93gsxturbo said:Its the same reason our sales dicks all get gray 4 door cab American made trucks in a mid trim level - looks professional without looking too spendy. Nice middle-of-the road approach.
I'm in sales so I guess I'm living the stereotype? LOL (my last two sales vehicles)
Steve_Jones said:In reply to TravisTheHuman :
Please show me where the vehicle you drive is a protected class. I've read some dumb E36 M3 here, but this is in the top 5.
Gad to have made the top 5! I didn't say a protected class. My comment is based on the EEOC considering car ownership "Financial Information"
EEOC Said:
https://www.eeoc.gov/pre-employment-inquiries-and-financial-information
"Financial information" includes current or past assets, liabilities, or credit rating, bankruptcy or garnishment, refusal or cancellation of bonding, car ownership, rental or ownership of a house, length of residence at an address, charge accounts, furniture ownership, or bank accounts.
Federal law does not prevent employers from asking about your financial information. But, the federal EEO laws do prohibit employers from illegally discriminating when using financial information to make employment decisions.
Please tell me if I am misunderstanding this.
In reply to TravisTheHuman :
You're misunderstanding it, or left the next paragraphs out on purpose.
First, employers must not apply a financial requirement differently to different people based on their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, age, or genetic information.
Second, an employer must not have a financial requirement if it does not help the employer to accurately identify responsible and reliable employees, and if, at the same time, the requirement significantly disadvantages people of a particular race, color, national origin, religion, or sex.
Third, an employer might have to make an exception to a financial requirement for a person who cannot meet the requirement because of a disability.
An employer can use financial information to reject an employee. The key is this line you posted:
But, the federal EEO laws do prohibit employers from illegally discriminating when using financial information to make employment decisions.
It says IF they use financial information, the requirements must be the same for everyone.
You can say "must own vehicle newer than 2015" but if you do, you can't hire someone that doesn't, that is what opens you up to litigation. If you turn someone down based on your 2015 and newer rule, you need to reject everyone that does not meet it
TravisTheHuman said:Steve_Jones said:In reply to TravisTheHuman :
Please show me where the vehicle you drive is a protected class. I've read some dumb E36 M3 here, but this is in the top 5.
Gad to have made the top 5! I didn't say a protected class. My comment is based on the EEOC considering car ownership "Financial Information"
EEOC Said:
https://www.eeoc.gov/pre-employment-inquiries-and-financial-information
"Financial information" includes current or past assets, liabilities, or credit rating, bankruptcy or garnishment, refusal or cancellation of bonding, car ownership, rental or ownership of a house, length of residence at an address, charge accounts, furniture ownership, or bank accounts.
Federal law does not prevent employers from asking about your financial information. But, the federal EEO laws do prohibit employers from illegally discriminating when using financial information to make employment decisions.
Please tell me if I am misunderstanding this.
You are misunderstanding this, and even admit that if someone rolls in to an interview for even a moderately professional position in a hoopty you would judge them.
NermalSnert (Forum Supporter) said:"fell face first into a tackle box" Bwaahaha. That cracked me up.
While in general this is probably good advice I have to admit I was that guy when I was younger and I used it to my advantage. I was an IT consultant at a time when the rest of the world viewed IT as geeks or freaks and I couldn't pull off geek very well. But I always dressed professionally and wore glasses which kinda hid some of my facial piercings.
I remember sitting in a meeting with a CIO of a company I was consulting for and all was going well but he just had a question on his face that he wasnt speaking. Finally he just blurted it out...."do you ever get your glasses caught in that eyebrow piercing?" Yes sir, all the time. And the meeting went on...
In reply to Steve_Jones :
Ok I see.
In reply to TravisTheHuman :
Just like most regulations, it's as clear as mud.
GameboyRMH said:In reply to ShawnG :
I've heard the belt/shoes/watch matching thing and this wasn't it:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/02/city-of-london-dress-code-brown-shoes-finance
I got around to reading the article.
It appears that you can either accept that this is simply the culture in London or you can get upset about it. Nobody there will care if you don't like it.
The key part is right in the article: “The guys in Savile Row would turn in their graves. It’s important to dress appropriately based on the clients you work with.”
That. Right there.
