Journal Zarf's Journal: International Contracting... my experience 21
I was laid off three times in 2001 with a total of six months unemployed. None of the companies I worked for were "dot-coms" and were in unrelated industries. I've always been looking at stability in a job. I looked for older companies with proven track records... but were still small enough a single employee could make a difference.
I selected very carefully. In fact in fifty years the first company had never laid off a single employee... in 2001 they laid off half their employees. So, in job selection I have never been purely greedy.
That caution did me no good what-so-ever. Even if I was the greatest programmer in the history of the human race I would still have been laid off... the first company completely folded its software division and outsourced the whole operation.
Before September 11th I had about three interviews a week and felt confident that I would have a job in a few weeks or months. Unfortunately September 11th did happen and it did "spook" most employers in my area. I never had another interview after that. By November of that year I had applied for over three-hundred jobs and done specific research on over sixty companies and walked in on a few dozen departments to try and get face to face.
I knew the job-market was getting bad when I started to get angry responses from companies on first contact. They were getting swamped and being agressive and selling yourself hard didn't work anymore.
My severence package ran out and I went on unemployment. I began selling anything I could sell to get more cash. The wife was getting tired of me hanging around the house pounding the keys all day trying to find work by digging through the internet. I got some piece work coding website components and even sold a custom content management system for a few thousand bucks. It floated us for another month but with a kid in school and a life-style set up for an income much higher we didn't have long.
We sold off our furniture and most of our possessions. Made plans to live with the in-laws in rural Tennessee in a tiny town with no tech prospects beyond perhaps fixing VCRs. Once we moved there I knew my career aspirations would be dead. I had already had to lie to a local grocery store to get a job as a cashier to try and get some extra cash and to stay sane. I braced for my future employment at Walmart in a hick community.
So one day I got a scratchy call from Germany...
I had never applied for a job out of the US before. I never applied for this job... these guys called out of the blue. They grilled me for an hour and a half on my technical knowledge of Unix, networking, network programming, and past work experiences. It was a terrible interview. I'm not J2EE and infact I'm cursed with six-years Perl programming experience, two years working with C++ and only a two week Learning Tree course in Java. In sort at the age of 27 I was a living dinosaur and my career days were numbered.
So when the hung up I expected that I would never hear of the job again. We packed up the house and moved to the rural hills of Tennessee where the majority of the population is employed doing something with Jon Deer (sp?) tractors. I was looking to work at the local shopping mall because I'm not much as a farm hand ... when I got another scratchy phone call from Germany.
They asked how much I wanted for a salary. Again, this is unusual... I normally save salary negotiation for the final step you have to know if these are people you can work with before you talk money. I had moved jobs from Alaska to North Carolina previously and Cost of Living in an area is a huge concern. You can't take an $80k job in San Jose and expect it to be like an $80k job in Montana. There's a lot of thought that goes into that aspect... so I took it as my turn to grill the interviewer.
I got rental rates for apartments, a few off hand quotes for groceries, and a thought struck me... my kid is in school... this job isn't in the US... what about school? What will they do for his school? What about taxes?
I had no computer of my own at this time and I researched the area mentioned in the interview, I used my in-laws Pentium 120MHz on their dial-up line to verify what I was told... I could barely stand the 28.8 modem and nearly destroyed their computer in my frustration. I soon found there was nearly no way for me to verify what my potential employer was saying.
I don't want to mention the employer or the location by name as that could eventually lead to future complications legally speaking but this company is one of the top three US DoD contractors. The sheer size of the company meant to me that they were likely to want to avoid bad publicity and thus want to treat their employees at least well enough to avoid frequent law-suits. Think of it this way... if you worked in AeroSpace or know AeroSpace tech... these guys were as well known as Microsoft or IBM are in IT.
So I got a call back. My interviewer assured me that the contract would give me an education allowance of upto $1500 a month. I demanded this in a separate contract before accepting. I asked about taxes and tax issues and was assured that all the employees at the facility I was going to be assigned to were all Tax Exempt because of the special nature of the Contract and being essentially "forward deployed" ... fascinating ... I was allowed to "talk" with some other employees at the facility via e-mail.
