Tag: career

• Why I left Google (July 21, 2024)

  How I became the focus of a mass ritual against generative AI, and what I did about it.

• I got a job (redux) (June 28, 2021)

  Today I join Google as a technical writer. This completes a process that began more than six months ago. Intense mid-winter interviews preceded many conversations with leaders of various writing teams within the gigantic company, all shepherded by heroically patient recruiters. (Thank you, Tyler!)

• On the clock (May 24, 2021)

  On the trickiness of making time to write for myself amidst a new job and a new, gadget-enforced fitness regimen.

• The lesson of Toombs the Enumerator (February 22, 2021)

  The cautionary tale of a bureaucratic fiasco in 19th century New York helps guide me at my job today.

• I got a job (January 16, 2021)

  Under cover of my birthday, I indulge in some personal news. Later this month I will join Hydrolix, a tiny startup with a very specific database product, as a full-time technical writer. This fulfills the career pivot I began to ponder 18 months ago, and represents both my first new job as a New Yorker and my first salaried job in over 15 years.

• I’m looking for tech-writing work (July 14, 2019)

  Twenty years after accepting my first job as a software engineer, I’d like to try picking up some technical-writing work. If I find that it agrees with me, I might well consider refocusing my career into writing full-time, making software development an activity I’d continue to pursue for my own benefit only.

• A letter about ‘Culture Fit’ (January 12, 2014)

  I wrote and sent the following letter to DuckDuckGo yesterday, via their “tell us about something you love” form. (They also have a “tell us about something you don’t love” form, but I saw no need for a negative stance…)

• How not to hire me (or anyone) (June 25, 2013)

  Here’s a PDF I was sent by a prospective employer last month. I’ve blotted out identifying information and trimmed some excess pages, but otherwise it’s exactly as I received it. (At no point in my communication with this company did I agree to an NDA or similar confidentiality agreement, but a bit of blurring seems only polite.)

• Jmac is for hire (June 11, 2013)

  I have begun to look for full-time work as a senior-level software engineer with strongest skills in web hacking with Perl, and bonus-points expertise in game studies and design. Here is a page all about me in that context, or you can just skip to my resume.