There's no I in teamRecord low unemployment. Skills shortage. WorkChoices. John Howard says that employees are free to look elsewhere if they aren't happy with their lot in life. Well, I took Johnny's advice. Here is the tale of my recent job hunting expedition. It's a long one, so you've been warned. It took me four nights to write.
Here's the background: I am a web developer. I make websites work by writing programming code behind the scenes. Companies like to move all of their business functionality to these websites and then save a lot of money by firing the employees that used to deal with the public over the phone or the counter.
I work for a company that puts me into various government departments as part of a contract. These contracts are for stupid amounts of money, while my company pays me a fraction of that to do the work. They make out like bandits doing maybe fifteen minutes worth of administrative work each week while I do all the heavy lifting. Most other web developers have discovered this inequity, so they do something called 'contracting'. This is where the person who gets the contract is the person who does the work, and thus they get all or most of the money.
Recently I was about to be put to work in a place that I probably shouldn't mention, just know that it is Australian related, Taxation related and Office related. I happen to know how much my company is charging this place, and it's almost five times what they pay me. This would not stand. I had decided to go contracting.
Looking for a contract, though they're plentiful in Canberra, is a pain. Luckily there was one available that had already accepted me; the one that my company wants me to do. My goal was to do this contract as a true contractor, while leaving my company some money as well. There is plenty of cash to go around.
Day 1 - I was planning out what to say on my way to the office. I couldn't play the loyalty card, I had been there only four months. I couldn't compare my salary to that of a contractor, that's called pattern bargaining and it's a reason why companies hate unions. I don't think that there even is a union for web developers. My best weapon was that I was the only person in the company who had the skills to fulfil the contract, and finding another person would be all but impossible. Of course I couldn't say that, my boss would equate that with blackmail and clam up.
I had to be strong, stay on target and not get personal. I wasn't going to lie, but I did have to create an impression that I have other parties interested in me.
I sat down with my manager and I told him that I would not be doing this job unless I got contractor's rates, specifically half of what the client was paying, otherwise I would walk. My manager is a great guy, I have no doubt that if he were my boss he would have said yes right away. He said that he saw my point of view, and that if he were in my shoes he would probably be doing the same thing. My manager told me that any arrangement would have to wait until my boss got back from China next week. Shit! I didn't count on my boss being overseas, I had prepared myself for an answer either way then and there. This was worse than a no. I went home at the end of the day wondering about what I had done. I had either done the best thing in my life so far or the worst.
Day 5 - After a week of wondering, I finally got an email from my manager telling me that I had a meeting next Monday with himself, my boss, the company contract manager and the company solicitor. At last, some news. The contract manager was a good sign, but the solicitor was a bad one. The meeting was at 8:30am. Who does meetings, or anything, at 8:30am?
Day 8 - The morning came and I went through everything in my head once again. I turned up, but there was no contract manager, and no solicitor. In hindsight I'm not sure that this contract manager ever existed, I certainly had never seen him at work. The solicitor didn't show because it was too early, and I didn't blame him.
I sat down with my boss and my manager, my boss did most of the talking. He asked me why I had the sudden change of heart, I replied that I had thought long and hard about it, and it is something that I must do. He made it clear that I would not be doing this job as a contractor. After some more business-like banter, it was clear that he had no intention of paying me a contractor's salary either. He also informed me that should I leave, my contract stated that I could not work for any of the company's clients, past and present. This was news to me, but I didn't want to go down that road anyway. Time to change tack.
I told my boss that my main concern was that this contract would fall through without me. He told me that this would not happen: "We always manage to find someone". I looked at my manager, he knew as well as I did that they had no hope of filling the position if I left. I could see this conversation deteriorating quickly into an outcome that no-one wanted.
I said that I would consider what we had talked about and get back to him with a decision. That decision being put up or leave. I left the office and went to the place that I was working at for the day. My head was swimming, and I felt sick in my stomach. I felt like I had just witnessed my own car accident.
I got home that night and read through my contract. My boss was right, I can't work for any of the company's clients. My company does a little bit of work for a lot of people; I can't work for half of Canberra. What the fuck is wrong with me? My contract was the most obvious weapon that he could have hit with me with, why didn't I read through it beforehand?
Plan A was an unmitigated disaster. Plan B would be much better thought through.
OK, here's the dilliyo. Further reading of my contract stated that in late June I get to go through a salary review period. Basically, that's where you sit down with your boss and he goes through various bullshit records of your supposed performance to work out how much of a pay rise he will give you. That was three weeks away. Three weeks to find another job, three weeks to finish what I've begun.
Day 10 - I saw my boss at the end of work and I told him that I would delay my decision until after my review. He agreed that this was a wise decision, as if that mattered.
That night I hit the job sites. I skipped the ads requiring experience; they were usually the jobs that contacted referees, and the only referees that I could give would be my fellow workmates. I tried to avoid salary jobs, I wanted to avoid going through this same hassle again in another few months. Being in Canberra, 90% of my job opportunities are with the federal government, so I stuck mainly with government positions and a few of the brighter looking private ones.
