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Unemployment is a chance to recharge

I don’t want to minimize the anxiety of being unemployed because it IS extremely stressful, but it’s worth remembering that it also provides some rare short-term life opportunities to recharge. You can take care of yourself by slowing down and spending time doing things you enjoy, to do

Interview practice doesn’t work for me

I have no idea why, but I can practice and prep for hours on end, but when it comes to the actual interview, some sort of basic instinct takes over and I go on autopilot. I can rehearse any number of things I should say, but in the moment I

You don't have to know everything

There are a number of posts and videos that claim you shouldn’t ever say “I’ve never done that” in an interview. And I get the sentiment – you want to project confidence and demonstrate a positive attitude. But the problem with these posts is that they declare these as

When hiring managers take a chance

Two of the biggest career-altering jobs I ever landed were because the hiring manager took a chance on me. I knew I could do those jobs well and had a lot to offer, but from the hiring side there was absolutely some risk. My work experience has always been weird

This month in Eugene (March + April 2025 edition)

I’ve given up on a weekly edition. Maybe we can do bi-monthly? 😅 Beauty rest. The look he gives when he has do not disturb on. Eugene joined us on Spring Break which included his first visit to both a hotel and an ocean beach. He seems to have grown

The "you don't need to be technical" myth

When someone says “you won’t need to be technical in 10 years because AI will do it all”, it’s very likely that… 1. That person doesn’t have deep technical skills and therefore has no real understanding of what they’re saying. 2. They’re trying to make

Knowing your worth as a job candidate

I think it's probably common for job seekers to think that companies hold all the cards when hiring, but I'd argue it's way more symbiotic than it might seem. It's actually quite hard for companies to find good candidates for their roles,

Terrible resume advice on LinkedIn

I recently saw a recruiter post this on LinkedIn: Save it as a Word doc (.doc or .docx) Not a PDF. Not a Pages file. Recruiters often need to make small tweaks before sending it on to hiring managers. And PDFs are a nightmare to edit. This is terrible advice.

About that “technical” interview

IIf, in an engineering manager interview, you ask me to do anything with a binary tree I’ll probably fail it on the spot. I didn’t graduate with a CS degree and I’ve never been all that interested in the low-level mechanics of programming or languages. But I

Beware the fake remote job listing

Job seekers, beware the fake remote job listings. Any job that qualifies “remote” with “if you are within x miles of an office, you must be in the office y days a week” isn’t actually remote. I’ve seen dozens of these posts recently and there’s an obvious

Four day work weeks please

I’m a big, big believer in the four day work week. I’ve been lucky enough to have brief periods with it (a few months at a time), and it’s honestly life changing. Traditional thinking is that because employees have fewer hours to work that they’ll get

This week in Eugene (extremely behind in February edition)

OK, so the weekly post about Eugene's antics fell apart quickly (totally didn't see that coming). I haven't posted since the week of 1/20/25, so this is a "catch up for February" edition. 😬 Perhaps hard to believe, but February was

This week in Eugene (1/20/2025 edition)

January has officially arrived in Chicago, which means it's insanely cold and everyone is grumpy. Luckily for us this changes nothing about Eugene's vibe and he's helping us get through it by staying sleepy and even keel. The aforementioned cold does require us to

This week in Eugene (1/11/2025 edition)

It was a low key week – well, more than normal at least – since everyone was getting back into their normal work/school routines and there wasn’t as much time to just stare and admire Eugene all day. The pace should pick up once we get back into a normal