Funemployment

My wife and I recently moved continents, and I have now joined the ranks of the funemployed, because (for our family) moving was more important that moving to a job. I'm certainly going to miss my old job (because, aside from being given billions of dollars and told to go explore the oceans, "Network Architect" is exactly where I want to be, and I worked with great people and did fun things!).

Read on for some thoughts on how to make the most of this process, and perhaps some ideas of what to do when you move vast distances...

Stranger in a Strange Land

I (more or less) grew up in the country and city we've just moved to, but after spending 20-something years in another (and not visiting this one in about 15), it's not yet "really" home - although the culture isn't particularly alien, and the words and accents are familiar. Of course, as a third culture kid, I assimilate accents quite fast, and so mine has a certain South African twang to it now. I imagine it will lessen as I spend time outside the house. The biggest change I've noticed is the soundscape of the city has changed - with the move towards more efficient buses and taxis, the old thrum of diesel has left, and something about the city feels different as a result (not to mention the changes to the skyline). I forgot how screamingly loud the underground was, or perhaps it's because I'm using different lines than I used to (or perhaps the lines and rolling-stock have aged and gotten worse...). On the plus side, Internet is fast (sadly DOCSIS rather than fibre in this area) and cellular communications are cheap (as are many tech toys), the power mostly stays on, water reliably comes out of the taps, and gas is conveniently piped to your home - and, despite the circus show of politics, things mostly just work. I don't think I've quite caught up with the change yet - I think my body thinks it is on some kind of holiday!

On using the time

Most ICT professionals bemoan the amount of time they'd like to spend learning new things, but that they don't have the time. Well, when you join the ranks of the funemployed, time is very much a thing you now have - indeed, it's your main resource! Depending on your financial resources, you've got a few options to make use of it, including hitting the books to get another cert (or three, or more...); enrolling in a course if self-directed learning isn't your thing, or isn't possible through books or research; building and playing in a home lab (virtual or physical); or even enrolling in a more full-time and long term programme of studies (like a degree).

Before you do any of that, it's probably worth doing two things - one, thinking about what you would *like* to learn, and two, comparing that with what the job market seems to want in roles you are interested in applying for. Let those factors guide you in selecting a sensible route forward. It's also perhaps a useful period of time to take stock and build up a plan of where you would like to be and what you want to be doing in n years time. I'm incredibly fortunate that my wife is gainfully employed already, and that we have enough saved up to weather the financial storm, but you certainly want to maximise your use of the time - and minimise the out of work time, too - unless you have a really good reason to stay out of work a little longer (say a full time course).

Make sure you take careful stock of your finances, too - you may want to get a particular qualification, but it may simply be unaffordable. Perhaps, if the permanent job market is dire, you could intersperse project consultancy work with learning, or go down a few grades in the tech work you usually do. Be wary of loans, credit cards, and other forms of debt! Hopefully, you have planned the move and have some savings; you may need to compromise on things like housing (i.e. downsize or live in a less salubrious neighbourhood) to be able to afford rent in a new city when only one family member is employed. You'll figure it out!

Also think of what the industry you're in will look like in n years time. If you're in systems or network administration, and you're not honing your skills in scripting, some light programming in at least one major language and various automation platforms (think devops or devnetops) you're going to become irrelevant outside of very small organisations. Put some cloud learning in there too, if you haven't already - and spend some time thinking carefully about infosec. If you manually do repetitive things, figure out how to stop doing that real soon now. Reflect on experiences from where you've worked before - what steps should a customer support person be able to do rather than calling on a sysadmin or network engineer? How could you implement that effectively, and safely (in terms of both "blast radius" if it goes wrong, and in terms of information security)? How could you have automated or "infrastructure as code"-d your environment? How can you improve your own efficiency or effectiveness? Better prepare for disaster recovery? Harden your environment against attack? Whilst there are guidelines on how much time you should spend automating tasks (e.g. https://xkcd.com/1205/), you should recognise that when you first start doing this you are gaining more than just time-saving - you are gaining experience and competence (perhaps ultimately even expertise or hopefully mastery) in automating things, so don't discount working on mini-projects that might be "educational" more than useful.

Do a lot of critical self-reflection. Do you like large or small organisations? Are there industries that particularly appeal? Are you more of a specialist or more of a generalist? What parts of jobs do you love (and hate)? What am I good (and bad) at? Strengths and weaknesses?
Why?

