{"id":50372,"date":"2015-01-13T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T14:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50372"},"modified":"2015-01-13T06:46:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T12:46:27","slug":"lifes-rough-wear-a-helmet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50372","title":{"rendered":"Life&#8217;s Rough.  Wear A Helmet."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two quick points as background:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It stinks to have a job offer rescinded. \u00a0I&#8217;ve had it happen once; a contracting agency made me an offer to work a contract at Northern States Power, back when that still existed. \u00a0In the two weeks that followed, NSP re-aligned its priorities. \u00a0The agency rescinded my offer; there was no job to put me in. \u00a0It was worse than a pain in the ass in my case; I had given notice at the job I had (which I hated), and I had a mortgage and three kids to feed.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m always amused to hear that businesses &#8220;recruit on college campuses&#8221; &#8211; partly because I went to a college that nobody ever recruited at (at the time) unless you were a nursing or computer science major. \u00a0I always figured &#8220;wouldn&#8217;t that be nice?&#8221;, but never thought that much of it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Anyway &#8211; from the City Pages, we see that Target has <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.citypages.com\/blotter\/2015\/01\/target_rescinds_job_offers_for_entire_class_of_new_hires_just_weeks_before_start_date.php\">apparently botched some offers<\/a>\u00a0to one of their 2014 &#8220;class&#8221; of junior executive fodder. \u00a0Their priorities and funding changed (certainly not because the Minnesota and National economies aren&#8217;t just booming, nosireebob, perish the thought), and Target got cold feet about some of their would-be junior suits.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t deal with that kind of management,&#8221; Zhang said, recalling the whole process of interviewing over the phone in October, flying out to Minnesota in early November, learning about the job, and preparing to move. &#8220;Don&#8217;t tell a whole class that they&#8217;re super special, awesome, and perfect for the job if you&#8217;re gonna treat us simply as another expense.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Mr. Zhang: \u00a0Sorry you got laid off before you even started. \u00a0But let&#8217;s try to get two things straight, here:<\/p>\n<p>First: \u00a0this may be in conflict with what Target&#8217;s recruiting staff, to say nothing of the professors at whatever $40K a year degree mill you just finished attending, told you &#8211; but you&#8217;re not super special, awesome and perfect. \u00a0You are units of talent &#8211; or, give your age, potential talent &#8211; that a company will measure against its needs.<\/p>\n<p>Second: \u00a0all management are like that. \u00a0Oh, they don&#8217;t all rescind job offers &#8211; but every last one of them measures expenses against bottom line.<\/p>\n<p>And &#8220;an expense&#8221; is exactly what you are. \u00a0At best, you&#8217;re\u00a0an &#8220;investment&#8221; subject to return on investment calculations, just like you learned in business school. \u00a0 That Target sometimes does that clumsily? \u00a0You could have asked anyone in the Twin Cities IT market about that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back to it. \u00a0 Or whine to the City Pages. \u00a0It&#8217;s your call.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two quick points as background: It stinks to have a job offer rescinded. \u00a0I&#8217;ve had it happen once; a contracting agency made me an offer to work a contract at Northern States Power, back when that still existed. \u00a0In the two weeks that followed, NSP re-aligned its priorities. \u00a0The agency rescinded my offer; there was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entitled-america","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50372","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=50372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50385,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50372\/revisions\/50385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}