job news – and responses to authority

Turns out the solar company is looking for someone to do an end-to-end on a sensor <-> webpage system for them. Basically take the meter, which talks to a box which speaks tcp/ip and have it auto update a database which would in turn generate web pages on demand for customers to see their power output. Also he wants it secure and scaleable. He wanted me to give estimates without knowing jack or shit about their hardware. I said $75/hour, half time, two months to a demo, 6 months to final product, and I essentially told the guy that I was pulling that out of my ass. The problem I would see myself spending the most time on is getting the box to do the right thing with respect to the network, but given that I know nothing about the hardware, it’s impossible for me to make any sort of a reasonable estimate. I also have no expectations of this panning out. I’m honestly not sure if I want it to. It’d solve my financial woes, and I’m pretty sure I could probably do it, but this would be taking far more initiative than I ever have in the past, and doing something very much unlike anything I’ve ever done before (independent contracting, assembling bits, setting up servers from scratch, gauging security and reliability of a system, working without direction or supervision). Scary thought for me. If I did it, though, major boost to the self-confidence. But, like I said, probably not going to get the offer anyway. He has my resume, he says we’ll talk before the end of the month.

On the other hand, there’s a low-level help desk nerd job at Cal. Pay scales ranges from 37k to 70k. The thing is, my experience at cmu’s user services lets me check every single box on their list. There would be nothing new, no challenge, and probably still alot of headaches, due to professors who can’t figure out where their computer’s power switch is and want to be called sir, and have their shoes shined, and their server rebuilt yesterday. Plus, there’s all the joys and sorrows of being within a hierarchical authority system. I’ve been down this road before.

On the other hand, they’d be fools not to hire me. I’d probably get much higher pay than I did at cmu, maybe even in the upper echelons of that range. But, it’s not a job I’d keep for long (not that they know that, not that I’d tell them). And to take it, knowing I wouldn’t be there long when they’d expect me to… Well, it’d rub me wrong in alot of ways.

I made a couple of choices in my youth. Early on, I was thinking of becoming a Catholic priest. No joke, I was an earnest, devout kid. Ask me about it sometime. How I’ve changed … and yet not. But I wasn’t content with the answers I was given. Even to questions that have no satisfactory answers (maybe if they’d said that, I’d have listened. I do not know). When college came around, I was considering ROTC. I adamantly did not want to {depend on | burden} my parents in terms of college tuition. But I made a choice not to submit myself to their authority structure, and still to go to the prestigious school (how might life have been different had I gone to the school where I got personal attention in the honors college program instead, and had it all paid for by scholarship. I’ve wondered that from time to time), relying instead on my parents’ generosity. Me now would definitely have made some different choices, but I wouldn’t be me now if not for those earlier choices, made by me then. Perhaps I’d still be wondering how things would have been different had I gone to cmu. Perhaps, perhaps not, but such speculation is essentially irrelevant.