ravan

Sometime in January, I want to change jobs. If you know of companies that will be hiring in that time-frame, let me know, and I'll point you to my resume. This post is public for a reason.

My desires in a new job are as follows:

Salary: $95+, plus ? Prefer $100K (I'm only making $88K plus whatever stock I get now. Last year I reported $100K, but the extra was all paper.) My tax bracket is that of a SINK, my expenses are those of a head of household.

Benefits: Need DP benefits, regular employment. No Kaiser, reasonable cost share.

Location: SF Bay Area, sane commute by car or train. No multi-system transfers and long walking - I'm a gimp.

Company: No flash-in-the-pan or quarterly profit focused meatgrinders. Serious five year plans, even though they might change, are good to have.

Duties/Environment (the really important stuff):
* Linux/Unix systems engineering, maybe some Mac stuff too.
* No %&^#%& Windows support duties. I'll use it if I have to, but I won't support Windows, MS Office, IIS, AD or other Windows software. Nevermore, Quothe the Ravan. No lusers, please.
* Congenial team who actually communicates - no prima donnas or cowboys
* Low politics - I want to work, not play ego games
* Responsibilities for systems must be coupled with control and authority to change systems. I won't be responsible for stuff I can't get root access to, period.
* I like building and tweaking things. I want time to do it right, not be condemned to do it over.
* Work/life balance - I'll do the occasional weekend or marathon week, but not all the time. Life's to short to spend all of it at work.
* Company that treats its employees (and customers) like adults, not children who need to be watched, monitored, measured and controlled. I will not participate in establishing or maintaining web filtering, email filtering/snooping, draconian DRM, or any form of spamming type marketing. This is not negotiable. All of these may be "legal", but don't pass my ethics test.

Nice to have (the more match, the happier I am):
* Work from home days. Sure, I'll do on-call, but it would be really nice if I could use my own Linux box to log in, rather than have to wank with a Windows laptop. RSA keys make for nice OTP generators.
* Cell phone and broadband assistance. Seriously, if you want me to be able to log in from home, or get email anywhere, you need to pony up the money, and buy me a crackberry.
* Commuter benefits and shuttles - if I need to take the train, give me a Go Pass and a lift from the train station if it's over a block or two away.
* Company needs to allow work on Open Source projects without "mother may I" hoops to jump through just to do documentation and low-level stuff.
* Charitable matching - I have a pet 501(c)3 - educational - that gets lots of my money. I should be able to hit the company up for donations.
* Hire me for a senior or leadership role, please. I'm really wanting to get into management. I believe I've got the people skills to do it, even if I may seem a bit gruff and irritable.

My job needs are informed by getting burned, and burned out, at several companies. If you think they're excessive, I would remind you that I've actually had health problems from craptastic jobs, and I can't afford it any more. I have to look out for number one, because no one else will.

This originally was a comment on

mdlbear's journal, but I feel it needs a wider audience, and expansion.

The problem with LJ is that the most useful factors - friends and communities, and granularity thereof - are not available on standard "plain" blogging software. Ordinary blogs are either/or - invite only, or all public. LJ has the granularity of access, but is controlled by a single corporation that is susceptible to economic and political pressure. What is needed is a way to build the community and friends lists (and access restrictions) that is platform and provider independent.

Enter "Blog Key". This software doesn't exist yet, it's only a concept. This concept involves a plugin. Each type of blogging software would have the plugin(s) ported to it, but is otherwise platform agnostic.

Plugin: "Blog Keys" - This plugin:
A) generates a public/private key pair, and integrates it into the viewing setting for your blog. No accepted key, no blog see.
B) provides easy distribution of public keys.
C) authenticates against given public key(s) that you've accepted, allowing the key generator(s) to read a protected entry.
D) provide an authentication layer by which you would be able to read the blogs of others who had accepted your key, and enabled you to read that entry.
E) provides rss feeds of blogs that you have keys to read (a "friends page")

If I want to be be involved in a blog key group, I enable access to my public key.

A blogger who want to let me read and comment on their blog transfers my public key to their plugin "Add my key!" type button. Thenthey add me to their general reader group, and additionally any subgroups that they wish. They would not, however, be able to read *my* entries, until I added their key to my plugin.

Essentially, the plugin becomes a keychain. I can read any journals that have accepted my key, and enabled my authenticated viewing of the particular entry.

Both commercial (6A) and open source blogging software could implement this. It would still allow public (no key required) posting, could be set up to require key authentication to comment, or be "friends only". All you'd need to participate would be a blogging platform that had the plugin available.

I can't program this, but I'm sure that an open project like WordPress would be glad to have it.

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Distributed "friending" - Blog Key

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