HallmarcDotNet

Thank You!

Thank you for visiting my résumé!

This letter is meant to fill in the details that a résumé doesn't generally cover and help you understand:

• What I can do for you or your client,
• how I got where I am now, and
• what I expect from you.

What I've Done Before

For more than fifteen years I have been a technical leader, programmer, writer, and system administrator with projects ranging from simple web page authoring and print newsletter editing in the beginning to distributed systems comprising hundreds of servers on four continents. Over those years, I have demonstrated success in multiple deployments and publications, with many systems still in production, supporting thousands of concurrent users and transactions, and many dozens of articles still referenced across the web and in libraries around the nation. As a spokesperson for education associations and related political causes, I have been quoted in the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Sacramento Bee, the Riverside Press Enterprise, and other papers.

Some things that have fallen off my résumé — because they are so far in the past and/or unrelated to my current career — are stints as:

• Boy Scout camp staff
• Answering service operator
• Gardener/groundskeeper
• Warehouse supervisor/forklift operator
• Noon Duty Aide/lunch monitor
• Vacuum cleaner salesperson
• Mobile DeeJay

The point in listing these jobs being that I've paid my dues already, and learned more than a few things the hard way.

What I'm Doing Right Now

As of Monday, March 1, 2010, I am available immediately for your project! However, for two years, before that I was the Unix Administrator Lead at St. Anthony's Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri, where I was totally responsible for all Unix servers and SAN devices, as well as project management for power, cooling, and other infrastructure enhancements to our primary and secondary datacenters. These are life-critical systems, meaning downtime should be measured in seconds per year.

Before my tenure at St. Anthony's, at MasterCard Worldwide, I built and maintained a system configuration and monitoring solution that manages more than twelve hundred Unix and Windows servers on four continents in a 24/7/365 SLA environment. The system uses Perl, Mason, Apache, Tivoli Management Framework, and the Korn Shell to provide a web browser-based system management interface for their operations centers in support of more than a trillion (with a "T") transactions annually. I did this for nearly three years.

What I'll Do in the Future

I am always willing to consider new challenges. So, yes, I am looking for a good career move, including direct-hire, right-to-hire, contract, and corp-to-corp. However, I do have a few ground rules...

Stand out from the Crowd

What can I say? I'm popular! In any given week, I receive at least a half-dozen inquiries from recruiters. Unfortunately, some of these contacts are very clearly made by people who have not bothered to actually read my résumé (a keyword search does not reveal all), and (unfortunately) most of those recruiters won't read this, either.

As a result, those recruiters probably won't receive a helpful reply.

Fortunately, you are performing your due diligence, and I am grateful! So, when I receive an email (preferred over a phone call, thank you) from someone who has made a minimal effort to understand my career history and aspirations, I make every effort to respond promptly and with sufficient information to move forward, if the position interests me.

Four things you should be aware of:

1. Location, location, location

   I'm currently living and working in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. Please do not ask me to move unless either you or your client is prepared to offer an appropriate compensation package. I'll expect a written employment agreement stipulating specifics, not just a handshake deal, too.

   As a U.S. citizen, I am authorized to work anywhere in the United States. Other than remaining in St. Louis, my preferred destinations are:

   • San Francisco, California (or the nearby Bay Area);
   • Portland, Oregon;
   • Boulder, Colorado (or the nearby I25 corridor);
   • the Lake Tahoe Basin and Reno, Nevada;
   • Vancouver, British Columbia (appropriate visa required);
   • Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario (appropriate visa required);
   • the Florida coast and nearby U.S. or British possessions and protectorates (appropriate visa required if non-U.S. territory);
   • Costa Rica, Panama, and Guyana (appropriate visa required);
   • Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England (appropriate visa required).

   I'm also quite open to a telecommute/up to 20 percent travel position based out of my home or a local office at very reasonable rates.

2. Compensation Expectations

   Over the past few months, I've been asked about my "salary requirements". When I explain what I'm looking for, some recruiters have said, "No problem!" while others have balked. The reasons my compensation expectations are justified can be summarized as: market value, client cost savings and revenue enhancement, and risk mitigation.

   For comparison, let's look at my most recent employment experience as a full-time, "permanent" team member in a healthcare environment. I had significant responsibility for patient-care-critical systems, infrastructure, and storage devices. Additionally, I frequently interacted with vendors, decision-makers, and representatives from departments all over the medical center. For this, my pre-bonus compensation was more or less in line with the market. In addition, I received such benefits as medical, dental, vision, life insurance, AD&D insurance, unemployment insurance, disability, pension plan and 401k match, a generous training allowance, and various other benefits.

