Notes from a Fledgling Wagecuck

hi hi it's been a while. I've actually written several blog posts to near completion since my last, but they either fell apart upon revision or I didn't maintain the motivation to finish them off. The latter is actually a pretty big problem because my blog posts tend to just be encapsulations of some particularly powerful yet fleeting mood I'm having, and once those feelings wear off it's more or less impossible to write in the same tone. I don't necessarily think that's a problematic way to write though. I've consistently been impressed by the sentiment expressed by Geuss:

So maybe I just haven't developed the right type of discipline to follow through on the last bit of completing a project even though my thoughts have moved on; however, I think that since the subject matter of my posts is basically just an emotional outpouring of myself on some topic that interests me in the moment I think it makes sense that it's more difficult to continue.

Anyway, the main point of this post is to talk about what I've been doing for the past two months, specifically as it relates to my search for employment. This journey basically started with some career fairs that were hosted at my university near the start of February. Up to that point I had put extremely minimal thought about my future employment. I mean, I'm a Philosophy/Economics/Political Science major so that kind of goes without saying. I knew for a fact I didn't want to go into any sort of government or non-profit trash so that basically nullified all of the actual use cases for those majors. Academia is not really an option, especially since it would likely be in philosophy or political theory. Fast track to being miserable and homeless there. Plus I would probably have to move to Europe if I wanted to study what I actually care about, which, lol. That's the other thing I realized in this process: I really really do not want to relocate at all. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Long story short I went into career fair stuff with the idea that I would apply to finance stuff trying to bank off my econ degree and office administrative type things because you don't need any skills and I didn't have any uwu.

So while I was prepping for the career fairs by updating my resume, doing some silly canvas thing that the university made with some questions that were basically training you to market yourself, and poking around on Handshake where the career fairs were organized and where the employers posted their offerings. Gross and bad.

Also there's something that begins to simmer under the surface here and I don't know where to put it so I'm gonna try to explain it here. At this time of me beginning to prep and stuff, it also happened to overlap in timing with me complete transitioning over to linux and deciding to learn python just slightly prior, so I was in a pretty tech-y mood. And while I was doing this prep stuff I would encounter a lot of CS students because UW is overflowing with them and it just made me think a lot about tech stuff. So somewhere along the way I decided I'd also be applying to IT jobs broadly. I knew I couldn't handle programming jobs so that was out, but I figured something related to tech might be neat. As I said it was kinda simmering under the surface so it was pretty nebulous and not well thought out, but yeah.

So I went to these career fairs. The first was a small one hosted by the education department that was only for education students. I could attend because of my education policy certificate. I thought the list of offerings was pretty funny because most were not related to education but more like art type stuff. I checked out the employer postings before attending so I knew where I was going to go. I even applied to some ahead of time, which in hindsight was really dumb lol. Part of the reason I was going to these things was so that I could learn how to revise what I already had, so why I decided to apply in advance is still a little beyond me. Most of the places weren't that important, but one of them was Saga [2], which is a massive software company in my hometown that is known for having really good pay/benefits. But whatever, what's done is done lol.

All in all, it was a relatively small event with maybe 25 or so business sitting at tables in the foyer of the education building. I was pretty anxious and unsure about a lot of things, but there were actually some nice people that worked in the education building that were there to just chat with you and help you prepare and that was nice. The girl that was talking with me corrected herself after using "he" to "they" which I thought was sweet. She showed me where I could place my coat and bag and afterwards I stood there for a while staring at the room trying to plan my next steps. I finally went up to some people and it went rocky, but pretty okay. Most interactions were forgettable but I'll highlight a few.