After three rounds of paperwork I had negotiated a contract that looked to me to ensure our health insurance, tax status, my kid's education, and the company's obligation to pay for my move out and my move back. I asked about German speaking classes and we were promised that all employees recieved host-nation and language classes as part of the company's benefits.
The glowing reputation of the company for its treatment of employees and the seemingly comprehensive contract set us at ease. The fact that I was working a grocery store made the job all the more appealing. I did something I've never done before. I accepted a job without visiting the facilities and meeting my coworkers.
In short, I was desperate to get a job and I convinced myself that this was better than working bagging groceries. I was certain that if I didn't take this chance I would never work in computers again. So... I didn't look as close as I should have. Besides, this was one of the largest most well know government contractors in the world. These guys were one of three companies that defined their industry... and they were offering a job that didn't involve an apron.
Would you take the job? Do you think I'm dumb for have taken it? Naturally, its easy to spot where I went wrong... after the fact... but I had never worked outside the US before and I had no idea all the protections that you can take for granted just by working in the US.
When my wife, small child, and I arrived in Munich we were met by a German man who carried a sign with the company logo on it. He drove us into the country side for three hours and dropped us at a Gasthous or motel. No one spoke english. I had been told that we would have someone who spoke english to help us. I didn't even know how to use the telephone... it turns out that German telephones are slightly different than American ones. I speak no German what-so-ever. It was frightening... I didn't even know if we were still in Germany or if we were in the right place. We were all jet-lagged so badly that we passed out in the car on the way out and had lost track of where we were.
I can't sleep on airplanes. They have too much noise and don't move right... not like a ship. I can sleep on a ship I can't sleep on a plane. So I was badly disoriented to begin with. I supressed a minor panic attack in myself and my wife at the same time. Culture shock is a real and palpable thing... especially if you were raised in a tiny community in old Russian Alaska and have had to move to an alien culture three times in the last year.
We sat in Bavaria on our own for sometime ... somehow we got the elderly lady at the desk to call a number for us... somehow everytime I picked up the phone and tried to dial I couldn't get all the numbers in the right order... thirteen numbers for a local call? At least my employer now knew where I was and we could wait for him.
It was a friday and we had to take care of business that day he said. If we didn't get the id cards by 3pm we couldn't have them until Monday and he was going on vacation Monday. So it was today or nothing. I hadn't slept in 24 hours so I figured I could coffee up and do it...
That was the first time I thought about exchange rates. I needed to buy a cup of coffee. Crap. I never negotiated exchange rates. I will jump out of sequence here to say that my employer said that if the exchange rates got bad enough he would have the DoD kick-in a Cost Of Living Allowance for us. This has yet to materialize and has cost much grief by nearly all the employees at this post.
I will get back on sequence in my next post and cover the pain of setting up shop in a country where you don't speak the language... in the end I hope you (the readers) will help me to distill a list of "lessons learned" for people seeking simmilar employment.
I selected very carefully. In fact in fifty years the first company had never laid off a single employee... in 2001 they laid off half their employees. So, in job selection I have never been purely greedy.
That caution did me no good what-so-ever. Even if I was the greatest programmer in the history of the human race I would still have been laid off... the first company completely folded its software division and outsourced the whole operation.
Before September 11th I had about three interviews a week and felt confident that I would have a job in a few weeks or months. Unfortunately September 11th did happen and it did "spook" most employers in my area. I never had another interview after that. By November of that year I had applied for over three-hundred jobs and done specific research on over sixty companies and walked in on a few dozen departments to try and get face to face.
I knew the job-market was getting bad when I started to get angry responses from companies on first contact. They were getting swamped and being agressive and selling yourself hard didn't work anymore.
My severence package ran out and I went on unemployment. I began selling anything I could sell to get more cash. The wife was getting tired of me hanging around the house pounding the keys all day trying to find work by digging through the internet. I got some piece work coding website components and even sold a custom content management system for a few thousand bucks. It floated us for another month but with a kid in school and a life-style set up for an income much higher we didn't have long.