   When exploring other opportunities, I have a general rule on compensation: the shorter-term the project I take on, the higher my hourly rate. Anything less than a month, I bill at my highest rate. One to three months is more reasonable. Three to six months more reasonable still. Six or more months, then we get into ranges typical for a senior employee. If your project is particularly interesting, I'm pleased to negotiate a lower rate -- but don't expect much wiggle room for run-of-the-mill business.

   Moreover, because the market values my skills, I am competitive with my peers in my specialized technical niches and the business needs that they serve. Hiring a Unix consultant will quickly rack up much higher costs than you will find with an individual like me. I routinely see contractors and consultants of similar skill and experience charging in excess of $285 an hour for substantially the same services I can provide.

   Because I bring significant skills and experience with me to a project, they either save my clients money through efficiency gains, or enhance the profitability of their companies by increasing their ability to sell products and services. The reward for my contributions should be commensurate with those savings or profits. I believe in being a partner with my clients, not a human resource to be exploited.

   Finally, shorter projects entail more risk. If the project is over in a month (or three, or six, or twelve), then I need the additional cushion to tide me over until the next paycheck. In the current recession, that could be several months. In the meantime, I do what I can to help hold the economy out of a deflationary spiral.

   In short, the additional risk for me and the additional value for my clients more than justifies the rate I am seeking.

3. Ex Officiousness

   In particular, I could be interested in the following types of opportunities (in preferential order):

   • Technical leadership – strategic direction and management in a technical environment (small company CIO, medium company IT director, large company engineering manager, team lead, project manager, etc.)
   • System architecture – integration of multiple systems into a cohesive whole or design of new systems (information architect, system architect, etc.)
   • Web development – middle-tier and browser- agnostic UI development (webmaster, web developer, UI designer, etc.)
   • Sales engineering – pre- and -post-sale support (sales engineer, implementation engineer, etc.)
   • System administration – Unix and Linux system administration and configuration management (sysadmin, configuration manager)
   • Technical communication – documentation for multiple audiences, both technical and non-technical (technical writer, technical editor, contributing writer, publications manager, etc.)

   I am most emphatically not a DBA or data architect, although I am comfortable building applications around databases that have already been developed by someone who knows how to do it right.

4. Tools, techniques, and trade secrets

   My preferred development environment is vim on Linux. I also prefer the LAMP stack on the server side, building Perl (and PHP as appropriate) applications with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, or DB2 backends, served by Apache. Further, I do AJAX/XmlHttpRequest DHTML/XHTML/HTML/XSL frontends, JavaScript, and related development work. However, I am an equal-opportunity developer and support the rights of those who lean toward the churches of EMACS and Eclipse, or even heresies like Microsoft Visual Studio, (If you didn't get that joke, just move on...)

   Yes, I am proficient with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash and Fireworks (although I prefer to avoid the last two), as well as all of the usual office productivity tools on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix platforms.

   Further, I can specify, design, build, harden, document, and maintain complex, multi-tiered, multi-architecture systems from the bare metal while referencing only the documentation and Google: storage, application server, DB server, and interfaces.

   Finally, I speak both Geek and Suit: I can make a fully buzzword-compliant business case and still hold the respect of a technically-oriented audience (although probably not at the same time in all venues).

What I expect from you

Professionalism is paramount. If you wish to open a productive dialog with me, I expect that you will have already read this open letter.

Please do not ask me about my willingness to relocate if you are unclear about my requirements. (Listed above, thanks.)

Also, please do not ask me about my willingness to accept a short-term contract if you are unclear about my compensation requirements. (Again, listed above, thanks.)

Further, if you are contacting me about an opportunity in the Saint Louis area, but you are not located in the region, please be prepared to tell me what you and your firm have to offer that will demonstrate to the client company (and me, of course) that you are a better supplier of technical resources than a local competitor is. I will not work with an out-of-the-area firm if it has no prior connections with a local client, or some other rationale.

Having said all that...

For More Information

I can be persuaded to provide a tailored résumé to you, if you would be good enough to send me a detailed position description.

In the meantime, as you have probably already seen, my generic résumé is available

Please feel free to contact me by email if you'd like to discuss a specific opportunity.