Living in the Future

Tag: Job

  • Proposition 22: Employment Insurance

    This is one of the worse questions of the bunch in that the VAST majority of people probably have no idea what is even required to qualify for Employment Insurance. Even just a list of the simplest stipulations of the program would help voters decide whether they think it should be easier.

    Since what I would actually prefer is that everybody could qualify for employment insurance (a basic income, if you will), obviously I think it should be much easier, but I also spent about 6 months on EI about 4-5 years ago now. Having a work contract end and no job lined up immediately after, I was one of the ones who easily *qualified* for EI, but one of the worst aspects of the program is that any money you make while on EI needs to be reported, and you get correspondingly less from EI as you start to make money.

    This is incredibly annoying because it literally gives you no incentive to work at all unless you’re making more money than the maximum you’re eligible for under EI, which when you’re trying to pick up work part time here and there, I can tell you is always less.

    Summary: All in all, this question is missing a lot of information, especially for a commonly misunderstood program like EI.

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  • Why Basic Income is so Important

    Canada’s prior experiment with a BIG [(Basic Income Guarantee)], the Mincome experiment in Manitoba in the 1970s, found that a BIG did not cause people to stop working — with two important exceptions. The first was women with infants at home, who effectively used the BIG to purchase maternity leave. We should expect a different response from women in modern-day Canada, where maternity leave benefits are much more extensive. But where child care and other supports for working parents are insufficient, we may see responses to a BIG that will show us those cracks in the system.

    The other group whose employment levels decreased under Mincome was teenage boys. A closer look reveals that with a basic income guarantee, male high school students were more likely to make the decision to stay in school until graduation. Given the Ontario government’s aim of increasing graduation rates and the need for a highly educated population, it will be important to understand how people’s labour market decisions interact with other important decisions, like the decision to improve their skills and buy a better long-term future for themselves and their families.

    > We Should Applaud Ontario’s Plans To Pilot A Basic Income Guarantee | Laura Anderson

  • Applying for a Job (January 6)

    Applying for a Job (January 6)

    Some days, you spend hours with your face right in front of a computer monitor, but at least there are ends-of-day like today that make it mostly worth it. I would love a job where my Chemistry, science and technology skills and knowledge are required, but my job search focus right now is in communications and media.

    Below is why I think I would be a good candidate for a media/communications focused job. If you know somebody who is hiring that might be looking for somebody like me, please share this with them, I would REALLY appreciate it! Thanks!

    This letter is in reference to the job posting at [REDACTED] for [REDACTED]. I am submitting this letter because I think that I, Rob Attrell, am an excellent candidate for the position. The combination of my experience and education will show that I have the requirements needed to excel in the role.

    Going to university, I wasn’t aware how important communications would end up being to me. I studied Chemistry at the University of Ottawa from 2006 to 2011, completing Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. On its own, that doesn’t qualify me for the position, but it was a formative and necessary experience.

    I learned many important skills during my studies and research that lend themselves to work in communications. First and foremost, my projects over the course of these degrees have given me a lifelong appreciation for the time and detail that goes into professional work. While preparing my Master’s thesis, I wrote and edited several major documents for both print and electronic media. That includes a textbook chapter, several academic papers, and two thesis documents. This work typically took many weeks or months of planning and working with colleagues to come up with a polished final product.

    Of course, in addition to the tangible work done during my degree, there are many other important skills I learned and improved at while in graduate school. Time management, self-motivation, problem-solving, and multitasking were critical to my success in class and in the lab. To this day, I apply those same attributes in all of my work, both at NSERC in my last full-time position as a planning analyst in Corporate Planning and Policy, and with my extra-curricular and freelance activities. I am constantly adapting my skill-set and looking for new and interesting things to learn, and projects and problems to tackle.

    For the last 4+ years, since the end of my degree, I have been devoting a whole lot of my free time to learning the principles of communications. I write regularly for my own interest on a personal blog, and I been creating more varied media like video and podcasts for the last 2 years as well. I am very involved in social media, and I’m always quick to try out the newest social medium or technology. I have been studying and learning web design, user interface/experience principles, and programming to maintain all the sites I’ve been managing since 2011 as well.

