What's the Worst Job Posting You've Seen?

Kickstart70 asks: "Recently myself and a number of friends of mine who work or worked in IT jobs have been remarking on absolutely horrible job postings for low-level IT jobs paying small change. It seems the headhunters and employers are still wanting knowledge in everything, at least one degree but preferably two, and want to keep employees on minimal wages (in the job listing linked, the wage is in Canadian dollars). Is this common everywhere? What's the worst job posting you have seen?"

Comments

Interesting requirements...

[hendridm]

> WINNT is nice to have.

Don't do it! The organization is clearly run by crazies.

My favorite part:

Software List: Some or all would be preferred.

I mean, damn, $17-$19 is pretty good for Help Desk, even if it is bilingual, but anyone who is familiar with all of the items on that list should make more than God himself. Of course, the poster of this probably works for Kelly Services anyway.

Re:Interesting requirements...

[shaitand]

I dunno, $17-$19 CANADIAN???

Re:Interesting requirements...

[cbeaudry]

You have to take into consideration that 17-19$ canadian, for a level 1 tech support job, is actually a good offer.

17-19$ Goes a long way in Edmonton (I beleive thats where the job is) compared to lets say Vancouver or Toronto where you'd need at least 25$/hour.

You guys have to remember, you will have a better living standard with 17$/hour Canadian in Edmonton, than if your doing 30$/hour USD in Sillicon Valley.

Re:Interesting requirements...

[nigel_q]

What part of Canada do you live in? Saying that most Canadians are bilingual is like saying all Americans speak Spanish. Bilingualism isn't actually that common outside of Quebec or the Ottawa/Hull region; only a small fraction of Canada. And of course, the further west you go, the less likely bilingualism becomes, and the move likely forced french study become resented. Take Vancouver, for example. What good is force teaching the kids there French, with Quebec thousands of KM away? They'd be better off learning Chinese. And even in Ontario, you only HAVE to take French in school until Grade 9. After that, you can forget it all, as if it was some horrible horrible nightmare, like Calculus. If you want to succeed in the Federal Government/Civil Service though, you'd best learn to parlez-vous. (They'll usually pay to have you taught...)

Re:Interesting requirements...

[cmallinson]

But in Canada, being bilingual is normal. French and English speakers are common. And $17-$19 CAD is far above minimum wage.

Although French-English bilingualism is common in the eastern provinces, it is rare in the west. Less than 7% in BC and Alberta. I would say this percentage is even smaller within the techie demographic.

Re:Interesting requirements...

[Dexx]

I work in downtown Edmonton doing tech support. I make less than that and consider myself doing well.

Re:Interesting requirements...

[tigga]

What is "bilingual French" anyway - two dialects of French?

French French and Canadian French?

Re:Interesting requirements...

[Mattcelt]

A good translator has real skills.

You mean as opposed to most helpdesk techs? *grin*

This is part of the problem here in the U.S. - companies hire lots of barely- or non-technical staff to handle the helpdesk, and they end up simply being call routers to the real techs, freeing those people from having to answer the phone.

I've heard the helpdesk at one company I've worked with referred to as "Victoria's Secret".

i.e., they're there purely for show and don't really support anything at all.

Re:Interesting requirements...

[Carnildo]

Translation of technical subjects is a great deal harder than general translation -- to do a good job, you need to know the technical jargon of both languages, and that usually means you need to have education in the field you're translating, as well as fluency in both languages.

(remembering a translated manual referring to "water-sheep")

Re:Interesting requirements...

[j-pimp]

And if you practice mopping floors enough and gain a few certifications in bleach and ajax, I'm sure you can become a mop consultant for a fortune 500 company.

Re:Interesting requirements...

[Malicious]

Dude, I live in Edmonton, and I make $18/hour doing ADSL tech support...

Re:Interesting requirements...

[Feztaa]

Sorry to reply to myself, but let's just work it out:

$10/hour, 40 hours a week, 4 weeks in a month = $1,600 per month.

$19/hour, 40 hours a week, 4 weeks a month = $3,040 per month.

In Edmonton, the cheapest apartments are about $400/mo, but we'll be a bit generous and assume that you don't want to live in a slum. So, $700/mo for your apartment, plus $50/mo for cable internet, plus $25/mo phone, plus heat/water/power will probably run you up $100/mo (I'm not sure on this one, my roommate pays those bills :)

So, for the $19/hour job, if you factor in those expenses, plus taxes, you're still left with around $2,000/mo for things like food, entertainment, etc. That's a lot of money (to me, anyway).

Re:Interesting requirements...

[Yo Grark]

Try living in toronto, $10.00 won't even pay for your apartment.

Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering

My Own

[jhouserizer]

The worst I've seen?

The job posting to find the person who will replace me.

Re:My Own

[Nucleon500]

Worse than that?

Finding out you're unqualified.

Re:My Own

[gmack]

Yeah.. When I quit my first job in montreal after the place took a direction other than what was on the job description(they wanted to do porn and I didn't) They posted a job asking for my qualifications but expected to about $12 CDN an hour.

