resume

(my name and email address here)

Objective: I’m looking for full-time work with a startup or small organization that needs a true generalist, someone highly intelligent and creative, who must wear many hats and wear them all well.

My skills are in web design, web development, marketing, system administration, and online community. My ideal position would require all of them.

1985 - BSCS Albright College, followed by serious systems programming and software engineering

1989 - Basic business coursework at St. Joseph’s University

1990 - Founded The Cellar, one of the Internet's longest-living communities - see cellar.org

1991 - Offered Philly its first Usenet+Internet email access

1992 - Converted professionally to sysadmin

1995 - Sysadminning on the net

1997 - Early PHP development

1999 - Founded first startup, web development team

2002 - Converted the startup to a personal consultancy

2007 - Enterprise Linux system administrator

2010 - Founded second startup designing beautiful, SEO-friendly microsites for small business - see tokeninternet.com

Affordable - honest - good-natured - humble - will not tolerate bad coffee

Don't forget your mad management/project management skilz.

BTW, you're hired.

Thank you sir. I will not let you down.

Tolerating bad coffee is a key skill in these United States.:p:

The resume looks good. Impressive is a better word, actually.

Thank you sir

If nothing comes of it I will move to a more... ordinary resume format and submit for web design work. Or something.

In the ordinary resume format I am much less impressive and that's what you need to get a job.

the ordinary resume format doesn't care about the Cellar because it wasn't professional work

People do not go on monster.com looking for people like me. Generalists. People want to hire specialists, for one skill, and they want to measure you on how expert you are in it. When they measure me that way I do not measure up.

we should talk. but later, I'm useless to you now.

ps, I like your resume and your work. There's a way to communicate it. There is.

Undertoad;798008 wrote:

People do not go on monster.com looking for people like me. Generalists. People want to hire specialists, for one skill, and they want to measure you on how expert you are in it.

Very very true. This has been my experience as well.

I like your innovative format. Definitely should stand out.

UT...it's great. You'll get the job of your dreams soon. If I could, I'd hire a guy like you in a heartbeat.

I like where you put 'honest' because as you've said no one seems to look for integrity and it would be the first thing I would want in an employee.

small businesses face a transitional challenge when they grow to a point where they need to hire someone(s) to handle the growth of their business. Maybe you need to find someone that has a 1st level business but needs to move to the 2nd. you could be the office manager. you'll need accounting skills for that, and the owner will need to trust you.

seems to me like a difficult gig to get.... have you thought about trying on some of your recent Token clients? Those are the types of businesses I'm thinking of.

Wow, UT. It sounds like you want my job, except the marketing and online community aspects.

I may be vacating it soon. You want to come to Montana and take over?

yes please

If you are serious, I'll give you a shout as things solidify. I can't guarantee you'd get the job but I'm thinking you'd have no problem doing so.

You could also look at this search on the MT job site. The two "web developer" jobs are in shops I used to work in. Good jobs. Good people.

dang i'm chickening out

Undertoad;798340 wrote:

dang i'm chickening out

I'm hoping you did an on-line stutter and meant to type you are CHECKING IT OUT! Check it out.

If even for practice.

Apply for a job you don't want, and reject them. Just for kicks.

I just don't know if I can afford to move to Montana.

Especially since you'd have to dig up the Cellar and move that too.

Interview question (genuine, btw):

"What five words will be on your tombstone?"

I said "Pepperoni, sausage, onions, bacon, cheese".

Undertoad;798424 wrote:

I just don't know if I can afford to move to Montana.

You could raise dental floss on the side.

Undertoad;798424 wrote:

I just don't know if I can afford to move to Montana.

You can find higher salaries here in the private sector. There are actually a fair number of small shops that are looking for folks. I can get you a line on some of that, but I'll have to dig through my email/bookmarks a bit so let me know if you are interested.

I know at least three people who moved from the east coast to Helena at around the same point in their lives and careers that you seem to be at. At least one of home credits it with vastly improved mental and physical health. He moved here and lost 60-80lbs without trying. Low-stress job and easy access to the trail system. Some folks commute by hiking/biking the trail system.

A friend's brother asked for my resume. I'm still not sure if I should send this or something traditional. Or nothing at all, this is a consulting place and I generally don't get along well with those greed heads.

Send this one! When you get a job with them you can start to look around for one that suits you better (It is easier to get a job when you have one already).

Send the resume, take the job, and be yourself until they either get used to you or rid of you.

You can be the new culture of the place. Or barring that, Limey's angle is smart consultant work will put you out there.

