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The story behind Juicy The Emissary’s 2017 instrumental album Attention Kmart Choppers starts back in 1989 with a 16-year-old Kmart employee in Naperville, Illinois employee named Mark Davis. During his first day on the job Davis was immediately struck by the Kmart issued cassette tapes that played during his shift.“I worked at the service desk and we would get these tapes every month to play and they would play continuously on an auto-reverse deck behind the service desk,” he explained in a YouTube video. “Every month we would get a new tape, and instead of throwing them out, I just put them in my apron and took them home because I figured some day it would be kind of interesting.”Manufactured by the Tape-Athon company and played upon Tape-Athon audio equipment, the Naperville store would run the cassettes until the tape inside was almost threadbare before replacing them. “These things ran for 12–14 hours a day for one month straight,” Davis explained in the YouTube video.Davis described the songs on many of the tapes as “stock, generic, muzak type of songs.” Though the tapes were discontinued almost 25 years ago, he couldn’t bear to part with his collection after leaving his job at Kmart and kept them as a nostalgic reminder of his youth.After hanging on to his anthology of discarded media for a quarter century, Davis uploaded his 59-tape archive to the website Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine in a collection called Attention K-Mart Shoppers in September of 2015. Filled with muzak, the occasional popular song, and original corporate adds, the tapes became an instant hit with audiophiles around the net and soon went viral.Not long after it made its rounds online, Denton, Texas producer Juicy The Emissary discovered Davis’ archive. After downloading the collection, Juicy spent several days listening to all 59 tapes and capturing samples that stood out to him. From there, every sample was meticulously sorted into folders.After listening and archiving samples, Juicy spent an entire day chopping samples. Once the samples were chopped, he loaded them into his Reason 4 digital audio workstation and experimented with different ways of arranging the cassette tape snippets. He also used a simple M-Audio keyboard to play different melodies with the samples.Throughout the process Juicy tried to make the entire project work together as one seamless composition instead of a collection of miscellaneous beats.“With a lot of my projects I like to try to tie everything together to make on cohesive, extended listening experience,” he said in an interview with Micro-Chop. “A lot of the samples that I’m looking for, I’m thinking of that application.”When Davis found out that someone had made an entire album out of samples from his tape collection, he seemed happy that his audio archive had inspired such a project.“I’m actually quite honored,” he told the website UndergroundHipHop.com. “I find it very interesting because it shows me how creative people can reuse something that can kind of be monotone for face value. When I listen to it, it brings me back to the Kmart days.”

Is it hard to find work in the Virgin Islands?Not specifically. There are plenty of jobs here, but there are a few cultural, political, and timing issues to consider.Oh, and I’m answering this for the USVI. I’m sure the same goes for the BVI for the most part.On the one hand, if you are experienced in food service or hospitality, there are always jobs open. Mostly for housecleaning and waiting /busing. Food service is a big item here, and I have several friends that wait even just a few days a week, but make more than they do at their regular job. For food service, you’re required to get a food workers card (goes for any type of food work and bartending), which isn’t expensive and mostly requires a stool sample test.Self employment is also popular here. If you like cleaning houses or apartments, the pay is decent. This seems to be the fall back job for some, and others make a good living at it. The lady who visits my neighbor worked hers into a multi employee business. Contractor work is also big. If you have skills and certs in things like plumbing, carpentry, or electrical, you can make some big bucks. The local realtors and rental managers are always looking out for good contractors. After last year’s hurricanes Irma and Maria, contract work has been non stop, and the guys doing it are generally able to charge whatever they want.As for big employers, that can be tricky. Many of them have come under the tax incentive EDC (Economic Development Commission), which is meant to attract businesses here with decreased tax burdens. The biggest drawback, at least for new residents, is that the business must hire a large percentage of locals who have been here for at least 12 months. The percentage of employees who don’t meet that but are still employed there are usually brought from wherever the business originated. My first year here, that caught me on several occasions. This is the political catch, as the government looks as if it’s protecting jobs for the locals.On St. Croix, we’ve gotten a lot of these companies, such as Diagio (makers of Captain Morgan Rum), as well as a lot of smaller ones. The small ones don’t usually stay very long. The territorial government is rather corrupt, and many can’t afford the kick backs required.Culturally, there are jobs that are quietly given only to the multi-generational residents, those that are VI born, and who have large families and groups of friends. Even major stores, like Kmart, Home Depot, and the grocery chains, will usually only hire from that pool.There are a lot of small and medium sized businesses here, such as jewelry, souvenir, distributors, and even some manufacturing. There’s a boat builder on St. Croix that frequently hires on apprentices, trains them for 6 months, then hires the lot the make it through.Timing is sort of an arbitrary, non legal requirement that many businesses look at. The island life is not easy. It’s expensive, it’s hard to find many goods, hurricanes and lesser (but just as scary) storms happen, the sea air rusts even the best stainless steel and painted materials, electricity is expensive, water is too if you don’t have a cistern, dust is constant enemy of the clean, and on and on. A lot of people come here because they liked it as a vacation spot, then realize it’s not that fun actually living here (it is, but it takes a certain mentality). Given all that, employers won’t even talk to you until you’ve been here for at least 3 or 4 months, many won’t until you’ve been here a year or more. Additionally, they want to know you’ve got roots here, such as a spouse