One day I'm overhearing the receptionist talking to a prospective sysadmin calling for my job "well sir.. before we process your resume.. do you have a problem with porn? how about animal porn? ohh well ok then. thanks anyways"

Glad I left? yep! That place and Ralsky deserved each other.

Re:My Own

[dtfinch]

Animal porn is a plague that nearly all sysadmins must face some day. Even working as a programmer, I've enountered it. I had to write a realtime firewall log analyzer to enable our network admins quickly spot suspicious incoming and outgoing traffic with our existing firewall. When I was demonstrating an early working version to my boss someone started browsing a bunch of sick porn sites, mostly animal porn judging by the urls. An investigation began immediately.

Re:My Own

[rborek]

That actually happened to me. I was given layoff notice, at which point I went for another job, same pay grade, same thing I had been doing... to be told that I was unqualified to do the job (which was the same job I had been doing!). I eventually got the job (I work in a unionized environment, and the moronic managers who tried to pull that one got overruled), but it does happen.

Re:My Own

[cyberwench]

I worked at a small computer shop - builds, repairs, internet service, that kind of thing. A friend's ex-husband brought his machine in to have us install some hardware upgrades. We didn't notice anything until we left it running for a bit and came back... Lara Croft screensaver, complete with really bad amateur Japanese-tentacle-type-porn.

Me, I'd remember that kind of stuff before I took a machine in for repair.

Re:My Own

[0x0d0a]

The point being, this wasn't a random computer store - he brought it there because he knew I worked there and knew we did good work. I'm sure he just forgot, or didn't know how to turn it off.

[shrug] Okay, fair enough. That wasn't clear to me in the initial post.

I'd care if I was taking my machine in for repair because it's incredibly rude to impose that sort of thing on others. There's a difference between leaving your porn in a folder somewhere when it goes into the shop, and having it be your desktop and screensaver.

[sigh] This is where we get into gender differences. Imposition wasn't at all the issue I thought you were bringing up -- rather, the possibility that he might be shamed.

I suppose the closest equivalent I could think of would be if I ran into a woman's computer with pornography of men, or perhaps a guy with gay porn on his computer. I just...I can't say I'd feel imposed upon. I'd probably get a chuckle out of it, but not feel uncomfortable.

To be honest, the tint of dishonesty is what bothers me more. Obviously, we try to lie to each other, to present a different image from what we really are. People clean up the house when they have relatives coming over, job interviewees wear formal business attire for interviews (even if they never would on the job), and generally sexuality is Not Spoken Of. It kind of bothers me -- I wish everyone could be entirely open and honest -- if they happen to find tentacle porn appealing, it'd be nice if folks could admit it. I've had a couple friends that are gay, and the degree of net emotional agony they go through with having to deal with hiding the fact much of the time seems like a mind-bogglingly awful social issue.

It may be that two hundred years from now, folks will be as far beyond us today regarding honesty in sexuality as we are beyond Victorian times and the kind of hidden social issues that Freud turned up.

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Poopsmith

Who'd take that crappy job?

[grub]

I count 163 things (well, wc -l counted it) on that list of things they want prospects to know. Obviously that job involves too much work and would interfere with reading /.

Anyone that applies is obviously beyond geekdom and is to be pitied.

Requirements that end up in a checksum failure...

[LostCluster]

The worst ones I've seen are ones that require you to have gone back in time in order to have enough experience with the software they want you to use:

"Requirements: 5 years experience with Windows 2000..."

Several good sites

[t0qer]

Fuck that job
http://fuckthatjob.com/index.php

E-mails of the suthibut family (doesn't seem to be updated)
http://blog.postapocalypse.com/dave/dave suthibut.a sp

10 years Java experience

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1997!

Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure.

[t0qer]

I'm being nitpicky about your commment I know. But you're lack of understanding into the space time continium and the 4th dimension requires it.

"Requirements: 5 years experience with Windows 2000..."


Ok if one wanted 5 years of experience with win2k, they would need to go forward in time, to say 2005. Not backwards, because win2k was not created yet.

Again my apologies for being a nitpick.

Lots of them here

[EvilStein]

at Fuck That Job dot com ..but you know, there are so many of these postings that it's really not that funny anymore. It just reaffirms our belief that management really is trying to squeeze everything they can out of the pee-on workers.
Gotta do something to give that CEO his bonus (studies show that executive compensation has gone up over 17% in the past year. Bah.)

Re:Lots of them here

[Guido von Guido]

As the Economist notes, executive compensation has gone up enormously while profits have not (see the graph at the bottom). This isn't to say that the average CEO doesn't work hard or have valuable skills. But there are lot of CEO's who are overpaid at the expense of both shareholders and workers.

Re:Lots of them here

[router]

I think if CEOs made 150k a year, most people wouldn't be complaining. Its the 7+ figures that makes us peons wonder if they couldn't be replaced with 5x as many Indian workers.... Oh, wait, that's only an option for peons. My bad.

andy

Re:Lots of them here

[dvdeug]

And it seems to me that life is a bit more complicated than you make it out to be.

