I recently visited one of the big job boards and was blown away that it claimed that there were 2,245 Sales Engineering jobs open within 25 miles of San Francisco.  Based on past experiences this was so out of touch that I didn’t bother signing up for the site.  What was probably going on was that they were counting all (software, car, coffee) “Sales”, (software, hardware, structural, plumbing, etc.) “Engineering” and “Sales Engineer” roles in the area.  From a data perspective to me this is too much entropy – too much randomness and uncertainty in the data leveraged to provide information.

Now a certain amount of entropy is a good thing.  When I had applied for an implementation role at Compuware years ago, I didn’t know that Sales Engineering existed.  A very sharp recruiter introduced me to Thomas Telligman and I was sold on the role.  It has been the most exciting career change in my life.  But when you are dealing with more information than you can process or consume it becomes a problem.

I’m working on an old project of mine and with that am looking to tame that overload of data when job seeking for certain roles in certain regions.  If you’ve looked for work in the past 12 months, are currently looking for work, or plan to in the next year I would really be helped by your input.  So please fill out my survey and let’s see what we can do!