Latest / He's Hot but Something's Off... / HHBSO 121: Graduating into the Great Recession (story time)

Transcript

HHBSO 121: Graduating into the Great Recession (story time) · He's Hot but Something's Off...

0:01
Hello, editing Joey here. I forgot to say in the podcast
0:04
that next week we will not have a podcast episode because I will
0:09
be in Taipei that week. But the week afterwards, two
0:12
weeks from now, normal service will be resumed for the Patreon
0:16
subscribers. Don't worry, I will have, as
0:19
always, the uncut episodes even for that week where I'm away
0:23
prerecorded for you. And now on to the show.
0:31
Hello, Welcome to He's hot, but something is off.
0:36
OK, It's finally getting a little slightly chilly in Los
0:42
Angeles. Chilly by Los Angeles standards.
0:45
I think the high today was looking at my phone, 68°.
0:49
And Oh yeah, it was the first time in a while that we got some
0:55
rain yesterday. Now, one of the reasons I'm
0:59
paying the Los Angeles tax is for it to be sunny about 95% of
1:06
the time, and that's basically what we have.
1:09
However, sometimes I am nostalgic for rain because I
1:17
grew up in Vancouver. So basically Pacific Northwest,
1:22
same weather patterns as Seattle, so a lot of rain.
1:26
I remember during the college years when I was living in
1:32
Vancouver, it was like almost every like so many days where it
1:38
was just completely cloudy, kind of dark and grey outside and it
1:44
would be a drizzle or like a light rain more often than not,
1:49
especially from October, starting from October into
1:56
February, March. So for a pretty good chunk of
2:00
the year, I just remember, OK, waking up and you know, I have
2:05
to wake up early anyways for college because I always had an
2:10
8:00 AM class or I would start work at 8:00 because I had this
2:15
part time job on campus. Well, I guess we should talk
2:17
about that more, but I never really talked about that job.
2:19
But I had that for so many years.
2:20
But I would get up at around just after 6:00 AM most days
2:28
would get ready. I would need to leave the house
2:31
around 7:00. If I left the house around 7, it
2:34
would take almost always like 40 minutes.
2:39
Like door to door and to the parking lot in the college, I'd
2:45
be driving for about 40 minutes and then that would give me just
2:49
enough time to like walk from the where, where whatever
2:53
parking garage I was in to whatever building my first class
2:57
was or the building where I had the part time job.
3:02
So, but like so many days, I also remember, yeah, so driving
3:06
there, you, you woke up before sunrise.
3:08
So it's already dark and half the time it's like a little bit
3:11
of rain. It never rains super hard
3:13
usually in Vancouver, but it's always just like light drizzle,
3:16
this constant light drizzle during the fall and the winter.
3:19
It's a little depressing. And obviously having to walk
3:22
between buildings on campus most of the time you do need to have
3:28
an umbrella with you. You know, those umbrellas that
3:31
fold down to be really compact. So I always had one of those
3:36
with me in my my school bag, whatever bag I have because it
3:42
could rain at any time. You just really don't know.
3:45
I have so many memories of just walking on campus between
3:51
buildings between classes or to get between class and work and
3:55
just walking around in this great drizzle.
3:58
So that was like 6 years of my life.
4:00
Anyways, yeah, I did work on campus for forever.
4:05
I got the job even before I my first day in college, like even
4:10
before I went to my first class, I secured a job on campus
4:15
somehow. So I worked for the IT help desk
4:19
at this college and it was kind of a great set up because it was
4:28
a college on campus jobs. I worked for university and
4:31
because of that they actually had regulations and rules on how
4:39
many hours the university can employ active students.
4:43
At most we could only work I think 12 hours per week was like
4:47
the limit. There were a few departments on
4:50
campus that hired students and they all had this rule.
4:54
So I think the library I think maybe at a lot of I don't know
4:58
about other colleges but I feel like not the library, the
5:00
bookstore, sorry. I think the bookstore is a
5:02
popular type of place on most campuses where students could
5:07
maybe get like a part time job. Yeah.
5:09
So I remember, yeah, I knew that at the bookstore at that
5:13
college, there were a lot of part time students that worked
5:16
there and they had this like 12 hour maximum.
5:18
So it was kind of nice because I didn't have to commute between
5:24
class, between school and work. And a lot of the times the
5:29
shifts at work were just filling up the space between my classes.
5:36
But sometimes you would have like a weirdly big break.
5:39
So there were some days where OK, 8 to 9, I had some lecture
5:44
and then my next thing, my school next class might not be
5:48
till 1:00 PM. So from 9:00 to 1:00, I had just
5:53
time to kill. I guess most people would study.
