Re: Am I "Overqualified"?

[KarlNyberg <karl@grebyn.com>]

Precisely.  Ask for the world, pay the least you can.  Early on in my
career, I worked at a company you might recognize where the running
joke was that they only hired single people because they didn't have
social lives and would work way more than the normal 40 hour workweeks
without overtime...

There is some rationale for the overqualified (other than the age
discrimination thing), though.  If employers end up hiring somebody
who would be bored by the work, they find that their investment in
that person regarding their local processes and standards, etc. is
more likely wasted when that person finds something more "interesting"
and leaves.  That's not to say that sometimes you don't take jobs that
are the moral equivalent of "flipping burgers", either because it's
all that's available in your region or you REALLY have to pay the
mortgage, get medical insurance, or any other number of reasons, but
in those instances, the employer should realize that it's a limited
time engagement.  (And I use the word employer generically - although
it is significantly more difficult to be a contractor than a serial
employee, even in instances where the work being done is project based
and employers would discard the short-term employees as quickly as
contractors.)  Additionally, many companies (reasonably so, I believe)
don't want to go hiring "at the top" from outside the company - they
want people to "move up the ranks" and don't want to have somebody new
(or a contractor) in a relatively responsible position (of authority)
on a project.

Then again, sometimes one develops a reputation (good, bad, or
otherwise), which, when coupled with the above issues, in the current
environment that just make it not work out and employers need a polite
way of saying "no".  Besides "overqualified", there's "we don't hire
contractors" (at several companies where I've ended up being a
contractor), "we can't pay that kind of money to somebody who works
out of their house" (but if I got an office that I was never in, since
they required me to be "onsite", it would be OK - go figure),
"unqualified" (that was for one Ada flipping-burgers project where the
money was already "wired" to somebody else and they had to find me
unqualified because I underbid the other party).

I like to do work in Ada (and look for those opportunities where I can
and which make sense).  I may not be completely "overqualified", with
my only twenty+ years experience, numerous clients, extensive
publications, recent awards from Sun Microsystems and ACM SIGAda and
all.  But it's a small, small world and there are too many of those
abovementioned kinds of issues in the limited Ada marketplace these
days.  Thank goodness that other markets don't have these constraints
- I'm busily coding away on Java and C on Solaris and Linux from the
comfort of my basement office, making more money than I've been paid
to do any project in Ada in years.

And it beats flipping burgers...

-- Karl --

http://www.grebyn.com

On Jan 31, 3:21 am, ap...@student.open.ac.uk wrote:
> On 30 Jan, 21:43, topmind <topm...@technologist.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jan 30, 1:21 pm, Ed Berard <ed.ber...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Howdy Folks,
>
> > > It seems that lately, I have been turned down for an increasing number
> > > of assignments, because I am "overqualified."
>
> > > I have been doing a good deal of "architecture tasks," as in:
>
> > >    * product architecture
>
> > >    * product line architectures
>
> > >    * process architectures.
>
> > > I do tend towards the more formal "C&C" viewpoints. However, I don't
> > > think that this has much to do with my problem.
>
> > > If you want, you can chck my resume at the bottom of our home
> > > page:
>
> > >    http://www.toa.com
>
> > > Any constructive feedback would be greatly appreciated.
>
> > > Thanks.
>
> > >         -- Ed
>
> > That's a code-word for "too old" or "too expensive". Time to lie.
>
> > Welcome to IT in Amerika.
>
> I agree but this has nothing to do with America. The desire to pay a
> potential hire the minimum one can get away with is universal.
>
> It is time to remove most of your experience from your CV. Although I
> am a techie I have been involved in recruiting and I have seen (and
> had to work with) employers that say "he's over-qualified". I always
> argue against it but it is hard work.
>
>
>
> > -T-