liquidcool

Yes, people forget that Emmanuel Goldstein of 2600 fame was a consultant on Hackers. If you thought that was unrealistic (and OK, it was), revisit the other '95 hacker movie: The Net.

You're right, that's a good point. And it seems Google has started to move away from BigTable with Spanner, which F1 is built on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanner_%28database%29

I like RDBMs, they get the job done for me (yay Postgresql), but his AdWords example is no longer correct. From Wikipedia:

> Eventually, Google developed a custom distributed Relational database management system (RDBMS) known as Google F1 specifically for the needs of the Ad business, which requires strong consistency, high scalability across data centers and powerful SQL queries. The interface has also been revamped to offer better work flow with additional new features, such as Spreadsheet Editing, Search Query Reports, and better conversion metrics.

Yes, I've worked in apparel ecommerce for some major brands, and many that market to older women use vanity sizing (beyond the general trend in the article), which leads to a high rate of return. You can put a vendor size chart right on the product page, but if the customer thinks "my size is X" instead of "my measurements are W, X, Y, and Z" they won't bother checking.

I'm curious, what is the risk of getting caught, and what is the penalty?

One thing to explore is reporting. Reporting on large enough data, putting into a data warehouse/star schema, etc., gets you into "business intelligence" territory. That puts you in touch with a lot of managers, providing clear value. Data visualization (dashboards) can be fun, too.

Getting the ratio of developers to jobs is tricky. I could check LinkedIn or a resume database, but they lag a bit since most only update them before job hunting. Still, probably not a horrible metric.

Another metric is salary. Also imperfect data, but right now the stand out is Java/Spring/Hibernate. Not too surprising as an "enterprise" technology, and probably also includes more people with degrees than frequently self-taught language like (say) PHP.

It's important to note that it's not the technology that gets you the job, but how well you stand out from the other candidates.

Sorry, it's California-centric since I'm in LA; OC is Orange County, one county south. OC is not a tech hub, per se, but has a lot of industry, and is home to Blizzard, Oculus, and a number billion dollar companies that naturally write a lot of software. If you were asking if LA is a tech hub, I'll say yes. It's growing, and Southern California graduates more engineers than any other metro area in the US, so it's attracting more tech companies. Google has offices in LA and OC, and just bought 12 acres for a new campus.

I search job board aggregators and do my level best to filter out agency recruiters. I don't trust the exact job numbers, of course, but I trust the rankings because the deltas are large enough.

I should probably narrow the query a bit (I'm using a job board aggregator), but there are a number of startups built on PHP, most notably Facebook. Yahoo uses it in places, and don't forget all the companies who need a WordPress, Magento, Drupal, etc. developer. These technologies run multi-million dollar businesses. And after years of consulting, I can tell you business owners don't care what's under the hood if it solves their problem with good ROI.

Since I started dabbling in recruiting, I've been doing rough tracking of job data for a number of technologies/stacks, broken down by region (LA, OC, and SV). When I checked outstanding jobs earlier this month, these were the rankings (most to least jobs):

SV: PHP, Java EE, Node.js, RoR, Spring/Hibernate, C#/.NET, Python/Django, Scala/Play, Groovy/Grails

LA: PHP, C#/.NET, Java EE, RoR, Spring/Hibernate, Node.js, Python/Django, Scala/Play, Groovy/Grails

OC: C#/.NET, PHP, Java EE, Spring/Hibernate, Node.js, RoR, Groovy/Grails, Python/Django, Scala/Play

And numbers show that SV has 4-5x jobs of LA, which has 2x jobs of OC. This is all to say that research is critical if you're choosing a technology based on getting a job locally.

I don't see a typo, nor do I see mention of ASP.NET MVC anywhere. "Spring MVC" is an extremely popular web framework on the Java Virtual Machine: http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-r...

I have many false employees on LinkedIn, but I can't completely divorce myself from blame after naming my company "Made Up Name." :-)

And I also recommend a phone call. I understand it will be uncomfortable for you after firing him, but be polite and if he doesn't comply, try LinkedIn, and then finally the legal route.

There are definitely companies selling such projects (Daxtra comes to mind), but as Aline Lerner pointed out [1] the problem isn't matching as much as it is sourcing. IOW, you don't focus on conversion optimization if you don't have enough traffic.

I do recruiting and because I'm a developer, matching is pretty trivial. But most recruiters don't have any serious dev experience, so if they need to search through a big database of resumes, this could help. Assuming you don't factor in that resumes are largely worthless :-)

1. http://blog.alinelerner.com/building-a-product-in-the-techni...

Anyone know if Sendgrid or AWS SES is affected? Or even the email marketing shops like MailChimp, Aweber, ExactTarget, etc.

There seems to be more backlash against the CEO for revoking the offer than the asker.

1. Ask them how they mentor junior members.

2. Invite them to lunch with the team so you can all interact.

3. Ask them to give a short presentation on a relevant technical topic to gauge their communication skills. (Idea taken from Peopleware)

What's interesting is that you don't even have to be the creator of said project to profit off it. There are companies that provide commercial support and consulting for Tomcat and Postgresql, but they didn't create them. There are a ton of other examples in enterprise grade FOSS.

Yes, it's like the Niels Bohr quote, "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field." You have to determine if you need someone who is an expert now, or can become an expert. If you have a bunch of experts already, you can relax the requirement for new people because of knowledge transfer. (Assuming you're good about that.)

But we must acknowledge the amount of time that people spend in jobs now. If it takes a year to gain mastery and people leave after 2, like you said, there's just not enough time for people to learn from scratch.