5:55
But what I would do is I would try to cram a a shift in there
5:59
and because the help desk hire all students and everyone was
6:03
basically in that same situation, they were very
6:05
accommodating with, oh, you can have like an hour shift here and
6:09
like a 90 minute shift here. You could even have like a 30
6:11
minute shift if you wanted to. So at the beginning of every
6:14
semester, you know, they have a system for everybody to
6:16
basically submit their availability, like their course
6:19
schedule. And they were actually very
6:21
accommodating doing that. Yeah.
6:23
And I did that for my whole undergrad.
6:27
I had that set up, which was really, really nice and I made
6:31
some really good friends. I think that's the longest job,
6:35
one of the longest jobs I've ever had in terms of between the
6:39
your first day there and your last day there.
6:41
Obviously like times when school was out, when I had semester
6:45
breaks on on internships, I wasn't going to that part time
6:48
job at the help desk. But yeah, like I work till I
6:53
think the first, my first week in college through my first
6:56
year, I started working there. It took me 6 years to do my
6:59
degree but I had a couple years of internships and then I
7:03
remember when I graduated. I graduated and I'm really
7:05
dating myself now. For those of you that are
7:07
curious, I graduated in 2009. For any of you that knows
7:14
anything about 2008, 2009 was a Great Recession.
7:18
And I remember the last, my last year, during my last year, I
7:23
think so it was in 2008 when the recession started.
7:27
All the people I knew that was in like the same cohort as me,
7:31
we're all in like the final year of of our degree.
7:34
We're all just talking about. There wasn't a panic per SE.
7:38
But obviously when you get to your final year in college, just
7:42
like when you get to your senior year in high school, you start
7:45
wondering, OK, what am I doing when I graduate?
7:48
You know, a lot of high schoolers, they are eyeing
7:51
college or some sort of post secondary education, you know,
7:57
but when you do your undergrad, the kind of typical expectation
8:01
is, oh, let's go, you know, like we're graduating from college,
8:05
so we're going to go get a job. It's not as popular to go
8:10
straight from your undergrad and directly into getting like a
8:13
master's degree. But when I was in my last year
8:16
in your college, there were a lot of talk with almost the
8:20
people I knew that, oh, we're going to, oh, they're going to
8:23
go get like a master's degree. They're just going to stay in
8:25
school. And it wasn't so much like a
8:29
bleak thing. It was just like, well, let's
8:30
look at all the options. Quite a few people, you know, at
8:35
when it came to the time when we were looking for jobs, when we
8:38
were, when we had maybe about one or two semesters left the
8:44
semesters to try semesters for like 4 months.
8:46
You know, people were looking for jobs and the job market was
8:48
not looking great. So I think for a lot of the
8:51
people I knew at that time, they were didn't want to do a
8:56
graduate degree. They didn't necessarily wasn't
9:00
their first choice to pursue a master's or to do that fifth
9:03
year or whatever. The job market wasn't looking
9:06
good. So if they couldn't get a job,
9:08
then they would, you know, just try to do a graduate, do
9:12
graduate studies. And I always feel like maturity
9:18
wise, I was always a few years behind my actual age.
9:24
I felt like when I was 18, not in terms of like my necessarily
9:29
my behavior and the way I acted. It's not like when I was 16, I
9:34
acted like a 13 year old. But I think in the sense of I
9:40
don't, it's AI don't know how quite to explain it, but
9:43
maturity, not in the way that I not in terms of my behaviors,
9:48
but I guess in terms of the way I perceive what I should be
9:52
doing in the world, like my place in society, if you will,
9:58
When we're supposed to be graduating that last year in
9:59
college, I was still very much in school mode.
10:02
That's all I knew. I, I never really knew.
10:06
I did a part time job and that was fine, but I just didn't,
10:09
wasn't even really thinking that seriously about, oh, what was I
10:12
supposed to do? I knew that, you know, you go to
10:14
elementary school, then you go to high school, then you go to
10:16
college and then you graduate. But I guess the concept of a
10:22
full time job was so foreign to me that I wasn't even sure I was
10:30
entertaining it even, you know, so when all these people were
10:35
talking about, oh, they're going to go do graduate degrees, you
10:39
know, like do a fifth year, they weren't really going to go into
10:42
the workforce. I was like, oh, like, what about
10:45
me? What should I be doing?
10:47
And it was just like a complete blank, no idea what I was going
10:50
to be doing. I was in computer engineering.
