Joan Marie Verba - Keeping hope through decades of challenges

Show Notes:

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Transcript:

Bekah: 00:07

Hello, and welcome to season three, episode four of the Virtual Coffee podcast. I'm Bekah. And this is a podcast that features members of the Virtual Coffee community. Virtual Coffee is an intimate group of developers at all stages of their coding journey. And they're here on this podcast, sharing their stories and what they've learned, and we are. To share it with you here with me today is my co-host. Dan. Thanks

Dan: 00:31

Bekah today. We had a fascinating conversation with Joan Marie Verba. Joan shared her long journey with us, including her early days in tech using Fortran and how refusal to accommodate her allergies has prevented her from having a lifelong career in tech. She talks about pushing forward and the importance of. Not taking no for an

Joan: 00:50

answer.

Bekah: 00:53

We start every episode of the podcast. Like we start every Virtual Coffee. We introduce ourselves with our name, where we're from, what we do and a random check-in question. Today's random question is if you could be an expert in one thing, what would it be? We hope you enjoy this episode. Hi, I'm Bekah, I'm a front end developer from a small town in Ohio. And if I could be an expert in one thing, can I choose the human person? Is that, is that acceptable? Totally. I was trying to decide if I wanted to do like brain or hormone, but if I can just totally be an expert in humans. That's where I would go. I think

Dan: 01:42

that's, I think that's valid and would be a very cool thing to be an expert in. Hi, I'm Dan I'm from, I don't know a medium sized city in Ohio. from Lakewood, Ohio. I do front end development and yeah, if I could be an expert in one thing, I, I think my answer's going to be what's like plants and stuff. You know, there's, there's, Arbery, there's like Arbery botany. Maybe that just covers everything. Cause I like the trees, I just humans.

Bekah: 02:09

So you can just say

Dan: 02:10

plants. I think I like plants no, it's, you know, and I've, I've learned and forgotten stuff, especially tree related, you know, like identifying trees based on different properties and nothing like that ever sticks in my brain. You know, if I don't use all the time, but. We had an abust at our house to clips and trees. And I just made him walk around in my yard for half an hour. putting a trees and tell, making me tell, tell me, you know, what kind of tree this one is? What's that one? What's that one, which he, he, he didn't seem to mind too much on, it was fun. So yes, plants, this plants is my answer.

Joan: 02:42

My name is, uh, Joan re Verba and I'm from Minnesota and I'm a front end developer. And if I wanted to be an expert in something, I think I would want to be an expert in astronomy. I know enough so that I did teach astronomy at Indiana university as an associate instructor for one year, but there's a lot more that I could know and a lot more that I than I'd want to know. So I'd want to know even more than I know now.

Dan: 03:11

That's awesome. Astronomy is so cool. That's another one of those things where that's my second. Yeah. I, it was always so interesting. And for me, I could never keep any of those, the details, you know, in my mind, but I always, I loved going to the planetarium and, you know, I, I took a couple astronomy classes, intro classes in undergrad. And actually I saw in your, I mean, you just said it, you were from, or you. Was it undergrad at Indiana? Or was it grad school? No, I was

Joan: 03:36

undergrad at the university of Minnesota and I took graduate courses at Indiana university, but I did not get a master's degree. I did not reach that point. Okay. Were,

Dan: 03:46

were you in Bloomington?

Joan: 03:47

Yes, I was in Bloomington, Indiana.

Dan: 03:49

I love Bloomington. I, we lived there. My, my wife went to grad school there. We lived there for, I don't know, five, five or six years. It's a great, great city. A great, great area.

Bekah: 03:57

Thanks so much for being on the podcast with us today. Joan, we're really excited to hear more about your story. And we always like to kick it off with the origin story, kind of how you got to the point where you are now, how you got into tech. And so I know for you, this kind of is a long story. So if you just wanna. Talk about up to the point where you got your first job in tech. Maybe we can ask some more questions and then go from there.