Send both. Use this one as a cover letter intro sort of thing.
Its great because it summarizes so much quickly.
If they want more detail, they can read the other one.
I just read that your resume gets about 2 SECONDS of time with the initial reviewer.
If nothing interests them, you're done.

I'm with classicman.

My resume is clocking in around three pages these days. Most of the first pages is a compressed view of the stuff I can do. The rest of it is diving deeper into what I can do with what technologies then what I have done and for whom. It's always tailored to fit whatever position I'm applying for, details removed/added/emphasized.

There is some repetition, but this is not as offensive to regular people as it is to most programmers.

Undertoad;799495 wrote:

... I generally don't get along well with those greed heads.

You can decide this later, when they've offered you the job and you've actually met the people!

Undertoad;799495 wrote:

A friend's brother asked for my resume. I'm still not sure if I should send this or something traditional. Or nothing at all, this is a consulting place and I generally don't get along well with those greed heads.

part of being employed and STAYING employed is getting along with people you dislike. just sayin'

It's a two-way street: I've been laid off and/or fired as much as I've gotten disgusted and quit. My average time with any employer has been about two years. And in as much as I see my life as a series of failures, that's a treadmill I shouldn't return to. I need to find a place that fits, or jump off the Walt Whitman.

Apply to the post office. None of those people like other people as far as I can tell......

Undertoad;799569 wrote:

It's a two-way street: I've been laid off and/or fired as much as I've gotten disgusted and quit. My average time with any employer has been about two years. And in as much as I see my life as a series of failures, that's a treadmill I shouldn't return to. I need to find a place that fits, or jump off the Walt Whitman.

you're never going to find a place that 'fits.' Sorry if I'm being negative here, truly. but your ideal job with ideal coworkers? does anyone have that apart from business owners? just get a job that you're good at, that you don't hate, that pays you well enough to live... and suck it up. and don't joke about jumping off bridges. if it gets that bad, go walkabout.

Yeah, no. You have no idea.

It's OK, what I'll wind up doing is using a quarter of my abilities, to make half the pay I could, in a job where I refuse to play politics. And that's OK.

Undertoad;799599 wrote:

Yeah, no. You have no idea.

oh, I don't know about that. into every life a little rain must fall. I've gotten myself painted into quite a financial corner. I may have a good paying job, but you'd be amazed at how little I keep, and how much I owe. It's a truly untenable situation, and some days I think about high places. But I keep going. I get up and drive 1hr40min in, work 13 hours and drive 1hr10min home, sleep repeat. because I have to.

don't take a shit job. but take a job. don't worry about finding one that fits. fit yourself. I'm just saying it this way because from my perspective, you've been unemployed for far too long considering the intellect you posses.

you'll be able to justify it, I'm sure. And believe it or not, I'm not judging you. you're alive and breathing. you're man enough to attract and keep a mate. you've got a lot going for you. if you really want a job, GO GET ONE.

Or, shave, get a haircut and a suit, and go hand your resume to people in person. smile, and talk nice, and tell them that you want to work for them. And let the rejections roll off. You'll get more rejection than acceptance, count on it.

this is hard for me. i'm being a dick, i know. I'm sorry for it.

... but i see you dreaming and wishing. If you want a J O B, you need to act. I could just blow some more sunshine up your ass, but that seems to be covered already. WHAT YOU'VE BEEN DOING IS NOT WORKING. change it.

If I didn't really like you, I don't think I'd bother posting my opinion at all. But I DO.

I'm willing to help, if you think I can. for serious.

Thank you sir but I am highly aware of the bullshit.

It doesn't work like that in IT. In IT, you are judged according to what technologies you are aware of, what you did in your last job, and whether you can survive an on-the-spot quiz about the platforms you are expected to work in.

In IT, shaving and wearing a suit is bad, it means you are not an engineer and cannot work with your fellow neckbeards.

I went the traditional route after being laid off. But after two years of it, what I learned was that it wasn't going to happen for me that way. It was a subtle combination of things:

=> System administration, my area of expertise, is out of style. Due to simplification over the years, larger businesses can make do with fewer administrators, and smaller businesses can manage it themselves. And then there's cloud computing, which reduces the administration load by half.

=> My ability to survive the on-the-spot quiz diminished. I found myself unable to answer even questions that were routine when I was doing the job. Once some of this stuff is not on the tip of your tongue, everything changes. I was never particularly good at the quiz, because I always found it strangely difficult to go from interview mode to engineer mode at the drop of a hat. I found myself consistently embarrassing myself.

=> Being an older techie. Not just my own excuse, the NYTimes documented it recently: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On

So... what to do...

