Ah, Economy

[bryant]

Yes, the economy does indeed suck; and I have joined the parade of those who've been laid off. This is far from the worst thing that could happen to me, but it is unfortunate in the short term.

So I'm looking! Key elements: director or managerial level position; network/system operations; gaming industry a plus; Boston area a strong plus. I was Sr. Director of Operations for the Lord of the Rings Online game launch; I know how to do smooth launches of AAA MMOs. I was also Sr. Director of Ops for AltaVista back in the day, so I've got some Web experience under my belt as well. Besides the nitty gritty geek experience, I've run customer support groups for both B2B and consumer-oriented products.

My resume is here (HTML) and here (PDF). Comments are OK, but please send via email.

Comments

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Good luck!

[gentlyepigrams]

Sorry to hear that. Best of luck finding a new position--if I hear of anything it'll be in Austin but we are acquainted with people in your industry.

[bryant]

That is completely OK; Austin is a neat city. We're able to move.

[lynxreign.livejournal.com]

I'm really sorry to hear it.

What technologies are you looking to use? I currently have contact with around 15 agencies in the Boston area and if you'd like the list I can get it to you tonight.

[gentlyepigrams]

I'll ask around. Coincidentally, our local gaming group has people in the industry.

[bryant]

Hah. Yeah, Austin's a great place for gaming -- I know a couple people in Bioware I'll need to talk to.

[bryant]

I'd love the list. My sweet spot is probably SAAS work -- online games are basically software as a service. I'm primarily a UNIX guy, and my best hands-on experience is Web-related. I am the perfect person to hire for a startup who can only afford one ops guy right now but wants someone who can build a group later on. I.e., I can build your infrastructure from soup to nuts: datacenter buildout, DNS, monitoring, procedures, SLAs, etc.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

ARGH. I am so sorry to hear this.

[crs.livejournal.com]

Bleah... good luck!

[lynxreign.livejournal.com]

Great, I'll put the list together and send it to you tonight. They'll likely all have to hand you to someone else in their company 'cause our skill sets don't really overlap, but they should all be able to help you.

And most of them are telling me that the market isn't all that bad right now, it is feeling like the typical beginning of the year lull with many saying they'll have openings in Feb.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

Oh, but here's a thing. You are probably not interested in this at all, or are overqualified, but I've been seeing this job-posting on the website for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts for, like, ever: link (http://www.uscourts.gov/uscjobvac/view/index.cfm?doc=JobVac2008-09-19--11-13-21-506--0.363846153129).

[bryant]

The guy I'm working with right now over at Winter Wyman concurs.

[peaseblossom.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear it! I just asked Jere to look into what they have available at his company; hopefully he can find something!

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

Oh, hell. That's sucktastic. I'll keep my eyes peeled and my ears cocked.

[dcltdw]

Hmpht. How wude!

If you're looking for more headhunters, I had a fairly reasonable discussion with the people at Atlantis Partners a few years ago. Nothing came of it, but hey.

[head58.livejournal.com]

Aw crap.

I'll keep my ears open at Tufts, but we're pretty locked down in a hiring freeze at the moment. Crap.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

that sucks. sorry to hear. i'll keep an eye out for you.

[bdeakin.livejournal.com]

Drag :(

[animal2nd.livejournal.com]

So sorry!

My company has a hiring freeze but I wouldn't recommend the company nor the area in general. I'm afraid I'm not much help other than to offer an ear.

[urnesha.livejournal.com]

:(

[marith.livejournal.com]

Ouch, I'm sorry. Will pass along anything I hear of.

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

Ouch. My sympathies.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear that.

You may want to subscribe to the RSS feed for the Boston Post Mortem Job Board.

Site: http://bostonpostmortem.org/jobboard/
Feed: http://bostonpostmortem.org/jobboard/rss/all/

[my-tallest.livejournal.com]

Sucky!!!

If it's any consolation, the headhunter calls right now are crazy, so there are positions out there. CRAZY. Like, I just got one while reading your post. Well, I'm only one data point, and these jobs are for data warehousing related stuff, but still. Jobs out there is what I'm trying to say.

Financial budgeting systems are very hot right now, for obvious reasons. Claim you know how to set up boxes to run Hyperion Planning/(some other budget app) on Unix. You do, as it's pretty much the same as any app, if more disk.

[my-tallest.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how long is the freeze? In the spirit of sharing: my unnamed university has hiring freezes for most parts through this June, and through June 2010 for a large set of departments I could name (and am in.)