Capital One is hiring for all kinds of roles in SF, New York, McLean and Richmond, VA, and other places as well: http://rolp.co/oZ3Nb and/or you can email me with questions at josh.rotenberg at capitalone.com
That job measured the number of keystrokes per hour of each employee. You had to maintain a 10,000 keystrokes per hour minimum data entry rate, they also spot checked for accuracy. Capturing the data you were suppose to enter (a scan of a piece of mail) what you entered, and what should have been entered.
While there was no question about goofing off... they used commodity hardware, but nothing else was general purpose (no internet, no email, no solitaire, no obviously general purpose OS), and no phones, talking., etc... they were very much watching for speed and accuracy during the entire time you were clocked in.
Yes, this. I don't know what technique they used. I expect it was known-value variety because they would have better automation in error detection. They may also have used a consensus model, showing work product that really wasn't known value, but was shown to enough different data entry people that the error rate was negated (the error rate requirement was pretty low as I recall) as in a group almost everyone would have done the entry correctly. A third alternative would be to send images that had passed OCR intake for the testing sample.
It was tedious and not well suited for people needing a certain level of variety or intellectual stimulation in their work. I found it a touch soul crushing... on the other hand I knew people there that were completely content doing exactly that work. They'd turn on their radio/books on tape/etc. (some, including me from time to time, would even read a bit) an go to a world of their own thoughts for 8-10 hours and be content. I had a relative that worked at the same place for 20 years and was completely happy with the job and life.
I did the data entry job for (as I recall) about a year and a half: it paid the bills and gave me a better life than I would have without it and I didn't have the right qualifications or work experience for anything better. For those reasons I was appreciative of the work while at the same time I looked to improve my working situation... something I can say of my work today (though what counts as improvement in working situation is way different now).
There are many jobs out there that need doing. Many of them are boring, or dirty, or dangerous. I don't think that necessarily makes for any more or less of a "sad life". I'm completely thankful to those that do those boring, dirty, or dangerous jobs. Some of them, like me, did it as an early first job sort of thing and used the work experience to get a better job: we paid our dues as it were. Others, like what I find unfulfilling or uninteresting. Some want to work outside, some want to work with their hands, some want to work with minds, and some simply want to be a bit financially better off than they are without the work.
"There is no such thing as a lousy job - only lousy men who don't care to do it."
We used to do this in a school - it wasn't creepy - hear me out:
We had labs of iMacs and if anything happened to a machine, kids would (more often than not) just yank the power cord. Occasionally this would foobar the machine entirely and create unnecessary work. We couldn't catch the culprits.
So, if the machine managed to boot up successfully, after an unexpected power loss, we would take a photo using the built in camera and send it along with a ticket to the job queue, as well as do a complete re-image of the machine (automatically).
The number of funny photos we collected of kids just starting at the computer with WTF looks on their faces. But - from these photos we at least had the opportunity to educate the individuals about how to look after the computers a bit better.
There was a minor scandal a few years ago when a school was sending laptops home with kids and randomly snapping photos via the webcam for similar reasons
I think this is the original story, you can follow the "related stories" links at the bottom to see how it developed:
It's been a while but I don't think the old iMacs at my elementary school had individual user logins at the system level. For things like the reading test program there was a login I think but not for the whole machine.
Capital One | Senior Software Engineer, Clojure | San Francisco, CA | ONSITE, FULLTIME
We need a senior engineer with Clojure experience to join our team and help us work on the Mobile/Web back end services that power Level Money, including adding new features, cleaning up old ones, improving performance and increasing test coverage. Qualified candidates will have some experience with Clojure or other functional programming languages, various AWS services (CloudFormation, DynamoDB, SQS, etc) and distributed systems. Experience with mobile application backend development and financial institution data are also a definite plus.
We were in Paris on vacation a couple of weeks ago and visited Poilâne. Wow. Lots of variety in this tiny shop, and everything we tried was amazing. We ended up going back the same day for more.
I've been involved in volunteering both in schools and at local community theaters in various capacities, mainly because my kids have become involved in theatre. I've done a lot of different stuff: front of house/ushering, some fundraising, food service, and set design and building. Given that my real job has me sitting behind a screen, the thing I've loved the most is just doing something completely different, working with people (both adults and kids) of very different walks of life with different interests and goals.
The set building has probably been my favorite overall. Lots of hard, manual work, using power tools, driving the truck, sourcing various items (props and sets often fall under the same team), learning how to make something come alive from just a pile of 2x4s and plywood, and coming together with people who are also just there to help as well as people who do this for a living is really fun in addition to being fulfilling.
I don't have long term self employment experience. My guess is that you'll give up a lot of freedom, the ability to pick and choose the things you want to work on and who you want to work for, and you'll gain the ability to focus on one part of the business instead of the marketing/sales/bookkeeping and have a much better idea of what your finances will look like over the next 1, 2, 6, 12 months. Here are a few things off the top of my head:
1) Find a shorter term contract gig with one company. This might give you the option to try something on for a bit without making a long term commitment. If you like it, and it's a to-hire situation, you can stick around.
2) Find a remote job that still gives you the at-home time and schedule flexibility that (I'm assuming) you are accustomed to.
3) Depending on where you are and what you decide to do, keep in mind that you can always bail and go back to self employment if you think it sucks.