I decided I had to create my own job, and that's what TOKEN was for the last year. It was not a successful business venture because we didn't have a sales model that actually got enough sales. But along the way, I did 65 different designs and taught myself good web design. Now I have a design portfolio:

http://tokeninternet.com/portf.php

And after tonight it'll also have a local beverages web site instead of my mama's site, which is actually too old to be up there.

THUS if I can't get a job involving my skills in web design, web development, marketing, system administration, and online community -- because people don't often hire GENERALISTS in IT --

I will then just go for the one sector of those five I actually qualify for, on the basis of the actual work I've done for the last year: web design.

The problem with that is, pure web design pays less than half what system administration paid.

And I'm damn certain there are web houses around that would die for someone who does all of the above and would pay much more for it. They won't advertise for it because they won't find anyone. It's highly unusual. And should be valuable. I don't know.

But web design, that'll my jobby job where jobbies grow on jobbies, if it comes to it, and that would actually be OK, if it comes to it.

Can't keep the house anyway, so fuck it.

My cousin and her husband started up a web design business from scratch because he couldn't find work in his chosen field that he could do from home.

He makes good money out of it although it was slow to start up, and he gets to work from home. Hardly ever has to deal with his customers face to face and works whatever hours suit him on the day.

If you're good at it, there's a market for it. You don't even have to be in the same country as the business is.

Think big. Go global.

Alternatively, think about a site you can start that'll be popular enough to support advertising or monthly subscriptions and build that instead.

I know a bloke who started the website www.stayz.com and he's making a very nice living out of it now and it's only been a few years.

You have skills most of us don't dream of. Use them.

My buddy got a job. They had a 15+ year man train him, which took almost a year. As soon as my buddy was trained, they got rid of the 15+ man. My buddy went to the boss, telling him he felt bad about taking the guy's place.

Boss, "I fire the frown".

I am the guy at work who always grins. They say UT is the happy guy. I used to be Bashful but I turned into Happy.

It doesn't work. The last guy who fired me said "You're a really nice guy but uh..."

A guy who fired me 15 years ago said last month "I'm really proud to have known you."

Another picture of this puzzle is that managers in IT are generally terrible, having come up as antisocial tech people and reached their level of incompetence. The best manager I ever had came up through supermarket management. Dealing with a thousand part-timers gave him great insight into what makes people tick. Best job I ever had.

And I left it for a $20,000 raise... at a consulting company that brutalized me. THAT job I left after six months for a $30,000 pay cut. The company was gone a year later. Live and learn.

If you're good at it, there's a market for it. You don't even have to be in the same country as the business is.

Think big. Go global.

In my experience, finding the market and figuring out how to sell to it is the hard part.

That was Token. The idea was, hey, most small retailers actually need a web site at this time - I could build nice ones and sell them very cheaply - we could even make it "no risk" and they could see their site before paying a dime - the competition charges twice as much, for a much shittier website. It should be the easiest thing to sell, ever, right?

What exactly went wrong with Token, anyway? Could you adjust the sales model and make that business grow? Perhaps you could offer some kind of affiliate program for people who live in other states? I was thinking about your business just the other day while driving into my small town. I know there are businesses in my town that don't have websites and I believe I could get you some of those clients if you were interested. Let me know what you think.

It continues on as a sort of part time trickle

The theory was that, at our price, we could get a salesperson about $100-$125 out of the $399 "basic site", and that a motivated full-time salesperson could sell as many as one site per day and gross $50k/year.

In practice, when we tried it, it was never more than one per week. My biz partner seemed to suggest that he was not a good enough salesperson, but he could never convince anyone else to do it, except for one guy who is a part-timer and just gets things here and there for a few bucks.

Eventually the idea was to branch out, and we sorta had a model in mind for salespeople and sales managers.

What you suggest is always possible and I would be happy to accept sales from you and give you a fair cut of it. To ramp up to the point where it makes a fair living for me, it probably doesn't, but if we can both make some side money that is a fine thing.

~

I also wonder if the price is far too low to actually attract business.

I posted this earlier. Nationally, I think the biggest company selling websites to small business is Yellow Book. They have a million customers.

Here is the Token Internet website for Star Plumbing which cost them $399 first year, $99 each addl year

And Here is the Yellow Book site which cost them $840/year

To be fair, people prefer national brands for this kind of stuff. And they did get a link in yellowbook.com as part of the deal.

We are doing commercial vans now, so i'm meeting a few middling contractors that are doing well enough to purchase work vans.

