I'm depressed. I moved to Berkeley a year ago, but I think this is a year of my life that I have to just write off as a loss. A giant minus on the balance sheet of life. With a few notable high points, most of the year has hovered at a fairly consistent state of sucking. And I can't really blame anyone but myself. I took the job up here despite misgivings, and I moved to this area, leaving all my friends behind.
I need a new job. I didn't think my job could sink a whole lot lower, but when you think that about any job you are likely to be proven wrong. Ironically I was just starting to enjoy myself when I was reminded of why I wanted to quit. I shouldn't get into the details, because listening to someone complain about their job isn't that interesting. It's a job, it's bound to suck most of the time. I've been lucky sometimes, and have had jobs I enjoy. This really hasn't been one of those times.
I had my yearly review. Here the boss sits you down, talks about how you've been, and tells you what kind of raise you'd be getting. In the week preceding the reviews, rumors were buzzing that the average raise was somewhere around 4%. Which is a respectable number. I've gotten higher before, but that was back when I was a real engineer. So I went into my review feeling fairly optimistic. I'd worked really hard the past year, at odd hours and with considerable patience for the oddities of the company. And at a salary that had started low, so I felt it was high time I received a compensating raise.
When my boss sat me down and started going through the comments, they were about how lazy and uncooperative I'd been. They were insulting, and had almost no connection to my actual year of employment. Even he admitted that they weren't an accurate evaluation of my skills, and were months out of date, or simply irrelevant. Which didn't change the fact that those comments managed to net me a big, fat 1% raise. At the news I simply folded up. I started crying, which then turned into sobbing. I couldn't even find the strength to get angry or upset, I was just broken. It was the last of many stings, and to some degree the hardest to take. Because of an inaccurate review, I'd be spending another year financially destitute, trying to stretch my salary out to cover everything.
Amazingly, he urged me not to quit, which was the only thing I was really considering at that moment. Or if not quit, I certainly was going home to search for a new job that night. For reasons why I should stay, he told me I could maybe get another review in a few months. I really wish I had the cash on hand to have quit on the spot. It would be well-earned. But appropriately, since I've been so underpaid all year I don't have anything saved up, especially for the months it would take to find a new job. So I'm stuck here, continuing to work, though I go through my days in a foul mood, essentially working out of necessity. It makes me feel bad for all the hard work I've put in so far, not to mention weekends and overtime. If I'm going to be paid as if I were a bad worker, I almost wish I were one. Instead I do the job I'm there to do. And still I worry about getting fired, though I work for so little and get so much done I can't imagine it's well in their interests to chuck me out the door. (But who knows? Maybe I am a horrible worker. It got me thinking.)
I even feel guilty for my bad mood. It isn't my coworkers' fault. Generally speaking, I like all the people I work with. They all work hard, too. My company is built around the people I work with, the ones who sit there and really make the optics. I never see my boss, and I didn't work with the other people who supplied comments on my performance or figured out what my salary should be. For all extents and purposes, they exist in a different world, one that doesn't even intersect with the one I'm in. I almost work in a different job. My lab runs itself from within, as did the one for JWST. The managers exist in name only, and are really most effective when they're gone. So, except for determining my salary, what they decide doesn't have any bearing on the rest of my day. Which is how it's even possible to continue on with work in the first place. I'm sure I'm not the first person to find their management ridiculous.
But yes, I need to find a new job. I don't want to stay on if I keep getting treated like this. And I'm tired of not making any money. San Francisco is expensive, and I barely make enough to keep my bills paid. It gets old. Back to the job boards. One of these days I'll get lucky, and I'll find a good job again.
In the meantime, I've been thinking about Benji. We had a kind of cool-down phase, after breaking up. We've talked, even hung out a while ago. It was really good to see him again. It was odd, too, like stepping back in time, to before we'd broken up. We talked just like we used to, it was a lot of fun. I've been kind of just sitting still since then. We broke up too suddenly, and needed a chance to come back to things. I don't know where things are now, and somehow I'm not worried about it. Seeing him again calmed all the little needs, silenced the part of me that couldn't stop missing him. It had been a big deal missing Ben, a persistent sadness. With the sadness gone, I don't know where I am. As I told someone today, I don't know if we're easing into something or easing out of something. It's too much work to think about it. I worry that not worrying means I don't like him anymore. But then, I don't know if I'm ready to get back together. Just seeing him again was kind of intense, like hitting a sensitive spot a little to hard. I don't seem to have the intense emotions anymore. It just kind of settled into something else. I don't know.
In completely random news, I decided to register and download the Netflix Prize data. The task is to create a better recommendation rating system, given a user's previous rental habits. The data set is 2 gigabytes of anonymous ratings data. I know that I'm probably not even close to the kind of programmer it takes to make a sturdy algorithm to parse the data, but the physicist in me can't help it. Physics people like data, we analyze data, make shapes out of it, make it show us secrets. We have a talent for sorting out data, and so from a physics standpoint, I see this just like any other data set. The only real problem is the size of the set, it includes 17,000 files, one for each movie, and it takes a computer with some real power to munch a set of files that big. I also haven't coded in a couple of years, so I'm rusty. Though it is nice to have a working compiler on my machine. It just makes me warm and fuzzy knowing I can write and compile a program in C at home.
But so far my biggest challenge is just getting to a point where I can actually do something with the data. It's like contemplating one of those huge stacked sandwiches, and trying to figure out if you pick it up and take a massive bite, or what. This is a really big sandwich. And there's a million dollar prize attached, so why not? A million dollars for a piece of code is do-able. Again, the physicist in me is urging me to work smarter, not harder. A good algorithm should be intuitive and short, and should have good predictive power. But again, I'm probably outclassed by programmers who are far more talented than I am. Still, it's fun to think about. I've had a chance to learn a bit about how recommendations are given from a computer's point of view. There are some interesting academic papers and theories about problems like this. For now I just want to play around with the data.