    I have spent a lot of time in the last few years working on strategies to gain traction in social media, as well as coming up with consistent branding and developing high-quality content. I also currently write freelance every weekday morning for a Canadian technology website called MobileSyrup, which enables me to keep up with technology and writing, while also working on ongoing projects and developing my skills.


    Thank you.
  • How to Turn the Page (on Life)

    How to Turn the Page (on Life)

    I’m not sure there is a wrong way.

    This week, I learned that I will be entering a new chapter in my life. For those of you who are following me on social media, you will probably already be aware that I found out that my contract at NSERC, where I’ve been working for the last 11 months or so, will be ending come October 9th. That means that as of right now, I have a little over one week left to find work to replace that job.

    Obviously, there are a number of negative ways I could choose to look at this. It would probably be very easy to sit back and let the bad news occupy my mind and bring down my mood. But I’m not going to do that. I’ve been here before. Since I left school in 2011, I’ve been unemployed 3 times, the longest time for 6 months (most of that by choice). The work I’ve done since I left school only vaguely relates to the work I am doing since I finished my degree.

    Mostly, the reason I’m not worrying about new ventures is that things are going REALLY well in my life overall. Despite this looming potential unemployment, my life is mostly looking way up, which is something I’m really happy about. I just got married to the girl of my friggen dreams, I’ve lost almost 20 pounds since the beginning of July, I’ve got a large number of very satisfying hobby projects, and I have an amazing network of friends who have been incredibly supportive of everything I do.

    I was very briefly hesitant to talk about my soon-to-be unemployment as publicly as I have, but in the many years since I basically became an open book to the world socially, my life has only gotten way better. And the reaction and help I’ve gotten from friends, colleagues, family and many other people is really quite touching. Once you tweet your weight to the world, directing them to a website where anybody can see what you’ve weighed for the last 30 days, there’s really no reason to keep anything too secret.

    Oddly (though maybe I shouldn’t be surprised), the main question I get when people want to help me look for a job is “What kind of work are you looking for?”. I think this is a weird question mainly because I don’t really think too much about it. I want to work, I want to make a living and I want to do something I love. I really like media (video, audio and writing), the internet, technology, and science. I’m getting to the point where work I do in those fields can be put on my resume as real experience, something I definitely didn’t see happening just a couple of years ago.

    I’ve talked before about how wonderful if would be if Canada instituted a basic income for its citizens, because more than anything what I want to be able to do is to be creative. I want to share my experiences and knowledge with people who want to learn and try new things. I want to open minds. I’ve been thinking for a very long time about doing a big project where I get to do things like this on a regular basis, but for that today I really do need a day job where I make enough to support what I’d like to do for the other big part of my life.

    However, even considering all of this, the biggest priority for me, and the reason why I’m so keen to get a new job as soon as possible, is that I want to start a family. I’m not in a rush to do that, but I do want to start sooner rather than later. And, seeing as how my wife and I are responsible and financially prudent, we’d rather wait until there are two sources of secure income in our lives before moving forward with that. And that is the most frustrating part of all of this. I just want to express my ideas and thoughts in a positive, constructive way and make the world a better place, and pass those traits along to the next generation of humans. But first, I need someone to take a chance on me.

    It’s worth it.

    If you know of any job openings or places that might be hiring, especially those looking for young people who are ready to learn and looking to make a difference in the world, please let me know. You can send me email at [email protected].

  • iOS 9 First Impressions (from the future)

    iOS 9 First Impressions (from the future)

    I’ve been writing part-time for MobileSyrup for a little over a month now, and since this piece is as topical as it will ever be, here is the writing sample I provided that got me started there.

    These are my predictions of what we can expect from Apple in the next version of their mobile operating system, iOS 9, written as if it has just been publicly released, in September 2015.

