Re: Exceptional Rails Developer

This has been a lot of fun reading the replies.  As a retired programmer,
not looking for a job, I am glad that you guys are perceptive and only have
egos that are so so large.  The biggest problem with taking a new job
anywhere, not just VC-startups is that you might have to move to a strange
place and that can make any programmer feel pretty insecure and
intimidated.  What if the VC-startup fails?  And are you working by
yourself?  That is the way I felt when I kicked the security of programming
employment at a large financial business and went into contract
programming.  It doubled and later tripled my income but the stress level
went up too.  Working for a VC-startup has all of the risk of contracting
with none of the benefits.

I did have a bad experience with a B2B VC-startup on a 6 months contract as
a contract programmer, my second contract.  In order to cut corners the
programmer manager refused to require the business partner and programmers
to document the project.  No business design documents.   No systems design
documents.  No program designs documents.  It was a nightmare.  I was one of
the few native born Americans in the systems shop.  And to top it off most
of the programmers were from that part of India where they clip the ending
consonants off their words.   I couldn't understand 50% of what they said.
I moved over to work with a group of Ukrainian  and Russian emigrants.  I
could understand the Ukrainians but not a Russian woman.  The poor woman was
terrified of what was going on in the department and totally lost and when
she got nervous she would start talking so fast I couldn't understand
anything she said. I felt sorry for her.  But I was glad when the contract
ended.

The job sounded like a worthy one, one that is good for a first time job to
explore and learn all about reality.  And the project does sound like
something socially useful.  A sort of common knowledge system that is very
popular in artificial intelligence.   See Conceptnet3, WordNet, or CYC.
 Whether it would ever be profitable or allow the programmer who fills the
slot to use it as a spring board to better pay or better job is anyone's
guess.  Academic environments, or ones close to academic environments, can
be a good way to break into the professional programming business.  My first
job as a programmer when I got out of the Air Force (I was trained as a
programmer in the Air Force, my degree is in chemistry), was a programming
position with the University of Florida.

But if you already have a job, the only thing good about a job offer from a
VC-startup is being  able to use it as leverage to get a pay raise from your
current boss and, more importantly, transferred from nice to have jobs that
are expendable to part of the essential development team.

As for using silly buzzwords, what the hell.  At least the CEO wants the
best.  That is always a good thing.  But he might be more successful if he
tries to "borrow" one of the programmers from a university that is looking
to cut the budget of its programming staff.  And they all are looking to do
that.  Of hire a undergraduate programming major part time.

Hope this helps both the CEO and, in good humor, the rest of you Yahoos.

No animals were harmed in writing this pithy post.

No Sam
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Josh Cheek <[e-mail]> wrote:

>  On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 7:32 PM, David Masover <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
> > On Wednesday 30 September 2009 06:54:16 pm Greg Donald wrote:
> > > We programmers all already think we are exceptional.
> >
> > Well, most of us.
> >
> > > You
> > > won't make less of us apply for a job by trying to single out people
> > > using silly buzzwords.  So stop it.
> >
> > That, I'm not sure of.
> >
> > Ok, silly buzzwords, yes. It seems every marketer ends up using
> > "exceptional"
> > or "ninja", etc, so it's watered down.
> >
> > On the other hand, I'd much rather work for a place which values talent
> > (whether or not they can find it) than one which values rapid-but-buggy
> > prototypes using the cheapest contractors that money can buy. I'm talking
> > about best practices versus "I tried stuff until it worked."
> >
> > I mean, it is nice to occasionally be the smartest person in the room --
> or
> > at
> > least the most knowledgeable. I'm back in school (since I don't have a
> > job),
> > which means I'm starting at the very beginning -- I'm talking about a
> class
> > which will spend a week or two on binary and hexadecimal, along with
> plenty
> > of
> > other trivia, before writing a single line of code. It's fun to finish a
> > weeklong assignment in an hour, or an hour-long assignment in ten
> minutes.
> >
> > But I don't really want to spend my life correcting everyone else's
> > mistakes.
> > As intimidating as it is, I'd much rather work in a place where
> everyone's
> > smarter than me, or at least interested in improving, than working in a
> > place
> > where a bunch of codemonkeys punch a clock -- or worse, a startup filled
> > with
> > Paula Beans in Aeron chairs with dual-30" monitors.
> >
> > (That's not a sexist comment, I promise. Google Paula Bean.)
> >
> > So that's the reason "exceptional" at least got my attention. It shows
> that
> > someone is at least pretending they care about learning and improving,
> > about
> > making their craft an art form, and about doing things The Right Way.
> >
> > But I'll give you a secret: If you want a buzzword that'll really catch
> my
> > attention, throw around words like metaprogramming and Domain-Specific
> > Languages. Talk about how your product will be fun to work on, and ask
> for
> > people who specialize in interesting things like CouchDB or virtual
> machine
> > architecture. Mention conferences you send your team to -- both to
> > advertise
> > and to learn.
> >
> > In other words: We're programmers. Find out what actually excites us, use
> > actual technical buzzwords (not marketing buzzwords), and use them
> > properly.
> > Be a cool place to work, and explain why you're a cool place to work.
> >
> >
> I seccond Zundra's sentiment.
> If ever you find yourself in a supervisory position, looking to hire
> developers -- I will work for cost of living (plus insurance).
> And I sympathize with your school experience, thats where I'm at now. I
> must
> have found 30 ways to generate fibonacci numbers.
>