Joan: 04:24

Okay. I'll pause. At that point, then I have been interested in tech for quite some time. My dad was a marketing manager, a controlled data corporation in the 1960s and seventies and eighties and up through the nineties and he sold mainframe computers to companies. And when I was in high school, the first computers came out and the high school had sort of a time share with a mainframe computer. And so there were some after school activities for people who were interested in computers and I attended those. And the way that we pro reprogrammed them in basic, and there was paper tape, we would punch holes in a paper tape and then run the paper tape through. And that was the software. And then we would get results. Then from there from high school, I went to college. My freshman and sophomore year was at the university of Chicago and I had some extra credits. So I took a computer programming course, and that was fun with the mainframe computers. At that time, we were not punching paper tape anymore. We were PA. Punching cards. And so each line of the code had to be on one card. And so if you had a large software program, you had pretty much a long box of cards to bring in and put through the computer and then the computer would read the cards and then give out the results. And then I went to junior and senior year. I transferred to the university of Minnesota and I got my degree in physics, but I also took computer courses. The reason I took computer courses was not only because I was interested in them, but because at the time they were telling us, well, you know, you can get your degree in physics or astronomy or whatever, but there aren't a lot of jobs in there. So quite possibly you will have a job in another area. So I took computer programming interested me. So I was taking computer programming courses after I got my degree and went to graduate school at Indiana university. I continued to take courses. When I finished at Indiana university, I took a couple of more graduate courses in computer science at the university of Minnesota. And after that I was ready to get a job. So I applied for a job and I got a job at, uh uny and the job was in the airline division. And I was in the group that was programming flight schedules. That's what I had at first. And then the programming group that I was in was expanded to cover also hotel reservations for the airlines. By that time we were not using cards anymore. We were doing what. Computer program is due. Now we were keyboarding our instructions into a computer and, you know, sending it in that way and getting it compiled and bug tested and all that sort of thing. That was a lot of fun. And so you asked me to stop when I got my first job in tech and that was my first job in tech. That was in the late seventies, early eighties.

Dan: 07:36

Oh, that's. My dad did just in school, a little bit of the, of the program with the cards and the whole, you know, punching holes in the cards. And he always talks about, I guess he, you know, cuz one of the, one of the things that is important is you have to keep them in the right order, right? Oh yes. When you are carrying them around and yeah. And so he is at least once, maybe more than that. Definitely. Drop the stack of cards and still

Joan: 07:57

what was recommended at the time is that we take a highlighter and on the top of the cards draw a diagonal line so that if the cards ever got separated, all we had to do was line them up so that the line was

Dan: 08:13

strange. Oh, that's a good

Joan: 08:15

idea. And that, and that would, that would mean, you know, if we dropped the cards and they got out of order, we could put them back and it was easier to do that way.

Bekah: 08:23

What did the industry look like for you getting into it? Was it something that was hard or did you find that you were at a disadvantage or were there challenges that you were

Joan: 08:34

facing? I didn't find a disadvantage at all. There were, and you know, other people who have studied the history of tech have, have also confirmed this. There were quite a lot of women in the computer programming field at the time, maybe about a third. Of the people who were working in the airline division at uny were women had no problems there in my group. I was the only woman, but there were lots of groups in the airline division. And about, I'd say about a third of the, the, the programmers were women. It was not considered unusual to be a woman in the field doing programming at the time.

Bekah: 09:14

And so as you moved forward in your career, was there a shift at all? Or did you feel like the environment started to change or did you kind of leave the industry before.