Enough to justify that the average CEO get a 1000 times in wages what his engineers get?

Re:Lots of them here

[ergo98]

Between 1980 and 2000 the pay of the average American CEO has gone from 42x the average worker's pay, to 531x the average worker's pay (source: National Post Business - Nov. 2003). Somehow I'm not crying any tears that they're putting in, err, "18 hour days" on executive lunches, driving in the limo, doing golf, and getting "exotic" massages.

But it is NOT easy. the competition is always there, working harder. Every time you have a great product someone else has just made it cheaper in Taiwan.

Uh, wouldn't this justify paying every programmer, designer, tech writer, etc, exhorbinant pays because it's "damn hard" to make money? You carry this on with:

As a tech guy I am not denying tech's value, But it seems to me we should NOT ever underestimate the incredible skills of the men and women that create our wealth and keep our companies running.

This seriously leads me to believe that your post is nothing more than a troll. The people who "create wealth" are the people that design and create the profit centers. Secondly, CEOs of public companies seldom own even more than a marginal percentage of the company - they walked into the situation generally because all of their friends sit on the board. The current running of public companies is absolutely criminal.

What extraordinary skill does the CEO bring to the table that justifies the unbelievable theft-from-within that is most CEO pays? Nothing justifies it. The reality is that a CEO position is indeed a necessary node on the org chart (a corporation needs someone at the steering wheel), but the person filling that role is not nearly as rare as is often made out, and usually is someone to basically tally the "votes" offered by all of the vice-presidents and directors to chart the course of the organization, and they most certainly don't need the sorts of incentives that they get dropped on their plate (531x the average workers pay? That is absolutely insane. Again - These people often didn't start the company, they have no loyalty to the company, and their only ownership is shares that they had to be GIVEN that they usually unload as quickly as they vest). Indeed, survey after survey have found that there is extremely little correlation (if any) between CEO pay and company performance.

Re:Lots of them here

[forkboy]

So "the job's really hard" is your justification for executive exploitation of workers, outsourcing of jobs, and bonuses and payraises for execs while the rest of the employees take pay cuts or get laid off? I call bullshit.

CEOs aren't the only ones that work 18 hour days, and most of the others that DO work those kind of hours don't get to spend a good portion of them on the golf course or at lunch with business associates.

But it seems to me we should NOT ever underestimate the incredible skills of the men and women that create our wealth and keep our companies running.

I'm glad your boss inspires you with his skill and leadership, but most of these yahoos running companies are self-serving greedy pigs that do not give a god damn rat's ass about the company OR their employees' well-being. Else, you would see more company loyalty and less bitching. You're a CTO, you're at the top of the food chain, so your commentary about how valuable the CEO is to the people that bust their ASSES making money for companies like yours is meaningless. Put some time in the trenches of a company run by your typical night-school MBA executives and you'll understand what I mean. Until then, put your toys away, get back in your Escalade, and stfu.

Re:Lots of them here

[serutan]

Lots of people work 60 hour weeks, especially during crunch projects, and they generally don't get a half million dollar bonus at the end of the year. Maybe your CEO works harder than the one's I have known. In any case, I doubt that the job of the average CEO has gotten 17% harder in the past year.

Re:Lots of them here

[BlackHawk]

Your boss must read /. I can't think of any other reason for being such a sycophant.

The real truth, Michael, is that the average CEO is indeed a hard working individual, but not so hard that he deserves to make hundreds of times the rate of pay of his line employees. His hard work, after all, is one component of the job. If any CEO is doing it all himself, he either is a company of one employee, or he needs to learn to delegate.

Oh, and about it being damned hard to make money? Not really; you just have to have the insight needed to supply a demand that will support it. And that insight usually arrives as a result of lightning flash, rather than being laboriously crafted from nothing.

Re:Lots of them here

[ergo98]

If you don't like the system.. work hard, take a few risks, and create a succesful company that YOU can run.

Few CEOs "created" the successful company that they're now pillaging. If they did, they seldom have huge compensation because they already have a massive investment in the company (see Bill Gates - I don't hear anyone complaining about Bill's compensation). Where they were a founder and they're now pillaging, that's usually a sign that it's going down the toilet.

So.. why not be the CEO then? If it's so easy to do, why isn't everyone doing it? Part of the skill isn't just in the work required to BE a CEO, but the fairly diverse skill set required to BECOME one in the first place.

If only the world were so ideal. Your commentary is largely as realistic as telling a peasant in feudalist England that if being a Lord is so easy, why don't they just go and be one. Most CEOs are the spawn of powerful families with powerful connections and tremendous wealth - I think you'll find very few biographies that start in a poor ghetto.

The reality is that most CEO's are truly good people. They work hard, and work to make their companies as good as possible.

No one said that they aren't good people, but there is an element to human greed that comes into play when people are given such unchecked power. Read the book Animal Farm (or re-read it) as it's quite insightful.