10:53
And we did have some of the big one or two of the big tech
10:58
companies did do recruiting days or recruiting sessions on
11:03
campus. That's pretty popular with, you
11:05
know, some large companies is to, you know, go to certain
11:08
universities and try to recruit some new grads.
11:12
And I think Microsoft did did come and I think I did do like 1
11:17
little interview. They just had a whole bunch of
11:20
like short little interviews, like a pre screen almost.
11:23
I really feel like everything I learned, I'm supposed to know
11:29
how to code. I took a saw, I was in the I was
11:34
supposed to have a master's of I do have a master's of computer
11:37
engineering and my specialization was software
11:40
engineering. I'm supposed to know how to
11:41
code. I can't.
11:42
I don't think I can code anything.
11:44
I really don't think so. But anyways, we were graduating
11:49
and then I basically wasn't, I don't think I was even really
11:54
looking for for a job honestly. So I graduated, I didn't have a
11:58
job. And what happened right when I
12:01
graduated was, you know, it was the summertime graduated my last
12:05
semester was done in like April. And then this help desk part
12:10
time job that I had, I've been with them for six years now.
12:13
They happened to have a contract position open where it was full
12:19
time, but temporary full time contract position that I was
12:23
able to get was I was like one of the more senior, you know,
12:27
students that had worked for them because it told me six
12:29
years to my degree. I've been with them for six
12:31
years. And a few of the other people
12:36
that also used to be part time students, they had actually
12:39
graduated into full time positions at that help desk.
12:43
So there was like a help desk supervisor coordinator.
12:47
And that person was someone I worked with as a part time
12:51
student. We both were.
12:52
And then we also had like one or two other people that were full
12:55
timers that I also work with. We were when we were all part
12:58
time students. So I managed to have something
13:02
to do. So I ended up that summer being
13:07
I don't want former title was it was like learning and
13:09
development or something like that.
13:10
So basically being responsible for general training and Q and
13:15
AQA just quality assurance of like the agents, like the
13:18
students that work there. So did that for the summer for
13:22
four months, and they extended that another four months until
13:25
the end of 2009. And then what happened was they
13:31
didn't need that person anymore. So, you know, to ring in the new
13:35
year. I had this degree that, you
13:38
know, in the middle of a recession that, I don't know,
13:42
wasn't particularly useful. And I didn't really have a job.
13:45
And luckily, I was still living at home.
13:47
And Chinese parents don't really mind their kids living at home.
13:51
They kind of like it. It's not like in the Western
13:54
world. So it was fine.
13:57
You know, I didn't go out of state or out of my hometown for
14:00
university. I spent a few months, like 3 or
14:05
4 months at the very beginning of 2010 just being job.
14:09
I had no idea what I did those the first three or four months.
14:11
I think I was just doing nothing because I was, I do remember
14:15
trying to look for some local entry level IT jobs in Vancouver
14:21
and I think I got a a couple two or three offers, but the pay was
14:29
so low and for what reason? I just thought this is such a
14:33
low amount of pay even though I didn't really have a reference
14:35
that I don't think I should be taking this job.
14:38
So I end up not doing it and I didn't I guess at the point I
14:41
didn't feel the need to have my full time have a full time job.
14:46
Yet somehow going into the spring of 2010 back at that IT
14:53
department where I used to was doing all the help desk stuff at
14:56
the college, they somehow had someone needed someone in their
15:01
shipping and receiving for the IT department.
15:04
So IT department had a help desk and they also had like other
15:06
parts of IT somehow. I don't know, I don't even fully
15:10
remember how I got this, but they just needed someone to help
15:16
with shipping and receiving. Like they had this little
15:19
loading dock and there's like a desk at the loading dock and
15:22
just needed someone to like help with basic shipping receiving
15:24
stuff. I don't even really remember how
15:27
I got the win of that or like how my name came up, I
15:32
completely don't remember. But I ended up doing that.
15:34
I ended up doing like shipping and receiving, barely any
15:39
shipping and receiving. We barely shipped and received
15:41
anything. I knew nothing about shipping
15:43
and receiving. As you remember that this like
15:44
little tiny loading dock, think of it as like a garage
15:48
basically. So there's like a garage door
15:50
that opened and closed in case a truck needed to like unload
15:52
something. And we didn't really get many
15:54
shipments, but there was a little desk right beside where
15:58
there's like a garage door open and closed.
16:00
And I remember watching a lot of the World Cup, because that was
16:07
right around the time the World Cup was on in the spring of
16:11
2010. So I remember at this little
16:14
computer at this little desk, and there was, like, no one else
16:18
that worked in shipping and receiving.