Man, this brings back memories of lying on my loft in college, listening to industrial music while reading William Gibson. Studying CS, playing with 3D on the Amiga, reading 2600, Wired, Mondo, etc., etc. It doesn't matter if it was tongue in cheek or half joking, for some of us, it was describing the world you wanted to live in, or hoped was the future since Max freaking Headroom :-) It was fun!

> The company originally designed a two-week indoctrination into its famously "fun" office culture that has since evolved to a four-week undertaking. ... Anyone who shows up late for the daily 7 a.m. start is fired on the spot.

It seems you have to be really into working there right out of the gate. Culture fit must be at the top of their list. Also can't help but notice the journalist chose "indoctrination" over "orientation."

Oddly, I can't determine what location this is for. The workbetter.us domain redirects to a Squarespace landing page that has no real info (who, where, etc.). It seems they are mostly doing business as OfficeLinks (NYC and Chicago) and own the .com for that domain outright, so why do they have to go after this guy?

Thanks for that. I came to post this article, not by Suster but enthusiastically endorsed by him:

http://blog.eladgil.com/2015/03/career-decisions.html

Edit: typo

Think of the ingenuity in crafting the device, and his business savvy to go from landscaper to millionaire (in the 70s). So much drive, and yet not enough to get himself to a GA meeting. Addiction's a bitch.

If a startup is a marriage, do you really want to marry these people? Do you see this as a quick exit (acquisition) or a longer slog?

If you want in, get a lawyer who specializes in startups (partnership agreements). They will tell you what your rights are regarding IP (varies by state), advise on how to negotiate for equity, and determine if your cofounders have committed any crime. For instance, if they knowingly misrepresented themselves to the accelerator in order to gain funding (keeping in mind IANAL) they may have committed fraud (regardless of what they call it).

This is a tough one. What everyone assumes is that a only blatantly sexist person will dismiss your resume because of a female name. Obviously, such people will flunk you in the interview.

The problem is it completely ignores people who honestly don't believe they are sexist (and may even consider themselves feminist), but suffer from an unconscious bias. These people might be fine to work for and not be biased (or blatantly so) in the rest of the hiring process.

I never thought of orchestras as havens of gender bias, but they totally were:

http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/b...

And I'm sure the judges certainly didn't consider themselves as sexist.

It's totally up to you, but an easy solution is to use initials, such as AJ instead of Allison Jane. For some reason, we almost always assume initials belong to a man.

As for the recruiter, hopefully they know some stats about diversity, including if they are trying to improve it. But in general, a recruiter does not want to submit someone who won't pass the interview.

What language(s) do you already know?

I'm also a fan of the Pragmatic Programmer and my lifetime language count is at 15. A few years ago I started using Groovy and haven't looked back. Very low ceremony language that gets rid of a ton of Java boilerplate. Borrows idioms/semantics from Ruby and Python, esp. list processing (collect, map, find/findAll, etc.), making those languages easier to learn. There's good library support, even outside of Grails, but Grails plugins are a big win. And assuming you want to be on the JVM to interact with other Java libs, Groovy makes this trivial.

I also love the optional static typing and compilation, which greatly improves performance.

I usually recommend people look at the style guide (http://www.groovy-lang.org/style-guide.html) and the GDK (http://www.groovy-lang.org/groovy-dev-kit.html). Pretty short reads that get you up to speed on much of the functionality quickly. If you like what you see, keep going.

I haven't felt motivated to learn anything new since this meets my needs so well, but if it had better library/framework support I'd give Clojure a shot. I enjoyed Lisp, but didn't use it outside the classroom except for Emacs. Probably learn it with SICP.

Thanks for the data on the evaluation time. 9-10 hours per applicant is nontrivial, I agree. If you've worked with someone shoulder to shoulder, I can also see that being as effective. The problem I hear is that depending on the experience and number of the founding team, they can exhaust their network quickly.

Peopleware has the idea of auditions, and I thought if you were clear about what you wanted, applicants would be comparable. I'm thinking, "Walk us through a project you did that demonstrates your knowledge of code quality." Or similar, with a clear list of what you're hoping to see.

I agree with the work sample test. In similar threads, some found cheaters, but the followup interview exposed them because they can't speak about the process and solution cogently. I imagine that if you look at enough, just reading them will allow you to spot cheaters, and having so many applicants will provide a good selection ethical developers. And a short contract-to-hire or probation period should deal with any who get through.

Contract rates depend on location, duration, skill set, experience, and industry, and you've only given the first. So it's impossible to tell you what to charge (and I don't know the Utah market, assuming it's even uniform).

I recommend patio11's salary negotiation guide:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

If you move from contracting to freelancing (which is a pretty big move), check out http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com/

Very good material.

At Boeing (and the other major aerospace companies), they have 5 levels of engineering, then the Technical Fellow track with 3 levels. Level four requires you be a team lead, and level 5 even higher level of responsibility. That was a more recent requirement, and we were told they corresponded with manager and senior manager, which slowed down promotions significantly.

The Tech Fellow track was created to grant executive level compensation to retain subject matter experts. Beyond a graduate degree, becoming a Tech Fellow requires demonstrating your subject matter expertise within the company, with a key measure being that other groups seek out your help, so it does require some politics and networking. At the highest level, you pretty much have to be a national authority. A lot of work, but executive compensation at a megacorp is significant.

That said, unless your specialty is avionics or CFD, I don't recommend aerospace companies for software engineers.