{"id":1718,"date":"2007-11-30T05:12:58","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T10:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1718"},"modified":"2007-11-30T07:59:54","modified_gmt":"2007-11-30T12:59:54","slug":"schadenfreud-reverie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1718","title":{"rendered":"Abandoning <\/i>Schadenfreud<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

At times, it’s hard to believe that it’s been almost five years since the most miserable year of my life started<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In late 2002, with the local software market in a drastic slowdown, I was contracting at a local manufacturing company. My project got de-funded – and when you’re a contractor, “no project” means “no job”. I went five months with no work at all, and six more months working little contracting jobs that barely <\/em>paid the bills. <\/p>\n

One of the low points, in early March – ten weeks into the ordeal – came with an interview at a local branch of a national company. Upside: it would have been a great job, and I’d have knocked it through the goalposts. Downside: it was on the far west end of Eden Prairie, highly inconvenient to Saint Paul. But I wasn’t going to kvetch about it; by this point, a job was a job was a job.<\/p>\n

It was one of the most gruelling days of my life. The interviews started at 8:30AM, with one-hour conversations with the department head, the marketing chief and the technical communications lead. Then a lunch-time talk with the lead programmer. Then more one-hour interviews with the graphics lead, the QA lead and another marketeer. Of course, some of the interviews were a little…”off”. One woman sounded like she was trying to justify her job to me; another seemed to be sizing me up as an ally in an upcoming bit of office political intrigue.<\/p>\n

The day capped off with a 90-minute chat with the Product Development director. During each, I tried to walk that fine line between “eager and aggressive” and “desperate” – which I most certainly was by this point. I left feeling things went quite well. And I followed up with a voice mail to the Product Development guy (who’d have been my boss) the next week.<\/p>\n

And the next. <\/p>\n

And the next, and the next. And the next, and the next. <\/p>\n

Seven weeks after the interview, I finally got through. “Oh, you mean we didn’t <\/em>send you a letter? I’m sorry. We took a different direction, and hired another graphic artist instead”. <\/p>\n

I don’t like to indulge in schadenfreud <\/em>– so I won’t. I don’t believe in Karma, but I do believe what goes around comes around, and I don’t need anything more coming around, thanks.<\/p>\n

So I’ll wish the “best of luck” to my coulda-been, now coulda-been soon-to-be-former, colleagues<\/a>. May your interviews be short, to the point, close enough to home, and successful.<\/p>\n

The market’s a lot better now. Y’all will do great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At times, it’s hard to believe that it’s been almost five years since the most miserable year of my life started. In late 2002, with the local software market in a drastic slowdown, I was contracting at a local manufacturing company. My project got de-funded – and when you’re a contractor, “no project” means “no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}