The first person I talked to worked for a company that sold standardized testing materials which obviously I'm completely against but that's part of why I started there to build confidence. The person I talked to was pretty young and flustered her way through our talk too. Turns out she graduated last year from my university so she was pretty inexperienced too. This was the start of a trend I noticed with a lot of recent grads as "recruiters". Really weird and I hate it. Anyway we chatted for a bit and she gave me a few of their positions' info, one being an administrative assistant to the company president and one being some L2 IT job. After that one was finished I retreated to my spot in the corner again and composed myself before going onto the next person, a ritual I would repeat after every interaction. I talked to the Saga person there too, but she basically just told me to go apply on the website, so I suppose I wasn't missing out on too much after all. Another notable interaction was with this group of 3 people working for Raven(? or something?). They worked on Call of Duty games and were looking for graphic design people (but they had other positions available on their Handshake). I needed to kill some time before I could talk to the next company I was going for because they were busy so I decided why not. So I went over to chat with the one guy that was there, and then the other two came back from doing something halfway through. I think it was mostly about a programming role? I bullshitted my way through all of it holy shit it was so bad lmfao. I mean I actually think it went well in terms of the interaction, but I was lying my ass off the whole time. Basically just me coasting off knowledge I had gained from being in gaming spaces, using github and linux a bit, and from the miniscule amount of Python I knew. I claimed credit for random github projects I was aware of and stuff like that. They gave me all their info and told me to apply online and I never did for obvious reasons. Was kinda fun looking back but definitely a little odd. Lastly I stopped at a company that had an IT position on Handshake, but the people actually there were in design or marketing and had no clue about any of it so they just told me to apply online.

Weird event overall but was defi useful at helping me get some experience talking to employers in a more casual and lowkey environment than the big career fairs for the whole university. Those were over the course of 2 days and had 200 or so employers each day? Wild stuff. I don't wanna go too in depth because I think it's kinda boring. Basically it was a lot of anxiety and a lot of weird interactions, but learned a lot [3]. One of the things I learned is that an economics degree is seen by a lot of employers as quantitative political science, and honestly not wrong lol. My justification of using it as a replacement for a business degree was certainly misguided, and it definitely wasn't a replacement for anything finance related or an accounting/actuarial degree. Still, I had a lot of banks interested in me for some reason. Idk if that's just like a banker shortage right now or if they shrug and are fine with economics majors or what. I also had a few experiences of just downright pyramid schemes that I have no idea how they were allowed in to the fair. The second day was pretty sparse because there was a giant snow storm so more than half of the employers didn't show up.

It was really really stressful and draining and confusing. Especially because I was actively trying to make up for the last 4 years of not thinking about jobs at all and figure out what the hell I wanted to do while I was acquiring the grotesque skills of marketing myself. Massive mess all around. I created a LinkedIn bro.

Anyway, through this process I decided I was going to go 100% in on IT. Started watching professor Messer videos to study for the CompTIA A+ exam, applying to a bunch of entry level help desk stuff, getting really into tech. Along the way somehow I started binging Linus Tech Tips videos in my free time. My dad is the president of a company and his IT guy was leaving, and he said that if I couldn't find anything that he would hire me as an intern to help their next IT guy. I had dinner with my uncle who works in IT and we talked about it too.

I'm not really sure why IT. I knew all the humanities stuff I was going for was absolute drivel, but to be honest that was what I was expecting. My plan prior to these last few months was just to rot at some desk job and then do fun things on my own time. I was never really big on being passionate about my career, and actually thought the opposite would be better. If I'm actively frustrated with my job, I will be less likely to develop undesirable drives, passions, dispositions, etc. But I suppose once I saw how revolting the reality of those positions were, I couldn't stomach it. It was really embarrassing to apply and interview at places where I was completely incompetent for the role. It's humiliating as it is, and that extra bit is just unbearable.

I suppose I should transition into talking about interviews now. I sent out like 25 applications in total. Some places I talked to at the career fair I didn't apply for but did exchange information with and they reached out to me to try to get me to apply which was cute. Like bro I was just stalling and wanted to have one of the Rubik's cubes with your logo on it, I'm not moving to Texas to work at your plastics company sorry. Anyway, I got no reply from 10 of them, rejected from 4, and interviews with the rest. Some interviews I went in knowing that it was not going to work out but just did it for the practice anyway. Like I even applied and talked to one of the pyramid scheme ones lol. At first my strategy was super hardcore flexibility lying. In one job I would lean and embellish a certain side of me and then go in a completely different direction with the next. It was very odd and felt really disgusting.