16:19
That's what they just needed someone to be able to, like,
16:22
answer the door whenever a truck dropped by.
16:26
That was me. Yeah, I just did.
16:28
That was an easy job. Once in a while, I have to,
16:29
like, tape up some boxes and tape up some labels or create a
16:33
shipping label. It's really easy memory, though
16:36
very specifically, I have this photographic memory.
16:39
This was also the time that just before I got that job doing that
16:43
ship of receiving, it was done a full time job.
16:45
It was some some temporary thing.
16:46
But just before I got that gig, I got more serious about looking
16:51
for jobs. And I have recalled when I was
16:57
before I graduated that there was some, some of these big tech
17:00
companies that came on to campus to recruit for, primarily for
17:04
software engineering or Suis, if you will, they're trying to
17:07
recruit for software engineers. But I knew that that was not the
17:12
thing I was going to do. I spent six years doing this
17:14
degree to basically find out, do the software engineering degree
17:18
to find out. I don't want to code.
17:20
I don't like it. I'm not very good at it.
17:23
It's not my Forte. But I have a piece of paper.
17:26
I have a computer engineering degree, like the piece of paper
17:28
that says, oh, you have this engineering bachelor's degree.
17:31
It's basically not that the piece of paper was what was
17:36
useful. What I actually was supposed to
17:38
have learned in class was not. But anyways, it told me six
17:42
years to figure out trying to study this, that I don't want to
17:45
do this, but I knew I liked it and I wanted to be in IT.
17:48
And all my work experience has been in IT.
17:50
Basically the two years of internships that I did, most of
17:54
them were IT related, doing IT support for internally for
18:00
various offices for various companies.
18:02
So that was good experience. That part time help desk job at
18:06
the university was really helpful experience.
18:08
You know, those couple of contract positions with the IT
18:11
help desk right after I graduated, it was also a helpful
18:13
experience. But like I had a decent resume
18:14
for someone who's a new grad in terms of the amount of IT
18:18
support experience I have, it's actually pretty decent.
18:22
So I thought, why don't I just throw some resumes at some big
18:27
tech companies In a way, I guess it took some amount of bravery
18:33
or self believe, maybe a bit of delusion, but you know, throwing
18:38
a resume out is cheap. So I remember being in my
18:41
bedroom at home, you know, and just looking up, OK, what kind
18:45
of entry level IT support positions would like at IBM have
18:50
or a Microsoft or a Google or whatever.
18:54
There were positions out there like that.
18:56
So I just kind of sort of threw out some resumes.
19:00
And I think I told this story before, I don't know which
19:04
episode, the podcast, so I won't tell it in its full entirety.
19:07
I'm sure I've talked about it. I just, we've done too many
19:10
episodes for me to know exactly what it is.
19:12
I think that's just a source function, but I think it's
19:14
search the transcripts. But anyways, that was when
19:18
Google somehow picked up on my resume.
19:21
And Long story short, you know, I did the phone screen with
19:25
Google. I still remember exactly where I
19:28
was when I did that initial, that initial phone screen with
19:33
Google. And I also remember that first
19:35
like interview that I have is you do a phone screen with the
19:37
recruiter. Usually then you'll do the
19:41
initial interview where we specifically remember like exact
19:46
this kind of picture, like this picturesque memory, this
19:51
photographic memory of I was in like my I, I kind of had two
19:56
bedrooms at my mom's place because, you know, we were still
20:00
in the same house from before my brother and sister had moved
20:05
out. This by the time I was
20:07
graduating college, my brother and sister had moved out of the
20:10
house already. And the house that I grew up in
20:14
in Vancouver, it had 12345. It has seven bedrooms.
20:20
It was 3 levels including the basement, 2 car garage.
20:24
It has seven bedrooms. It had 123 and like 5 bathrooms.
20:29
But the the basement was like a, the basement could be like a
20:32
little suite in itself, but the basement had like this giant
20:36
living room and then two bedrooms and also just like
20:39
extra like space. So it was like a pretty massive
20:43
house and my parents bought it because my parents bought it
20:47
when we were all like young kids when we're all in school.
20:50
And also when early on when we have the house, we did have like
20:55
some family friends that would stay with us every once in a
20:59
while. So early on in when we have that
21:02
house, we did use up kind of like the space the house needed.
21:05
But obviously, as my brother and sister got older and they got
21:09
like, you know, they, they moved out by the time it was like
21:12
2010, there were so many like free empty rooms.
21:16
I just took up two of the rooms. So I have one room that was just
21:19
my bedroom. And then I took my brother's old
21:22
bedroom as, as the office space. It was actually a really nice
21:26
set up. So I know we're on a tangent,
21:27
but this is exactly what this podcast is about.