Joan: 09:27

Well, I'll tell you what happened with the industry. Uh, what happened in the industry in the eighties was that, well, first of all, I changed jobs in late 1982 because of the recession and my group in the airline. Was discontinued, I guess it was given to, to somebody else, but I was transferred to a financial thing and it was asked I was programming in Fortran and I was asked to program in Cobal and I didn't really want to do financial programming. It didn't really appeal to me in cobalt. Did not appeal to me at all. I mean, there are some people who say that, you know, you ought to be able to learn any programming language, if you are a programmer. And I learned a lot of 'em. I learned many in college and graduate school and I was prepared to do anything, but I was not prepared to do cobalt. Somehow cobalt just never fit my particular skill. And as I said, though, they say that you can learn any programming language cobalt just never made sense to me in any way whatsoever. So I went to Republic airlines because I was used to doing airline programming. They programmed in. I'm blanking out on the term, but it was the, the very basic programming language that we, that we had. So I was, I was in another programming language. That was fine. I learned it fine that didn't work out for various reasons. And so I sort of bounced around from job to job until I got to a, uh, tech startup in 1980. And this is where the environment changed, but probably not in the way that you think, because by that time, Steve jobs and apple were, were trying to revolutionize the computer industry and do things differently and have a different work environment and have a. Working philosophy. Now I have food allergies up until Steve jobs started introducing all of these innovations at the workplace. Food was forbidden. You were not to have food. Definitely not to have food in the places where you were doing keyboarding, because it was felt the chromes would mess up the computers, mess up the keyboards, mess up the computers. You weren't supposed to have food anywhere at all at your desk. They might look the other way. They looked the other way. Cuz I had tea, you know, I brought a Thermo of tea. I, I was looked the other way, but otherwise you're supposed to eat in the lunch. You were not supposed to eat in the computer areas at all, but when Steve jobs started doing things, one of the things that he started doing was introducing the fact that you had food all over the place. You had free food for everybody at the workplace, and you could have food everywhere. And there was food everywhere. And by the time I got to this startup in 1987, there was food. Every. And this was a problem for me, you know, I'm definitely allergic to peanuts. They were eating peanuts at the keyboards where I was supposed to do programming and I got definitely ill. My lung capacity dropped by half. I had to go see a doctor. I was ill for an entire year. I had to quit the job because I simply just to recover. I, I simply could not work there anymore. And that was a big change for me. After that I wanted to get back into programming, but the personal computer, the mainframe was going out of phase. And the startup that I had worked for in 1987, went out of business a couple of months after I quit, because they were into mainframes and nobody wanted mainframes anymore. Everybody wanted personal computers. And I did not have the instruction to program personal computers and I was broke. I didn't have a job. I had moved back with my parents and I was ill. And so I, I couldn't afford to go back to college and learn the new PC programming skills. So I went to other jobs, worked for a publishing company, trained as an editor, got into publishing a little bit. After that I worked as an editor for about 15 years, and then I, I also worked for another company more or less in customer service. And then in 2015, I learned about coding boot camps. And I had never heard about coding boot camps before, but someone was starting a coding boot camp locally. And I thought, okay, maybe I can retrain to do this because I had learned basic HTML by myself in the late nineties to build my own websites. And I knew enough to build a website, but you know, nothing that would suit me for a job, but the, the recruiting boot camps and the person who started the coding boot camp was interviewed by the local press and said that the reason why he was. A a coding bootcamp was that there were so many jobs in web development open, and there weren't enough trained people to fill them. And I thought, okay, I should be able to learn coding fairly easily because of my computer programming background, the bootcamp is not terribly expensive and I, and it would be like 16 to 20 weeks. And then I would go to a job and then I could get hired. Well, okay. So I applied for this bootcamp in 2015, and it was pretty difficult to get in. I had to have two interviews. I had to take some free coding classes to prove that I could code. I had to prove that I was, had an aptitude for coding, and then I applied for a scholarship and I had to pass a number. Various tests to get the scholarship, but I finally got accepted and I finally got the scholarship and the coding boot camp for me was supposed to start at the end of August a couple of weeks before the coding boot camp was supposed to start. And I, and I got the scholarship. I, um, called the person who was in charge of the coding school. And I said, okay, I need accommodations. I have food allergies. I would like there not to be food in. School room in the classroom. If you have food elsewhere, fine. I'll avoid those areas, but I can't avoid the classroom. So there has to be no food in the classroom. Well, the guy sort of went ballistic and we had a half hour conversation in which he was just apoplectic. And, and I was trying to explain this, this really isn't a big deal, but he was still apoplectic. I said, look, let me go to your. Location. And, you know, I'll be able to tell pretty easily if, if it's suitable for me or not. And so I did go to the location a couple of days after that and looked around and I said, look, you know, this looks pretty good. All you have to do is, is make sure that there's no food in the classroom. And I think I'll be okay. But no, a couple days later I received an email from him saying that my enrollment had been canceled. My scholarship had been cancel. And in addition to that, I was totally unsuitable to be a student at a code school. Jeez. Okay. Not to be deterred. wait, can we just pause for a minute here? There, this is a good place to pause.

Bekah: 17:19

I just feel like we've covered a couple of decades here. So I wanna, I wanna jump back to like your first experience with that, because you talked about these environmental changes and it's a lot of things that one, I don't think people really think about. Dealing with challenges that they're not faced on a day to day basis all the time. And so when you had to quit that first job at the startup, did you talk to your employer about the situation with the food?

Joan: 17:47

Oh, there were a number of conversations. My doctor wrote a two page letter to them explaining my food allergies and that I couldn't be around nuts and I needed the Nury area and all this sort of thing. And they finally got down to saying, we're going to offer you a nut free area, your desk. Mm-hmm and that really was not sufficient yeah, it was, it was not sufficient. So I really had to quit because they said, you know, it's it's this or nothing. So I quit. But there were a number of conversations. I had conversations with my supervisor. I had a conversation with HR. The doctors had conversations with them. The doctors wrote letters, you know, stuff like that. It. It didn't, we weren't able to, to reach an agreement where I thought that I would be safe. So I, I simply quit. And I was, I was so ill by the time I quit. Anyway, as I said, my lung capacity dropped to half and it stayed that way for quite some time. It took me about a year to recover from that. So it was, it was a really traumatic experience for. Oh, for

