole bit. I'm forgoing Adderall as well, just to rely more on my willpower and mindfulness. I realize this means I won't be as productive and focused as before, but it feels like a better way to go about things. This way, if the Adderall shortage leaves me without pills for an extended period of time, I can muddle through.
I did put in another order for the prescription last week only to be told by my psychiatrist that I would need to have an in-person meeting (due to post-COVID regulations) AND submit to another urine screening. That means another break from marijuana, which I'm not too upset about. I realize that I'm...dependent on it, so taking a step back to have a more mindful relationship with it is a good idea.
Right now the plan is to abstain until my birthday weekend on August 6th and see how I feel then. In the meantime, I'll be drinking a lot of water and exercising as much as I dare to purge the THC in my system. Then I'll hit the lab and we'll see what's what.
Lots to do this week; good things are coming, but I do have to make sure I'm well-prepared to receive them.