As far as CEOs working as hard as they can to make "their" company (sure it's their's...once their $10 million in "incentive" stock options vest so they can immediately divest them) successful, how about this: You, Mrs. CEO, have the right to put down as much of your family's hard earned money as you want, on the open market, to buy company shares. I know that you'll be so dedicated, so talented, so visionary, that this will be nothing less than an extraordinary investment as you steer the organization to success. We will all applaud you when you reap the rewards of good stewardship.

Oh, what's that? You don't want to risk a penny of your money on this dump? You insist that we give you ridiculously under-priced stock options with no time-limitations? You insist that we line your contract with departure bonuses so no matter how much you screw up you're guaranteed a wealthy future regardless? You insist that there is rampant inbreeding among boards that you and all of your friends sit on, basically putting the wolves in charge of the hen house?

Oooh, sounds like a deal to me.

Re:Lots of them here

[Kioti]

Now we know how you became a CTO.

Re:Lots of them here

[mungtor]

What extraordinary skill does the CEO bring to the table that justifies the unbelievable theft-from-within that is most CEO pays?

I really feel that you have never worked for a CEO who really cared about his business or his people. You use the word "most", but I feel I should provide a counterpoint.

I'm not a CEO, but I have worked for one who honestly cared and wanted to makes his people as rich/successful as he is.

He worked for 3 years without drawing salary. He paid all travel expenses out of pocket. He was in at 5:30 AM every day, and left after 8pm (I don't know when, because I was only putting in 14 hour days from 6-8). In nearly any area the guy was scary-smart, but he did approve a more than 200% raise for me because he knew I was working my ass off for the company.

Certainly not all of them deserve what they get, but some do and I just wanted to mention it. There is even a startup in the local area with some very familiar management. I know that they remember me and the other people who worked haed for them.

I guess that my point is that being a CEO is like a lot of other things. You hear about the bad ones, but there are no stories about the ones who really do try.

Re:Lots of them here

[Fnkmaster]

Sorry, that's bullshit. The "average" CEO of a Fortune 500 company, yes. However, the average CEO of a small to medium-sized software company (let's say 10-100 employees) might make twice what his top engineers make. If that. And some equity incentives, but if it's a private company, hey, that may be worthless anyway.

And there are a lot more small and medium sized software companies out there than Fortune 500 companies. Just something to noodle over for those of you so entrenched in Big Corporate America that you forget about the alternatives. Is a good CEO worth two or even three times what a top engineer is? Maybe, maybe not. But that's a very different picture from your factor of 1000, which is the exception, not the rule. Obviously no man is likely to provide _that_ much more value to the company on the margin than everybody else.

Re:Lots of them here

[0x0d0a]

As the other poster pointed out, this is not a free market.

It is a generally pervasive social condition that CEOs have extremely high pay rates. Why? Corruption and cronyism at the top of a profitable company aren't enough to sink a company, and such things are extremely attractive. I'm, frankly, amazed at the general level of dishonesty and self-serving behavior exhibited by top-level folks I've seen.

There are a couple of legitimate potential reasons to pay your CEO a lot of money. The first is that CEO candidates are extremely rare -- much like how a scientist in an extremely new and lucrative materials science field might make a healthy salary. I don't buy this. There are a ton of business graduates each year. A business degree is one of the easiest degrees to get. MBA work is absolutely trivial compared to something like a good hard science *undergrad* degree.

Another possibility is that you are really getting a lot of quality for your money. Again, aside from connections (which ties back into the whole dishonest cronyism that I'm irritated about), I'm curious as to what kind of value a particular CEO candidate has that merits that he be paid thousands of times what his peers are paid. Given the degree to which markets are unpredictable and other factors, I have a hard time believing that past performance of companies a CEO has headed is a particularly strong indicator of future prediction. I'm *very* dubious that an expensive CEO (10 million a year) is better than a cheap CEO (100 thousand a year) plus 99 $100K/year engineers. That's an awful lot of additional product that you can provide.

A final possibility is that a job is so onerous that one must pay a phenomenal sum to get someone to do it. I don't buy it. At a good-sized company, VPs and above are generally treated awfully well. Business life is an ongoing series of company-paid conventions at fancy hotels and resorts. You may need to be ready to respond 24/7 if there's a corporate disaster (think 9/11), but I suspect that there are a lot of folks that would be in at work in another 9/11. You do run the risk of being a corporate scapegoat ("we fixed our problems by switching our CEO"), but if you work for just four years at $10 million a year, you have an awfully comfortable retirement lined up.

I suspect that most companies could get by with significantly less management than they have.

Another issue to take into account -- in traditional business from a hundred years ago (say, manufacturing), the higher level employees tended to get promoted "from the ranks". Your plant manager was (roughly, and in ideal) the most competent of your middle managers, who were the most competent of your low-level managers, who were the most competent of your bottom-line workers. It made a lot of sense to maintain a pay hierarchy.