    As it stands, iOS 9 will be announced for the first time to developers next week, on June 8th in San Francisco, and you’ll know I’ll be watching intently! Without any further ado, here are my impressions of iOS 9!

    As we’ve come to expect in September, the final version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 9, was released today. Last year’s release of iOS 8 gave users a whole new set of tools to quickly access information contained in their apps in a secure, controlled way, with keyboards, app extensions and today widgets. Developers and users were all very excited by this new and unexpected openness from Apple, while some feel that they could have gone further still.

    With iOS 9, Apple have opened up even more, making several changes that users have been frequently asking for in the last year. There has also been a focus on stability and security in iOS 9, and the platform feels a lot more consistent than it has since the release of iOS 8 one year ago. The larger iPhone sizes are also slowly changing the way we interact with iOS, and the interfaces of many apps are changing and improving to reflect that.

    Some of the biggest changes to iOS this year are designed to bring the newly released Apple Watch into closer step with the iPhone. A new overhaul of the contacts app will allow you to set a global VIP contact list for notifications, including integration with your Twitter and Facebook contacts. You will also be able to get public transit information through Apple Maps directly, meaning that your shiny new Apple Watch will be able to let you know when buses nearby will be arriving. The update also brings the ability to reply to messages directly from notifications in third-party applications, both on the iPhone and on the Apple Watch. Finally, the Beats Music service, purchased by Apple in 2014, is now built-in to the iPhone and Apple Watch, allowing you to stream professionally curated playlists that combine the music you have on your phone with music in the Beats Music catalogue. The update also brings the Beats Music collection into iTunes on your computer, and allows you to pick up your music where you left off on your computer when you’re heading out the door.

    Some of the other new features that are welcome additions to the platform include:

    • A system-wide low-power mode that will kick in automatically and disable background activity when your phone is running out of juice.
    • The ability to set non-Apple apps as default, including mail, web browsing, and camera apps from an approved list (and allowing users to remove default Apple apps from their home screens completely). Third-party apps will also now be able to work with Handoff more easily work, allowing you to quickly move between iOS devices and Macs, especially when using non-Apple apps.
    • Updates to the photos app that include an incognito mode and corresponding folder for pictures that you don’t wish to automatically upload to iCloud Photo Library or other cloud services. iOS 9 also includes a new API for photos that will simplify the auto-uploading process, sending your photos from iCloud directly to third-party applications like Dropbox and Google+, rather than uploading multiple copies from your phone.

    All of these changes are welcome additions to the platform, focused mainly on enabling users to complete simple or complex tasks in less time. All of this in turn saves battery life as well as using less of your monthly data allotment, something we can all get excited about. Several changes to iOS are designed to push quick interactions to the Apple Watch, which is also an important move. The value added by pairing your phone to an Apple Watch will likely continue to grow as the platform matures and more users and developers really start to see what the watch can do for them.

    There has been a lot of discussion in the last year about the decreasing stability of iOS, with some pundits suggesting Apple should slow down and make sure to get the details right with their software releases. This update really does seem to be the best of both worlds so far, with a slough of new features sure to impress new and old users alike, while the stability of the device in day-to-day use appears to be a return to expectations from a company with such high quality standards.

    As it was last year with the release of app extensions, the full nature of this update likely won’t be realized until third-party developers have the ability to take full advantage of the new features in their applications. Developers will also inevitably continue to refine their applications as use cases shift, and it will soon be required that interfaces purposefully adapt to larger phones and the usefulness of an accompanying Apple Watch.

    We will continue looking through the update and share anything else we come across in the coming days and weeks.

  • I’m A Professional Writer? (Unwind Media; April 30 – May 6)

    I’m A Professional Writer? (Unwind Media; April 30 – May 6)

    Some huge news on Unwind Media this week; I got a new job! I’ve officially begun writing for a Canadian technology blog called MobileSyrup, and I’m having so much fun with it! I’m writing for them mostly during the evening and on weekends, starting off pretty slowly. I’ve wanted to write on a professional level for quite some time, and I’m really excited to get the opportunity!