Bekah: 19:00

sure. And then the, the traumas relived, I think when you were trying to enter that bootcamp in the middle, when you were working as an editor and the other things you were doing, were they accommodating

Joan: 19:12

to you? The editing job was ahead of its time because it was remote work. There wasn't really a lot of remote work at that time. That was legitimate. This was legitimate, remote work. All I had to do, I, I worked at home. They wanted you to work at home. It cut their overhead expenses, tremendously for their employees to work at home. All the editors worked at home and all I had to do was to. Just go to the pickup area and pick up my assignments in the morning. And then the next day I would drop off my assignments from the day before and pick up my new assignments. So it really, there really was very minimal contact there. And so I worked at home where I was comfortable. The other job that I had did accommodate me. But them. And remember I said, I worked for a publishing company too, for a while. They in the publishing company did accommodate me, but there was an overall feeling that they felt it was a nuisance. And that I was a nuisance and that they really would rather not do this, but they sort of had to, because I had to be accommodated and they sort of had to fill, fulfill the employment law about accom because the ADA had not been passed. When I lost my job in 1987, it had been by the time I'd gotten these other jobs. And so they accommodated me, but it was not a comfortable situation in either of those.

Bekah: 20:46

Okay, so you left tech and in this very traumatic experience and then 20 ish years later, decide to try tech again. And so I wonder, like what kind of inspired you to try for this again, after having such a bad experience in tech prior.

Joan: 21:07

I guess I was desperate at the time that that I enrolled in the bootcamp, I had lost my previous jobs. The editing job came to an end and I was told that I was not eligible for rehire. I won't go into the reasons. And then the other job, again, as I said, the accommodation was very reluctant. And I felt unwelcome. I just felt that the, the time had come for that job to end too. So I didn't have any work and I felt that I could, and I thought, you know, if there's such a demand for web developers, good, because this is a job that I can do. All I need is the instruction on the latest techniques.

Bekah: 21:47

So then you're back in this situation again, right. And you've kind of are reliving this trauma in a new way and you are stuck because what you thought was going to happen, just got. Totally taken away from you. And then you decided you were gonna keep going forward, right? That

Joan: 22:09

is correct. Shall I go on? Yeah, I wanna know do that.

Bekah: 22:15

You still are looking for those jobs. That was still the inspiration here.

Joan: 22:19

I still felt that a coding boot camp was the way to go. So I kept on researching coding, boot camps to see if there was one nearby or one that I could take remotely or whatever. And so at the end of 2015, I discovered that there was a boot camp network called the iron yard. That was all over the country, but was just planning to get started in Minneapolis. And I thought, okay, let's get on in, on the ground level on that. So I did. So I went and I went to the, get acquainted meetings, get acquainted with the iron yard meetings and I applied. And again, I took another bootcamp later, but we'll get into that, but it seems that that the bootcamps have a, um, long. Intake process by which they want to make sure that you have the aptitude to do code and that you have at least the enthusiasm to do code. So there was a long process by which I had to meet these requirements and I did fairly easily. And so I was accepted into the iron yard. In early 2016. And again, I waited until the last minute and I said, I want to meet with the campus director. And I met with the campus director and I told the campus director of the iron yard. I have food allergies. And I need accommodation. And as soon as those words are out, we're out, the campus director said, okay, here is what we're going to do for you. We are going to have no food in the classroom. We are going to notify all the students. They are not to bring any food into the classroom. They're not to bring any food in any of their backpacks. They're only to eat in a, in designated areas, outside the classroom. And she said, and if you have any trouble with that or have any problems whatsoever, you come and talk to me. That was very different than my previous studio. That sounds

