User Profile

[herman_g]

When my father died last year, my niece was designated executor and I was purchasing tickets to fly the 8000 km for the funeral. When I chatted with her she was all responsive. I needed to speak with her about some a specific detail and thought it was just easier to call.She never answered (despite...

[herman_g]

Not wanting to talk on the phone is a bit rude but that is pretty much par for the course with under-35's. They are so used to chatting on social media and you need to ask them it's ok to call them. If you just call them on whatsapp or whatever, they seem to think you've broken protocol and don't answer....

[herman_g]

My UK-based agent (my client is in the Netherlands) mentioned on Linkedin last week that business is the lowest he's seen in 40 years. In 2008, there was no usual new work in the UK at the start of the fiscal year but the phone started ringing mid-August and I had 3 offers in September....

[herman_g]

It took me 2 years to and a move of 2100 km find my first role putting mainframe tapes on tape drives at a major bank. The normal practice was to hire grads as operators and progress to coding back then.

The bank hired interns from two colleges for 10 weeks. The same ones normally came...

[herman_g]

I leave the recruiting to the recruiters. The only superior knowledge I have is that when a country / region makes a really stupid decision - eg. holding the 1995 Quebec seperation vote, it's time to move on because the brown stuff will soon be hitting the economic fan. Montreal has not recovered despite...

[herman_g]

That's nonsense.

Even Greece, where I spend most of my time, has not had a cost of living crisis like the UK. For example during peak energy prices, the government was heavily subsidizing everybody's bills.

My client (a top 5 Dutch bank) is persistently losing contractors to...