I need a new job. I didn't think my job could sink a whole lot lower, but when you think that about any job you are likely to be proven wrong. Ironically I was just starting to enjoy myself when I was reminded of why I wanted to quit. I shouldn't get into the details, because listening to someone complain about their job isn't that interesting. It's a job, it's bound to suck most of the time. I've been lucky sometimes, and have had jobs I enjoy. This really hasn't been one of those times.
I had my yearly review. Here the boss sits you down, talks about how you've been, and tells you what kind of raise you'd be getting. In the week preceding the reviews, rumors were buzzing that the average raise was somewhere around 4%. Which is a respectable number. I've gotten higher before, but that was back when I was a real engineer. So I went into my review feeling fairly optimistic. I'd worked really hard the past year, at odd hours and with considerable patience for the oddities of the company. And at a salary that had started low, so I felt it was high time I received a compensating raise.
When my boss sat me down and started going through the comments, they were about how lazy and uncooperative I'd been. They were insulting, and had almost no connection to my actual year of employment. Even he admitted that they weren't an accurate evaluation of my skills, and were months out of date, or simply irrelevant. Which didn't change the fact that those comments managed to net me a big, fat 1% raise. At the news I simply folded up. I started crying, which then turned into sobbing. I couldn't even find the strength to get angry or upset, I was just broken. It was the last of many stings, and to some degree the hardest to take. Because of an inaccurate review, I'd be spending another year financially destitute, trying to stretch my salary out to cover everything.
Amazingly, he urged me not to quit, which was the only thing I was really considering at that moment. Or if not quit, I certainly was going home to search for a new job that night. For reasons why I should stay, he told me I could maybe get another review in a few months. I really wish I had the cash on hand to have quit on the spot. It would be well-earned. But appropriately, since I've been so underpaid all year I don't have anything saved up, especially for the months it would take to find a new job. So I'm stuck here, continuing to work, though I go through my days in a foul mood, essentially working out of necessity. It makes me feel bad for all the hard work I've put in so far, not to mention weekends and overtime. If I'm going to be paid as if I were a bad worker, I almost wish I were one. Instead I do the job I'm there to do. And still I worry about getting fired, though I work for so little and get so much done I can't imagine it's well in their interests to chuck me out the door. (But who knows? Maybe I am a horrible worker. It got me thinking.)
I even feel guilty for my bad mood. It isn't my coworkers' fault. Generally speaking, I like all the people I work with. They all work hard, too. My company is built around the people I work with, the ones who sit there and really make the optics. I never see my boss, and I didn't work with the other people who supplied comments on my performance or figured out what my salary should be. For all extents and purposes, they exist in a different world, one that doesn't even intersect with the one I'm in. I almost work in a different job. My lab runs itself from within, as did the one for JWST. The managers exist in name only, and are really most effective when they're gone. So, except for determining my salary, what they decide doesn't have any bearing on the rest of my day. Which is how it's even possible to continue on with work in the first place. I'm sure I'm not the first person to find their management ridiculous.
But yes, I need to find a new job. I don't want to stay on if I keep getting treated like this. And I'm tired of not making any money. San Francisco is expensive, and I barely make enough to keep my bills paid. It gets old. Back to the job boards. One of these days I'll get lucky, and I'll find a good job again.
In the meantime, I've been thinking about Benji. We had a kind of cool-down phase, after breaking up. We've talked, even hung out a while ago. It was really good to see him again. It was odd, too, like stepping back in time, to before we'd broken up. We talked just like we used to, it was a lot of fun. I've been kind of just sitting still since then. We broke up too suddenly, and needed a chance to come back to things. I don't know where things are now, and somehow I'm not worried about it. Seeing him again calmed all the little needs, silenced the part of me that couldn't stop missing him. It had been a big deal missing Ben, a persistent sadness. With the sadness gone, I don't know where I am. As I told someone today, I don't know if we're easing into something or easing out of something. It's too much work to think about it. I worry that not worrying means I don't like him anymore. But then, I don't know if I'm ready to get back together. Just seeing him again was kind of intense, like hitting a sensitive spot a little to hard. I don't seem to have the intense emotions anymore. It just kind of settled into something else. I don't know.
In completely random news, I decided to register and download the Netflix Prize data. The task is to create a better recommendation rating system, given a user's previous rental habits. The data set is 2 gigabytes of anonymous ratings data. I know that I'm probably not even close to the kind of programmer it takes to make a sturdy algorithm to parse the data, but the physicist in me can't help it. Physics people like data, we analyze data, make shapes out of it, make it show us secrets. We have a talent for sorting out data, and so from a physics standpoint, I see this just like any other data set. The only real problem is the size of the set, it includes 17,000 files, one for each movie, and it takes a computer with some real power to munch a set of files that big. I also haven't coded in a couple of years, so I'm rusty. Though it is nice to have a working compiler on my machine. It just makes me warm and fuzzy knowing I can write and compile a program in C at home.
But so far my biggest challenge is just getting to a point where I can actually do something with the data. It's like contemplating one of those huge stacked sandwiches, and trying to figure out if you pick it up and take a massive bite, or what. This is a really big sandwich. And there's a million dollar prize attached, so why not? A million dollars for a piece of code is do-able. Again, the physicist in me is urging me to work smarter, not harder. A good algorithm should be intuitive and short, and should have good predictive power. But again, I'm probably outclassed by programmers who are far more talented than I am. Still, it's fun to think about. I've had a chance to learn a bit about how recommendations are given from a computer's point of view. There are some interesting academic papers and theories about problems like this. For now I just want to play around with the data.