Dan: 24:18

better . Joan: So I did go to the iron they said, and again, the campus director and the instructor said, you know, we are where you have food allergies. If you have any problems, you, you, you come to us. I never had any problems because the students were very diligent. About observing the rules and that was fine and they didn't seem to have any problems with it. That was great. So I started the, the iron yard in June and graduated in September. Then I started applying for jobs and they had, you know, the part of the program was job coaching and all this sort of thing, which was great. And then I did apply for a job at, at a certain company. I won't name it. I, I applied for a job at a certain company. They said it was a front end development job. Mine was, I just got a certificate in front end development. Wonderful. Let's go for it. All of the intake was remote. Every single bit of the intake was remote. I did not see a single employee face to face until my first official day at the job. Everything was remote and the induction process was long. It was a couple of months. They did a thorough background check and I had to pass the background check, which I did, but then again, that took a month and then finally they gave me an. I accepted the offer. I signed the employment contract, and then only after that, I said, I need accommodation for my food allergies. So I was put in touch with the executive. This, this is a big multinational company and I was put in touch with the executive in charge of employees with disabilities. And she said, okay, to accommodate you. We have to have a doctor's note. We have a certain form. You can have the doctor fill out and fax it back to us. That's fine. They emailed me the form. I printed it out. Fortunately, my doctor had an appointment on the same day. I went to the doctor, she filled out the form. She, she faxed it in. I faxed it in to, to make sure that they got it. I also scanned it and emailed it to make sure that they got it. They told me that they got. That the accommodations were there. They were going to have signs up. They were going to, to put me in the place that was the most remote op the most remote desk from the lunchroom. That's what they promised me. They said there would be signs up for people to, to say, there's someone with food allergies here, please confine your food to the lunchroom areas and don't bring any nuts and peanuts into the, into the AR in the work areas at all. They said, this was all going to happen. So I went there and I had a week's orientation at the headquarters, which, which was fine and the environment was okay. And they did pay attention to my allergies though. I had to remind them a couple of times. And then I got to the first day on the site of the job where I was going to be at and welcome. Got my badge. Showing my desk. Okay. First thing I do is of course I wash off the desk in case the, the previous occupant had crumbs or anything. So I'm washing off the desk and my supervisor comes up to me and says, oh, I need to, to inform you that we share desks here. And I said that, well, that's fine. But the person who is sharing my desk will have to be very diligent because I have food allergies and can't have nuts and peanuts in the area. And he said, oh, no one told me about that. And also there were no signs up. And also my desk was not the farthest one away from the lunchroom. Wow.

Bekah: 27:52

So all of the accommodations

Joan: 27:53

that did not happen. And then a week later, my supervisor asked me to come into a conference room and meet with me privately. So I meet with him privately. And he said you can't work. So basically I was sent home to await an assignment. I waited for a year. They did not have an assignment for me that they felt that they could put me into, and then they laid me off.

Dan: 28:23

Ah, so they sent you home just because they didn't wanna deal with accommodating

Joan: 28:29

you or they didn't wanna deal with the food allergies situation. No. Gosh. Is that what

Bekah: 28:33

they said? What was the,

Joan: 28:35

the reason, the reason was the food allergies. Oh wow. They said you, you, you can't work here. We have food all over the place all the time we were, and we're not, that's not gonna change.

Bekah: 28:45

And you know, the thing here too, is. First of all. I'm sorry, this is something that you should never have to go through at all. Let alone. Over a period of many years to have to push through these challenges. But also, you know, I've heard other people who need accommodations for health reasons who have experienced the same thing where they've been told, well, go home and then we'll contact you when we have an assignment. And then there's never an assignment for them. And it is just, I wanna say a shame, but it's, it's, it's, it's terrible, right? It's way worse than a shame. It's not okay at the very least, you know? Okay. So now you've navigated through yet another challenge and somehow not given up hope. Right. And where does that take you next

Joan: 29:39

about the time that I got laid off, the university of Minnesota was offering. A bootcamp locally and the price was right. So I enrolled in their full stack bootcamp thinking that, you know, I have front end development experience. If I get full stack experience, that will expand the number of jobs I'm able to apply to. So I enrolled in that bootcamp. They did accommodate me. I did have to remind them a few times, but you know, they did accommodate me and I graduated. I started that in, uh, March of 2018, about the time that I was laid off. And then that wa that ended at the end of July in 2018. So I graduated from that and all the time that I was going through the bootcamp and learning through the bootcamp, I was also looking for work. All the time. And I have been looking for work ever since I was laid off in March of 2018. And I have kept track of the number of jobs that I have been applying to because I was sort of curious as to how many jobs or how long that I would have to apply before I got a job this morning. I filled out my 532nd job application. That's how many jobs that I have applied to since I was laid off. So I am still applying for jobs. I have done some freelance work. In between, but when the pandemic came last year, those dried up pretty quickly. So I didn't even have any freelance work to do so that's pretty much where I am now. I am still applying for jobs. Still hoping that someone will hire me. I don't know if you want me to go on the podcast and relate my terrible experience of last month. which you heard about at the Virtual Coffee? I can, if you wish.