A few years ago, the parent company of my former employer was basically forced out and he went out and started his own thing. He's a very influential person in the c-suite for most, if not all, of the large local companies and, honestly, he's a decent guy who really takes care of people. I always pegged the day he left as the day that the company really started to change, and not for the better. My career coach recommended that I reach out to him saying that if I could get fifteen minutes in his office, that would put me on a level that would exceed nearly everyone else in the local market. It's not like I interacted with him a ton - he was the president and basically the closest I ever got was that he was my boss's boss's boss. The company was small enough at the time and I worked with all of the top-level people - most of whom were either his family or friends - on different things over the years so I assume that he was aware of who I was, but it's not like we were buddies or anything. Yesterday, I connected with him on LinkedIn, he accepted, and I sent him a note asking for some of his time to talk about what the market looks like and what opportunities I should be running down out there. This morning he sent me his email address and told me to reach out so that he can have his admin schedule some time for us to meet.
Just more reinforcement that it truly is all about relationships and who you know so never burn a bridge.
Also, the severance payment hit my checking account this morning, so that has taken a huge amount of stress off of me.
This showed up on my FB feed this morning and it was too good to not share.
Still plenty of conversations but nothing concrete. However, it seems like I am building some momentum. I feel like this will be a bit like Hemingway wrote, "Gradually and then suddenly".
I've got a lunch tomorrow with a contact that I made from a contact that I made from my brother. This person works for a company that is sort of a competitor* of my old firm and has told me that while the company doesn't have anything open at the moment, we should meet to explore the possibility of creating a position for me and, failing that, use this person's extensive contacts to make some more connections that might have open opportunities.
The day after that, I have an initial interview with another company that is a competitor of the first one and a sort of competitor* of my old firm. That is one that I submitted an application with my old, untailored resume the day after I got laid off and have heard nothing. I did some asking around in my network and while I didn't find anyone who could make an introduction, I did get some intelligence as to who the hiring manager is. I attempted to connect on LinkedIn but got no response, so I finally emailed the person and introduced myself. I didn't hear anything back directly from that email, but I did get an email from a recruiter for that company about a week later to schedule an interview.
There also appear to be some recruiters that are sniffing around my profile on LinkedIn, aside from the scammers that are pretending to be recruiters, which is promising. I had one recruiter reach out to me with what would have been an absolutely perfect fit for me, except it was all 'frame and I can't even spell z/OS...
------
* My old firm is somewhat provincial and is in the neighborhood of about a billion in revenue, maybe a little less, while these other firms are more like 20b in revenue and cover far more territory around the country and around the world. So while they are, technically, competitors, most of the deals that my old firm was involved in wouldn't really be worth the squeeze for either of these other firms.
Long story short, my buddy, a millwright with an engineering degree, recently re-applied for a job with a manufacturer that had put him through the entire process, that was so positive, he'd already started making plans. Then told him at the very last minute that they had decided to go in a different direction. They offered him the job this time and said, the reason we didn't offer you the job last time was that you were too 'engineery'.
More proof that when you're turned down for a job and it doesn't seem to make sense, you shouldn't beat yourself up over it. Chances are that the HR professionals have no idea what they're doing.
Peabody said:Long story short, my buddy, a millwright with an engineering degree, recently re-applied for a job with a manufacturer that had put him through the entire process, that was so positive, he'd already started making plans. Then told him at the very last minute that they had decided to go in a different direction. They offered him the job this time and said, the reason we didn't offer you the job last time was that you were too 'engineery'.
More proof that when you're turned down for a job and it doesn't seem to make sense, you shouldn't beat yourself up over it. Chances are that the HR professionals have no idea what they're doing.
I had a company do something similar. They brought me in for an interview, told me they liked me, but I didn't completely fit the job description. Said they were going to rewrite the job description and have me reapply, which I did. They brought me in for another interview and asked me basically the exact same questions (after rewriting the job description to almost exactly fit my resume/experience) for them to call me the next week to tell me they were going in a different direction.
That one made absolutely no sense to me.
Ran across news that despite the tech bloodbath throughout 2024 that was quite noticeable by the start of the year, 40% of tech workers worldwide quit their jobs that year 
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/24/2_in_5_techies_quit/
The usual RTO/flexibility issues were mentioned and it looks like the work intensity problem is becoming more widespread as well.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
I'm super confused.
If 40% of tech workers worldwide walked, why is it difficult for guys like you to find a job? Do we have nearly twice as many IT workers than we actually need?