We sold off our furniture and most of our possessions. Made plans to live with the in-laws in rural Tennessee in a tiny town with no tech prospects beyond perhaps fixing VCRs. Once we moved there I knew my career aspirations would be dead. I had already had to lie to a local grocery store to get a job as a cashier to try and get some extra cash and to stay sane. I braced for my future employment at Walmart in a hick community.
So one day I got a scratchy call from Germany...
I had never applied for a job out of the US before. I never applied for this job... these guys called out of the blue. They grilled me for an hour and a half on my technical knowledge of Unix, networking, network programming, and past work experiences. It was a terrible interview. I'm not J2EE and infact I'm cursed with six-years Perl programming experience, two years working with C++ and only a two week Learning Tree course in Java. In sort at the age of 27 I was a living dinosaur and my career days were numbered.
So when the hung up I expected that I would never hear of the job again. We packed up the house and moved to the rural hills of Tennessee where the majority of the population is employed doing something with Jon Deer (sp?) tractors. I was looking to work at the local shopping mall because I'm not much as a farm hand
They asked how much I wanted for a salary. Again, this is unusual... I normally save salary negotiation for the final step you have to know if these are people you can work with before you talk money. I had moved jobs from Alaska to North Carolina previously and Cost of Living in an area is a huge concern. You can't take an $80k job in San Jose and expect it to be like an $80k job in Montana. There's a lot of thought that goes into that aspect... so I took it as my turn to grill the interviewer.
I got rental rates for apartments, a few off hand quotes for groceries, and a thought struck me... my kid is in school... this job isn't in the US... what about school? What will they do for his school? What about taxes?
I had no computer of my own at this time and I researched the area mentioned in the interview, I used my in-laws Pentium 120MHz on their dial-up line to verify what I was told... I could barely stand the 28.8 modem and nearly destroyed their computer in my frustration. I soon found there was nearly no way for me to verify what my potential employer was saying.
I don't want to mention the employer or the location by name as that could eventually lead to future complications legally speaking but this company is one of the top three US DoD contractors. The sheer size of the company meant to me that they were likely to want to avoid bad publicity and thus want to treat their employees at least well enough to avoid frequent law-suits. Think of it this way... if you worked in AeroSpace or know AeroSpace tech... these guys were as well known as Microsoft or IBM are in IT.
So I got a call back. My interviewer assured me that the contract would give me an education allowance of upto $1500 a month. I demanded this in a separate contract before accepting. I asked about taxes and tax issues and was assured that all the employees at the facility I was going to be assigned to were all Tax Exempt because of the special nature of the Contract and being essentially "forward deployed"
After three rounds of paperwork I had negotiated a contract that looked to me to ensure our health insurance, tax status, my kid's education, and the company's obligation to pay for my move out and my move back. I asked about German speaking classes and we were promised that all employees recieved host-nation and language classes as part of the company's benefits.
The glowing reputation of the company for its treatment of employees and the seemingly comprehensive contract set us at ease. The fact that I was working a grocery store made the job all the more appealing. I did something I've never done before. I accepted a job without visiting the facilities and meeting my coworkers.
In short, I was desperate to get a job and I convinced myself that this was better than working bagging groceries. I was certain that if I didn't take this chance I would never work in computers again. So... I didn't look as close as I should have. Besides, this was one of the largest most well know government contractors in the world. These guys were one of three companies that defined their industry... and they were offering a job that didn't involve an apron.
Would you take the job? Do you think I'm dumb for have taken it? Naturally, its easy to spot where I went wrong... after the fact... but I had never worked outside the US before and I had no idea all the protections that you can take for granted just by working in the US.
When my wife, small child, and I arrived in Munich we were met by a German man who carried a sign with the company logo on it. He drove us into the country side for three hours and dropped us at a Gasthous or motel. No one spoke english. I had been told that we would have someone who spoke english to help us. I didn't even know how to use the telephone... it turns out that German telephones are slightly different than American ones. I speak no German what-so-ever. It was frightening... I didn't even know if we were still in Germany or if we were in the right place. We were all jet-lagged so badly that we passed out in the car on the way out and had lost track of where we were.