So much was disgusting. From viewing the experiences that have happened to me from the lens of how marketable they make me to boxing myself into some shitty container of a person that sounds appealing, it just was all completely horrid. I hated every last person I talked to. I didn't like the way they looked at me or talked to me at all. Sometimes they felt like ravenous vultures, sometimes they felt like a disdainful prince glaring down at a peasant. Everyone was insecure. The way of speaking is simply revolting. It's confusing to try and fluff up your experiences as something with Value. I hated it. That's the point of this paragraph.

One of the interviews that went through multiple rounds was with that standardized testing place. I exchanged a ton of emails and went on several phone and video calls. They had me submit my ACT scores??? And had me do a correction test on a writing sample??? Goofy two star glassdoor ass company. I met with the president and we talked about education stuff and I did fine. They offered me a job to move to Chicago and I said nomegalul. What I actually said was that I wanted to work remotely (despite the entire time up to now telling them I would have no problem relocating) and be paid 20k more than what I knew they were offering lol which is effectively the same thing.

I dropped or rejected several others, but nothing worth noting really. Lots of sales jobs which I would be awful at and would hate with a passion.

All that's left from here is to talk about Saga and government internships from my state. I'll start with the latter. There was a massive pdf document listing hundreds of internships and you could apply to five. I picked five IT ones nearby where I lived and sent them out. I heard back from three of them, one of which wasn't even one I applied for. The first internship interview went bad. Really bad lol. It was for some entry level desktop support stuff and I was interviewed by two of the IT managers. I stumbled over myself completely and the flubbing was really not working at this point. This was my first real IT based interview and I was really nervous and that made it really hard for me to come up with believable stories.

That's the thing about entry-level interviews. It's questions like "What is an example of a time you were in a leadership role and what did you do when things went wrong?" They're awful for questions for so many reasons. But whatever, at this point I was pretty used to it and was able to embellish some stories to make them make sense. Except for some reason this time I just completely fell over myself and said the most stupid shit in the world. Shockingly bad its actually unbelievable. "What's an example of me explaining something complicated to someone and it went poorly and what I learned? Sure, so I was helping my dad out with his... operating system (? where are you going with this?)... and um... yea he was just having some problems... and yea it was his work computer and his IT guy could have looked at it but I thought I could do it (me literally coming up with uncounterable counter-arguments to my own story in real time, pog!)... and I pulled up the... umm... task manager? (WHAT???) And he was scared by the complicated charts that something was going wrong (kill yourself what is wrong with you) but I tried to explain it to him... (and then I continued with some other bullshit)." This was the FIRST question mind you, so it was over after that completely. Just astonishingly stupid. I still haven't heard back from them and I don't blame them.

Anyway, the next internship went much better. I had taken some time to reflect and prepare since the last trainwreck so I was feeling better and performed a lot better. They sent me the five questions they were going to ask half an hour early which was pretty cool and helpful too, and then a panel of 4 people conducted the interview. It was slotted for an hour but I answered all the questions within like 25 minutes. The guy at one point basically told me to slow down implicitly but to be honest I didn't have a ton extra to say. I suppose it didn't matter though because they offered me the internship, but I'll come back to this shortly.

The last interview I fucking nailed. Absolutely smashed. They loved me and I was super charismatic and yea it just went really well. Again, this was IT too. It was the one where I talked the most about my Python experience, and was actually the most honest with my experiences. I didn't try to sugarcoat it but I suppose it was one of those things where I undervalued the significance of what I was able to do? Again it's weird because with jobs they fluff up the language so it feels more grandiose, but I was just upfront with the fact that I just learned it for fun on freeCodeCamp and just made some side projects for my day to day convenience and chatted about it. They were super into it and supportive and it was great. I know that doesn't mean a ton because it's an entry-level internship right but idk it felt nice after a lot of struggling with IT related job stuff to finally get a win. It wasn't just that part too, I did great in the rest too. I actually haven't heard back from them yet, but it was like 4 days ago so.. shrug [4].

