It’s possible that the contracting work isn’t good for us long term since the jobs are somewhat lower-level, but we all know it’s necessary. At this time in history, career takes a back seat to food on the table, but still the question lingers – Are you committing career suicide by taking a job for which you feel grossly overqualified?

The mind of a hiring manager is a mysterious thing, but this recent article on CNNMoney.com shows that experts believe it’s not seen as career suicide. It’s survival.

Some points:
•In today’s economy and with current unemployment rates, companies will not penalize job seekers for taking a job to put food on the table.
•Working through a contracting firm is a great way to get your name and skills out there. A short term position can get the proverbial foot in the door, and while we are all waiting out the slump, we are proving ourselves in real terms to the decision makers. A short term contract led to my last career position, which kept us in milk and bread for over a dozen years.

Other salient points:

•Be honest in the resume and interviews about recent job changes, and discuss what these jobs taught. If it’s working the support desk at BigRetailBoxStore-dot-Com, talk about how your customer service skills have improved. If the only work available was to be the Cable Guy, then stress the new found appreciation for the hard work of midnight changes and surviving extreme conditions. Whatever it is, we’re learning something that will make us a better employee and a better person.

Experience gained during this recession can show employers how essential we can be to the IT department. Being adaptive, flexible, and creative have always been the real skills underlying all the tech-speak. Here’s our chance to prove it.

Maybe my standards are dropping, but I need a job that fits me a little better, where IT problems are solved at a languid pace while drinking not-great-but-OK-for-free coffee. And doing it all as comfortably horizontal as possible.

I keep looking but I’m not finding that perfect match on job websites. And I’m not demanding. These websites don’t have to be elegant, or even very good – at least not at first. Shoot,, these days tons of ideas start out not great, designed by committee and pushed to market like a half-dressed jockey trying to jump on his horse at the starting gate, flailing along in the middle of the pack and pretending to be competitive.

My inspiration, of course is…the Zune. It went from a clunky brown brick…to a smooth cool futuristic design – that no one’s buying - in only 6 or 7 generations.

So, in keeping with the “bad presentation of a not-original idea that we’ll fix later” school of development, here are my Zune-like web sites intended for the modern IT professional…

- Radio ButtonsR Us: For the one-size-fits-all web designer with strong skills in, well, pretty much just radio button design. Motto: “No imagination required”

- TwistedPairJobs dot com: IT legacy employment. On the job training in green-screen monitor repair and Winchester drives.   Help fulfill the growing demand for 286-based CPU programming! (Bring your Cuban passport)

- ResumeSizeMatters: QuicknDirty Resume’ enhancement. Pay by the inch! (Warning: side effects of large resumes include drowsiness, inability to focus, paper cuts) Though rare, resume reviews lasting more than 4 hours may require an eye doctor. 

- PhishingTheMarket: Jobs for the larcenous at heart, moral compass optional. Please include a proper ID (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and provide some very personal information, banking details and secret handshake with your application.

- Grow_a_Pair.org: Let our Ex-drill sargeants expertly bring out the beast within, and send you snarling into interviews with both guns blazing.   Motto “No Argument Too Small”

- TheDogAte_MyResume.tv: If you need excuses. we got ‘em. Or did, ’til the faucet accidentally leaked and dripped water down the wall, shorting out the printer so we can’t remember what we wrote.

- NoOneSeesTheWizard: Not no Way, Not no How… Save the time and trouble of applications and interviews – just call our HR hotline to hear a menu of rejections. Experienced applicants can press “9″ to have them twittered directly to your cerebral cortex.

- Work.from.bed dot net: Skills in horizontal typing and drinking through a straw are essential.  Motto: “Noon is the New 6 AM”.

- CoffeeBreakAll.Day Hang out 24/7 with laptops in coffee shops using their free wireless. Work in a fast paced, noisy environment while…wait, you do that already. But if you claim to actually make money at this, please leave a note in the comments section.
We could use a chuckle.

In ‘98, when computers were all beige, and Gates and Jobs still hated each other and Sun was the golden child of the bubble, the story of the rats and the little people came out. Their cheese went missing, and apparently being Lactose deficient, Sniff and Scurry immediately ran off to find some.

After pounding down an all-cheese diet day after day, I’d be looking for a green leafy salad to unblock things. . .just to avoid awkwardness in a confined space, if ya know what I mean. . .and I think you do. But in the story there were no bathrooms, so maybe food followed function in the maze.

