[Tfug] OT A word of thanks

[Chad Woolley]

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Matt Jacob <matt at mattjacob.com> wrote:

> And so begins the mass TFUG exodus of 2008. Cue organ music and bright
> lights.
>

Wow, what a thread.  I've had tfug on auto-archive for a couple years now
and I happen to see this thread when searching for something unrelated.

Here is a hint for you people threatening to quit the list:

1. Use Gmail
2. Learn the "Mute" key (it's m)
3. Presto, you don't need to participate or even see any thread you don't
like

As for the Original Topic, here's my thoughts:

* Tucson sucks for IT.
* If you have great skills, a decent personality, and know how to market
yourself, you can get decent telecommuting jobs.  Maybe not in sysadmin, but
definitely in coding.  I'm doing Agile Ruby/Rails development, and I have
headhunters calling me all the time, even though my resume specifically says
that I will only accept part-time sideline work in Tucson, and I'm happy
with my current job.  If you are looking for a hot area in the upcoming
depression (oops stay on topic), those are some keywords to have on your
resume - backed up by real experience of course.  How do get it without a
job?  Open source!  Help out on Rubinius or something. Check out Evan
Phoenix's keynote at the last MountainWest RubyConf).
* Bowie is right - you gotta be the fish nibbling at the bait.  Keep all
your leads in a spreadsheet (google docs?).  For good ones, set up a weekly
reminder (google calendar?) to bug the hiring manager via phone or email,
unless you were explicitly turned down.
* Any email that has more than one sentence in ALL CAPS should be slept on.
If you still want to sent it tomorrow, have someone else read it and tell
you if you are being a jerk.  This was a hard lesson for me to learn, and I
still mess up, but you definitely catch more flies with honey than you do
with vinegar.


Good Luck,
-- Chad

PS - please forgive me for pimping Google hosted apps on a unix list, but
remember you can configure postfix to forward everything to gmail and set
whatever sender/domain header you want from gmail.
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