Bekah: 31:56

I think that's really a part of your story and you face so many challenges. And so if that's something you're willing to share, I would love for you to talk about that too. I am

Joan: 32:05

certainly willing to share this because I was told when I made the call and I'll get into that in a moment that this was a very common scam that people who are applying for check jobs, run into. So. At my 521st application, I got a note saying that they wanted to interview me, which was great. I mean, I've, I've been on your interviews. Haven't gotten hired, but I've got, I've had some interviews. So they, they asked me to interview and I responded to the interview. It was a set of written questions, written interview questions that they asked me to return and I returned them. And then, then after I returned them, you know, there was an interview and then they said I was hired and I was just thrilled. I thought I, I was hired now this, this job was posted on Glassdoor, which is a reputable place for posting jobs. The name of the company was genuine. They took the name of a company of a genuine company in Austin. Texas gave me the genuine name and address the employment contract, which they gave me was a standard tech employment contract, looked like any other tech employment contract that I had signed. I signed it and sent it back to them. By email, all this remote stuff was not unusual because I had gone through this with this other company where everything in the onboarding was remote. The email address looked like. The email that would be from the HR, from this company, uh, no trouble with the email address. Although the person that was supposedly my supervisor had a non-company email, but you know that I've had freelance jobs where that's happened too. So that, that didn't raise any, any alarms with me. So I thought, oh my goodness, I am finally hired. Wonderful. I've got an employment contract. They said fine. And it's for a remote job. Great. That's what I need a remote job. And they said, you've gotta set up a home office. Fine. That's that's great. And we want you to use company equipment that you buy from our designated supplier. That's not unusual either. So they said we will send you a check. And you will use that check to buy the equipment for your home office. Fine. So they sent me the check and it came through the post by priority mail. It looked like a priority mail envelope, but the address, the name and address on the check was not the one of the companies. So I emailed the person that was supposed to be my supervisor. I said, this check is not from your company. And he says, oh, that's one of our trust vendors. Don't worry about it. It's a good check. I said, okay. But I also looked at the address on the envelope and the address on the envelope did not match the address on the check. Which did not add none. Neither of them matched the address from the company. And I looked up on Google maps, the address, the return address on the envelope, and it was a vacant lot. And so my supervisor was, was saying, my supposed supervisor was saying, okay, we want you to take the check to the bank. We want you to email the receipt, the deposit receipt to us so that we know that you've deposited the check. I said fine. So I went to the bank and I said to the banker, I. I've been told trust, but verify there's, there's something about this check that I questioned. So what I would like you to do, this was on a Friday. I said, what I'd like you to do is call the bank and see if it's a legitimate account and that the funds are available. And they said, well, this is Friday after three o'clock and it was so, so we really don't expect a response until Monday. I said, that's fine. So on Saturday my supposed supervisor gets back to me and he says, has the check been deposited? I said, yes. And I scanned the receipt and emailed it. Did not have my full bank account number on it, those seats. So like felt safe in that. So he says, well, we want you to get started right away. So we want you to buy the equipment right away. I said, fine. He says, I'll put you in touch with our supplier. Fine. So it was a text message conversation. So the text message says, I am George or whatever from a one computer supply company. And, uh, we want to deliver the equipment to you by 5:00 PM, but we want you to pay for it first. And we want you to withdraw the money in cash from your bank, and then deposit it into our bank. I said, okay, now I had checked my bank account thing and it looked as if the check had gone through. So I thought, okay. It looks like the check has gone through, so I. I drove to the bank and I said, remember that check. I want to withdraw it. She says, you, you can't. I said, uh, why not? It said on my, on your website, when I checked my account on your website, that the money was available, she says, oh, that that's, that's an error. That was misleading. I'm sorry that it still isn't, we're still waiting for it to come through. And we're still waiting to hear from the other. And I said, okay. And so I texted the supplier and I said, they won't let me take out the money. I'm I'm sorry, I can't do that. And I never heard from the supplier or the supposed thing again, Monday I called someone who was, who I felt was knowledgeable in these sorts of situations. And I said, look, here is what's happening. And she. Called the Minnesota attorney general right away. And so I did, and I explained my situation and he, he said, you've been scammed. He said, this is a common scam. He said, what job title did they hire you for? And I said, software engineer. He says, this is a common scam for the software engineers. He says you were lucky that the bank didn't allow you to take out that money in cash, because otherwise you would be held responsible for that money. It was $6,000 he said, and, and file a report with the FTC and the FBI, which I did. Did the

