From: mike@isgtec.com (Mike Sellers)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc
Subject: Re: transform a resume
Date: 1 Jan 93 20:47:19 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: ISG Technologies Inc., Mississauga Ontario

ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler) writes:
> [...]
> Most correspondents agree that I am not very marketable in most places.
> Those that think otherwise really don't know of any place that would
> actually consider hiring me. As I explained, looking for a job is full
> time metawork and I don't have that much time to spend on it. Following up
> on the vague feelings that people have about what should work is very
> time consuming. So I am more interested in specific pointers.

So, as you've explained your situation thus far: You have specialized skills
for which there is not a large market; you require working conditions far 
outside the norm of the social contracts typically made between individuals
and corporations; and you refuse to spend time on "metawork" to go find a
company that might be willing to work with you.  In other words, you do not
possess widely-applicable skills which might benefit someone else's enterprise,
and yet you require that someone else expend the effort to come to you with an 
opportunity which fits your (as yet unstated) conditions.  Good luck.  I hope 
you find something that fits your "needs", but I wouldn't hold my breath.
The more radical the opportunity you require, the more likely it is that you
will have to go out and make it yourself rather than having it just fall into
your lap.  The universe favors none of us unequally.

> My preference for one month's work is based on the fact that I am committed
> to my own research in mathematics and the perceptions that:
> (1) most companies will not be sufficiently sympathetic to my needs as a 
>     scholar
> (2) It is very difficult for me to contain the distraction that working at
>     even a part time job would cause me unless I confine it to a fixed
>     short interval of time each year. Someone else might not have that problem.
>     Since I do, I have to take it in into consideration before accepting a job.
> 
> The insistence on $6000 net from the work is based on the simple fact that that
> is what I need to pay my food and rent.
> 
> It's all very simple.

From your side, yes it is.  From a potential employer's side, what do you have
to offer them which would lead them to offer you what you require? 

> [...]  "Work" is work that you do in the hope of being
> rewarded  with money. "Metawork" is work that you do in the hope of being 
> rewarded with "work". Metawork is quite cynically exploited in many professions
> and I regard it as a sucker's game.

I'm surprised at this attitude.  Would you then consider mathematics to be what 
you do to find a quantifiable answer, and meta-mathematics to be what you do find 
something which is mathematically amenable?  If so, is this also a sucker's game?  
What you call metawork others might call a planned approach to greater financial
security (among other things).  Not every work-like activity yields money 
(or answers, as I'm sure you're aware) every two weeks.  The most profitable
activities, in whatever sphere, usually don't.

--
              Mike Sellers      User Interface Team Leader
           mike@isgtec.com      ISG Technologies, Toronto, Canada
              "Actum ne agas" -- Do not do what has been done.
                         Furare tantum ab Optimis