Obviously, a home lab to play with learning or honing skills is ideal, but you may be able to find other resources to plug some of the gaps, and your home lab setup might not be a dream setup - remember that if you can learn in it, it's good enough. Whilst learning within the specific environment you want to be working in is ideal, you may not be able to afford the gear. See if there are virtualised platforms you could use instead, or recognise that sometimes learning the underlying concept is more important than learning the exact sequence of magic words to type in to achieve it on a specific platform - if you have a rock-solid understanding of how e.g. BGP or OSPF is supposed to work, it's easy to apply that to any platform. Leverage FOSS! Mikrotik make very inexpensive routers if you want to learn more about routing, but you may also find network simulators like EVE-NG or GNS3 useful (if you can run them on hardware you happen to have). Raspberry Pis make reasonable basic Linux servers. Look out for vendor training platforms; Juniper for instance offer a lot of learning resources freely, free virtualised lab environment (vlabs), and support the NRE Labs site. Virtualbox will let you run VMs on your windows machine very easily. I've written two posts on learning - Dunning-Kruger and Learning and Read it, note it, (re)do it, teach IT: How to learn effectively.

Once you've figured out what you want to do and how to do it, make sure you draw up a timetable or other framework to ensure you stay on track and on focus; as with remote workers, it helps to do the personal hygiene stuff, put on pants every day and have (if possible) a dedicated "work" area. If you struggle with internal motivation or are easily distracted, figure out some way of ensuring accountability, perhaps including "rewards" for good behaviour!

As finding a job in a new market can take some time, make sure you block out sufficient time to actively job-hunt or otherwise meet non-learning related goals to getting work, unless you've agreed with your family that you're taking X months out to focus on learning new skills or gaining new qualifications - even then, it's worth keeping an eye open for any particularly interesting work opportunities.

Remember as you gain new qualifications, skills and experience in your "productive downtime" that you'll need to add them to your CV, mention them in covering letters, LinkedIn profile, or even use them in your interviews. 

If you're part of a family, make sure you do enough of the household chore heavy lifting - but don't make it the only thing you do in a day, and try to ensure your "quiet time" to get job hunting or learning done can be respected. Make sure you regularly talk things through with your partner, as well (note to self...). Periods out of work (on top of moving, one of the top 10 most stressful things you can do, apparently) can cause considerable stress, and even frayed tempers. Don't let poor communication make that worse!

You may want to (indeed I strongly recommend that you do) set aside some time to put together some sort of career plan, even in a vague outline - where do you want to go, and what will it take to get there? If you need some inspiration, there is a series of articles on this exact topic on Wendell Odom's blog; have a look at the career planning posts from 2015 at: https://blog.certskills.com/category/general/career/

Bottom line - make sure you plan things, speak to your people, and don't waft around aimlessly!

On the job hunt

Another thing you ought to do (particularly if you feel you're already well stocked up on certs, skills and experience) is apply for work.

The best routes to do this are obviously  industry and market-specific, but the usual advice to polish up your CV, LinkedIn profile, and cover letters is a good start (as is taking the time to tailor them for each specific position). You may also be in a market or industry where recruiters play a big role in finding people. It may be worth setting up an appointment with a few that work in the industries you like and with the skills you bring to the table - so they get a feel for you and your strengths, and get a feel for what you might offer to their customers. Some will give you assistance with applications, like polishing your CV or cover letter or doing some interview preparation work (as it's in their interest to get candidates they put forward employed). Treat such meetings as important job interviews - the good recruiter is definitely trying to suss you out as a possible hire for their clients. Such relationships may also bear fruit over several years.

If you move into very different job markets, you will also probably have to take one or more of a pay or seniority cut; if, like me, you've moved from a small town in a developing world country where technical skills are rare and valuable, you may have just entered the "big leagues", and have much more competition for roles. If you do have to make that trade-off, make sure you have a plan to get your career back "on track" as soon as possible. There's probably some careful balancing act to be undertaken between accepting "too junior" a role and being out of work "too long" by reaching too high. A strategy there might be to start where you think you should be, see if anyone bites in a reasonable time-frame, and if not, start moving down the hierarchy/experience/skills ladder. It is, of course, sometimes just a "waiting game" - but if you're not getting invited to interview, then certainly that should be an indication that your CV needs work (not necessarily only in terms of format, but in terms of applicable content - which might mean you're not experienced enough or lack something they're looking for).

