My new blogs

I have created two new blogs, replacing this one:

• Yet Another Opinion is a blog containing more “serious” writing (RSS feed is here)
• My personal blog, in which I write about whatever I feel like writing (RSS feed is here)

See you there, or there, or wherever.

Changing things up

I’ve decided to retire this blog, as I want to separate my writing into fun stuff and more serious/informed writing. This blog falls, uneasily, between the two. Besides, I want to come up with a better name for a blog than the one I’m using here.

I’ll be creating one or more blogs very soon to replace this one – as soon as I do, I’ll post a link here.

Thanks to all six (or so) of my regular readers and commenters – I appreciate your taking the time to add your views.

“Perspective career for your”

Here’s the first few paragraphs of a spam message I got today (reprinted verbatim):

Hello!!!

I am manager of “Trust Expert Company”

We work since 2004 with most of the popular worldwide companies.

Our clients sell or order from eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, walmart and other suppliers and auctions. But unfortunately Russian sellers can’t receive PayPal money for sold items to United States and many US sellers not offering shipping to other country then USA.

We would like to offer perspective career for your.

The average salary will be around $1000 / Monthly. We suggest you to familiarize with our current vacancy. We invite citizens from other countries for cooperation. Functions of the regional agent: receiving and cashing out payments from our customers and then transferring funds to our clients.

Obviously, this is another variant of the Nigerian bank scam. When I searched for “Trust Expert Company” on the web, I discovered that these scams are called “419 scams”. This is because Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code deals with fraud. I didn’t know that; live and (occasionally) learn.

Maybe they do get paid

A followup to my last post: out of curiosity, I searched for more information on IBM’s student intern program, and found this page.  According to this, “Competitive salary is paid based on the number of credits completed toward a student’s degree.” So maybe the student who gets hired for this job will get paid after all.

But now I’m confused. (Which is not that hard to accomplish, actually.) If the job pays money, why are they looking for an “intern”? Don’t interns work without pay?

Then again, according to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary (I love Firefox’s search capabilities!), an intern is “an advanced student or graduate usually in a professional field (as medicine or teaching) gaining supervised practical experience”. This definition does not imply that the intern always goes without pay.

The morals of the story? Words can have multiple or ambiguous meanings. And, sometimes, I don’t necessarily know what I’m talking about. (You have been warned, dear reader.)

16 months for free?

I’m looking for work again, which means that I’m receiving regular email notifications of job postings from many of the leading job sites. One of these job postings is from IBM – they’re looking for a student to serve as a 16-month web developer intern.

This intern must be registered with her university or community college and must have completed at least two years of school. He must also be planning to return to school immediately after completing the internship.

According to the job description, the intern’s duties could include:

• Web development for internet and intranet sites/portals
• Consultation with the customer on requirements and website design
• Performance and usability optimization
• Development or enhancement of website graphics/animations
• Development / update of website documentation

And the qualifications are:

• Operating Systems: Unix, Windows
• Programming Languages: Java, JavaScript, SQL, Perl, CGI, HTML
• Applications: Flash, Dreamweaver, Front Page 2000, Adobe Photoshop
• Strong written and verbal communication skills

I can’t help but think that a person with all those qualifications would be able to find work somewhere that actually pays real cash money.

 

Of course, there is the following carrot:

 

One of the purposes of our student programs is to identify students who, based on mutually satisfactory work term experience, would be suitable candidates to join IBM and start a career following graduation.

 

I don’t know much about IBM’s current employment practices, but I’m assuming that IBM does not guarantee jobs for its interns – or, even if they landed jobs, that they would get to keep them if there was a market downturn.

 

Don’t get me wrong: I can see how an internship can be mutually beneficial, under the proper circumstances. Learning things in a real-world setting is often better than learning in a classroom. And an organization that takes on an intern often has to spend time teaching this person – there is a real cost there. But asking someone to work for 16 months for no pay seems a bit much to me.

 

Even more disturbing: suppose this becomes an industry-wide trend? In this nightmare scenario, no one would be able to get hired anywhere without being willing to contribute a few months of free labour up front. And why would anyone want to hire a contract writer, programmer or web designer if a large pool of free talent is available?

A random act of kindness

I was at the corner of Broadview and Danforth at about 6 pm today when I saw a woman rush up to a man standing at the corner. She was carrying an umbrella – the man had left the umbrella in a restaurant on Danforth Avenue. The woman was clearly a waitress who worked at the restaurant, and she must have run about half a block to catch up to the man and give him back the umbrella. She then sprinted back to the restaurant to get back to work. Wow.