21:30
So I my the bedroom that I slept in was my original bedroom from
21:33
when I was like really young. And then when I was young me and
21:39
my brother shared a bedroom. We had AI think it's called a
21:42
Jack and Jill bathroom. So basically it's a bathroom
21:44
where there were two doors and the 2 doors LED directly into
21:49
two separate bedrooms. So me and my brother we shared a
21:51
bedroom. So this Jack and Jill bathroom,
21:54
it basically had along one wall, you have the toilet in the
21:58
middle and then two identical vanities and counters.
22:03
So obviously one side was for me, the other side was my
22:05
brother, and then on the other wall across from the toilet was
22:08
the bathtub. By the time I graduated college,
22:11
my brother no longer lived at home.
22:13
Actually, no, my brother was was living at home.
22:15
He moved down to the basement, so he had the entire basement to
22:18
himself. So I was on the top level.
22:20
So his old bedroom, that was the Jack and Jill to my bedroom.
22:24
I took that over as my office. So I remember when I would wake
22:27
up, I would wake up and then if I wanted to just get over to
22:30
like my office, I would just cut across the Jack and Jill
22:33
bathroom. So I basically kind of had this
22:35
like really nice. I didn't have to like exit out
22:37
from runway into the hallway to go into the other room.
22:40
So it's kind of cool. Yeah.
22:41
But this office space, I set it up as office slash living room.
22:44
So I had like a little flat screen TV in there.
22:47
And I also had a little couch, little sofa, like a love seat,
22:51
smaller sofa across from the TV. And then against this like
22:55
window at the front, I had my desk.
22:57
So anyways, I remember I was in this interview with Google, the
23:03
first popular interview after the pre screen.
23:05
And I'm sitting at this desk in this particular room, which is
23:09
now my office, which used to be my brother's bedroom in front of
23:13
this like giant window that faces the front of the house.
23:16
And I remember like being on the computer, like kind of sort of
23:21
semi Googling some of the things that the interviewer was asking
23:25
me. But Long story short, I remember
23:28
the first day that I was supposed to start that shipping
23:31
and receiving job. It was April of 2010, being in
23:38
the building where the IT department was and the IT help
23:43
desk, the help desk for the IT department was in the basement.
23:47
So that's like there's the IT help desk room.
23:49
So I remember it was like morning time.
23:51
I just gone there. I was supposed to like go see a
23:54
particular person that I knew from working there about like
23:57
how to get started. It's like my first day for this
23:59
job and I remember I was just like saying hi to various people
24:04
that I knew, but I was working there for six years.
24:07
So there's all these people not just in the help desk but also
24:09
in like some adjacent departments that I knew.
24:11
So we just like chit chatting and whatever.
24:14
And then I remember getting a phone call from Google.
24:19
We had this little hallway that was at the bottom of a staircase
24:23
in the basement of a building right outside the room where all
24:27
the help desk, all the help deskers were.
24:30
And it's like a small little, like weirdly shaped corridor
24:33
hallway in the basement of a building in college.
24:36
And there's like no traffic there.
24:37
Like there's no lecture halls or students wouldn't wouldn't go
24:40
down there. It's only like a few IT rooms
24:42
down there. So that hallway was usually
24:44
empty. That was the exact day, exact
24:47
area where I got the car from Google that I got the job that I
24:50
applied for them. So yeah, I did do the shipping
24:53
and receiving for them, but it's kind of weird that the first day
24:58
of that shipping and receiving job was also the day that I got
25:00
the car from Google that they extended me to offer.
25:03
The job was down in California. So basically I was doing the
25:07
shipping and receiving for, I don't know, it's like April,
25:10
May, June, July for like for like maybe three or four months.
25:18
And it was so weird because I remember, OK, I got I was there
25:21
for the first day of this like shipping.
25:23
We see my job that same morning. I got the call from Google and
25:26
like obviously I was going to accept it.
25:28
Like Google was trying to hide me.
25:29
Google offered me a job in 2010 when it was the recession was
25:36
like just over at that point was like, how could I say no?
25:40
Even in normal times I wouldn't, I would say yes, but I remember
25:45
the first thing I kind of sort of had to do when it whoever was
25:49
supposed to like my manager for the shipping receiving thing.
25:52
One of the first things I had to tell them that morning was I
25:54
just got a call from Google. They hired me and I start in
25:59
August in California. That was like the way I started
26:03
off this like shipping recent job is telling them, I don't
26:05
know what you want to do with me.