Nearly all the applications I did were three to five pages long, and they sometimes ate up whole nights. All of the government jobs tend to ask the same things in their selection criterias, so after a few days I had developed a standard set of answers that I could copy and paste into each response.
I got plenty of replies, but not many interviews. Anyone who has been on a government recruitment panel will tell you that a pool of applicants takes weeks to acquire, then they are vetted through various levels of bureaucracy which can take just as long, and only then are interviews held. Government jobs are great to get, but applying takes a lot of patience. You have to work to their schedule, not yours.
Some positions seemed to be fast-tracked though, so I did attend a couple of interviews. Here is one of them:
Day 18 - I turned up to the nameless government department's building wearing a suit and holding an A4 notepad. I only wear a suit to weddings, funerals and job interviews. I don't know which I hate more. The notepad was so that I looked interested in what they had to say. That's a top business tip for you all.
They were about to start a project that would run for a number of years (read job security) and were looking to hire people with the right blah blah blah. I gave the usual team-playing, change-making, equity-policying bullshit answers. In front of me was a list of technical questions. This is typical for job interviews but for some reason it had completely slipped my mind. I hadn't studied for it so I could only answer about half of them off the top of my head. Nice one, you retard.
Despite bombing out (which I wouldn't find out until a lot later) I thought things went pretty well. Of the few other interviews that I attended, I got no timely response. I wasn't expecting responses any time soon, I am realistic when dealing with the government, but I was pressed for time.
Day 32 - Time was up and I had failed. It was now time for my review, the best I could do is see how much cash I could bluff out of my boss. If I could at least act like I had a firm offer from somewhere else, I was sure of a payrise of some kind.
My boss layed out my new deal. A small payrise, and quarterly bonuses adding up to a medium sized payrise. This was still far from what I was wanting, and even lower than what I was expecting. I was also going to get certification in an area of my choice, which is nice to have, but it's no substitute for phat cash. I told him the truth; any certification that he offered would only serve to pad out my resume. He went quiet and then moved on to other parts of his offer. I'd get a small cash bonus for any other employee of my company that I could get working where I am working. Now I felt that he was cheapening my role; I'm not a recruiting agent. Still, it wasn't a requirement, so I just wouldn't bother.
The offer was OK overall, but it was still much less than what I would get if I went contracting. I told him that I would go home to think about his offer and get back to him soon.
Who was I kidding? I was beaten. I would have to take his offer. It was a relief in a way. Writing job applications takes up a lot of time, and having a resolution meant that I could get on with other things. I'm not going to use the word 'closure', that's for Oprah.
I sat down that evening and read through my emails. Between my footy tips reminder and a penis enlargement offer was a reply from a private company. They were interested and wanted to set up an interview. Suddenly I was very glad that I didn't accept my boss' offer right away. Closure be damned, I've got a live one! I emailed back, setting up a lunchtime interview the next day at a pub close to where I was working.
Day 33 - I used my long public service lunch and went to the interview. I had arranged to meet the guy from the company in the outdoor eating area of the pub, but it was pouring down rain that day so we went inside and got lunch.
We talked for a while, he seemed like a good guy. I told him my situation and how I needed an answer before the end of the day. I didn't like making demands on potential employers, but he didn't seem fazed at all.
He had a list of questions prepared. Again, I had completely forgotten about this common part of the interview process and I hadn't prepared. It was a very long list, and he offered to email them to me so that I could answer them at home. I said that I was pressed for time and would prefer to answer them here and now. I did surprisingly well. If those questions were any indication, I thought that the job would suit me fine.
I was leaving my work when he called me back. He offered me the job (!) for more money than I had asked for (!!), and I could work from home (!!!). I danced a jig and went home to write up my resignation letter.
Day 34 - I emailed my boss saying that I would be declining his offer. I'm sure I'll be telling my grandkids about the time that I turned down a 20% payrise. Teachers, policemen and nurses have to fight through the courts to get a 3.5% rise, and that just barely covers inflation.
At the end of the day I went back to the office to hand in my resignation. I didn't know how my boss would react, so I prepared myself with counterpoints to what I thought he was most likely to say. To my surprise he was very supportive. I offered four weeks of notice and we wished each other well. Four weeks seems a bit long, but it's more than needed in my industry to find a suitable replacement.
As I left for home my head was swimming again, but this time I was laughing. This was the paydirt from the last few weeks of worrying. I stopped in at EB Games and bought a couple of Wii games as a reward to myself. I've done well. I even had the gods on my side...
Day 35 - The next morning my manager called. He was sick all week so he wasn't there when I resigned. He offered to match the offer that I got from my new company. I pretended to think and then politely declined.
I feel sorry for him, my manager knows how hard it is to find people that can do what I do. He's the one who will have to find my replacement from a very small pool of people who will be paid double what he can offer if they go through a recruitment agency instead of through my company. Canberra is notorious for never being able to attract enough IT people, and just recently an interesting statistic has come out showing that Canberra has more jobs available than job seekers.