If you have business cards and/or brochures, I could shill for you. If not....I just did a deal for these guys. It looks like their website could use a bit of a face lift. Maybe you could work out a deal in exchange for some printed materials?

I also wonder if the price is far too low to actually attract business.

and/or make enough money. What the YP does sux. I know web designers that charge 10x
what you do for multiple page sites, maintenance,SOP and all that. They never were below $2000 - NEVER.

Those may be directed toward a different demographic, but still, I think you'd be surprised who will pay (x) for a site.
I used to rep out on the side for one guy for a % of the total sale.
Since I've lost my job and the contacts I had, its a lot harder now for me.

OTOH, there are a lot of companies who've entered this market including ValPak, Money Mailer, Clipper, H&D
and a few others who have lost a lot of print revenue to the internet-ish types.

Oh I did a top-notch folded 8.5x11 print piece.

send me a pack of them if you've any left

Two things. A joke and a serious thing.

You could always go to California and become a Brogrammer.

But really, it sounds like you need some help marketing yourself and your business. Most of us computer folk do. You're probably not particularly interested in Ruby, but the Ruby Freelancers podcast has a lot of good resources. Books and tips and such.

(BTW, I believe that specialization is the key to making more money and more security. Been that way since at least the dawn of civilization.)

One thing that stands out to me is that you charged so little in your small business website gig. For that little money it needs to be automated/self-serve. If your competition charged twice what you did, you could probably charge 3-5x and sell people on the quality.

Yeah, if the business model isn't working, change it. There's lots of good ideas here.

I have more to post, but think of it this way...if you get 5 or 6 people in their local communities selling at least 1 or 2 of these a week, you would meet your goal and sustain yourself pretty well, considering you are working for yourself. Something to think about.

I'll post more later.

Undertoad wrote:

Oh I did a top-notch folded 8.5x11 print piece.

jimhelm wrote:

send me a pack of them if you've any left

Can I have some too, if there are any? If not, maybe just send me a PDF and I can print a few?

Very large PDFs are now available at

http://tokeninternet.com/cover.pdf

http://tokeninternet.com/inside.pdf

If you have a duplex color laser printer you can print these! If you have a color laser printer that does not have duplex, you will have to turn the page over and re-insert it into the paper tray to print the other side.

If you have an color ink jet printer, throw it away and get a color laser.

Undertoad;800103 wrote:

Very large PDFs are now available at

http://tokeninternet.com/cover.pdf

http://tokeninternet.com/inside.pdf

If you have a duplex color laser printer you can print these! If you have a color laser printer that does not have duplex, you will have to turn the page over and re-insert it into the paper tray to print the other side.

If you have an color ink jet printer, throw it away and get a color laser.

How about a black and white laser printer?

A B&W laser is better than inkjet anything, but not for the brochure which is designed for color.

Re: your prices.

There's an old story about a hardware store.

They had a box of Russian made hammers:

Russian Hammers $5 Cheap!!

No one bought them.

So they changed the price:

Soviet Industrial Hammers $20

They sold the lot.


Probably never happened, but you get the idea.

Sell on price during the bad times. Sell on features during the good times. That was my rule.

ZenGum;800261 wrote:

Re: your prices.

There's an old story about a hardware store.

They had a box of Russian made hammers:



No one bought them.

So they changed the price:



They sold the lot.


Probably never happened, but you get the idea.

When we were young, Shelby worked at a fru fru salon. they had a case of hairbrushes and other accessories. One day, she doubled the prices of all of the brushes... from $25 to $49.99 or something...

they sold very quickly. part of perception of value comes from the retail price. especially if the customer is not an expert in what they are buying.

Undertoad;800103 wrote:

Very large PDFs are now available at

http://tokeninternet.com/cover.pdf

http://tokeninternet.com/inside.pdf

If you have a duplex color laser printer you can print these! If you have a color laser printer that does not have duplex, you will have to turn the page over and re-insert it into the paper tray to print the other side.

If you have an color ink jet printer, throw it away and get a color laser.

printed a dozen duplex, flip on long edge, in black and white on my laser printer. looks well enough. I'll give them to business owners. I'm gonna talk that guy that I built the deck for into going for a site. He has half of 3 gold buying stores, and his partner is part of 8 total.

They spend a retarded amount on print ads. like over $10k per month or something. this should be an easy pitch.

Thanks!

Where are his stores? I tell you, just Google "cash for gold" and show him the local listings which appear after the top 3 search results. The key is to get into those listings or, if he's there, to show his website instead of a generic Maps listing.