Every statistic in that article seems really squirrelly. Their math ain't mathin.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
It says 40% of the people THEY POLLED, not 40% of tech workers. For example, just where I work would be equal to around 7,000 people leaving their job.
Also, have to love a "publication" that uses itself for references. That's laughable man.
In reply to z31maniac :
Actually, it says 2548 polled were in tech. WORDWIDE.
There are 55 million tech workers worldwide. 40% of 2548 is effectively zero.
No data on the sampling method. It appears that they were people who had once worked from home. Only 35% of people worked from home during COVID. I guess that means the 65% people f the rest of us don't count.
They seem pretty proud that they pulled from 35 "markets". I have no idea what a "market" is. I know what a country is. There are 195 of them. I know what a broadcast market is. There are 210 in the US. I think they may have missed a few "markets".
I thought it was also a little unclear as to whom these polled persons were. It almost seemed like the 40% number was of people that had quit for any reason. I typically like what El Reg has to say, but that article left me with more questions than answers.
For my own search, I am actively looking for something that is not remote. Couple of reasons for that: Pragmatically, I have less competition if I'm willing to take a 5-day-in-office job because that limits the geographical competition to people that live in the area or wish to relocate on their own dime to the area and it eliminates the whiners that do live in the area but can't put on their big-boy pants and go to the office. Secondly, as a long time remote worker - I was doing it before Covid made it cool - remote work is fraught with problems. There are certainly tasks and parts of a job that are much better to do from the home office. When I needed to do a bunch of writing for an RFP or had a particularly difficult problem to solve, being able to sit at home, turn off Teams, Outlook, and my phone and just grind was the quickest way through the process and would get me the best results. Being interrupted, having the distractions of the office, and all of that made that sort of work difficult. Flip side, though, with everyone remote I've had email chains that went on for weeks to get to an answer or an agreement that could have been reached in about 30 minutes in a conference room. Being able to wander the halls and strike up conversations with people from different business units and teams is also incredibly effective at building those cross-functional teams that everyone seems to want and that's something that is almost completely lost in a virtual office setting.
In reply to wae :
That sounds like a smart strategy
In reply to wae :
I would like to go back to hybrid setup like we were pre-COVID. 3 days in the office, 2 at home. Most meetings were scheduled for the Tue/Wed/Thur we were in the office (even though we still had plenty of people in other offices/countries). And then Monday/Friday WFH and be able to set yourself away and really work on hammering stuff out. Tuesday was usually the meeting heavy day because different people took different days at home, my boss and I, M/F. Other TW, Thur/Fri, Devs and QA only took Wed to WFH.
z31maniac said:In reply to wae :
I would like to go back to hybrid setup like we were pre-COVID. 3 days in the office, 2 at home. Most meetings were scheduled for the Tue/Wed/Thur we were in the office (even though we still had plenty of people in other offices/countries. And then Monday/Friday WFH and be able to set yourself away and really work on keeping up to date on the GRM forum topics.
Fixed
Datsun240ZGuy said:z31maniac said:In reply to wae :
I would like to go back to hybrid setup like we were pre-COVID. 3 days in the office, 2 at home. Most meetings were scheduled for the Tue/Wed/Thur we were in the office (even though we still had plenty of people in other offices/countries. And then Monday/Friday WFH and be able to set yourself away and really work on keeping up to date on the GRM forum topics.
Fixed
Hahaha! Even in the office, we still had a fair amount of inactive periods while waiting for VM's to build and stuff like that to test new features and such.
z31maniac said:Datsun240ZGuy said:z31maniac said:In reply to wae :
I would like to go back to hybrid setup like we were pre-COVID. 3 days in the office, 2 at home. Most meetings were scheduled for the Tue/Wed/Thur we were in the office (even though we still had plenty of people in other offices/countries. And then Monday/Friday WFH and be able to set yourself away and really work on keeping up to date on the GRM forum topics.
Fixed
Hahaha! Even in the office, we still had a fair amount of inactive periods while waiting for VM's to build and stuff like that to test new features and such.