26:07
I'm going to kill some time until August and I'm going to
26:09
bail out to work for Google. Not with any attitude, but it
26:13
was just like, hey, I had to be upfront, like, hey, you know,
26:16
there's some developments here career wise.
26:19
Yeah. But I really fond memories of
26:22
working at that particular help desk.
26:24
There were a few spicy phone calls I remember getting.
26:27
There were a few phone calls earlier on when I did that help
26:31
desk job and we had to take phone calls so we each had our
26:37
little headset that we would plug in at whatever station we
26:41
sat down to at work. We did have a walk up area so
26:45
people can like walk up and sometimes we help people in
26:47
person or we would just be answering tickets because people
26:50
could e-mail us and then we would be doing tickets.
26:52
I remember earlier on in the help desk career when I was not
26:56
as experienced and it was my first time doing phone support,
27:01
that there were a few times where the customer just came in
27:04
a little too hot it or it was like a more advanced problem and
27:08
the customer's upset not at me, but at the problem where I did
27:12
have to hand it off to someone more senior for them to take it.
27:17
So it's very, very Tier 1. You know, eventually after like
27:21
a few years, I became the more senior, one of the more senior
27:25
help deskers. And then there were quite a few,
27:28
you know, more junior people that had joined the team.
27:32
And I was, I became the person that sometimes, you know, took
27:35
those escalations, if you will. They did have like a tier
27:39
system. We had like tier ones and tier
27:41
twos. One of the most memorable things
27:45
I remember from that job is we had these phones and like, we
27:49
had these like fancy phone systems, like like a call centre
27:51
phone system. And we all have to like log into
27:53
the phone and a lot of times multiple people would be logged
27:56
in because we have multiple help deskers, right?
27:58
One phone would ring and then the next one is supposed to
28:00
ring. It's supposed to be some sort of
28:01
like round Robin system. The way that the incoming calls
28:04
are supposed to be distributed to all of the help deskers that
28:08
were active and locked in at the time.
28:10
What you would usually do is you're on a phone and you're
28:13
helping someone and then the phone call ends.
28:16
What we're supposed to do is we're supposed to basically take
28:20
a little bit of time to finish typing up the ticket.
28:24
And they all taught us this and they, like said, it's something
28:27
we have to do. But when you're actually on the
28:28
phone helping someone, you don't always have time to type up
28:33
everything about that call into the ticketing system.
28:36
So what we would do is the call ends, there's a little button
28:41
called not ready on the phone. What you're supposed to do is
28:45
when you're done with the call, you press that not ready button
28:50
and then your phone wouldn't ring because you're on not ready
28:54
status. So for as long as you're on that
28:57
not ready, then your phone won't ring.
28:59
Then you know, OK, I can take a minute or whatever to like
29:02
finish typing the ticket. If I needed a bathroom big that
29:04
I can go to the bathroom. You know, you're still, you're
29:06
still logged in, but you're just like unavailable.
29:09
Your phone wouldn't ring when you're on when the not ready
29:11
button is pressed. Apparently some of the help
29:15
deskers found that you could game the system with this not
29:19
ready button. So let's say there were two help
29:22
deskers logged in. So me and one other person,
29:25
phone call #1 comes in, I get it.
29:27
Then the next phone call is supposed to go to them.
29:30
The third phone call goes to me and then we just go back and
29:32
forth, right? What this little trick some of
29:36
the help deskers found was that if they double clicked on the
29:41
not ready button, they would not get the next phone call.
29:47
OK, and you can do it really, really subtly.
29:50
It's like the phone doesn't beat when you press a button.
29:52
You can like really subtly, just like double tap on the button.
29:56
You can stay on not ready because one of the metrics that
30:00
they looked at was how much time during your shift you're on not
30:04
ready. If you had a one hour shift and
30:08
you were on not ready for like 30 minutes, like it's a metric
30:11
that they can very easily pull. So you can't just stay on not
30:13
ready. So I think the supervisor
30:18
management people didn't really know about that trick until some
30:24
of the helpdeskers complained about, hey, I don't seem to be
30:29
getting as many calls as whoever.
30:30
When I had to shift with this other person and we were the
30:32
only two people there and we were like sitting side by side,
30:34
it seemed like I was getting more calls.
30:37
Apparently they looked into it more, but I think the management
30:41
people weren't aware of this little trick.
30:44
They eventually knew what they're looking for when they
30:45
dug into it. They did fire I think a couple
30:48
of people for that. I didn't even know about that
30:51
trick until like that whole bombshell had came out somehow
30:55
because I think then eventually they warn people, hey, we know
30:59
about this trick and we're looking for it, so don't do it.