Also, in Google Maps, zero in on his general vicinity and search for "cash for gold" and see if he gets a thumbtack. If he doesn't, he desperately needs a website. If he does, a website will market searchers, way better than a generic Maps listing.

I've got it ...

Teh Cellar Bizness ...

classic can sell, UT can do the actual work, and I can make both of you feel better about yourselves and keep you from killing unruly clients. We'd all be putting our best skills to use.

Classic has already politely declined the position.

(And rightly so if the model doesn't work as well as we thought)

wolf;800354 wrote:

I've got it ...

Teh Cellar Bizness ...

classic can sell, UT can do the actual work, and I can make both of you feel better about yourselves and keep you from killing unruly clients. We'd all be putting our best skills to use.

Practice this phrase "Bialystock and Bloom" :D

His main store is at Rhawn and Frankford in Holmesburg. He has one in Bensalem, and another near Red Lion rd where sycamore used to live. i can't remember the name of that town.

His store is actually named "Cash for Gold" lol. he's very creative.

That's awesome. Everybody uses "cash for gold" now. But actually using the name "Cash for Gold" for the business will give him a unique SEO advantage.

and another near Red Lion rd where sycamore used to live. i can't remember the name of that town.

Warminster? There's a Cash for Gold in Warminster, but I only knew Syc's place in NE Philly.

Well I have a ton of advice for him, as well as what he should be doing with Google, not just with the website possibility. As long as he's willing to deal with a fat guy in jeans and a collared shirt. If he wants a sales guy who can dress up, I'll have to send my business partner.

Undertoad;800355 wrote:

Classic has already politely declined the position.

(And rightly so if the model doesn't work as well as we thought)

I actually pitched the idea to several contractors whom I had done business with in the past.

I need to pitch it to the right people. Therein lies the problem for me.
My contacts from my previous position were not the right ones.

FTR - I saved the PDF's and will offer in the future.

Undertoad;800377 wrote:

That's awesome. Everybody uses "cash for gold" now. But actually using the name "Cash for Gold" for the business will give him a unique SEO advantage.



Warminster? There's a Cash for Gold in Warminster, but I only knew Syc's place in NE Philly.

Well I have a ton of advice for him, as well as what he should be doing with Google, not just with the website possibility. As long as he's willing to deal with a fat guy in jeans and a collared shirt. If he wants a sales guy who can dress up, I'll have to send my business partner.

he's a fat guy in jeans and a collared shirt too. I spoke to him, and he said his partner had some reason that he DIDN'T want a website. I'll have to keep pestering him a while, i think. stay tuned.

Undertoad;800377 wrote:

That's awesome. Everybody uses "cash for gold" now. But actually using the name "Cash for Gold" for the business will give him a unique SEO advantage.

jimhelm;800382 wrote:

he's a fat guy in jeans and a collared shirt too. I spoke to him, and he said his partner had some reason that he DIDN'T want a website.

If he doesn't own the trademark, he may not want to attract web searches from those who do.

jimhelm;800345 wrote:

When we were young, Shelby worked at a fru fru salon. they had a case of hairbrushes and other accessories. One day, she doubled the prices of all of the brushes... from $25 to $49.99 or something...

they sold very quickly. part of perception of value comes from the retail price. especially if the customer is not an expert in what they are buying.

I don't know if this is urban legend or not, but there's the story about a guy putting, say, an old lawnmower out on his curb, with a sign that it was free. No one took it. He put a price on it and it was stolen right away.

I've been calling a lot of industrial supply places this week, getting quotes on steel angle, sheet metal, and refractory materials. Not your usual customer service field. I'm going to pick up the first round of the orders in a little bit, so we'll see how it all plays out. But, thus far, phone interactions only, there is an inverse correlation between the quality of their website and the quality of their phone service and prices.

This guy seems like the most straightforward place to order high-temp refractory in Metro Detroit: http://www.k-industrial.com/

This guy is either insane, or just extremely cheap for sheet metal fab (He quoted me $35 on something a steel shop in the 'burbs said would be $202, 5 working days -- I had priced the material alone to build it myself at $75): http://www.ldssheetmetal.com/

Probably the two worst websites I've seen in a while.

UT, it's not in your pamphlet as I remember it: what's your policy on $ and # of updates / year, etc, if it were a business wanting to have a regularly-added-to portfolio of work?

For most of our one-page customers we just say updates are free, unless you go crazy about it.

If they have a specific need, I can build a password-protected administration page where they can, say, update their monthly message or whatnot. I'd probably say $30/hour if they had some sort of custom problem that requires more design work every month.