    I discuss it a little on Future Chat this week (see below), and you can read my work from the last week here, here and most recently here. Ottawhat? this week was also a lot of fun, we interviewed Lilly Tran, a young woman who writes closed captioning for a cable TV porn station. I definitely did not know that was a thing, and we all learned a lot!

    Ottawhat? #50 – Lilly Tran
    In this episode, we spoke with Lilly Tran, a closed-captioner for adult films. We discussed some of the weird things Lilly’s heard around her relatively normal office…
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    Future Chat #56 – We Don’t Need A Biologist
    This week, Rob gets a new job, we discuss Microsoft’s Build conference (much to Nick’s chagrin), Tesla’s big new battery, and how a woolly mammoth burger…
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  • My Student Debt

    My Student Debt

    Mo’ money…mo’ problems, said no one, ever.

    Another quick thought:

    I have been out of school for 3 years (completed all requirements in Dec. 2011). I wasn’t particularly careful with money during my 5 years of schooling, but I wasn’t wasteful either, and I also worked for most of that time. I amassed just over $63,000 in student debt over those 5 years.

    I’ve been in the work force for 3 years, and in that time I have spent a total of around 8 months unemployed, 2 of those voluntarily. Since January 2013, I have spent only about 9 weeks not working (of the 5 positions I’ve held, only 1 was a longer term than 6 months). I have recently passed the $20,000 mark in paying off this debt; as of this month, I only owe around $17,000 in loans.

    I like to consider myself a success story in terms of reasonably independent adults with a university education who lived away from home during their studies. I know people who are in much better financial positions than me, but I know many more who are far worse off. And I would only tangentially credit my post-secondary education for the jobs I’ve been able to get, I haven’t been paid for any chemistry-related work since I left grad school.

    The fact that so far, I am what I think people would consider a success story makes me pretty sad for our society as a whole, and our education system specifically. I would LOVE to work in Chemistry, but that takes years of experience that I cannot get outside of university, and getting that experience by staying in or returning to school would be unavoidably expensive.

    I’m fairly confident that if I apply myself, I can expect a base level of success at whatever I choose to do with my life. This inherently takes some risk, something I’m not particularly comfortable with, and something that gets exponentially more complicated the longer life goes on. I don’t want to just float through life on a base level of success in what is handed to me, I would like to do something I am passionate about and achieve real tangible, life-fulfilling levels of success, something that is very hard to do knowing I will spend 4-5 years just getting out of debt from school.

    I would love to keep learning my whole life, and I intend to, whether that education is formal or not. I want some freedom to pursue independent creative endeavours and to explore philosophical ideas without worrying about losing what I’ve been working so hard for. I just hope that money cash doesn’t rule everything around me for my entire life. I am still looking forward to starting a family soon.

  • Ottawhat #40 – David Narbaitz (Monopolatte)

    Ottawhat #40 – David Narbaitz (Monopolatte)

    David Narbaitz is the founder and owner of Monopolatte, the first board game cafe in Ottawa.
  • Attrell Update – This is Unwind Media!

    Attrell Update – This is Unwind Media!

    This week on +Attrell Update, I introduce my media enterprise, UnwindMedia.com! This is also a chance for a year-in-review media empire-wise. Exciting stuff!

    You can join the Unwind Media Facebook group at http://facebook.com/groups/unwindmedia or follow us on Twitter @UnwindMedia.

    If you want to keep up with these videos, click on our picture in the top right of the video and subscribe!

  • Attrell Update – Gorillas, Guns and Going Nose Blind

    Attrell Update – Gorillas, Guns and Going Nose Blind

    This week on +Attrell Update, I talk about human filters, why we need to talk about important things, and ponder the future of Attrell Update!

    If you want to keep up with these videos, click on our picture in the top right of the video and subscribe!

    On Monday, Steph gave some advice on trying to find a gift for that special someone in your life.