31:02
But I think that was after they fired someone.
31:05
Is it wrong that I felt no remorse that this person got
31:08
fired? But I think I think if you were
31:13
trying to very actively do less than your fair share of the work
31:20
in AI, think malicious is a pretty strong word.
31:25
I think there were some night shifts.
31:26
So I think eventually when the later years we open till like we
31:31
were open till like 7:00 or 8:00 PM.
31:33
So there are they had to keep some people on.
31:35
And a lot of the times they would have two people on the
31:38
night shifts and the person who got fired, it was during a night
31:44
shift that they were doing this in particular.
31:47
So basically the other person got shafted.
31:49
I don't know. I never felt any sympathy for
31:56
the person that got fired. Maybe do I even remember who it
32:00
is? I mean, there, I've worked there
32:01
for so many years and you know, students kind of go, but
32:03
students only really are doing their degree for four years
32:06
usually. So like, you know, this kind of,
32:11
I think it was someone that not that I didn't like them, but I
32:15
had no reason to like them. And if, if that makes any sense,
32:21
I don't think I knew that person super well.
32:24
I don't know, I think maybe I just thought he was like a
32:26
little weird or something like that.
32:28
But I thought absolutely no remorse or any sort of sympathy
32:32
for the person that got fired. I kind of, I kind of sort of in
32:35
a way kind of liked it. But it's like I don't want to
32:37
work with someone that is going to cause me to get more tickets
32:40
on phone calls than the other person.
32:42
But I was still very straight laced.
32:44
I was a good worker at that time still.
32:46
Anyways, I want to do my share of tickets.
32:49
And, you know, I had a really good relationship with, you
32:51
know, quite a lot of the people there.
32:53
You know, we were friends and for example, like with a bunch
32:56
of them, I actually took a trip during college to Tokyo and they
32:59
invited me and I went with them. So they were also friends as
33:02
well. And we had like a really great
33:03
dynamic because we were all students and we were kind of
33:06
sort of in that same boat. And it was cool that they hired
33:09
all students to do to help desk. So yeah, I got on really well.
33:13
So, you know, I was just like, Oh yeah, let's like divide up
33:16
the work and, you know, kumbaya and whatever.
33:20
But to find out after they got fired that you're kind of
33:24
throwing other people under the bus for your benefit in a way.
33:28
Malicious is a strong word. But I think technically is I'll
33:31
intent. Isn't that what malicious is
33:35
anyways? Yeah.
33:36
So that's, that's interesting that that was a part of my that
33:40
was a part of my, of my early, early adult years that I don't
33:44
think about very, very much. But, you know, I was very
33:46
thankful that for having that job, that that part time student
33:51
help desk job. But I'm sure if I didn't have
33:55
that job for as many years as I did, Google would not have hired
33:59
me. Because I think one of the
34:00
reasons Google hired me was for an IT support position was
34:05
because I had so much IT support experience.
34:09
You know, because I did that and I had two, two of my 3
34:12
internships were internal IT support for offices for two
34:18
different companies. My third my the third of my 3
34:23
internships, I did a internal corporate web casting gig, which
34:28
when they will talk about that, I think that podcasting gig had
34:32
a few interesting stories. And I think I can tell now.
34:35
Yeah. But because, you know, I had
34:36
like 8 months doing internal IT support for this one company,
34:40
another eight months of internship doing international
34:42
support for this other company. And I was doing the like help
34:44
desk thing kind of on and off for like 6 years.
34:47
And then I also had, you know, this like 8 month contract right
34:50
after I graduated with that same, you know, college IT help
34:54
desk. I felt like, you know, I had a
34:56
lot of that experience. And if I didn't do those
34:58
internships, if I didn't have this kind of part time on campus
35:02
IT job, you know, Google wouldn't have hired me.
35:06
It was very strategic for me to do as many internships as
35:10
possible because one of the very few smart things I did during
35:13
college was I somewhat had this smart idea to like, oh, let's do
35:20
as many internships as possible to get as much experience as
35:23
possible to build up a resume so that when we graduate, that will
35:27
be a relative advantage to other people that didn't do
35:29
internships. I don't know where I got that
35:32
idea from, but it was like one of the smartest things I've ever
35:35
done, like Barnett, one of the smartest decisions I ever made
35:39
was to participate in the internship program.
35:42
But the internship was a complete optional thing.
35:45
It wasn't like pushed on you. You kind of had to take your,
35:49
you kind of have to take your own initiative to do it.