Be certain to have some lion-taming stories prepared for your interviews. By that, I mean good answers to questions like "what's the most complicated X you've ever fixed / installed / architected / diagnosed / broken"! Reflect on key requirements or skills listed by each position and have stories about how you've tackled similar (or at least vaguely related) challenges and technologies. People like an engaging story - obviously, you don't want to lie or embellish the truth, but make sure you have a logical and concise structure to your story as well (like STAR). Interviewers are generally trying to answer two over-riding questions: 1) can they do this job? (mostly answered by the CV already) 2) will they fit in and be good colleagues? It really helps to have thought about potential questions BEFORE the pressure of the interview is on, because there is always a risk on the day you'll go blank and look like an idiot. Interviews are widely acknowledged to be pretty terrible ways of assessing people, but you might as well "hack" them to perform as well as you can in them, so you can go on to do the same in the actual role! Don't be afraid to pause for a moment to think about how best to answer a question - it's better to structure your thoughts and have a focused, concise and good answer rather than just rambling at the interview panel, terrified of silence... Spend a bit of time learning more about good CVs and interview techniques if you haven't done so. If you can avoid telephonic or "skype" interviews, do so. I've had some horrible experiences with them, like the time the other end's echo cancelling system just screamed in my ear every time I tried to talk - incredibly off-putting and I did not perform terribly well as a result. Body language and in person conversations are also just much better.  Treat each interview as a learning exercise, too - spend some time after each one reviewing what you felt was good and bad about your own performance, and how you could improve next time. If you're like me, you'll spend hours kicking yourself about all the ways you could have answered the questions better - so put that work in ahead of time (note to self?). I've written a longer post specifically on applications and interviews. 

Also, check if you need some new clothes for interviews; depending on the industry and market, you may need a range from very formal to "Silicon Valley Smart" (you know, your good hoodie, clean jeans and shiny sneakers!). Whilst many of us hardly take a second glance at clothing and shoes, this is not the case of all people, and particularly, non-tech people on panels. I was devastated when I had to stop wearing baggy shorts and t-shirts and move to chinos and a collared shirt, but now I'm used to it. I also don't hate a suit, but I prefer less formal (I've also spent a lot of time crawling around in ceilings, where suits don't make a lot of sense). Don't let uncomfortable shoes or clothes put you off your game. Bottom line here - look the part you're supposed to play! Don't be afraid to call for advice here if style/fashion is something way outside your comfort zone. If you can find workplace pictures that aren't stock photos, they may clue you in on expected dress; if you've moved country or even city (or industry) you may find dress norms different from what you've done before; it's usually appropriate to err marginally on the side of too formal, unless that flies grossly against the workplace culture.

Be at least a little flexible on things like which industry or position you'd like to work in - by all means, start by choosing ones you prefer, but if that doesn't work out, try another; try a lower job grade position if you need to. Once you get employed in the country/city, it should be easier to get employed somewhere else - and a job will pay the bills and help you gain further experience until you can find something better - if for some reason that initial position doesn't fill you with joy! Likewise, whilst we'd all prefer "permanent" employment, some part-time or consultancy work isn't necessarily a bad move.

Networking is not just for packets and frames...

It's an open secret that typically the easiest way to get hired is if someone on the hiring committee already knows you and your work. Thinking back to all the jobs I've been offered in the past, I have no doubt whatsoever that people knowing me has helped me - indeed, I was more or less "head-hunted" for the last two positions I filled, and the two before that, people wanted me to work for them, too. I now completely lack that "social capital" - I'm sure it's slightly less powerful in a megacity compared with in a relatively small town, but I imagine it still has its place.

So how can you develop social capital, or a close analogue?
There are three fairly obvious avenues:
a) online presence (not helpful in all industries) - establish yourself as a "thought leader" or dazzle people with your brilliance in appropriate venues (code in github, blogs, LinkedIn articles, videos, articles in trade magazines or whatever works in your sector and area and plays to your skills). This can help get you known.
b) meet and impress industry-specific recruiters.
c) network with peers.

Unless you directly work in online marketing or are looking to get into technical article writing, the second two are likely to be more effective. In particular when you move to larger cities, you will find that there are various fora you can attend to meet other people with similar (professional) interests to your own. With my interest and experience (and desire to continue working) in networking, meetups like NetLDN or NetMcr make eminent sense. EMFCamp looks interesting! I'm an odd mix of sociable but shy - I've learnt I enjoy being around other people, but I am hesitant to step out of my comfort zone and actively meet and interact with new people. If you're anything like me, you need to seize that particular bull by its horns, and get out there! If (or when) you meet people that you think are doing the sorts of job you'd like to be doing, it may be possible to ask them their thoughts on what it takes to get there. Even just "hanging out and listening" can lead to some really useful insights. You might also politely ask if there are any job leads or trusted recruiters they might suggest, or general insights into the job market. There may also be hacker- or makerspaces, or conferences you can attend. Often the most useful parts of conferences are the networking opportunities outside of the scheduled events. You may find reconnecting with friends and extended family, or meetings friends of friends (or family), yields further useful insights or leads. You may even want to spend some of your time volunteering for NGOs or CBOs - many could really do with even just a few hours of skilled systems administration, although a longer term commitment is usually better; as well as the good cause, you'll further hone your skills and may even get some good references or even job leads out of it! If you parted on good terms with your last employer, they may even welcome paying you for some of your time. 

If you're in the same position as me, good luck out there. There will probably be updates as I navigate these waters myself! :)