Title: On Not Being a Software Engineer

I write this to share my experiences good and bad about being unemployed in the software engineering arena. It's not meant to be advice, I certainly can't claim that my strategies have been overly successful. But it might give some comfort to those in similar positions, or arm you with some information should the worst happen.

Thankfully, I didn't find out by text message. Well, as I got my mobile phone for job hunting, it wouldn't have been possible. My boss in the open plan office got an internal phone call (one ring, not two), very curt, as if pre-arranged. He then came over to my desk, a word in the oberfuehrer's office. Pound, pound went my heart. I know what this is. Keep calm, don't hit anyone. Take it well and make them feel sorry for you.

They gave me the minimum possible redundancy payment and asked me to work my notice. I was amazed how little I came out with. The government allows the one week's salary per year to be capped at £250. So, you guessed it, for my toils, my commitment over the last two and half years, I got five hundred quid. It's tax-free, hooray, that'll help pay the bills, then. I asked if I could have my PC, to which they replied that it was needed as a server in the fragile IT set up. I wasn't even out the door.

As I went home early, I felt very free. Powerful. Perhaps I was trying to convince myself I had made the decision. My wife was away with the kids, and I decided not to tell her on the phone, so lived with my terrible secret for a couple of days. I didn't go in the next day, but had some correspondence to find out who else had gone. Unlike the previous round of redundancies, where newer recruits and dead wood had been pruned, this was real cost saving. I went because I was paid well. Why was that? Perhaps because I was more productive. Still, it was a numbers game and I had the wrong number. I felt some truth in people's voices when they expressed surprise that it was me, it gave me some comfort, I suppose.

An ex-colleague at an old company had drunk himself to death shortly after losing his job a year or two ago. So, I had a few compensation beers, but didn't get stuck in too much. Rather I felt the need to do something. So I did all the jobs which had been on the to-do list for ever.

I didn't actually work that much of my notice in the end, with the odd interview and kids having chicken pox. When I reached my official termination date after holiday pay, it was another year.

Well, there's never a good time to have a baby, or lose your job. New Year is probably the worst, though. You have to wait for all the budgets and plans to get agreed, and people to start feeling busy after Christmas's excesses. I'd signed up to a couple of internet job sites and started getting a trickle of things which matched my ever-broadening criteria. It was pathetic.

The best early lead I had was from a friend, whose department was about to recruit, so I got in on the act early. I had one interview, and then another with a test. It was all looking rosy, and then the management decided to change their plan. So, I got the job that wasn't. Back to the drawing board

My company had been really, really helpful and given me a dozen agencies' email addresses. Half of which were out of date. Don't be deceived by initial pleasantries and banter. These guys are not working for you. They are working for themselves first, the client second, and you last. You only hear from them when they reckon that you would be able to get them some money in terms of their slice of the pie. Agent. Think about the word. Estate Agent. That's about it.

So, I sent my details to them all. Of the ones which got through, I had a number of email or phone replies to confirm things. One or two said there "might" be opportunities in a couple of places. As I only needed one job, this was great. Then nothing happened for quite some time.

Some agents are more active, and trawl the internet sites, so I occasionally get a phone call out of the blue about some job in a far-flung corner of England, usually south east. They talk of relocation as if it's like going shopping or to the pictures. Given the shortage of jobs, I'm now looking at anything anywhere, so relocation is on the cards. Near the beginning of the process, an agent had contacted me enthusiastically about a job somewhere I didn't want to live. I declined interest, and being a salesman he gave me some banter to make me think I might not have another opportunity like this one. In some ways I regret not taking it up. On the other hand, had I taken the job (should I have been offered it), I'd probably be regretting it about now. Can't win.

April come she will. And the end of the financial year. Another doldrum. Still, thereafter I got two interviews in the space of a fortnight. The first was one of wishy-washy style where you have to stick your oar in to make any positive contribution to the meandering themes of discussion. One where you just don't know what they'll think of you. They give everyone an assignment to do. I spent three working days on it and sent in my solution - we had to write a plug-in for one of their products given a couple of examples and a huge document describing the COM interfaces. I produced something which pretty much met the requirements, although I don't think it did much to demonstrate how I might be a good team leader. From the quality of the examples, I think they were looking for a hacker. Didn't get that one. Neither did anybody else, apparently.

Which exemplifies what's happening everywhere. Employers know they've got us over a barrel. You first have to play buzzword assault course. This is where you jump through hoops to demonstrate that you have the right letters after your name (COM, STL, etc.). You also have to have masses of experience and be exactly the right kind of person. It's particularly bad when they are looking for replacements for staff moving on. It would be quicker to campaign to change the cloning laws for humans and grow a new employee than to wait for them to pick someone by themselves.

The second interview I mentioned earlier was for a contract. The agent had said there wouldn't be a test. Wrong! A written exercise, and half an hour or more of a barrage of technical questions from dead pan people, like being on Mastermind, only I didn't get to choose the specialist subject. Apparently, I did OK on the technical side, but they didn't take me because I hadn't any tibco experience. In fact I hadn't even experienced the word!

I'm the sort of person who is not bored. I've got a house and family, so there's lots of time taken. I've also tried to do some web development, which has been a challenge given my limited experience and resources. I've battled with TCP/IP and the like to get a mini network here (my company did agree to give me an old manky test machine), but I couldn't get the Access OLEDB drivers to work properly. I've gone for PHP/MySQL in the end and am about to get stuck in. As I do such things, I realise that basic software engineering skills and project management skills are all that count. And I get frustrated when job adverts require that you are an Oracle or SQL Server guru. Why? Relational databases aren't difficult to understand. C++ on the other hand does need some expertise. Only no one seems to need C++, or they don't think they need that level of expertise. Some adverts want graduate programmers or people with two years' experience. Why? Because they are cheaper. But, I like to think that you get what you pay for.

When I was in work, I used to see things around me which might make a living. I've got a big garden, so thought I could dedicate a large area to propagating cuttings of my herbs. A rip off at £2 each on stalls, but I soon realised that I'd have to do hundreds and thousands to pay the mortgage. How much compost is that? I still think about becoming a plumber or carpenter. I can pretty much do it already given the work you need to do to get the typical British house remotely nice.

My wife has been in academia for most of her life, and thinks I should become a professor, in German (she's German). I'd need to do a doctorate first. I sort of got persuaded and did some surfing of web sites I only half understood. I'm still not sure if I can do something which is interesting to me, meets research criteria and is actually useful in the real world, as I don't want to lose touch with things. I'd be keen to hear from anyone in academia, perhaps doing a PhD, or teaching something IT-related.

Now and again the frustration of being out of work rears its head. Either I or the wife get stressed out. And usually one point which comes forth is why I haven't done more. Simple, I haven't had time. You could spend all day, every day looking, but where? I feel I've done the 80/20 thing, and have covered most of the opportunities with my agency registration and email notifications. I don't know if this is correct, but given that the same jobs occur in the different systems, and sometimes the same job will appear twice in the same message through different agencies, I reckon I'm doing OK. To be honest, my best leads have come from being contacted by agents actively looking for skill sets, who think they have a "real" job vacancy to fill. As opposed to the one which took over three months to decide whether or not to interview me, and didn't, and then readvertised the job.

There's lots more I could write about each of the companies I've been to, or the way the agencies behave, or the helpful suggestions people make, but I hope to have captured here a flavour of what it's been like for me. Let's hope you don't get here, or if you are, that you get back soon! You've got to grin and bear it.