Certifiable?

I know. I never blog. I never write. I didn’t mean to leave off blogging on a cliff hanger again.

Where am I now?

First the good news – I’m certifiable!

OK. You already knew that, but I got my I.T. Network Design and Administration certificate from Seattle Central Community College back in June.

Still working on being Microsoft (& A+) certifiable and looking for an entry level I.T. job, though; while working evenings and weekends as a market research interviewer. Back to the future there. Market research interviewing has been my survival job for several decades, much like restaurant jobs for normal people.

Spring term, my final term, was crazy, but in a good way. Classes, an internship in the I.T. department of a medium size non-profit, work, and the rest of the time studying. Crazy, the way going to school is meant to be (at least for those of us who don’t come from wealthy families).

Considerably less crazy then 6 terms of:

• begging for funding from a different program each term and not knowing if you’re really going until 2 weeks into classes. . .
• waiting for money or a voucher to cover books up to one month into the term. . .
• and at the very end, not knowing if I’d find a survival job before my unemployment extension was set to run out a few weeks before the end of the term .

Textbooks? We don’t need no stinkin’ textbooks! This stuff is easy…

Is this any way to run a Worker Retraining program? It still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

It’s no wonder when I ran into one of my former classmates a couple months ago he looked like a werewolf.

Fortunately, I didn’t have much time to look in a mirror back in those days. . .

Certifiable and [I.T.] employable? I’m still trying to figure that one out.

OK. Time to get some pointers. Since I work evenings and weekends at my market research job, a morning job club at a coffee house with with a lot of I.T. folks my age sounds like a good idea. Right?

Mmmm. . . All looking suspiciously at me with my new I.T. Certificate (and maybe my not so grey hair, thanks to Clairol…Oh, wait,  and I went blonder as well…). I.T. workers who’ve been in the field a long time and now unemployed a long time. Some going for the same entry level help desk jobs as me. . .

Yet Microsoft said in the Seattle Times last week they need visas for more skilled workers from overseas because they can’t find skilled workers here.

Faced with 6,000 job openings and Congress at loggerheads over whether to admit more skilled workers from overseas, Microsoft on Thursday offered a twofer solution — charging employers millions of dollars for the right to hire more foreigners and using the money for training to eventually fill those jobs with Americans.

http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoft/2019276648_microsoft28m.html

What gives?

Mind you, I’m not opposed to immigration, and I support the need for better technology education in K-12, which Microsoft also proposes. I still don’t understand how we both have so many of us looking for jobs in I.T., both seasoned workers and those of us with new training, and claims for a need to bring in more I.T. workers to the area.

We’ll see.

Microsoft makes it’s own, unique problems, though; by the way they treat their workers.  Especially their “stack ranking,” which Forbes magazine calls a “terrible management technique,” creating what Vanity Fair refers to as a “Cannibalistic Culture.”

How does stack ranking work? According to the Vanity Fair article:

“Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer.print

Forbes commentary on the Vanity Fair article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/03/the-terrible-management-technique-that-cost-microsoft-its-creativity/

I guess if you’re going to run through talented people like that, you might run out of people in Seattle and it might just help to hire people from, say, India, and then send them home when you’ve used them up. . .

Or am I being to0 cynical?

Aaahoo!

OK. maybe too much Warren Zevon for me. . .or not enough!

Retraining – Intensive IT at SCCC

All right, so I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, although it has been awhile since I’ve updated this blog. I have been back to school, taking IT classes in Network Administration at Seattle Central Community College since January. It has been rather intensive (both the classes and the adventure of funding) and its taken me awhile to find time for other things like blogging again.

Seattle Central Community College

As my lay off date was approaching at Allen’s Press Clipping Bureau, I was looking at the IT computer classes at Seattle Central on-line, thinking it would probably be too late to apply for winter term or maybe even the whole school year. Then I saw the Start Next Quarter link.  I filled out the form and went in for SCCC’s next information session. It was easy, yet difficult to return. It’s complicated, as they say on Facebook. . .

I qualified for worker retraining, contingent on my being approved for Commissioner Approved Training (CAT) from Employment Security (Unemployment), which happened half way through my first term. Meanwhile I needed to look for full-time work actively while taking 20 credit hours of technical classes (which were mostly in the evening). I discovered job finding strategies and the job market had changed considerably in the 13 years I was working at Allen’s Press Clipping Bureau. A topic for another day, but I’ve found that internet applications are a double edge sword. Easy to apply, but easy for them to ignore you. . .and, I really needed some employable skills (which fortunately, I was already working on).

I like a challenge, but, that first term especially, I was taking on a big one. I was taking advanced classes in network administration at the same time as my introductory class that was their prerequisite, going for a reverse degree, as worker retraining refers to it. Which they do due to lack of funding. It gets crazier, though. . . I have to apply for multiple funding sources, which only cover you a term or two. I’m on my third program now, through the YWCA. I’ve often not known if I’d get funding for the first few weeks of the term, and still don’t know if I’ll manage enough terms for a certificate or degree.

What is network administration? I’m going to be setting up, configuring and managing networks of computers.  Programming I don’t have yet, although I hope to take a course in that as one of my electives. Web design – nah, I’m not very creative, in an artistic way. I’ve been learning about Windows 7 installation over networks, Windows Server 2008, Cisco routers, and finally starting some Linux.

Maybe learning to install Windows 7 sounds like it shouldn’t take a whole term, but things are a little more complicated when you’re installing it on business computers on a network. . .

Windows 7 Lab

Now, I know I’m not cut out to be in a really corporate job (and glad to be reminded from my connections and groups I’ve joined since joining LinkedIn there are many possibilities, including hospitals and non-profits who need IT).  I just know I don’t want to end up working for a company like our fictitious example in my Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure Configuration book:

Engulf & Devour (E&D) is a fast-growing, venture-funded new media company, specializing in acquiring smaller technology based companies and integrating their operations to benefit from economies of scale. As a network-based,  consumer market-driven enterprise, E&D must manage the assimilation of technical environments from acquired companies without disrupting network operations and still provide the efficiencies promised to the venture capitalists backing the corporation. . .

Assimilate? Oh, no, I’m going to be become Borg! . . .

Seven of Nine

. . . or worse, a Capitalist. . .

@_Capitalism_

Resistance is NOT futile! That’s a subject for another blog entry, though (and yes, I need to get back to writing about activism and music as well).

I’m also not cut out to be a total control freak. I do understand the need for security, but, probably wouldn’t institute these policies (from my Windows 7 Configuration book):

. . .As a technical specialist responsible for network security, you could conceivably demand that your users log on each day by typing 72-character passwords, scanning security bracelets permanently fastened to their wrists, and having their identities confirmed with a blood sample. There are, however, likely to be objections to this treatment from users.

We will assimilate. . . Oh, wait. . .

As a Borg, err, Network Administrator for Engulf  & Devour, err, E&D. . ., I must be assured of the safety of our companies data. Don’t worry:

. . .The grisly stories of severed body parts being used to fool biometric scanners are (hopefully) fictitious because the technology exists to confirm a finger or appendage is still connected to a living body.

What? What about my former co-worker who was attached to that, ahh, appendage? Eek!

I am Borg. . .

No o o o o!