That is not the case any more. You generally don't have any folks in the upper ranks (VP and up) that worked their way up from the bottom. There is no even approximation of a meritocracy. You hire business students to become execs. Furthermore, a big move has been made to make business a generic field -- business schools produce students that are interchangable between various companies. An exec generally does *not* have much domain knowledge about his company. He knows a set of business models and processes, how to interpret charts, and the like. As a result, the folks populating executive and engineering positions are drawn from entirely different stock. Execs have business degrees, engineers have engineering degrees. The legacy of a pay hierarchy still happens to live on, however, despite the fact that it requires much less rigorous education to become a business student, and that there is a larger available pool.

All that being said, I (an engineer) don't care too much. If I wanted to earn more money, there are a lot of things that I could do that would improve my salary. However, I pretty much eat, drink, and live my field, on the job and off, so I'm pr

In US dollars

[orthogonal]

The job pays 17.00 to 19.00 Canadian dollars per hour.

That's 13.05 to 14.58 US dollars per hour.

(No this is not a cheap anti-Canada joke. Currency conversion is taken from here, the first Google lsiting for currency conversion.

Hey, it's not that bad

[y2imm]

The Canadian dollar is up around 77 cents US these days.

Oh shit, that does suck.

CAD$38K ASP Programmer

[thegrommit]

That's less than US$29K. While one of the job requirements may be unique, it would be amusing to see how long a heterosexual male would last working there.

Re:CAD$38K ASP Programmer

[HungWeiLo]

I bet you get used to it. Two summers ago, I did web monkey work for a major university hospital, where I got look at up-close STD patient photos (in ultra high resolution taken with a 5MP camera, no less). After half a week, it wasn't such a big deal anymore. After awhile, if a friend showed up to visit me, I would point to a picture I have on the monitor, and say something like "hey look at those little mushrooms," forgetting about the outside world.

Re:CAD$38K ASP Programmer

[ruprechtjones]

Hey! Those photos were meant for my physician's eyes only! Give them back!

um, nevermind, move along.

Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure.

[bert33]

When I was looking I actually told recruiter this. "It's impossible to have that much J2EE experience." Supposedly the companies do this so they can say they could not fill the position and off-shore it.

Keep in mind

[rob-fu]

...that as much as you hate your lousy IT job, there are 10 other people who would fill it given the chance. On top of that, I'd rather have a job in IT than working in, say, a meat processing plant. I'm grateful to have a job in IT, even if it sucks.

Re:Keep in mind

[Gord.ca]

And that's the problem.

When there's a perception that the employee should be thankful for any job they can get, the employer is free to screw them over.

Welcome to the 21st century

[winkydink]

If you still have an insanely high-paying IT job, give thanks and keep saving. Chances are good that you won't have it much longer between offshore outsourcing and a whole ton of unemployed IT ppl willing to do your job for less $$$.

Let's face it. IT salaries got way ahead of themselves in during the boom. Now the pendulum swings the other way

Have you looked at what a teacher makes or any other number of degree-requiring professions? CAD$40k might sound sucky to you, but I'm betting there's a lot of unemployed IT ppl out there right now who'd take it in a snap.

Re:Welcome to the 21st century

[bladernr]

If you still have an insanely high-paying IT job, give thanks and keep saving. Chances are good that you won't have it much longer between offshore outsourcing and a whole ton of unemployed IT ppl willing to do your job for less $$$.

As an executive who out-sourced some work to India and also hires plenty of US talent, I can tell you that highly-skilled US programmers who understand the domain they are working in (health care, telecom, finance, etc) will still command top-dollar.

Just today (yes, today), I had a major schedule slip that could cost the company millions over that cheap labor. In their defense, the requirement that was given to them was incorrect, and they did a superb job of implementing the system. However, a US based programmer with knowledge of the domain (telecom in this case) would have recognized the requirement as incorrect and would have implemented correct code anyway. As an aside, she said the Big-5 consultancies do a horrible job and providing people with domain expertise, in spite of claims to the contrary.

Just this week I spent time with a fellow executive from a major ILEC. She told me that they are outsourcing Java work to India like there is no tommorow. However, highly-skilled programmers with true knowledge of the business are still paid as high as they ever were (which is my experience in my organization as well).

If you want my advise, learn the industry you want to work in. Programming skills are cheap, I don't care how good you are. Business knowledge is still a damn rarity. Business knowledge and the ability to implement it in systems is almost impossible to find. That means it is paid well for.

Oh yeah, most resumes I see from programmers who think they know the business don't know nearly as much as they think. Spend as much time learning the business as your programming skills, and I think you'll be fine.

Re:Welcome to the 21st century

[BJZQ8]

The one exception to all of this is education...there is really no way (yet) to outsource the people and skills necessary to install and run the computer systems for anything like a school district or a university. There are currently lots of consulting firms financially cornholing school districts from 500 students to 300,000...and plenty of opportunity to undercut them. My advice would be show them a better way...preferably one without licensing costs.