and kids, you own a home here, etc…There are a couple things about how people work here. There’s a thing called “island time”, which means people don’t rush to do things. The cashier at the grocery store will usually just sit an chat with people she knows, or a maintenance guy might take a few days to get to your repairs. This is also important to remember with employment here. You might apply at a business, and not hear anything for weeks. I had one call me back 3 months after I finally found another job.The other thing is that the islands are informal. Sure, you can fill out that application paper, or do it online, but many employers will hire someone who simply walked in looking for a job. If they like you, you’re in. Always immediately follow up an application with a request to see the person responsible for hiring.And, finally, there is a territorial Department Of Labor here. You register on their website (VIEWS), and you can see all the job openings, along with the requirements. You need to remember that, while the minimum wage is somewhat higher than in most states, the average wage is much lower. Combined with a higher cost of living, and what might usually seem like a decent wage in most states is barely livable here.In 2012, the western hemisphere’s largest oil refinery, Hess/Hovensa, closed down with no warning on St. Croix. The refinery employed around 4 or 5 thousand people, most from here, and contributed the largest amount to the island’s financial well being. After may years, and lots of political promises, Hess is opening up again. That means there’s a lot of employing going on at the moment. I’m skeptical about JUST how many people are going to be working there, the reality is it’s badly needed. If you’re experienced in oil refining or are mechanically inclined and can pass a port security test, Hess is going to be hiring. Chances are, they’ll even need to hire from outside. Not sure on the EDC thing on this, but seeing all the workers being shipped in for this, I’d almost guarantee the residency isn’t going to matter.

Yes!!The Project Management Professional certification, or the PMP certification, is probably not the first certification that comes to mind to advance or start a career in software engineering. Many engineers are continually learning new languages and technologies in a very dynamic field, so certification in project management is not on many radars. However, project management is growing in other areas than in tech, and project managers are in high demand. The average annual base salary for a project manager in the United States is $75,474, but in tech, project managers can expect to take home an average annual base salary of $97,000. Of course, PMP certified project managers earn even more, but we’ll get to that later.More Reasons Why Tech Wants Project ManagementThe tech scene has a celebrity status right now, and tech is an exclusive club because the work is notoriously difficult. Based on this, one could imagine just how difficult project management in tech is. IT projects that are not managed well are often late and over-budget, with one in six projects turning into a ‘black swan’ — projects with a cost overrun of 200% and a schedule overrun of 70%. Bad project management in IT can cause companies to rack up losses, such as KMart losing $1.2 billion due to their failed IT modernization project.Based on these problems, you can imagine why many tech companies look towards getting good project managers, especially PMP certified project managers. The Project Management Institute states that even though 93% of organizations say they use standardized project management practices, in actuality, only 23% use standardized project management practices throughout the entire organization. Also, only 58% of organizations fully appreciate the value of project management. Another problem is that as much as 68% of employers outsource project managers. Yes, this may be due to cost-cutting measures, but many times project management expertise is outsourced due to lack of talent and qualifications.About the PMPBefore we get into answering the question of whether or not software engineers learning PMP is worth it, let’s understand what the PMP certification is. The PMP certification was born from the Project Management Institute to show employers that an individual has the necessary skills to bring a project to fruition. Unlike many other certifications in the software and tech space, a PMP certification is industry-agnostic. This means that you can use it in just about any field such as finance, government, defense, and of course, tech.The PMI packed everything a qualified project manager should know into the PMBOK® Guide. PMBOK® stands for Project Management Body of Knowledge®, and it was first published in 1996 as a set of rules to show how best to manage individual projects. This guide is the Bible of PMP and has all the principles, regulations, and methods that make a PMP certified project manager great. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world; being PMP certified will put you ahead anywhere you are.Some Reasons People Get PMP CertifiedNot many people want to admit it, but money is one of the biggest motivators for any job. There are so many reasons why project managers and others get PMP certified, but it doesn’t hurt that PMP certified project managers earn 20% more than their peers. The other perks include networking opportunities, as the PMI regularly puts on events through their various chapters. Another great thing about the PMP certification is that it respects and acknowledges the fast-paced and dynamism of today’s job market. Every three years, a certified person must take the necessary steps to earn professional development units (PDUs).The Importance of the Project Manager in Software DevelopmentThe PMBOK® defines project management as the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to consolidate and leverage human and material resources so that the project life cycle can meet its cost, scope, quality, time, and customer satisfaction requirements. In a way, the software engineering process is similar, as material resources such as code blocks and tools are leveraged along with human and infrastructural resources to create software in a highly disciplined and quantitative process. Let’s compare diagrams for system/software development and project management.Waterfall product development process for a single client, courtesy of PMIWaterfall product development process for multiple clients, courtesy of PMIThe software development process is about the technical aspects of completing a project. These technical aspects follow a set of rules and guidelines set out in software engineering fundamentals. But