That brings us to Saga. I'm bringing it up last but the interview process was going on throughout all of this. There were so many steps. First they had an intro phone call with me. Then I needed to fill out some personality survey thing and do some assessment with browser proctoring that was like logic puzzles and english skills. One part you had to learn and apply a new coding language they came up with just to demonstrate your ability to pick up new things [5], which was actually pretty fun. After that I had to attend a zoom presentation with a bunch of other people idek how many, where they just gave an overview of Saga and the role I applied for, Project Manager. Basically they would travel a ton and help clients implement Saga software. Like every other week you leave on Monday and get back home on Friday. Seriously pitiful and I would hate it. But I was still just taking whatever just for the experience and practice, and it's Saga so why not. Then they got back to me and said I made it into the final round of interviews, but that they also wanted me to hear about the Technical Solutions Engineer role and that they wanted me to do a programming test because of that.

I don't know why I got flagged for that? Maybe they didn't have enough people? Maybe I did really well on the fake coding language in the first test? I think I probably did and I had a lot of fun, but I'm not sure if that's the reason. I asked some Saga people later during my interview and they said it was all opaque to them too so I suppose I'll never know. Anyway, I did that test. It was 4 hours with 4 questions and you could write it in any programming language, including pseudocode. It was proctored and you couldn't use search engines or any external help. I didn't really feel any pressure because I had extremely low expectations. I figured I'd completely bomb and have no idea how to do anything so I would just exit the test early after poking around a bit. Still though I was really interested to see what it would be like. When I opened the exam it was just four relatively simple tasks, maybe requiring 30 lines each? Well at least 30 lines of my shitty code. They reminded me a lot of the freeCodeCamp projects in terms of scope. So I was actually kind of capable of doing them.

I decided ahead of time I would use Python because that was what I had been working with recently. I considered pseudocode, but it had been so long since I had used it in my course in discrete math that I think it would have just been harder.

My answers weren't pretty by any means and certainly wouldn't run if you tried them, but the logic was there I think. There was one I know I completely missed a portion of the requirements. The task was to write a script that would check the position of a checkers board and spit out the optimal play. I made it so it could find a path after filtering the first set of moves, but wasn't able to have it compare the final values for the most optimal. Basically, if checked in every direction in order in a circle and if it made one jump it would be stuck on that track.

I did way way way better than I was expecting I would do going in and I had a blast doing it. I always talk to myself when I do things, and even though I wasn't supposed to talk for the proctored exam I did it anyway because it helps me think. I laughed at myself so much it was just really cute and enjoyable. I seriously had a fantastic time. It tickled my brain and I thought it was really funny when I would do completely incorrect things because I couldn't remember the proper syntax. Don't even get me started on my trying to use a dictionary, it was a mess :P. At one point I was talking and I was like "well, I mean that's clearly wrong... but fuck it dude.. ah shit I probably shouldn't say that" and giggled a bunch. Anyway, it was just really fun thing and I was pleasantly surprised with how close I was to being able to do them. I'm sure they were still super simple test examples but whatever, it was comfy.

After that was the big interview day. 4 hours long. Started with an overview presentation thing similar to before (honestly recap I'm not super sure why they did? Maybe just refresher?). Half of it was like marketing living in the city nearby because a lot of the applicants are not from here. Kind of a hard sell to move from Cali to a snow biome so I get it I guess. There were only 6 other applicants on this call (3 girls, 2 guys + me), which is way less than the 100? or so that were on the last one. There were other days of presentations and other big interview days so that wasn't all the applicants btw so I don't know how indicative that is of how many were culled. Apparently Saga is pretty selective so like 1% of applicants get hired but I don't know how many even go through with the first examination so who knows what that actually means.

After this we went to role specific introductions. First up was Project Manager and all the girls from the overview presentation call were there but the guys were not (I would see them next in Technical Solutions Engineer), which I thought was a little funny [6]. The role overview was just someone with that job talking about what they did [7].