Re:Welcome to the 21st century

[prell]

Hiring off-shore work on the cheap, and saying that IT workers get paid too much, are completely different issues, so don't fool yourself into being justified for off-shoring labor.

Sending work off-shore to save a few bucks, is an exploitation of a low standard of living. Simple as that. Only IT could get away with what The Gap does every day, and get patted on the back for it.

Your thinking is short sighted and selfish. You advocate knowing business? I want to know business, but not your business. Complacency is the same as ignorance, and is the greatest sin.

That's like...

[siskbc]

I dunno, $17-$19 CANADIAN???

...$0.37 American these days, right? You can do better than that making shoes in Thailand.

Re:That's like...

[xgamer04]

Actually, the Canadian dollar is rising against the USD... when I traveled to Canada last march, I got about 1.6 canadian dollars, and now it's about 1.3

Re:That's like...

[fidelius]

You've got a point about the military... but name a country that would seriously like to attack Canada.

Drugs are indeed made in the US, so perhaps US consumers should be asking why they pay the highest prices in the entire world for them.

Re:That's like...

[refactored]

...name a country that would seriously like to attack Canada.

Montreal.

Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure.

[Anne Thwacks]

Its fairly simple - they actually want to employ a dishonest person.

Job listing I want to see

[nate nice]

Requirements: Creative, smart individual who finds delight in working with others and around others. Candidate should have an understanding of computational theory and application and be able to grasp new ideas quickly. Prospective employee should have skills in a couple programming languages as well as the ability to learn a new language or environment quickly. If you are right for this job you will be able to apply your knowledge, logic and intuition to the problems at hand. You enjoy solving problems and discovering new ways to do things. An engineering degree is preferred but not necessary. If you don't have an engineering degree you will be expected to demonstrate competency in math, logic and computer science theory. You will be paid accordingly to your abilities in the above listed requirements.

Instead we see:
Must have 10 years of programming in language A that has been around for 4 years. Most know X,Y,Z. We don't care if you can learn X,Y,Z or understand the theory behind X,Y,Z, you must know it because it is a nice buzz-word right now. Be prepared to unlearn X,Y,Z and learn G,H,J when they become the new buzzwords. We don't want you to think, we want you code!! code!! code!!

But I digress.

Re:Job listing I want to see

[Pinball Wizard]

In the real world math, logic and computer science theory don't matter as much as you think they do.

In the real world, programs that I write will run orders of magnitude faster than ones that you write. Of course, this may not matter to you, writing simple web or dialog box code that interfaces with a db containing a few thousand items(or less). But my code can scale to processing millions, even billions of items. Can you say that? Of course not, you wouldn't know the difference between an n^2 and a log(n) algorithm if it smacked you in the face.

You may be a code monkey, but I know the difference, and so do my employers and clients.

Re:Job listing I want to see

[PhoenixRising]

There is such a job: grad school. After I get bored with life outside the ivory tower, I'm going to head back there for good.

It's pretty unreasonable to expect to find a job with such requirements (outside of a few highly-coveted nearly-academic positions, like a language designer for MS or Sun.) A business generally doesn't need to hire people to be Really Smart; they hire people to do some particular thing. If they can do that, bully.

A friend of mine and I were debating which we would hire if were in the position to do so: someone with a degree from a well-respected university CS program, or someone with a certification relevant to the position we'd be hiring him for. I chose the latter, hands down. I'm not really concerned if, say, my router person can prove a problem NP-complete. I am concerned about whether or not he can set up ACLs correctly. A CCNP I can be reasonably sure of competance in, but a college degree is an unknown when it comes to ability to implement.

This isn't meant as a disparagement of academic CS; I think anyone who wants to enter the field should at least have a BS to ensure that they have some understanding of the basics of what goes on in computers. However, a real CS program doesn't teach you how to implement things with current technologies in use in the business market. That's something you need to pick up to make that academic background relevant to a business, which is only going to make direct use of one part of it .

I'm not kidding about academia as a job, either. If you really want to keep learning and applying a broad variety of things, go to grad school, get a job as a T.A., and aim for a professorship. You'll be happy you did.

Re:Job listing I want to see

[wiresquire]

Actually, you touch on an important factor (if not the most important) that I always work into hiring. It's what you may call attitude or behavioural traits.

There's several theories around HR and hiring that are based on behavioural observations. ie that what you have done before, you will do again.(Yes you can change behaviours, but it's hard and takes a while, so you're better of hiring someone that has those behaviours already).

Basically, you ask questions that relate to the behaviours that you want. Eg, for a sysadmin, I need someone with integrity - that won't go stealing passwords, building backdoors, or downing the system if they happened to get laid off.So you can ask a question like "Everyone breaks the rules sometime. Is there a specific situation where you broke the rule that in retrospect you think you shouldn't have ?"

In effect, you keep probing for proof of past behaviour. Generalizations are not acceptable. You need specific instances. "Do you have an example of that?", "What specifically was your role?", "Could you be more specific?" etc

Some of you may have encountered this in interviews. There are some 'interview tip' sites that actually talk about this. It can be quite akward for both the interviewer and interviewee, but I have found it to be quite effective.