Dan: 38:14

FBI have anything to like similar things to say,

Joan: 38:16

or I filed the reports online and neither of them have gotten back to me. And both sites said, uh, you know, when you file a report for us, we might not get back to you on this. We'll do our best, but you know, don't expect us to, to get back to you, but. Thank you for filing and excuse me, here's a copy so that you know that you have a record of filing the report with us, but that was pretty much it. And as I said, I never heard from them again. So I was all excited to, I thought someone was finally going to hire me and then. Someone didn't and I had never heard about this scam before. I mean, I've heard of other scams, and so I've been aware of people trying to take advantage of me, but this one I had not heard of bef ever before. And it was just not something that I expected. . Bekah: No, I had And I think, you know, as you're telling the story, number one, I never would've noticed that the addresses were different for me. I just probably would've taken it to the bank and did what they said. So, I mean, I think that on top of everything else, you took such careful steps, which of course you never should even have to do. Right? Like this whole entire story. So much extra work and stress and conflict is being put on you as you're trying to get a job. And I just wanna say that, you know, I think. Your ability to continue to move forward and to talk about it and to openly share it is so inspirational, I guess. I mean, to see you moving forward is, is something that I really appreciate you talking about. Well, thank you. I'm happy to share my story. And I hope that the, I hope that others are able to get something out of it anyway.

Dan: 40:10

Oh, absolutely. And it's it's I just like this approach is just like, so I don't know, evil. I'm trying to think of a good word for it. You know, you know, I've, I've heard of this scam, not this scam, but I've heard of. The way, the check part of it worked, right. You know, deposit a check, take the cash out, give it to me. And then they cancel the check thing. But targeting people, looking for jobs is like, uh, you know, I don't know. I dunno. It's just, uh, shameful

Joan: 40:38

using a legitimate site for job postings using the name of a legitimate company. Oh

Dan: 40:46

yeah. I mean, that was going to be another question I was going to ask was if you had reached out to Glassdoor through all this, or mean after it happened at all.

Joan: 40:53

I went to Glassdoor and found that the job posting had been taken down. And I felt that they probably knew about that from that the, the job posting did, did not exist anymore, but I mean, they were slick in the fact that they used a legitimate job posting site that they used the name and a, the actual name and address of a legitimate company that they used a legitimate looking. Employment contract and that at least the HR, the supposed HR person seemed to have a legitimate company email address.

Dan: 41:28

Wow. Yeah, the criminals, I'm sure they're making a lot of money, you know, scamming people like this, it's just the emotional place that people who are doing the job seeking is in, cause we've talked to people who have done a lot of applications and this long process and, you know, everyone of them has shared how hard it is, you know, how the struggle it is emotionally draining and everything like that. And so I would imagine your defenses are kind of lower than they would be normally anyway, you know, so. It's tough, but I would echo what Bekah said is just thank you for sharing. That's this part of the story, because, uh, knowing about it is like probably the best defense for, for other people at least. Oh yes. You know, I'm spreading the word about it, so yeah. It's, it's scary though. Yeah, it is. I don't like it.

Bekah: 42:15

Okay. So now you're here, Joan. And what is your hope

Joan: 42:21

for the future? I'm still applying for jobs. , I'm, I'm hoping that that someone will hire me somewhere. It's pretty much all I can do at this point, because I, I do need a job. I want a job. I would like to work, but because of my limitations, I do need a remote position that limits the number of. Jobs that I can apply for, but I'm, I'm still applying and that's all I can do is just move forward.

Bekah: 42:49

And what kind of keeps you going? Is there, like what powers your motivation or your perseverance to keep pushing forward?

Joan: 42:57

I'm just that sort of person that, you know, if someone says, well, you know, you can't do that. And there's a lot of obstacles and you know, there's, are you sure you wanna do? I'm just the sort of person who says the heck with it. I'm doing it. I wanna do it. I'm going to do it. I'm I'm do it. You know what? A couple, some people have asked me. I've gone to events where I have re related that, that I got my bachelor's degree in physics, that I was the only woman quite often in the, in the classroom. And I've been asked, you know, well, you know, how did you feel about that? And I said, well, I thought, you know, if they didn't like it, that was tough. I mean, no, I mean, I guess I was fortunate in that, that nobody discouraged me from getting a bachelor's degree in physics because I was a woman or, or looked down down on me while I was getting my degree into this because I was a woman. But I, I have heard that other women who are trying to get degrees in sciences have had a real, really tough time. I didn't, but I was prepared for it. And I thought, you know, even if they did to heck with them, that's their problem. I don't care. I've always had that, that attitude, that if I had a, um, a goal and it was a legitimate goal and it was something that didn't compromise my moral principles, I was going to go for it.

