Tech Support Dept

you know those endless medicare advantage ads you see on tv.
They're a very bad choice. Read this.

Delays, denials, debt and the growing privatization of Medicare Medicare Advantage enrollees report treatment denials and delays in payment, leading to harmful outcomes in healthcare

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gen-z-job-seeker-refused-111141880.html

It was 1979, and I'd been working as a computer programmer about 5 years. I was living and working in suburban Montreal. And a job opened up in Toronto with the Cadillac Fairview Corp, builders of the Eaton Center,, all the Fairview Malls, and a lot of residential development in the US and Canada.

After a brief phone interview, I was given a problem to solve. It involved writing a computer program (in COBOL) to solve, and they wanted to see my solution, and my code, and a test run to prove I got the right results.

Hours later, I had an elegant solution. And I sent it to them.

And they called. Fly down to Toronto, for an interview, meet with us, and then fly home.

My wife was pregnant with our first son. Very close to her due date.

I flew down, and they asked me about my solution. They told me what the IT dept was doing. They told me about the job. Then they offered me the job, on the spot. A good step up in salary. 100% relocation assistance. My wife's parents were living nearby, so we had a place to live while we looked for a home. I started work for them, and they truly paid for everything, including bridge financing while we bought a house, and were waiting for the sale in Montreal to close, giving us the money.

I worked for a wonderful man, Robert H Parker, and later a couple of others. I whipped a poorly written system of programs (that crashed nightly) into the most robust system they had, (I needed to, as it crashed every night, and needed emergency patching to get the job done). And I needed the sleep.

I was named the top COBOL consultant, and I really knew my stuff. I learned how to make code error free. That is still something most programmers cannot do.

I left after 5 years, having worked out my contract. And I was hired by a computer manufacturer. I was on a team that developed a Network Session Exerciser. It's a fancy name for PING, and I eventually was a one man team. It was a terrific time in my life. Even though I had to battle managers who wanted to force me to send out the software before it was error free.

Anyhow, that was a long story, wasn't it.

So I was reminded, by this news story, that the job applicant failed because the "test" would be too much work.

So there is a lesson here. Be the exceptional one. Do the test. Work hard working hard. Be the best. It pays off.

I ended up with a reputation in two countries. When I later moved to the US, and eventually worked for myself, I got a call from FAO Schwarz, the toy stores, to solve a problem no one else could solve in their Indianapolis store near Circle Center. Of course, I solved it, within a couple of hours. They'd spent a great deal on previous techies, none who were up to the job.

Just be exceptional.

Gen Z job seeker refused to do 90-minute task because it ‘looked like a lot of work’—now the CEO who complained about it is being slammed A job applicant refused to complete an aptitude test because it "seemed like a lot of work." It cost them the job, but now the employer who admitted he was put off has come under fire.

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