h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm sorry but I am at the moment. I think that the main reason is that I still can't seem to get a job. So many people have said to me now, "Oh, if I could, I'd employ you" or "As soon as a posistion is available, you'll be first in line." Bollocks. This is just their way of not saying to you "Yeah right, who'd employ you? But I don't have the guts to tell you to your face." What is wrong with these people? It's like the agencies that I've been using to try and get work. The line I got on Monday was "I deal mainly with artists for the role of designers, my college deals with developers, which is what you'd be better suited for. I'll give him your details and they'll get in touch with you." Did they? Sure, right, not on your life. And the line today from another agency? "I'll send you an email, then if you would reply with your full cv we'll get onto finding you a job." Again, Bollocks. These people seem to think that it's a whole bloody game to us. I've now been unemployed for over a year. And the joke? The joke is that there is apparantly a skills shortage at the moment!!!
Apparantly there aren't enough people out there, able to code html and javascript, to fill the amount of vacancies. Again, Bollocks. There are the people out there, but the agencies/companies aren't willing to give them that all important first step in the industry.
Some of you reading this will have seen what I'm capable of, and I'm not the best coder I know. I wrote that chess programme that now has 19 registered researchers playing it. I wrote the coding that automatically formats the Post articles and makes them look as they are in two columns. I wrote the code that makes the Post logo move up and down and turn into a menu when you click it. But can I get a job coding? Can I bollocks. And why? Because I don't have a degree. Simple as that. A degree? I mean, come on. You can now get a degree in David Smegging Beckham for christs sake! But if two people were to go for a job, one with no formal qualifications but able to do the job, and the other with a degree in a poncy footballer and not a smegging clue about the difference between Java and JavaScript, who would get the job? You'd think that it would be the person who knew the job, you'd hope it would be them. But no. It's the git who spent three years getting into debt as an excuse to watch football every day.
That says a lot about the current state of the job market.
THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF SKILLS. THERE'S A SHORTAGE OF COMMON SENSE.
Last summer, while I was at a wedding in Leicester I bumped into someone I knew from a few years earlier. This guy had just finished three years at university getting his degree in internet programming. So I said to him, "Cool! So, aren't you glad that javascript came about, it makes things so much easier doesn't it?" to which he replied, "I don't know, we didn't touch javascript." This guy just got a degree for frags sake, but didn't even know how to make an image change when the mouse pointer was over it.
Another friend of mine has taken on the task of running the website and intranet for the company he works for. He didn't want to but the guy who did run it walked out and left them in the lurch. He's been running it now for about a year, and when he gets stuck with something, he phones me up and asks me to look at it for him. This guy is on £30,000 a year! And he asks me to help him out. He keeps saying that I should get a job doing websites. I keep telling him I'm trying. Then when i say, "Why don't you give me a job?" He replies with that old "Well, at the moment the budget doesn't allow it, but as soon as we can employ someone to do that, you'll be first on our list." How many times do I need to say bollocks before you start to notice a pattern here?
So, to conclude, a message to all agencies out there...

Stop being so bloody pretentious and get off your clouds and give people a break. We're not all as dumb as you think we are.

But then again, as long as we keep following them like sheep and asking them nicely to find us a job, pretty please, and oh so sorry to take up any of your time, oh and if you can find me work I'll give you a commision and a share of my salary. Then I think we may be completely dumb shits.

Yeah, finding employment is a bitch. No smileys on this one, I'm completely serious.

I don't blame you for being stroppy, either. A year on social security, achieving all you've achieved, seems a bit rich to be borne. It's frustrating me, too, and I've only been doing it this time for about two months. The next job my agency wants me to do they expect me to take a pay cut for, too, which - to put it rather bluntly - shits me up the wall. Nobody seems to want to take me seriously as a web editor, either, in spite of all the work I've done for h2g2 and those on it.