I have a theory that part of the effectiveness is that the interviewee has not been exposed to this before, so I usually ask if they are familiar with it up front and explain it may be unusual and somewhat uncomfortable, but don't worry, everyone else is going through the same hell.

Re:Job listing I want to see

[Michael Crutcher]

A job I applied for a couple of years ago (while I was in grad school) required CCNA/CCDA. I didn't have these certifications but I wanted the job and felt like the certifications might come in handy down the line. So I bought two books studied for a week and passed both tests. Did I know anything about network design/implementation? Absolutely not, I'm just a good test taker. Did I get the job? Yep, and what I didn't know I picked up within the first few weeks on the job. If you think that those tests indicate an ability to do the job you are sadly mistaken.

Certainly it is reasonable to hire someone with some knowledge of the problem domain, but picking up someone who is not a complete idiot tends to pay off far more in the long run (at least in my experience).

Re:Job listing I want to see

[forkboy]

You're absolutely on the mark. It's hard to beat acadamia for salary or job security if you're willing to put in the time for a PhD. Tenured professors make close to 6 figures starting, well over 6 figures after 5-10 years, and are next-to-impossible to fire. If you do research on top of that, you get grant money to play around with. Not to mention you're doing work for the benefit of society rather than simply to make a few fat, rich, white guys fatter, richer, and whiter.

Hell, even as a grad student, if you go into a field that is short on intelligent students (basically all the hard sciences) you'll be making a 20-30,000 a year salary as a grad student and not have to pay tuition. Spend a couple more years as a post-doc lackey making around 40,000 and get some good research published and you're set for life.

This is why I left the IT industry and went back to school. I was tired of low job security, annoying corporate culture, co-workers like something out of a Dilbert comic, and pointless tasks. The moron-to-person ratio is much smaller in academics.

Re:Job listing I want to see

[aevernon]

It is helpful to know whom you are targeting in your job hunt.

As programmers, we laugh our guts out when we see job listings for a C programmer or Perl programmer, etc. because we know that anyone worth his or her salt should be able to pick up a new language quickly. After all, these languages are Turing complete. You can only express a for loop or an if statement in so many ways.

Those of us in the know realize that you want to hire for domain knowledge. I mean, I've been programming in C for 10 years, but if someone asked me to write medical imaging software in C, my language background is useless because I don't understand the problem.

When you hire a permanent employee, it obviously makes sense to hire for attitude and aptitude, since tech skills become obsolete so quickly. However, in defense of these job postings that have hyper-specific, buzz word laden requirements, I should point out that many are from recruting firms (head hunters). Their clients call them and say, "We need an experienced programmer that already knows C++ and can start work THIS WEEK because the project is already late/fubared/etc." Their clients often don't have time for you to inhale the O'Reilly book. They are desperate for someone to fix their problem immediately.

Mail room

[faust2097]

I saw a posting for mail room personnel at CNet that said "must have 2 years previous corporate mail room experience". And it wasn't for managing the thing, it was just a nomal clerk position.

Would you want to hire someone who was either a) so uncapable that working the mail room is the peak of their abilities or b) so ambition-free that they had multiple years of mailroom experience without advancing?

Re:Mail room

[bladernr]

"Yes, but how do you raise a family properly without money", the jackass says.

I was rasied in an exceedingly poor family. To quote a song: "People that say 'Money is the root of all that kills' have never had the joy of a welfare Christmas."

We were so poor, we didn't even qualify for welfare (actually, we were denied welfare because we were white... we were told that if we were a minority, we would have qualified. I like to spin the story to "too poor to get welfare," I find it more amusing than the sad truth).

My wife's first and foremost responsibility is to raise our children. Mine is to feed them. You can call me sexist, or money hungry, or anything you want, but my children will never know want the way I did, and if that requires me to work 24 hours a day for the rest of my life, so be it.

Fortunatly, I am quite successful and do get plenty of time for family, and have plenty of money. That has not always been the case, and there was a time in my life where I would work 40 straight hours, sleep 6 to 8, then do it again. If I ever need to work that way again to provide my family a comfortable lifestyle, I will.

As if having ambition in your job is a virtue. How about having ambition in being a better human being. How about having ambition to do the right thing. Are people in Greenpeace ambition free ... I think not. I think they are a lot more ambitious than most of us here ...

Don't get me started on Greenpeace. In my experience, most have no understanding of what it is they are protesting. How many anti-Globalization types (of which most Greenpeaces-types ascribe) actually truly know what globalization is? Give those types some ambition to learn and have an informed opinion. They would do more good getting a job, working during their protesting time, and send their pay to feed starving people. But that wouldn't be as cool, I guess.

Want to know how many starving people those jerks could feed? I once fed over a dozen people enough food for 3 days in South Asia for less than 1 US dollar. But, thats not as cool and sexy as protesting, and will never land you on TV or get you laid, so I guess they don't want to do that.