Day 49 - Over the last week my phone had been running hot with interview offers. Like I said before, the federal government is notorious for advertising positions months in advance and not doing anything about the responses until the new financial year when they know exactly how many contractors that they can afford.
The call I that got on this day was especially welcome. The recruiter lady was offering me my current job. She started telling me the list of required skills and I butted in and finished it off. Then she asked if I knew anyone who was suitable. Yeah, because I like selling my friends out to shit jobs that pay peanuts.
So that's the story of how I got my new job. As at the time of writing this post, I have about a week left of my current job and my company still hasn't been able to replace me. I know that this government contract will go under, but I did give my boss plenty of opportunity to save it. I shouldn't care anyway, but I do. Was I right to leave? Was I being just another spoilt Generation Y brat? Am I right to end a post with a question?
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you managed to make 'IT job issues' interesting to read, which is deserving of a promotion itself
I can't help but read all of that and think, fuck, i'm so glad i never automatically agreed to playing by the rules and becoming Mr CareerMan, although it was a close shave (in IT, no less) and the agents of social pressure sometimes make me doubt my choices. It's just nuts that people continue to find this type of society acceptable - what do they spend their existence's doing? Is it really satisfying to be little ridiculous cogs in the giant machinery of capitalism, to go to work 5 days out of 7, getting told what to do, when and how, just to enjoy the mod-cons, the big tv and the shiny car? How does the worker bee feel at the end of it's stint of existence? Are we all supposed to take to heart that dumb t-shirt motto: "He who dies with the most toys, wins?" What are you gonna do with all that hard-won cash you're trading your existence in for Nick? Go on a few expensive guided-tour-type holidays, get yourself tied to a mortgage just so that you can say the shelter you're currently utilizing is your "own" and spend more money on it to impress others? Make like the baby-boomers you hate so much yet are clearly emulating, and raise a couple more little additions to the overpopulation problem and start the process anew? Where the fuck are we all heading? Does anyone even fucking THINK about it? Or do they just accept they have to assimilate into the society they're thrown into when they're born, play by the rules and then shuffle off into eternity, supposedly content at the end that they "played a good game?"
When that fairly inevitable day comes that a man in a white coat informs your family that all he can really do for you is "make you comfortable" from here on in, will you still be trumpeting about your shrewd manipulation of the IT scene in early 21st century Canberra?
In the context of your evolved value system you believe you've had a win and you feel good about it. Feeling good is feeling good - it's subjective, and i suppose that if one feels like that most of the time i can't argue it's a wasted life, but man, like someone surveying an anthill in the middle of a vast African landscape, and thinking about those worker ants, with their single function in their single little niche, my brain just screams "There's so much MORE to life! Wake the fuck UP!"
Ideas aren't "deep" if they're on the surface of your consciousness most of the time. Maybe it's just that most people are shallow and what they designate as "deep" is a bit too uncomfortable or difficult to face and resolve ;)
Trainspotting was shit, apart from maybe making a few people think twice about adopting the glamorous junkie lifestyle. I'm not saying "choose life," i'm saying re-evaluate your whole perception of what life is and what it can possibly be, because people have no fucking imagination any more and obviously no realization that their time is currently finite and of infinite value, being short and bookended by infinite non-existence.
"Money can be exchanged for goods and services" is an amusing though weak argument - in fact, it's the over-emphasis on the money, what we have to do for it and the shit we buy with it that was the crux of my previous statement.
Guy, Guy, Guy. Will you ever learn?
How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? What exactly would you have Nick do before you can regard him as living a worthwhile life? Should he climb Mount Everest, have sex with a hot chick at the summit and then skateboard to the bottom? What sort of thing would you have him do before you say "ok, now your a cool, fuck 'The Man', fuck 'The System', kinda guy who is living a life worth living"?
If the worker ant lifts his head and can comprehend the vast African Savannah around him is he a better Ant? Is he living a more meaningful life? Would it bother you that he still cannot comprehend Planet Earth? Answers below.
Man. A meaningful, fulfilling life does not come from earning lots of money, it doesn't come from deciding to not work in a 9-5 job, it doesn't come from being a part of the system and it doesn't come from breaking the rules and living outside of the system. Each individual must decide for themselves where it comes from.
And I will tell you another thing. It is not for the sake of the colony that bees, ants and humans form the colonies they do. It is for the sake of the individual. I think you could have shortened your original comment down to the following:
"I am damn unhappy with my life. It feels meaningless. How dare you cunts feel happy."
Answers (I would write them upside down but I don't know how):
Maybe someday
5 roads
Dunno
Yes he should
Dunno
It would make him a super-ant
no
I'm sure it would bother you.
dude, thanks heaps for your story. its really shone a light on the whole confusing mess that is ACT government.
i have good, rare skills too but zero experience.
my plan is to go for some bullshit temp work, get some references, and try to make some contacts.
pity us virtuous, saintly bloggers can't get together and start some serious nepotism in the circles of power... ;)
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