Part II:

Okay, maybe that monitoring work would not
be very important.

But, maybe the company is facing some
challenges in routing, scheduling,
planning that, as is commonly the case,
boils down to linear integer optimization,
right, known to be in NP-complete. So, an
impressive example might be a 0-1 integer
linear program with, say, 40,000
constraints and 600,000 variables. Then,
asking for a solution that is optimal,
down to the last tiny fraction, might be a
bit much, but coming within 1% of
optimality might be nice. So, suppose Joe
came withing 0.025% of optimality? Might
want to chat with Joe about any problems
in looking for good combinations.

So, Joe also put that work on the 1000
resume copies he sent.

Ah, usually the real data is arriving in
ways that are not fully predictable. So,
there is a stochastic process and want
to know some of what the results will be.
Once Joe was in touch with some people in
touch with the US Navy, and they wanted an
evaluation of how long the US fleet of
SSBN missile firing submarines would be
under as special scenario of global
nuclear war but limited to sea. From an
old B. Koopman report and some common
sense assumptions, Joe saw a continuous
time, discrete state space Markov process
subordinated to a Poisson process, wrote
and ran Monte Carlo software to do the
evaluations, and had the work please the
US Navy and be sold to a leading US
intelligence agency (could say which one
but then would have to ...).

Joe put that on his resume, too.

Then Joe got a call back, and they wanted
to know what he knew about C, Python, and
R.

Joe said that he'd one some C programming,
but the language was so primitive that
it was usually next to useless for his
work in analysis. For R, that was just
simple, standard statistics, and the work
he'd done is statistics was beyond what R
offered and he wrote his own code. For
Python, that was similar -- instead he'd
written his own code.

The interview died.

Okay, there's a fundamental lesson here:

Fundamentally, in US business, the
attitude remains much as back in a Henry
Ford plant 100 years ago: The company and
the company managers know more than any
candidate employee, about the work, how to
do the analysis, how to write the
software, and an employee is there just to
add routine labor to what the company
already knows. So, a resume that mentions
work beyond what the company knows
conflicts with this fundamental attitude
and results in rejection.

In US mainline business (there are
exceptions elsewhere), they are just very
strongly against hiring as an employee
someone able to do something the company
can't already do.

So, dumb down the resume.

Then inside the company, fit in, don't
expose real potential.

Then look for a good, new problem, say,
needing analysis such as in the OP.

Then, largely independently, after hours,
make some progress through prototype code
and some impressive real output from real
data.

Then develop some high level foils, go to
the relevant manager, and give a short
talk.

Then expect 'incoming' attacks, vicious,
whisper campaigns, sabotage, etc., from
jealous people. Then discover if the
company really wants good analysis or
not. If so, likely will have to transfer
to a much better position, say, on staff
of the CEO. Else, will likely soon get
FIRED. No joke.

If say anything about such analysis before
actually have the results, then people
will either laugh or attack. The
situation is quite general, say,

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at
you, then they fight you, then you win."

Mahatma Gandhi

So, what the heck to do?

Sure, face the market directly. Do a
startup. Pick your own problem, do you
own analysis, write your own code.

Back to it. Work for today: Use a .NET
collection class for a fast, easy to
program way to find duplicates. So, a Web
server, a Web session state store (wrote
my own with just TCP/IP sockets, class
instance de/serialization, and two
instances of a collection class instead of
using, say, SQL Server or Redis), SQL
Server, and two specialized back-end
servers, 18,000 programming language
statements in Visual Basic .NET in 80,000
lines of typing.

Going live is getting to be very visible!

Let's see: The work is intended to
provide the world's first good, a must
have, solution for a problem pressing for
nearly everyone connected to the Internet.
To start, if I can get on average one user
a second, 24 x 7, then, ballpark, I should
get monthly revenue of

2 * 8 * 5 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / 1000 =
207,360

dollars. Now, in the OP, what annual
salary ranges where they talking about?

The core analysis work? Silicon Valley
has more hen's teeth than entrepreneurs
who would understand that work even if I
explained it to them, and many more such
entrepreneurs than such VCs!

If you have something and explain it,
then, if it is really bad, no one will
like it. But, curiously, if it is really
good, the same, no one will like it.
Remember what Gandhi said. Or, easier and
much the same lesson, just go back to
kindergarten and to Mother Goose and
"The Little Red Hen" -- same stuff. The
hen wouldn't get hired, either.