veiled4allah

it's official

I received the official offer letter for becoming a full-time employee and will be faxing it in on Monday, inshallah. The salary they've offered is about $400 a month more than what they were paying me as an independent contractor, plus I get medical, dental, vision, vacation, and 401(k). :D Up till now, I hadn't mentioned who it was that had hired me, since I wasn't sure of the protocol, but now that they're bringing me on as a regular employee, I don't think it needs to be secret anymore. I'm working for Six Apart, the company that makes the Movable Type blogging software, and runs the TypePad hosted blogging service. In case you're curious, Six Apart just received $10 million in venture capital this week and that's why they're hiring. My head is still spinning a bit at how quickly they're bringing me along. A lot of high tech companies seem to be very reluctant to bring people on as employees and have to pay benefits and so on, they like to keep them as contractors. From what I've seen in the last two and a half months of working for Six Apart in various capacities, they treat their people well and that's something you can't really put a price on. Since I work from home, I don't deal with my co-workers face-to-face, but I'm in pretty constant communication with my supervisor throughout the day, mostly via email. She's been terrific in helping me on the learning curve, in keeping me up-to-date on things, and in looking out for my interests with the company. So that's another way I feel I'm working with and for some good people. All praise is due to Allah SWT for giving me this wonderful opportunity. :totallycool:

yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great news on the personal front. It's been just about a month since I started working under my full-time contract. The company would now like to hire me as a regular employee when my contract finishes next month!! :invasion: I'm so happy! :blob: I haven't received information yet about benefits or other details, but just the security of being an employee rather than a contractor will be a big step forward. When I told my mom, she was so happy that she was literally almost speechless. It's been such a long time since I had this much stability; when I was employed previously, it was part-time only. :D :blob: :) ;)

update

Today was my first day working my new full-time job. It looks like there's going to be plenty to keep me busy, al-hamdulillah. The best part about working from home is that there's no commute. ;) After spending all day at the computer, I need to get away for awhile, so I might be posting less frequently than usual. We'll see how it goes, inshallah.

it's official

I am now employed full-time. Yay!! :blob: I'll be starting my new contract on September 1 and it runs through October 31. :D

moving forward

The details are being worked out about my full-time contract. I'll be making about $14 an hour and the contract covers a period of two months to start with. The money is exactly what I've been hoping for in a full-time job to be able to live comfortably; I can and have lived on quite a bit less, and most of the jobs I've been applying for this year pay less, so it's very nice! Hopefully, I'll be starting in the next week or two once we get all the details worked out. I'll be expanding my tech support duties and moving into customer service work, handled by email. Inshallah khayr.

could this be the start of something good?

Promising developments on the career front. My trial period as an independent contractor was through today. I've been in discussions with them and they would like to expand my duties and are even floating hints about a full-time position as an employee. That would be so awesome!! I'll be continuing to do the same work while we come to an agreement on this. Inshallah khayr. :blob:

busy working

If all goes well, I just made $75 today. I finished my training on my new job yesterday and today I completed successful responses to three support tickets. There was a backlog that had built up while I was doing my training so I got to do a whole bunch at once and I expect that the pace will slow down after this. There's one more that I need some further information from the user in order to continue but after that it'll all be new support tickets that come in. I'm really happy about this, al-hamdulillah. It may not be enough to live on yet, but it's money coming in and they are definitely interested in having me continue to do this for them as much as there's demand for it. The money I make from this will help a lot, inshallah. :invasion:

things are moving right along

I haven't worked (i.e., for paid employment) in the high tech field since 1999. But from 2002, I've been keeping my hand in, off and on, by helping out at the Movable Type support forums (do a search on username almuhajabah). And I followed that up with my Movable Type Tips blog. That's what led to my current engagement. Funny how that goes. I signed and faxed my contract yesterday so until August 17 I've got a source of income, and hopefully we'll sign a new contract after that to continue the arrangement; this is just a trial period to see how it works out. I'm still not sure if I should announce this on my blog, so I'll continue to remain mysterious. I am doing technical support work and get paid per successful completion of support requests. I'll be doing some training today, practicing responding to test requests but hopefully by next Monday I should be ready to jump in with some real paying work. Like I said before, this won't be a lot of money, but it'll help and my parents (who've been largely supporting me) are relieved at the lightening of their burden. Let's hope this this might lead to something more than just part-time contract work, or that I'll finally get a response to all those resumes I'm sending out, inshallah.

a hopeful sign, inshallah

As some of my long-time readers may remember, I'm unemployed. I'm still sending out resumes every week but for the last month or two I just haven't been getting any response at all. There are hardly any paralegal jobs or even a lot of jobs at all in law offices. The administrative assistant and similar jobs that I've been applying for I guess they don't want me for. It's pretty depressing. The economy is supposed to be picking up, and we've actually seen some major employers hiring again in this area, but mostly in manufacturing jobs or hiring back people they had laid off previously. The "pink collar" job market doesn't seem to have picked up yet. I still don't have real employment, but I've picked up a temporary contract for the next three weeks with the hope that it can become a longer-term contract if the trial period works out well. I was doing some contracting of a very different type earlier this year but that fell through. This arrangement looks better and I know the company pretty well (I'm not sure yet if I can mention details about the job so for now I'll remain mysterious). This time I'll be self-employed rather than a contract employee like I was for the other company, which gives me more leverage. Got to do some reading, though, to learn about how I'll need to handle filing my tax returns, and other legal issues. This probably won't bring in more than a couple hundred bucks during the temporary contract period, but as my mom says, it pays for groceries and it's money I don't have to take out of savings or borrow from my family so it's a step in the right direction :) Inshallah khayr.

still trying

I had another job interview this morning. The job isn't as interesting as some of the previous ones I've interviewed for, it's for an administrative assistant position at a trucking company. Mostly a lot of clerical work processing and filing job applications. But the pay will do, and it would be a steady job. So here's hoping. I also may have a possible lead on some contract work that might bring in a few extra bucks a week, but it's very much in the air so I can't really say anything about it yet. Inshallah khayr.