the act of getting this process started and getting the completed product to the customer is what product management is about, which is why they go hand-in-hand so well. The project manager’s job is to know who their client is and what steps to take to deliver the best product to the client(s). Each of these steps has its guidelines and its own recommended times for completion. Software engineering is all about the steps to get to the end of a project, while project management looks at the bigger picture and defines the HOW and WHY in getting to the goal.One crucial step that is a part of the engineering process but is done better in the project management process is the product rollout step. Product roll-out and logistical issues are often not defined in the engineering process, and sometimes this causes delays and customer satisfaction issues. Excellent project management defines this at the beginning of the cycle. Having a PMP certification empowers managers to identify risks and problem areas such as product roll out in delivering the finalized product to the client(s). Even in an Agile work environment where each employee is given a lot of freedom in projects without much need for managers, having team members that are PMP certified will result in smoother transitions between steps of the engineering process, and a timely roll out to customers.Other Reasons for Project Management ImportanceJust as in different fields, software engineering often requires applicants to have PMP credentials to fill a project management role. Software engineers are grouped by their experience levels and seniority, such as L1, L2, and L3 (T1, T2, and T3) engineers. The higher your position, the more you’re expected to take on leadership roles. In many companies, even if they may not hire separate project managers for different projects, they will give the task to individuals they believe have the skill and the knowledge to tackle that very project. Regardless of what their background is like, these individuals will have to follow many of the rules laid out in the PMBOK®and other project management guides and manuals. Because of this, it just makes sense for senior software engineers to get PMP certified.You can indeed get hired for project management roles without a PMP qualification, but it does stick out like a sore thumb to recruiters, and your chances of getting hired increase. Getting PMP certified doesn’t automatically make you a better project management professional, but it does give you the skillset to become a better project management professional. Getting PMP certified is all about showing your employers that you want to climb the ladder of the organization that you are at. It shows them that they can call on you when a leader in any capacity is needed, and it can help you get promoted, even though the position may not be PM-related. Being PMP certified is such an excellent gauge for commitment simply because the person that qualifies has to have thousands of hours of project management experience.How to Jump Right InYou have decided that it is indeed worth it for a software engineer as yourself to get PMP certified. First of all, ensure that you remember this certification is for proven leaders, meaning you are either a Team Lead, a manager, or some other leader with years of experience in project management. No matter which position you are in, you will have to have the correct leadership qualifications. Hence, if you are a laid-back software engineer who is agreeable and has been doing everything, a team leader says, the PMP certification is not for you. The PMP program looks for team leaders, which means you will have to have years of experience in not only leading teams but leading teams in completing projects. To qualify for the PMP exam, an applicant would need a Bachelor’s degree with a minimum of three years of project management experience or an Associate’s degree with a minimum of five years of project management experience.Once you have determined that you qualify, you will have to look at the time that you have. This doesn’t only include the time it would take to do the exam, but the time it would take to prepare for the exam as well. The PMI requires 35 contact hours in preparation for the PMP exam, meaning they want proof that you attended some training program that would help you prepare for the exam. This means that you will most likely need to request time off from your job to do a plan like PMTI’s, which gives a 4-day live in-person PMP boot camp and a 4-day live online PMP boot camp. We also do a self-study program for those who will not have the amount of time per day to complete the whole boot camp in just four days.Consideration must also be made for commute time, which can be a nightmare for those living in large cities such as New York and San Francisco. Yes, large cities have standard modes of public transportation, but it also has a lot of traffic and delays as well. If you choose a PMP exam preparation program such as PMTI’s 4-Day Live Boot Camp Experience, it is best to consider the distance between your residence and the training center.Another thing that would need to be considered before signing up for the PMP exam is your readiness. Even if you have the right leadership qualifications, actually being qualified means being able to handle the stress that this program will bring. The PMP exam is 200 multiple choice questions, and they’re not easy. Many people choose to take a 4-day boot camp in-person or online, and if you are not mentally prepared for a program like that, you can lose in a variety of ways.ConclusionIt is worth it for the software professional to get PMP certified, but they will need to think hard about all the sacrifices that will be made in getting there and after getting there. For instance, when you become an official project manager, be prepared to sacrifice the day-to-day joys of coding, testing, and everything else a regular engineer does. The project management role involves a more holistic approach to solving problems, and even though engineering expertise will help with the completion of many projects, your new role will need more than engineering knowledge to do the task effectively.Many mistakenly believe that a PMP credential automatically qualifies you for project management roles. It doesn’t. Many great project managers are overseeing the development of essential and sophisticated software and don’t have a PMP certification. The PMP certification is there to show what you are capable of and gives you the right tools to advance your career. Having the PMP credential shows an employer that you have the right level of commitment to seeing a project to its completion and that you know to do so.