The 'lack of common sense' problem, however, is not going to go away. The only way to make money is to sell something that nobody can afford to do without - i.e. it makes more basic sense to pay for it than to get it somewhere else for less, or for free.

To people who ask you for advice without offering to pay you for it, just say that you won't tell them without being paid for your time or your knowledge, and explain why. They'll either get sick of bothering you and go away, or they'll employ you - it's just that an awful lot more of them will do the first, rather than the second.

Funnily enough, just as I was writing this last bit, the song 'Eat the rich' came on over the CD player. Spooky.

How're things otherwise, Pastey? If you've any ideas for making money that don't involve selling your soul as well as your skills, let me know!

Other than that, things are good but weird
Anne and I are getting married at the end of June, and a lot of our time is taken up with organising that. All this afternoon for example we were working on the invitations.

With the doing the web stuff for free, it's weird as well. For some of the people, I really don't mind not charging. These ones are people I've known rather well from the pub, and they have offered to pay me, but I know that they can't afford to pay me, let alone going rates for a web developer, so I always say that they can owe me a favour. I just can't take money from people in the same situation as I am
But, yeah, finding employment is still a scrote. I can't even get an agency to even get me a first job. Seeing as I haven't done this, commercially, before they don't seem to want to know.

Sorry to say I hadn't heard about the wedding plans - a belated congratulation is undoubtedly in order! I think I'm going to have ot pay a little more attention to the people who matter...

I know what you mean about not wanting to jam people in the same boat as you - I feel that all the time, too. Agency employment, for all its benefits, is still a bastard, because the work never, ever lasts long enough to allow you to do anything you want to do. The only way to make money, like I said, is to work for yourself with a really, really niche business idea that nobody can resist. Then it doesn't matter whether you've done it 'commercially' before, and you can dictate terms, which if you do it fairly will set you up for life.

Am I too much of an idealist? I know not...

Possibly

It would be nice though.

Not meaning to but in but have you checked the classifieds in the back of "Edge" magazine? Normally loads of jobs in the industry in there, I also know that a company called Runecraft is expanding there operation ATM and taking on loads of staff, check out there site, you may get lucky.

I feel for you, Pastey.

Companies hate hiring people. When they have to, they look round for all sorts of crutches, which is why they like qualifications. Then if things go pear-shaped they can say, 'He had a first class degree and good references'. Or, even better, 'He was the second cousin of the Managing Director.'

They gave the website project to your friend because they saved the cost of a salary, and the bother of making a decision.

Hypoman is dead right about you not giving your work away. OK, if it’s to a really good mate, or to someone who’s doing something on a strictly amateur basis, or beginning a project with no money (perhaps). But definitely not to someone who’s earning a living out of your work. When you’re unemployed or even just young it’s easy to undervalue yourself, but in the real world advice costs money, time costs money. Refuse to help, or charge. that's what I say. If you’re doing half his work, take half his pay. For years Chester Carlson, the inventor of the Xerox machine, employed an engineer out of his salary as a patents clerk.

I’m brilliant at thinking up far-fetched projects that may or may not go anywhere ismy plan to build an entire planet in cyberspace. But I’m very careful who I involve in anything purely speculative. I reckon I’m entitled to risk unlimited amounts of my own time, but if I bring anyone else in I pay cash when I can or at the very least ask for as little help as possible and make it clear that if there are profits they will be shared.

On a philosophical level, there's a possible advantage in your position, though it's also a bit far-fetched. All the obvious jobs go to the obvious people, but the real fortunes are made in the areas that aren't obvious at all. For instance, the big money in Hollywood was made between the wars by immigrants, some of whom could barely speak English. Sam Goldwyn (Metro Goldwyn Meyer) was famous for his fractured grammar ('Include me out' 'A verbal contract ain't worth the paper it's printed on'). The white anglo-saxon protestant boys on the East Coast were busy becoming lawyers and stockbrokers. They wouldn't demean themselves with anything as far-fetched and sordid as making movies, and they wouldn't travel to a town nobody had heard of on the west coast.