After that I had a 15 minute break and then the real interview stuff began. I had a "case study" interview which basically means they propose a big hypothetical, I study it for a bit and then give an answer of how I would react in the Project Manager role (I didn't do one for Technical Solutions Engineer). I did horribly I think. I was just awkward and I didn't have good chemistry with the interviewer I guess. Felt pretty uncomfortable overall and had some weird moments. It'shard to know how to answer a hypothetical when you barely understand the job and have no idea what internal procedures are like, but whatever. After the case study portion they asked me standard interview questions and I don't remember how that went except for the last question. I had prepared a document in the morning with a list of the questions they would ask gathered from reddit and glassdoor and wrote out my answers and they had all appeared, so far so good. Then she ends with "what haven't I asked you that I should ask you?" Panic. What the fuck? Man I don't know. I don't have anything to tell you what do you mean?? Scanning up and down my document but nope they don't fit here as questions to pose myself. Floundering. The only thing breaking up the silence is me just going "ummmmmmmmm.... uhhhh.... well...". Finally, in a stroke of brilliance I say: "you could ask me about my general personality? (yes, I said it as a question, I was just as confused by what I said too.)" We both awkward laughed, it was so clearly bad lolol. I didn't answer my own question cleanly either.

But I didn't have much time to dwell on that because I went straight into my next thing which was doing a 10 minute vocal presentation. I spent a long time in the days leading up figuring out what I was going to talk about and what I was going to say. I decided on a topic of visual novels. My first outline document was 10 pages long, and I trimmed it down into 3 different presentations focusing on different things. I was going to play it safe with just a general overview of the game mechanics and what it could offer as a type of game, but actually ended up settling on giving a history of the development of visual novels after I presented it to my dad [8].

There were supposed to be 3 people listening. One person showed up a few minutes early with me and she seemed like a little shy and nerdy TSE person. A little later a guy joined that was completely checked out of it and was super phoning it in, which honestly I didn't mind. The last guy, which also happened to be the recruiter assigned to me, did not show up. So after 10 minutes of waiting the TSE girl just told me to start anyway. It actually went pretty well. I found the topic interesting and I practiced so it went smoothly, and I didn't have to look at their faces and could just read from my doc since it was all on zoom [9]. TSE girl asked for a recommendation and I said Katawa Shoujo which I haven't even read yet but whatever. The guy that was there asked some generic question that showed he wasn't listening but again I didn't mind, less pressure anyways.

After their questions are done my recruiter finally shows up and apologizes that he was in a meeting that went long. The other two drop out and we begin the wrap up interview. It's a lot more chill/conversational and I think the guy took it easy on me because he felt bad about being late. He asked about my presentation and said he knew a VN but couldn't remember the name, and I correctly guessed Doki Doki Literature Club. I mentioned that I strongly preferred TSE to PM role and we talked about how much I liked the programming test. After a bit the conversational wore off and there were more interview-y questions but it was mostly fine.

I can't imagine someone read through all that. Really slow and dry description of that day. Not sure why I did that but whatever its fresh in my mind.

Well anyway on Thursday I got an offer from Saga for TSE for 75k salary, which is way higher than the $20/hour summer government internship I had as an alternative. It wasn't even really an option not to accept. It's a technical type job which is what I was going for and I don't have to try and scrounge together some IT hustle shit. Like don't get me wrong, I have a whole host of misgivings and worries about it. But ultimately I think it just makes too much sense not to. They have up to 6 months of training when you first start and bonkers benefits and yeah idk it's a whole job not just a temporary internship.

Not really sure why they chose to hire me, one silly headcannon I have is that me selecting "she/her" as my pronouns from a pre-interview drop down menu contributed. Stolen valor diversity hire pog. I don't think they ever used pronouns to refer to me in the interview either lol. I think I find this idea especially funny because of what my uncle said to me when we met up: "You should tie your hair up in your LinkedIn profile picture, you don't want to look like you're one of those 'questioning-your-pronouns' types. Well actually maybe for Saga it might help."

But yea, since getting the offer I've just dropped everything else. Turned down the internship offer, stopped studying for CompTIA, quit my current job today (I was only doing it for resume padding), don't have to fill out any more applications. The job at my dad's work was actually getting pretty far along in the planning process and we dropped that too now. IT was actually pretty interesting and I'd still like to learn, but it's nice to not have all that pressure on me to pick it up immediately. There's been a lot going on lately and I haven't had a significant amount of free time for a long while. I'm really looking forward to the next little bit with nothing going on.

