What the hell do I do with this information?

[Undertoad]

I have a 4 year comp sci degree from an excellent northeastern liberal arts college, and one third of an MBA from a major university. I've done mainframe-level systems programming, software engineering on real-time devices, high-level technical support of Unix. I understand every major Internet protocol and many major languages. I can run any Unix or Linux system expertly. I understand almost enough about networking to be a network administrator. I've written entire e-commerce systems for major organizations. In software development I am highly productive. I know Photoshop AND Visio.

I understand the Internet and its culture. I'm practically a net researcher. I can explain what web 2.0 is and why it's important and not a bubble. My website was founded before the web was invented. I've followed all the big trends in usability and design.

In offices I'm always professional and cheerful. A team player who eschews organizational politics. I'm a born communicator; I love to write, especially for the web. Speaking in front of people makes me happy. I've built and managed a team of people successfully. I've worked at both big and small consulting, and at small, medium-sized and large businesses.

I would work for cashews, or peanuts plus equity.

However, there is no call for me. I am unemployable, either full time or as a contractor. I am soon to be weighing my options in convenience store management.

I am a "generalist".

[mbpark]

Undertoad,

I can attest to you working very hard and practically running businesses for people. I really can. Even though I haven't worked with you in over a decade, I have heard your name, and it's always been in good terms. I have never heard anything bad about you. Yes, I do hear a lot about "unemployables" that manage to keep jobs in this area, and other "unemployables" that are working security. Not information security, but store security as in loss prevention.

I have not heard a bad thing about you at ALL. Considering how many former co-workers I have had and have probably pissed off to no end (I'm admittedly not the easiest person to work with), that's a major accomplishment in my book .

I'm working in the consulting racket now, however it's a killer. To stay working and in demand with my customers, I sacrifice a lot every day. I also work late at night a lot more than I'd like to doing data conversion and performance tuning.

The managers I work for are notoriously tough and are proud of it. I've worked with them on HR hires. Upper management at my customer sites focuses hires initially on either band-aid solutions to problems, immediate fixes for really big problems, or extremely in-depth knowledge of a certain area. The latter are brought in to fight the fires that come up when systems fail.

The generalists I do work with are either in the Information Security or Microsoft/UNIX/Oracle system administration/interoperability areas with Active Directory. You have no idea how many corporate admins are not educated on interoperability between Exchange and Sendmail (and I know you know the latter 100% better than I do!).

It's not being a generalist...it's knowing how things interoperate and how to lock them down, both of which I KNOW you know .

Mitch