Keep looking. Think about starting up on your own. And if I ever get my Planet Project running I'll come to you (I see it happening in Virtual Reality and I'm no tecchie). If you help, and there's ever any money in it I'll see you get your share.

Hi Pastey, I've just been reading through your journal, your job situation seems to be identical to mine... I've got the computer skills but not the qualifications, so I have to do crappy temping jobs instead. Oh well...

Eeyore, what's your Planet Project? (I'm another person who likes coming up with bizarre ideas)

Hi, Peregrin.

My planet project is the oddest and most ambitious idea IÕve ever had.

IÕm building a planet in cyberspace. In DNAÕs immortal words, it will be almost but not quite unlike earth.

You may think IÕm being insanely ambitious, but it would start quite small: a street, then a town, then a train journey to the seaside, building up till all the fragments of artificial environment mesh together into a complete planet. And I wonÕt be doing it alone. I have already chosen two artists to help me, though as I told Pastey I hesitate to ask them to put in hours of work on something that, at the moment, is a pipe-dream.

IÕve done quite a lot of work myself, however. IÕve filed away several hundred visual ideas, and drawn six of them to a fairly high level. They should be on my h2g2 home page, but thereÕs been a snag in the Ôhost a gifÕ scheme. IÕm hoping Pastey will be able to sort it out when he gets back from honeymoon.

I see my planet being used as a game environment, like an immense Myst or Riven. It could be linked to exercise machines to give healthy people or hospital patients something to do with their minds as they build up their muscles. And it could give anyone with a computer a holiday on a desktop - safe, inexpensive and easier on the environment than the average two-week vacation.

Hopefully youÕll be able to have a glimpse of EeyoreÕs planet very soon, when the pictures go up on my page.

Cool!

I've been thinking of something very similar but entirely different, if you see what I mean.

My idea is to make an alternative to this universe. i.e. a universe where the designers make the rules. This computer generated 3D universe will defy most physical laws of real life. It will have no gravity, and therefore no up or down. Three dimensions of Space and one of Time will exist, because I feel the human mind cannot cope with alternatives. Space will be a little odd though - small buildings can have very large interiors. Very useful for built up areas.

The whole thing will be kept on a server, or a network of servers like IRC. Because download speeds vary for different people, you will be able to set the amount of detail you want to download - e.g. whether you want to be able to view people as people and see what they're doing, and who they are - or just have blobs showing their position.

Something like that anyway. I won't explain it all here because I'm running up a phone bill. There's several things like this that I've been thinking about, because I'm the kind of person that daydreams about technology a lot. The therapy is helping though.

I'll take a look at your page, sounds interesting

Hi, Pastey (and to a certain extent, Peregrin - but not jointly, obviously)

Too late to say I hope the wedding & honeymoon go well, but I hope you and your wife will be very happy.

First of all, I'm a stupid old git who knows nothing about anything useful so I'm ideally qualified to give advice.
I had a friend who was a self employed plumber, like you he would never take money from friends. It was bloody annoying. He always lived in rented property. He used to say that he wished he had done what his friends did when they were quite young - get a job for peanuts working for a "reputable" firm or the local council. Stay long enough to get a mortgage then leave & make some real money.
Right. I've no idea to what extent your "web" skills etc. would be applicable, but ... what about I.T. helpdesks with large concerns or councils? O.K. I know you'd have to deal with morons like me, but there is, I gathered from a ten year old (or thereabouts) - no degree - who did the networking and Lotus installation at our place, a load of information exchange amongst such comrades in adversity. No sooner had some £4000 been invested in him for the Lotus training than he got a job elsewhere paying twice as much + free car & petrol + all expenses mobile phone. He's been replaced with an older plodder who is not likely to be poached so we'll probably need to get in a consultant when things go wrong.
Swallow pride, foot on the ladder then give 'em the two fingers. Worth a thought?
Hope things pick up.