I haven't been reading at all for a while and when I popped back in a few days ago with some Geuss it was so nice. I think I'll return at some point because it is still something I really enjoy, but it's just such a different headspace than I'm in right now so it might be a bit. The last few days I've watched 6 seasons of anime and it's been ages and ages so that was nice to enjoy again. It's a bit jarring to go from having way too much to do to have nothing going on at all but I think it should be nice. Not sure what I'll do just yet.

Oh and another thing that just sorta weirded me out is having a bunch of my family contact me and congratulate me on getting a job. Seems like some weird capitalist ritual thing and it was just odd. I suppose I had a more subdued reaction to getting offered the job than everyone was expecting. When the recruiter told me on the call I think he was expecting something more but idk I'm not good at performing joy like that and I'm pretty ambivalent on the whole thing to be honest. Like yea I'm glad I have the offer relative to the alternative jobs in the marginal utility sense but I still don't think that means I have be overcome with joy about becoming a wagie. Maybe this is a topic for another day but I think I just have weird expectations about things, as in different from other people. I think a lot of people see me as pessimistic but I don't necesarily feel that way. I just don't expect a lot from certain institutions and I think I get vindicated pretty frequently in my assessments. And it's not like I'm dogmatically negative either, otherwise I would be surprised by getting an offer or other things like that. Sure I can be negative about myself in a way that appears to be just hateful and obsessively negative, but I don't holistically evaluate myself in that way. I'm bouncing around a lot so maybe I'll just leave it at that and try and be more clear another time.

This isn't much of a blog post, huh? I think when I started out I had more of a point but this is sort of just a description of what's been going on with me. I don't know, maybe it's interesting to read about me ping ponging around. I didn't emphasize the CompTIA stuff a lot, but I actually put a ton of time and effort into it. Lots of watching lectures, practice tests, and note taking. My note taking document is.. okay well I tried to copy and paste it into google docs and it crashed my browser lol. I got it back up and it's 304 pages but the spacing is kinda funky so maybe half of that. In any case it's a lot. I really wanted this. Also, I know CompTIA A+ omegalul but bruh idk. I've got nothing, it's not the worst to start with? I need a lot more than that I know but if I'm genuinely learning things it seems like maybe it wasn't a terrible idea. Whatever, doesn't matter now.

Ok well it's late and I'm tired now. I don't know how to end this. Maybe I'll fix this tomorrow but don't count on it uwu. I'm sorry if you read all of this :P

Alright it's the next day and I have a few extra things I'd like to add.

Another thing I didn't touch on was the benefits of working for a large company like Saga relative to smaller things. Obviously there are economies of scale things like better pay and benefits, but I also think there's some more things on top of that. Because it's my first real job and a field I don't have any formal education/experience with, the ability to have a 3-6 month paid training process is super nice. Also, because Saga is so large it is by necessity rather bureaucratic, which people normally think of as a bad thing and normally I would agree. However, this also means that there are going to be more established processes and guardrails which I predict will be helpful when I'm starting out (but I could see being annoying if I'm still around after I get more experienced). But the main thing I was actually thinking about was the relative isolation from more direct forms of interaction with capitalism. Like obviously the law of value permeates the entire thing, but what I'm trying to get at is a "The People's Republic of Walmart" type of thing [10]. Because it is such a totalizing institution and because of the role I play within it, I won't be directly dealing with pretty much any market interactions. I'm rather pleased with this arrangement about that because I think the alternative would foster unsavory dispositions in me.

Lastly, finally landing a job has caused me reflect a bit on my college years and think about how much I've changed. I wish I could talk to some friends (let's be honest, one friend very specifically) from my early college years and catch up to compare their expectations to what's actually happened, but I don't think that's going to happen for understandable reasons I won't get into here. Overall I'm pretty pleased with how things have developed, but of course that's what a me on this timeline would say. I definitely would have liked to learn some things sooner, but yknow figuring it out in a messy way is an important part of the process I suppose [11]