Re: Anyone on this list?

[Katie Lucas <katie@fysh.org>]

On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 09:14:11PM +0100, Josef Spillner wrote:
> On Wednesday 30 October 2002 13:57, you wrote:
> > Yes - that's true - I've gotten several lucrative consulting jobs and
> > more than a few job offers as a direct result of my OpenSource stuff having
> > been 'noticed' by companies who'd like to recruit someone whose abilities
> > can be seen ahead of time.  You can learn a lot about someone by looking
> > at their code and reading their mailing list archives that would be
> > impossible to find during an interview.
> 
> How true. I got my current job more than 2 years ago by demonstrating some 
> sort of selfmade Linux game which still compiles nowadays but could probably 
> be rewritten in less than a weekend.
> Back then it was like, boah dude, one year of heavy development...
> 
> Josef
> 
> -- 
> Free operating systems. Free software. Free games.

If only	that were the case here.. I just spent three months
interviewing and frankly it was comical.

All of the games companies I spoke to, we had much the same
conversation. It goes "yeah, we're really keen on hiring serious C++
and development people with games experience to try and sort out our
development because we're aware that too many projects are taking too
long and costing too much and then failing and you want **HOW MUCH** A
YEAR?!?!?! My god, we can hire THREE people fresh out of university
for that!!!!"

One company read my CV and then insisted on me taking psychometric
tests to see if I was smart enough to talk to their programming
interviewers.[1][2] It was only at that second interview I found out they
actually wanted a visual basic developer not a C++ developer. I	don't
do VB. That was the point I was rude to them, because they'd wasted
quite a lot of my time by then.



Only one of the companies bothered to read my website, never mind go
out looking at stuff I'd written.





[1] For	the record, I have a BSc in computer science, qualifications
in philosoph, creative writing, accounting, marketting and 8 years
experience in software development.

[2] I did point out their tests were flawed on the grounds of
containing the usual gender biases plus not actually being applicable
to people who are off the middle 50-percentile of the range. And that
you shouldn't apply psychology tests to people studying psychology...