Bekah: 44:26

Okay. So I know also you're a prolific writer, you've done science fiction and some other things. Have you ever written your life story?

Joan: 44:35

I have not. What I have written as far as life story is concerned. I am a, a star Trek fan and I've been a star Trek fan since 1966. And in the 1990s, I wrote a history of star Trek fan activity, a fan history. From 1967 to 1987. And this is probably as close to a biography as it gets because I told my personal journey through it. But also what was happening. This book has gotten a lot of attention, not a lot of public attention, but a lot of attention from people who are like, um, scholars in the field of popular. And I'm very well recognized in the field of popular culture. My star Trek fanzine collection is at the university of Iowa special collections. I was interviewed last month and the interview was posted Monday about this. So I've gotten a great deal of satisfaction from that, but the problem is. Publishing and writing is not a very profitable endeavor, unless you're one of like the 2% of authors who can make a living at it. But it's something, it's something that I do because I enjoy writing. And for people who enjoy writing, it's something that you can't not do. So I keep writing I'm writing right now. Set aside, my writing for my current novel just before this podcast. So it is something that I do and it's something that, that keeps me going, but it's not something that you can make a living with. And I enjoy, uh, I enjoy, I enjoy web development. I've got. A dozen sites, dozen life sites that I keep up and keep working on. And my GitHub repository is solid green for this year. So this is something that I enjoy too. And I'm just going to keep going until I can't anymore.

Bekah: 46:34

Have you thought about going back into freelancing? Well,

Joan: 46:38

yes, I'm always available for freelance work, but nobody's calling that's the problem. Yeah, that can be hard

Dan: 46:45

too.

Bekah: 46:48

so have you thought about what your ideal job or what would it look like? I

Joan: 46:52

guess. Well, if you want to talk about ideal job, ideally, I would like to be one of the 2% of authors who makes a living off of my writing and publishing. But again, it's so hard to get into that 2% of authors. So failing that. I really enjoyed my first job as an airline programmer programming, the, the hotel reservations and the flight schedules. That was a lot of fun. I enjoyed that so much. And I was so disappointed when the company took me off that project. I mean, something like that, a web development project, where I can use my skills, where I can make a nice front end for somebody that would be a wonderful job to have.

Dan: 47:37

Now, what was it about that airline project that

Joan: 47:40

you liked? First of all, I was programming in Fortran, which is, which is a language that I enjoy very much. I've forgotten most of it by now though. So I couldn. Be a suitable fit for a legacy Fortran projects. And I've been told that they're out there, but I was programming Fortran programming in Fortran was fun. The airline scheduling was, was a lot of fun because it was just something that you could. Put your hands on and look at it and, and get satisfaction out of, you know, people are using my stuff every day. Yes. And, and, you know, it's, it's, it's something that's useful and it's something that's good looking. And I did it, you know, that, that kind of satisfaction that you get from the job, the hotel reservations. I mean, I actually. Did a lot of the hotel reservation stuff from the ground up, I designed a hotel reservations thing, as well as wrote the code for it. I designed the concept, they just said, give us a way to do hotel reservations. So I did the designing too on that one. And so that, that was something that I was proud of, but yeah, the, the, the flight schedule was a, was a lot of fun and very satisfy.

Dan: 48:55

That's awesome. I can totally relate to that. Especially the, this is actually useful and people are actually using it. part of it. Yes. You know, it doesn't always happen, you know, in, in any particular job, you know, so I can totally relate to that.

Bekah: 49:08

Joan, I wanna say, thank you so much again, for sharing your story. And for being here with us, it was really powerful to listen to you, talk about it and to hear how you're ready to just keep moving forward. And I hope, you know, some way Virtual Coffee can help continue to support you in those goals and do something that hopefully we can celebrate you getting a job pretty

Joan: 49:30

soon. Well, thanks very much for interviewing me. This was fun. Yeah, I had fun too.

Dan: 49:34

Thank you, John.

Bekah: 49:36

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Virtual Coffee podcast. This episode was produced by Dan OT and Bekah harra, Weigel and edited by Dan OT. If you have questions or comments, you can hit us up on Twitter at Virtual Coffee IO, or you can email us@podcastvirtualcoffee.io. You can find the show notes, plus you can sign up for our newsletter to find out what Virtual Coffee's been up to on our website@virtualcoffee.io.

Dan: 50:05

Please subscribe to our podcast and be sure to leave us a review. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week.

The Virtual Coffee Podcast is produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel and edited by Dan Ott.