I can't sleep on airplanes. They have too much noise and don't move right... not like a ship. I can sleep on a ship I can't sleep on a plane. So I was badly disoriented to begin with. I supressed a minor panic attack in myself and my wife at the same time. Culture shock is a real and palpable thing... especially if you were raised in a tiny community in old Russian Alaska and have had to move to an alien culture three times in the last year.
We sat in Bavaria on our own for sometime
It was a friday and we had to take care of business that day he said. If we didn't get the id cards by 3pm we couldn't have them until Monday and he was going on vacation Monday. So it was today or nothing. I hadn't slept in 24 hours so I figured I could coffee up and do it...
That was the first time I thought about exchange rates. I needed to buy a cup of coffee. Crap. I never negotiated exchange rates. I will jump out of sequence here to say that my employer said that if the exchange rates got bad enough he would have the DoD kick-in a Cost Of Living Allowance for us. This has yet to materialize and has cost much grief by nearly all the employees at this post.
I will get back on sequence in my next post and cover the pain of setting up shop in a country where you don't speak the language... in the end I hope you (the readers) will help me to distill a list of "lessons learned" for people seeking simmilar employment.
How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:2)
For that mattter, is Germany really so much cheaper that it makes sense to ship Americans over there instead of having them work over here? (Especially when "over here" can mean Montana or Tennesee.)
Re:How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:2)
I work on a military base. The base is an American base. The base has things that only Americans can work on. The base hires Americans to work on the things that only Americans work on. The company is an American company.
For that mattter, is Germany really so much cheaper that it makes sense to ship Americans over there instead of having them work over here? (Especially when "over here" can mean Montana or Tennesee.)
As
Re:How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:2)
The hardest part is the people in charge think that underlings are unqualified to think some things, when they have the most important experience in some matters.
Re:How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:2)
I think it's more that technology has changed so much and the superiors haven't caught up. To be fair, it isn't possible to move this job stateside without huge expenditure in re-writes and re-design of systems that already work.
Re:How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:2)
Re:How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:2)
The dollar really is weak these days. I feel very much like one of the 'off shore' developers when you consider the dollar to the British pound or (euro for that matter). It may seem like they are blowing a tre
Re:How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:2)
Okay, you've got to explain that.
Re:How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:2)
I do the Minneapoli
Re:How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:2)
Re:How's the DoD outsourcing to the FRG? And why? (Score:1)
Germany's an expensive place to be... (Score:2)
Heh -- maybe it's cheaper than southern California, but compared to just about anywhere else in America, I'd find it hard to believe that Germany is cheaper in terms of cost of living (and labor costs are some of the highest in the world -- ergo Germany's serious unemployment problems, because it's so expensive to hire people). Taxes, property costs, gas prices, etc. a
Again... (Score:1)
As for the telephones: what is exactly different? I have been in the US and I used phones over there
Re:Again... (Score:2)
Re:Again... (Score:1)
Entirely too Much about Dial-Tone (Score:1)
Dial-Tone in Europe is IIRC, generally single-tone. Germany, for example, signals dial-tone with a 425hz single continious tone. Italy goes completely whacko by having a periodic dial-tone (.6 on, 1 off,
France uses 440hz single-tone, the UK uses 350hz single-tone. The Netherlands uses a 150/450hz tone-pair continous.
There is a subtle difference bet
Re:Entirely too Much about Dial-Tone (Score:1)
Yeah, just like me. Have used phones in a lot of places, so I don't notice anymore. It is also very hard to stress me out :-)
DTMF is indeed standard as far as I know. But hey, I'm not a telco specialist...
Re:Entirely too Much about Dial-Tone (Score:2)
Re:Entirely too Much about Dial-Tone (Score:1)
I have this unfair advantage of knowing 5 languages.... I can get along about anywhere.
Re:Entirely too Much about Dial-Tone (Score:2)
Re:Entirely too Much about Dial-Tone (Score:1)
I can tell you that even if you know the language, getting along in a new country is hard. You don't know well enough about the laws, about the administrative chores you have to do (like car registration, insurances, drive
What part of TN? (Score:2)