It’s been a hectic day. Partly spent on getting some routine content into the Daily Kos queue by a deadline, done. Another chunk of time dedicated to seeing about a guest post on Slate Magazine. In the works, we’ll see. And the best part spent scheduling two interviews, both for interesting jobs. The first one is an office manager for progressive organization, working with progressive clients, building my own team to do the same, that kind of thing. It doesn’t pay great. So, if I’m not going to make much, my thought is the work should be rewarding, beneficial to the community, and teach me some new, useful skills.
This one does all those things, plus I get to be the head guy, but the pay is really … challenging. So challenging that I can’t say for sure if it would even be feasible. For one thing it’s in downtown Austin not far from 6th Streets, which would mean monthly parking expenses to the tune of a couple hundred bucks and either moving to a more expensive and closer place or commuting every day down a road called 183 and the city’s main thoroughfare called MOPAC, during rush hour. I’ll have to hold out for the maximum possible pay if they do end up liking me.
The other interview is a customer service tech-support job for a company that provides real-time services to other business, it requires higher end skills, solid knowledge of navigating the Internet on hand-held wireless devices and trouble-shooting same for clients. The pay and benefits package is not bad, around 45k with bonuses and taking into account that they pay 100% of the health insurance premiums. Sad to say, if offered me both I’d simply have to seriously weigh taking the higher paying job even though the advocacy position greatly intrigues me.
Can you get around the parking by biking, or a combination of driving/biking, maybe?
Yeah, become a bicycle commuter. It fits with your new physique.
Sadly no, if the office is where I think it is, I wouldn’t be able to ride a bike, not even close. Besides, I think bikes are great, efficient forms of transportation, but even if it were only a couple of miles, bicycles mixed in with rush hour traffic, especially without separate bike lanes, do add up to some danger over time. I know or rather knew two people just in the last ten years who have been hit and killed by cars while riding bikes to work. Hell I knew a guy who was walking to work, on a well maintained hike and bike trail down by Ladybird Lake here in downtown Austin, who was more than twenty feet away from the edge of a road on the trail, when a car came skidding along, over the curb and killed him at 7 o’clock in the morning.
The hubby biked to school for over three years out in California – safe bike lanes everywhere, and drivers who were respectful of bikers. Now that we are back in SA, he doesn’t dare to ride it, even when it isn’t 105 in the shade. There have been several bikers killed or maimed in this city lately. There are actually rednecks who brag about running bikers off the road.
Two memorable comments from the paper – “Why do these bike enthusiasts insist on doing their sport in the middle of the street? I don’t play football there.” and “The only people who ride a bike to work are those who lost their license for DUI or illegals who never had one. Either way, they deserve what they get.”
After reading that, I begged the hubby to hang his bike in the garage and not try to use it until we can move back to Ca.
Go for the job that makes you happy & take the bus.
Riding the bus does not need to be a terrible experience. You can read, doze or listen to music while underway.
Employer should pay for it, of course. If they are really so progressive they will want to encourage the use of public transportation.
Adding: if this is really a progressive organisation but they are in some impossible or too expensive location, making their employees pay for the privilege to work there out of their low salaries, they are clearly doing something wrong and they should be open to criticism about that.
I did the progressive screen interview and I have to admit I got really good vibes about the job and the org from person who conducted it. It went really smooth, very comfortable, very different from other views I’ve been on; the lady was real organic and warm and chatty, nothing like the more distant, cookie cutter initial interviews at most companies I’ve endured lately.
I was quickly escalated up to a final interview with the decider a week or so from now. My main concern remains that it doesn’t pay great, but there are performance bonuses, so my questions in that final will be about that bonus structure and if they do make an offer, how it is structured will be a big part the deciding factor for me.
I found out the reason they’re centrally located is because of logistics, they do a lot city-wide of boots on the ground canvassing to create support for issues and candidates that they translate into votes. They were one of the orgs where individual reps did a really good job of adopting a neighborhood and creating relationships with voters, and went on to turn out the vote in 2012 so successfully.
That sounds like a cool place to work and I’m sure that you would be proud to be part of turning Texas blue.
Will the job continue past the 2014 and 2016 election seasons?