Here I am (Giora), attempting to cope with the writing-once-a-month-or-so target. We have gone through several fun weeks since our last post, including a trip to the marvelous Niagara Falls, 10 fabulous days with aunt Hilla & uncle Benny and a lot more. However, I will neither concentrate on the joy and happiness we get from Hadas and Noga, nor will I elaborate about the Pittsburgh shaky spring weather. This post will be different, dedicated to thoughts that have been crossing my mind: about some aspects of the reality in Pittsburgh as I experience it, and about the American society and culture in general. Before even starting, I'd like to emphasize that these are merely my subjective observations, and should be read as such.
As I've written previously, I am still performing the mundane tasks required by my current unsatisfactory job, though I'm almost totally absorbed by an intensive job-hunt. While highly time-consuming and often tedious, this process is also fascinating and provides many interesting insights into the society I live in, as well as into specific companies and technologies. This job-hunt-while-you-work may seem foreign to some of you, but I gather it is a fairly common situation in the States, certainly more than in Israel. The fundamental reason, in my opinion, is health coverage. If you have never lived in America you might not realize how central an issue it is here. Health care is inconceivably expensive in the US, and one's health coverage essentially depends on and is funded by one's employer. Hence, both financially and psychologically, quitting your job is not an appealing option. In order to avoid too lengthy a message, I will skip my detailed opinions about the American capitalism and its healthcare system.
Another reason is that seeking better opportunities is so very inherently natural here. From the MBA information session I attended, through numerous email correspondences to several half-day interviews with prospective employers, I can hardly count the numberof times the word "opportunity" was uttered. Indeed, the land of unlimited opportunities... An aspect which I was astonished at was the extent to which personal "connections" are central in searching for a job here. The conventional wisdom is that sending your resume to the Human Resources of a company is equivalent to sending it directly to the paper shredder. Regretfully, I can confirm this belief - only in very few cases someone called me back without my resume being personally handled by a contact within the relevant company. As aresult, I'm investing huge amounts of energy in establishing such personal connections, utilizing every possible direction - from parents of kids in Noga's daycare, to every person I happen to meet almost in every social setting.
As part of this effort, I found myself in a for-me-surreal situation - participating in a "Networking Event". And no, for thetechies among you, networking here is not transferring data over computer networks, but the actual creation of a human network. That is - meeting people from similar professional fields, with the sole purpose of establishing personal connections with them. Don't get mewrong - it was NOT a job fair, and I was almost the only participant who attended with the main purpose of finding a job. I was also the only one without a suit (which eventually I'll have to buy despite my hesitation of becoming a suit myself), but this is another story:-). Most of the people there were entrepreneurs, executives, investment bankers etc., in the height of a successful career. Such networking events, which are very common here (as I came to discover), are simply the way people do business. In the specific event I attended, there wasn't even a keynote speaker or any other "formal" reason - it was straightforwardly organized so that people would mingle and get to know each other, promoting whatever business goals they have.
Indeed, in Israel we also have similar networks, in a sense automatically created by the military service and greatly accelerated by the small size of society and the aggressive Israeli mentality. However, the blatant manner in which these connections are established in the business world here was new to me. Just so you're not worried about my fate, I somehow managed to overcome the embarrassment, as well as the language barriers, and indeed several personal connections were established that evening...
Further around job seeking, a notable characteristic of the job openings in Pittsburgh (and to my understanding in the US high-techindustry in general) is the strict requirement for very specific specialization. At first I thought this is only the overly pompous way employers word their ads, much like the intolerable way resumesare written here - even if you did almost nothing in your career, you ought to write that you did everything, and that you're no doubt the best. This imposes another difficulty for me - even after feeling sick when reading my Americanized resume, I'm not sure it's distinguishable from a resume belonging to someone with lesser qualifications and experience. You gotta see the resumes here tobelieve -V the best marketing minds in action. Anyway, back to specialization, my inquiries indicate that certainly the market here is much more specialized than in Israel. Despite my belief that being a good software engineer with fine learning abilities are the most important requirements for my target jobs, employers here are often after someone who already did, preferably for many years,things almost identical to what they need. This, obviously, drastically narrows the range of potential jobs for any specific candidate.To a large extent, American high-tech professionals are indeed more specialized and less versatile.
At a first glance you might tend to state that this seems commensurate with the natural tendency to "work by the book". In a sense this is true, and so very different from the Israeli mentality. However, there is another interesting insight here (have I mentioned that job-seeking was interesting?!): the American market sees a significant and important trend in the past few years, a trend called "off-shoring". Simply put, this means that every business task that can be performed as efficiently and for much less money, is transferred (or outsourced or off-shored) abroad, predominantlyto India. For example, many of the huge call-centers operated by American corporations are nowadays physically located in India. Similarly, numerous large software development projects are moving abroad to India, utilizing its extremely-cheap and highly-talented workforce. In this reality, there is little wonder that American professionals needs to be specialized - if you're not, an Indian professional can perform your job, and for less money.
So, as this message has already become too long, I will stop here. I suppose these ruminations of mine are not necessarily of interest for all of you. I'd love to hear any feedback, so that I'll know if similar future messages are of interest to the potential readers.
Love and kisses from Pittsburgh,
Giora
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