35:52
And somehow I found that out early to like want to do this
35:55
program and you only by default you would do 2 internships and
36:02
you would do 2 and sometimes they were just four months, like
36:06
the the length of 1 semester. Somehow I got it in there early
36:12
on to be like OK no I want to do like long 8 month internships
36:16
that would spend 2 semesters and I want to do as many as possible
36:20
and you could do a third one if you wanted to knowing that it
36:22
would push back your graduation date.
36:26
So my original graduation date if I didn't do internships I
36:29
would graduate, would have graduated in 2007.
36:33
I think the recession, did it start like right after that
36:37
2008? I don't remember the dates, but
36:39
it was a little bit of misfortune, you know,
36:42
graduating, you know, after the Great Recession had hit.
36:47
But it was somehow like a stroke of like ingenious that I had
36:53
been maxing out on work experience.
36:56
You know, I was either doing an internship full time or when I
36:58
was doing school I was doing this part time job, you know,
37:03
basically I was always employed and getting experience.
37:06
So that was like a really great advantage for me.
37:09
And I definitely, I definitely know that if I didn't have all
37:13
that experience, I wouldn't have been able to get that Google job
37:16
and my life would have been very, very different.
37:19
And I wouldn't be sitting to you.
37:21
I mean, I would be alive obviously at some point, but I
37:23
want to be sitting here in my condo in Los Angeles talking to
37:28
you about this right now. Sometimes I think if just one
37:32
little thing, if I just didn't get that job, that one little
37:35
thing had taken a different turn.
37:38
You know, sometimes you wonder like, oh, what if like this
37:40
didn't happen or this one other thing didn't happen?
37:42
What if this turned out a little differently?
37:44
What if I didn't get that job offer?
37:47
I really feel like getting the job offer from Google changed my
37:52
life so much because I moved down to California.
37:55
I had a job in tech in Silicon Valley and just from there, like
38:01
my life would be so completely different.
38:03
But I guess everybody kind of has a has points in their life
38:09
where they look back at that point where they're like, oh,
38:11
what if like this turned out a little bit different?
38:13
My life would be on a completely different trajectory.
38:17
All right, so that was a little trip down memory lane as an
38:22
additional, let's get out my plugs up at the top.
38:25
But I never do let me get better at plugging stuff.
38:27
It's not really in my natural, it's not my nature to do plugs,
38:32
but I do have the Gay Cruise and Travel podcast, which is now
38:36
sponsored by just Joey Travel. So please go follow me there.
38:41
All the travel related cruise with this stuff is always on
38:44
that podcast now and it's a bit of fun over there.
38:48
I just posted an episode this week about the top reasons why
38:53
cruisers might miss the initial boarding for a cruise and all
38:57
the ways to avoid that and avoid being a statistic to make sure
39:01
that you get on the cruise that you booked.
39:04
And we also have my Just Joey Travels Instagram.
39:07
So Just Joey Travels, the travel advisory business has its own
39:11
separate Instagram. Please go follow it.
39:13
Please, please, please, please, please should I do something
39:15
special for people, for listeners of this podcast to
39:18
follow my Just Joey Travels Instagram?
39:22
You know what? If you go follow my Just Joey
39:24
Travels Instagram and you let me know about it somehow, maybe
39:30
I'll give you, I'll do something for you.
39:33
I don't know. I'll give you a discount to my
39:35
Patreon. I'll do something.
39:37
Just let me know and I'll try to reward you in some way.
39:40
All you have to do is follow Just Joey Travels on Instagram
39:44
and then let me know, like comment down in the YouTube
39:48
comments for any of my podcasts. That was so just to just to say
39:51
you did it. So like, hey, hey, Joey, I
39:53
follow your just Joey travels Instagram and then I don't know,
39:56
I'll do something like let me know what you want.
39:58
I won't just do anything. I'm not for hire like that.
40:02
OK, But like I'll yeah, what do you want?
40:07
I think I can do free trials on my Patreon.
40:10
Let me know what you want. And the first obvious thing I
40:13
can think of is why don't I give you a little free trial to my
40:16
Patreon or like a heavy discount on it?
40:19
And then you can, you know, get access to the uncut episodes of
40:23
this podcast. And then you can also access at
40:26
one of the high tiers, you can access all the travel vlogs that
40:29
I've done. There are dozens, I think by
40:32
now, dozens of travel vlog videos that are up there now.
40:36
Yeah. So go follow just so we travels
40:38
on my Instagram. I'm trying to build that up and
40:41
then just let me know somehow that you followed it and then
40:44
let's get you some free slash super cheap access to my Patreon
40:49
so that you have a little extra content to consume better the
40:53
next time. Bye all.