Yeah, there was always time for a little decompression when we were in the office. I don't use my work computer for anything personal ever, so I'd either bring my personal laptop with me or just use my phone, but nothing wrong with checking the news or hitting the forum now and then. I completely agree with you on that type of hybrid setup, though. There's got to be a day when most folks are in the office and/or the flexibility to change it up as needed for meetings. I could basically make my own schedule and come in whenever I felt it was needed. Mostly I showed up to go to lunch with people and drink coffee. And I got so much done in those interactions.
wae said:z31maniac said:Datsun240ZGuy said:z31maniac said:In reply to wae :
I would like to go back to hybrid setup like we were pre-COVID. 3 days in the office, 2 at home. Most meetings were scheduled for the Tue/Wed/Thur we were in the office (even though we still had plenty of people in other offices/countries. And then Monday/Friday WFH and be able to set yourself away and really work on keeping up to date on the GRM forum topics.
Fixed
Hahaha! Even in the office, we still had a fair amount of inactive periods while waiting for VM's to build and stuff like that to test new features and such.
Yeah, there was always time for a little decompression when we were in the office. I don't use my work computer for anything personal ever, so I'd either bring my personal laptop with me or just use my phone, but nothing wrong with checking the news or hitting the forum now and then. I completely agree with you on that type of hybrid setup, though. There's got to be a day when most folks are in the office and/or the flexibility to change it up as needed for meetings. I could basically make my own schedule and come in whenever I felt it was needed. Mostly I showed up to go to lunch with people and drink coffee. And I got so much done in those interactions.
Yeah, they polled everyone that worked in the office and most said "WFH Permanently" only a few of us wanted to return to hybrid. So then they gave us 2 weeks to get anything we might have left behind and closed the office.
The lunch I had this week was good. As expected, I didn't walk out of that with anything definite, but it's planting seeds for the future, growing my network, getting good feedback and ideas, and she's a pretty cool person with an interesting side project tangentially related to the automotive field. Definitely someone to stay in contact with.
The interview went really well, I thought. I was really inside myself and nervous about it beforehand but once we started talking everything sort of fell into place and it became perfectly natural. In retrospect, I don't fully understand why I was so wrapped around the axle leading up to that call. That is the sort of thing that I've been doing professionally for a very long time. While it's a little bit different that the only thing I'm selling is myself and the stakes are much higher for me personally, the basic format and content is no different that the hundreds of initial meetings I've been on in the past where my first task is to sell the customer on me and make them feel like I am competent, honest, and trustworthy. Fortunately, once the basic introductions were past and we got to the meat of the interview, I switched on and it just became a regular conversation. I'm expecting to hear back in the next week for a second interview with the hiring manager.
One that I'm most excited about, however, is an opportunity that I found on LinkedIn yesterday morning. I've been wanting to shift into something that's going to be seeing growth and there's a particular player in the cybersecurity space that I've been watching for a while. My former manager went to this outfit when he got laid off about 8 years ago from our former employer. The position that came up is specifically for this city, so I'm not competing with everyone in the US - which is really nice. The role is perfect for me - I would be responsible for becoming a technical expert and then going from partner to partner to train and mentor them and help them to sell our product to their customers while being their primary technical escalation point. I would get to learn and teach which is kind of a dream job for me. I had applied to several roles at this company in the last 4 months, including before I got laid off and when I had asked my former manager about those positions, I didn't really get a lot of help from him. This time, however, I tried a different approach that I think has some lessons in it.
Before, I had asked him if he knew anything about the particular role and didn't really give a specific ask. I was just kind of generally asking if he could help me out and he was responding in the affirmative but with nothing specific. This time, I texted him as soon as I saw the opening and told him that I was still banging my head against the process and wasn't about to give up. There's an opening that would be perfect for me, but I need your help. Who is the hiring manager for this position?
This time, I made my ask very specific and gave him an action to take instead of making him come up with an action on his own. Within an hour, he had sniffed out the recruiter that had the position and by the close of business he had given me the name of the hiring manager and he had emailed that hiring manager to find out the best way to go through the process. I put in my application (again) last night and pinged the recruiter and the hiring manager on LinkedIn with a short introductory message. The hiring manager actually got back to me pretty quickly saying that I come highly recommended from my former manager and that he was looking forward to arranging an interview.
The biggest problem that I'm going to have is that while I have a pretty good background in data governance and compliance, my resume is very focused on storage. So when I do wind up interviewing there, I'm going to have to have brushed up on my security knowledge so I can speak the vernacular and highlight my abilities to learn quickly and to teach other people, since those are really the biggest parts of the job.
I know I keep saying this, but it's so very true: It's all about who you know.
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