The adventures of Phil and Mike

Phil and I have lunch out in town once a week or so. We decided that talking about good lunches we have experienced was almost as enjoyable as the lunches themselves.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Our team is being dissolved, and you all need to go find a job

OH $#!%... OH $#!# OH $#!%... followed by several seconds of deep heavy breathing... OK, OK, OK, we can handle this... We've been here before... Think, THINK, think... ok, control the breathing, we've been here before, we know what to do... ... ... Call every one we know [check], no promising leads. In-house job board, seven good hits, apply for all seven, even some that don't really match...

Ahhh... One good hit, leads to a great job, ask around about the manager, good reports from those working for him, interview goes great... Job is super, a step up to the next pay grade, pretty relaxed working environment, fun job, no really great geek job - Hacking the LINUX kernel at the motherboard level. I can do that, I got the skills, hardware, bus architectures, host front-side-bus experience, UNIX sysadmin, I can master this...

Slow down there cowboy, where are we headed? 30+ years in electronics, every two or three years it's the same story, kind of like ground hog day... Group or job goes south, gotta find a new job, every time its the same thing, we get lucky and get a step up, a nice position... One day your luck will run out, then you'll be what, fifty something, on the street looking for a job? You're 47 now, you're gonna be working until what? 65? 70? Yep, 70 is more like it... 23 more years... In an industry that constantly goes up and down... Time to leave... well, 25 years ago was really the time to leave, but there's no time like the present, when you still have a good job.

Where to go??? Geology, I took one class, did great, subject clicked... Outside, I've loved outside ever since I was a kid. I never though an outside job would pay well, so I chose electronics. But Geology looks great... Broad field, you can be a: Land Surveyor; water well driller; septic tank installer; hydrology (underground water flow); environmental cleanup; archeologist; building site surveys; then there is the mining side: gravel; clay; gold; uranium... Petrology... Much broader than where electronics went. When I started in electronics, we were fixing everything. I like to fix things... Electronic toys cost a lot back then, When I started in electronics in the 70s while in high school, running parts for a TV shop, a TV cost about as much as a minimum wage worker earned in about three months, they were not very reliable, and needed to be repaired somewhat often. I never thought they would be disposable.
Well Geology looks good to me... So I saw a counselor to see what I need. Lots. Well then it's best to begin with the beginning, Chem 1A - done, got a B, now I'm half way through chem 1B.

I got about eight more years, I'll be 55, but I'll have a new career.