I just got a new second job at my college, Oregon State U. You wouldn't believe just how hard it was to get a job here. I not only had to compete with international students, but also native students here for just a job, not just tech-related jobs. Out of two dozens job I had applied, about seven are rejection letters, others I didn't receive any replies. My first job was working at the Memorial Union as a food worker. While I enjoyed the work, I still preferred working with machines more than humans so always looking forward to dish room duty, ironically. But currently, I am working as a Web Content Assistant for the Outdoor School of OSU Extension Service. I am thankful for the opportunity working manual labor job, though. It gives me more appreciation for the people working these types of job, and how much they have to put up with.
Now, why did I title this post A different mindset? Well, my job consists of moving contents from the old web page, made in Umbraco, to the new site, made in Drupal. But I am not allowed to touch any codes. Like, I am told to make the new contents closest to the old ones' look under new guidelines of the new site. Knowing this made me realize what my employer meant when they said I was overqualified for the job. So now I can't think of the web in terms of codes, inner structures and workings of the site. Only its contents matter. Doesn't matter if they won't match design in the end, as long as they are brought over under new design patterns. I do my job, afterward recap all I have done back to the project manager. We will have weekly meeting every Wednesday, same as my previous job. In fact, I was the one who brought up the weekly meeting idea, a thing I usually did in my developer routine.
It took some time getting used to this role. It's an odd feeling. Like, I used to be the one behind how the web looked. I was both frontend and backend. The old job's page, I was the one to make changes directly, with the full power of programming. And now, making web with Legos, buttons and clicks. You want to add button, there's a button for that. You want three columns, button. I wasn't even allowed to touch HTML mode to align three buttons to be on the same row. I had to get creative with this limitation, and added an extra three-column row so they are aligned. I can only do this job similar to how most people running a website would do when they aren't as proficient in programming as I am.
I could understand the reasoning behind this limited power. The design is decided by a higher power. So it's wise not to mess with it too much. But hey, a tech job is a tech job. After so many rejections, I'm just happy to take whatever counts as computer job. And who knows? Doing this job well, I might be considered to be put on the Salesforce team, or become one of the developers. That is, if they still have a slot. Working here means a foot in the door of tech employment here. One for my resume.
Life is good.