In any case the two rats took off on their creepy little pink feet to find more Winsleydale and Stilton, while the little people settled in for opportunity to come knockin’.

It all seemed magical, if a bit childlike.

Change was different 10 years ago. The bubble was swelling up nicely, so we all cruised across its overstretched skin, enjoying the smooth ride to a shiny future of tech job security. Changes in the market were exciting; it was what made us go find the big cheese that brought big raises back in ’99.

Today, change is like opening the fridge and the light doesn’t come on. Squinting into the guts of the box, none of the formless shapes look appetizing. But we have to eat, and the fridge is where the food is. So we reach in and grab whatever job opportunity we can find, even if it’s half-a-loaf compared to our old bread-winning gig.

I kept thinking that we’d been through this before. Heck, in ’02 budgets for IT projects shriveled like forgotten grapes, but we rode that one out. This time, kicked out into the maze with severance in hand, I joined the legions milling around the job market like zebra on a river bank. But there was only one option, so in we went, fighting currents to make it to the other side and job security.

Back at the maze, we find handwriting on the wall, put there to give little people courage in the confusion of change. The first messages aren’t all gems: “Having Cheese Makes You Happy” sounds like Yoda in his early years, before he figured out how to warp syntax to sound sage. (“Happy you are, when Cheese you have”).

Around the corner, the advice gets better, if a bit deep for the likes of rats and lilliputians. “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” I’m thinking, Not Die, first of all. Fear of large moving trucks and bungee jumping have kept me on this mortal coil so far. To paraphrase Gekko, “Fear is Good”. Still, it’s a more useful piece of graffiti than Yoda’s pre-teen advice.

Then it gets serious. “Smell the cheese often so you know when it’s getting old”. Aside from evoking disturbing images, that one could be useful. I may have seen the layoffs coming and jumped into a safe public tech position, insulated from the economic sturm and drang outside. But I wasn’t really like Sniff, so I kept telling myself the work isn’t stale so much as just getting sort of a strong odor. It was becoming Bleu cheese, or Gruyere, which my dad said smelled like gym shoes after they’ve been in the locker for a week. But I digress.

Overcoming inertia, anxiety and the worst recession in decades – we reach our (predestined?) destination. The memory of what we just went through can’t stop our old habits – we love having our cheese and eating it too – so we’re snoggers for the next bubble once again.

But there’s one more piece of writing on the wall. Not inspiring as much as sobering. Maybe the only takeaway from this whole experience.

“They keep moving the cheese”

-

Very private pillow-talk-tweets of an ex-IT power couple, taking the only jobs left in town…

Techbarista: got the job! seems easy enough but cappuccino machine leaks black tar…checking for buffer overflow

8)3DESlady: check ur training manual…

Techbarista: mine starts “All your base are belong to us”…Bad omen?
_

Techbarista: is it me, or does ‘venti mocha no whip halfcaff double shot’ sound like a command string?

8)3DES: so slow here I spent morning decrypting SSH link to home office. just idle chatter, so now rearranging R Bull, labels-front
_

8)3DES: still slow. homebrewing espresso mixed with red bull… Buzz On !!

Tech: yeesh, not good, don’t overclock yourself

8)3DES: Roger that, hands so shaky dropped pastry – now the icing looks like Dick Nixon.

Tech: EBAY?
_

Tech: called in sick today. Bosses garbled msg on vmail sounds like “Someone set us up the bomb”. What?

8)3DES: . mgr here is like, high school man, like, really. guitar hero jedi or so he claims
_

Tech: yawn. busy but routine, reminds me of nights working in the NOC.
_

8)3DES: where is mouse for the cash register? :p

Tech: check under the counter…mice like pastries

8)3DES: hahah…wait, eww
_

Tech: ‘sometimes a mouse is just a mouse’…freud

8)3DES: you mean fred, that operator on 3rd shift back at old data center. ate donuts & coffee 24/7

Tech: Yeah right, where did he end up?

8)3DES: started pest control company with his severance

Tech: fred? really? he didn’t know subnets from sql queries.

Tech: knows his rodents tho, so call him about that mouse problem

8)3DES: enuff with the mouse, besides, he sold franchises and move to FLA to play in a band full time
_

Tech: he was smarter than i gave him credit…guess sometimes a mouse is more than just a mouse

8)3DES: yep, build a better mouse trap, yada yada, ticket to paradise

Tech: I miss midnight donuts with fred. meet you at Kr Kreme?

8)3DES: ok, but no more talk about rodents…and NO coffee, plz