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Recruiting the wrong person for a job is very, very costly, you'll end up paying a few months of salary before noticing the mistake, and then you have to re-do the entire hiring process again, which also costs money.

... which doesn't explain the over-reliance on CVs and "resume pushers." Want to hire someone? Go to a developers' conference and see who asks the most intelligent questions, who gives the best answers without trying to get into an ego pissing contest, who's honest and who's a poseur, etc. Sure, it will cost you some $$$, but you'll get a better feel of who is talking out their ass, who is respected by everyone, and who is an obnoxious toxic SOB in real life, instead of just playing at being a BOfH online ... plus you'll learn something.

The biggest lack in business is communications skills, not programming skills. Where do you think the unreasonable deadlines, the feature creep, the death marches, the zombie projects that the undead are condemned to toil on come from? And it's not "all management's fault." Everyone in the chain has to take some blame, by not being able to effectively communicate why something is a bad idea, or the necessity of feature triage, or the need for more "quiet think time" as opposed to banging out LOCs a mile a minute.

Also, to answer the original posters' question - the definitive place to look for jobs in Canada: http://www.jobbank.gc.ca/Intro_en.aspx - Canadian government web site where employers post job offers, it also supplies tools for job applicants, info, etc ...

>And where are you finding these $10 an hour employees? Even outsourced support costs more than $10 an hour.

What planet are you on? On my planet, you can easily find support worker jobs at that price. That took about 10 seconds to find, btw. No serious amount of effort. Perhaps you only searched for 9 seconds?

>The corporate server is Exchange.

Sure, if the company has chosen Microsoft. In this case the company has chosen whatever works best for them. If you expect a company to choose something because you prefer it, I believe the correct word for that would be "arrogance".

>The big boss has powerpoint... and a pdf willn't work since she needs to edit the document before sending it on.

Same thing again. A company that doesn't choose microsoft would use OpenOffice or something else. Next thing you'll tell me is that if a car part isn't made by Delco, it's not really a car part, is it? Or perhaps if a computer isn't made by Apple, it's not really a computer?

I mean, honestly, are you seriously trying to say "I'd like to see a Toyota take a Delco radio!" Because if you are, I do believe you've lost already. Even more ridiculous, but still on track, would be an argument from you that it's not paper if it's not size A4.

Anyways, the big boss of a real corporation has whatever program on his computer that works for him. And any sane big boss has the program on his computer that the rest of the company is using.

>And what scheduling program are you using?

I don't know, there's just too many to choose from. Evolution, Zimbra, Chandler. It would be up to the sysadmin to evaluate the products and decide the best course of action.

You sir, truly seem to be very misinformed about these things. I'd love to teach you all I know, but I just don't have the time. I suggest trying google next time. Just as before, please spend more than 9 seconds on your search.

>The active-x control is signed so all the employee has to do is click on it. And by the way, there isn't an active-x equivalent for linux.

Wow, your company lets users install things on the computer with just a click? Because they're signed? I mean, just... wow. Do you also let them play games on their computer because they've been signed? Drive the corporate car to the airport to pick up their family from vacation because it accepts keys? Bring hookers into the workplace because they've recently passed an STD test? Puh-leeeze.

>And the biggest example of a linux is envirnoment is a maker of guitar strings...priceless.

Yes, exactly. Or don't you get it? You don't have to be IBM to be able to make Linux work for you. You can be as non-techie as a company that makes guitar strings and find Linux does it all for you. Oh, maybe you assume because they make guitar strings they wouldn't have things like meetings, email, presentations, production management, websites, etc? Well, you know what assume does. It makes an ass out of you. Not really me, because it's pretty clear at this point I'm much more intelligent in this field than you ever will be.

>You obviously live in a major metropolitan area.

If you call a population of about 205,000 people an obviously major metropolitan area, then sure, you're right.

You can easily verify these claims here. It's hard to find a nice apartment in this province in a city large enough to hold a decent job in for under $800, assuming you either want a large 1 bedroom or a cramped 2 bedroom. A hellhole can be had for about $600, but most of them haven't seen repairs, never mind upgrades, for at least 50 years (I know, many of my friends rent for around $650 a month, let's see: Heating permanently on maximum, upstairs bathroom belches out sewage because there's a pipe that hasn't been fixed for decades, another one's bathroom ceiling poured water for 2 weeks because the landlord couldn't be arsed to send a plumber out, etc, etc).

The "4 bedrooms" apartments for under $500 are just rooms in a flop house (literally, by definition, as it is shared quarters). Popular with the students, but only a smidge better than single room occupancy.

>Try more like 4-500, for a real nice place, in the majority of the country that isn't a large city.

I'd like to know where you're talking about. Here's a sleepy town nearby me. Population 10,000. I went to school there a long time ago (Go Lancers!). Most people living around there were farmers. Rent starts at $580 a month. I'd love to check smaller places, but they tend not to have anything to rent at all, and if they do, it's hard to compare because there's only the one place.

>In a city? 30k will be what you make flippin burgers.

That would be nice. Unfortunately, burger flippers workers make $8/hr here. At 40 hours a week, that's $16,000 a year (vacation pay doesn't count, since we're talking average lifestyle, which means average 2 weeks vacation).

>and streets that AREN'T STRAIGHT god I hate developments

Heh, Kitchener being the odd place it is means it has incredibly curvy roads (check it out on google maps) since the grid system was only used for 10 years. However, it isn't the "big city" thing. It's that way because Kitchener used the original Mennonite cart tracks for roads. In our case it's nothing to do with making it look nice, it's just done that way because it's always been done that way. Did I mention the Mennonites designed our main streets to intersect three times (King and Weber) and the road directions aren't magnetically aligned, but are aligned to the river?

>and makes sure you're always sliding on the edge of fucking disaster come wintertime when things ice up. ... how did I wind up ranting about that? er. time for beer.

You sure you're not from here? :-)

I know plenty of people that "get by" on $25 - $30k a year here, but it's more getting by than enjoying anything in life. *sigh*

However, this has been so poorly enforced for the past 30 years or so (since the Trudeau administration) that it basically doesn't exist.

Euphemistic, unclear, and non-standardized job descriptions are common no matter the field. Of course, it's more common in places where there is high demand and low job quality: workers at Subway are called "sandwich artists", telemarketing is "enumeration-type work".

Some job listing sites do require employers to use standardized job titles. The Government of Canada's Job Bank website uses a dewey-decimal-like National Occupation Classification, so that at least you can understand what type of work is being described.

The detailed job description? Well, the devil's in the details. Read the employment contract before you sign it.

- RG>

More jobs. If you aren't searching nationally (which most people aren't) or leaving the fields blank ; there aren't more than one or two matches. Even these are mostly fake jobs listed from headhunters and placement agencies looking to expand their pool of workers. I'd also like to see less competition between the job websites. I don't like checking 15 websites for a job every day.

PS: For Canadian bums like me that are looking for a job, check this site out.

If you live in Ontario, this site is great. Just don't go stealing the good jobs, as I'm still looking too!

http://www.jobbank.gc.ca/ShowJob_en.asp?OrderNum=5 71931&Source=JobPosting
12/h programmer job.
Not to mention they want you to sign invention, secrecy and a non competition agreement for 5 years !!.