Re:Mail room

[Monkelectric]

That actually happened to me ... I interviewed at a job taking reservations for the Hilton hotel (I have a CS degree, but there are no CS jobs at the moment, tried to make the best of a bad situation). Scored WAY too high on the tests and got bounced.

um wtf?

[crabpeople]

"worked in IT jobs have been remarking on absolutely horrible job postings for low-level IT jobs paying small change"

? except for the rediculous amount of qualifications needed for that poisition, it seems like any other job posting ive seen for helpdesk. also 19 bucks an hour is alot of money to most entry level people i know (including myself). it should be noted that the rent in edmonton for a small apartment is usually around 500 CAN/mth and with this job working 40 hours a week would make like 3k.

how is 3k a month bad? have you tried looking for work lately? im tryign to find a job doing similar things in vancouver and would be more than happy with 12 or 13 dollars an hour. that would cover rent and internet and all that.

wtf is the poster on? does he expect everyone to be making 50k+ a year?

Real posting...

[Doug Merritt]

This was a real posting to a job list a few months ago:

> From: Jenny Richards [mailto:..........@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 11:11 AM
> To: .........@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [.......] Entry level programmer in Duluth, MN
>
> Location : Duluth, MN
> Term : 1 year
> Rate : $5.10 / hour
>
> Requirements:
>
> - 21+ years of J2EE Development.
> - Fluent Sanskrit.
> - PhD in Computer Science and 17th Century French Poetry.
> - Must have had 4 or more products that sold 1,000,000 copies.
> - Must be a member of the Mayflower Society.
>
> Locals to Duluth given preference.
> All requirements are mandatory, so don't waste my time by sending my
> your pathetic resume unless you're a perfect fit.

It was real posting to a real job list, which I thought was very funny, but the poster got banned from the list for their sense of humor.

Re:Real posting...

[Herkum01]

This is a great way to get in lots of trouble. In the US, by law, you better be able to show an association between the requirements between what a you put on a job posting, and how it is necessary for work. Taking your example above, needing to be Fluent in Sanskrit. If I apply to that job I could go the EEOC and say that the requirements are BS and I am qualified and should have been hired.

Think of it another way, if I said (for an IT job), "blacks need not apply." Being black would have nothing to do with IT work, I would have my ass-served in a hand-basket to the EEOC. The company that let me post that would be in big trouble and I would likely to be out of a job.

To take another recent example, jobs that are requiring an SAT score. These companies said that having a high-SAT score related in could job performance. If they said that, they better be able to prove it (which I doubt). SAT scores are used to determine the grades of freshman going to college, not a mark to determine your job skills. You complain that you did not get a job because of your SAT scores that you took 10 years ago, you can get money out of those companies.

Just because a company says it true, does not make it true. They have an obligation to society to serve its interests as well as their own.

Re:Real posting...

[CrazyClimber]

Believe it or not, that's a pretty good wage for Duluth...

Re:Real posting...

[WatertonMan]

That was fake? Damn. I thought I had an in to get to Duluth. I met every criteria except for being local to Duluth. Of course my J2EE development was pretty rusty the first 18 years. But I do remember the days trying to do it in Basic on my old Apple //c.

Re:Real posting...

[gcaseye6677]

Requiring SAT scores is complete bullshit. How you did on some test in high school is no indicator whatsoever of how you perform on the job at age 30. Its about as realistic as preferring candidates with large feet. SAT scores have been 'recentered' over the years to increase the averages, therefore the test very much favors people who took it recently. My 1220 was good back in the day, but it would be crap now for a senior graduating in 04. Kids now are also more likely to have taken an SAT prep course, which were unheard of not too long ago. People were preparing to do well enough to get into the state university, not to have the scores used against them in job interviews for the rest of their lives. I believe only one company asked to see my SAT scores when applying for a job and I told them to stuff it (even in this economy).

Re:Real posting...

[Zeinfeld]

Requiring SAT scores is complete bullshit. How you did on some test in high school is no indicator whatsoever of how you perform on the job at age 30.

IQ tests mean very little at any point. The bulk of the 'research' done to support the use of IQ tests has been either tainted with eugenic/racist theories or outright fraudulent. Stephen Jay Gould did the cannonical debunking of them in 'the mismeasure of man'.

When I was at high school I posted some IQ scores that were well outside the standard range - 160 to 180. That is because the school was a selective school and we had a weekly coaching session on the exam to get into the upper school. My scores went from upper decile to 2 to 3 standard deviations above the mean. All through coaching and practice.

Then when we got into the upper school we were told that research shows that the results are innate. I said the results had to be faulty since the entitre class of us had shown the same type of improvement (not necessarily as extreeme). Thats the point where I discovered that English public schools can hire some awfully stupid geography teachers. The science staff backed me up though.

Odd thing was that despite all that testing the school never picked up the fact I have a form of dyslexia.

Re:Real posting...

[lacrymology.com]

"Taking your example above, needing to be Fluent in Sanskrit. If I apply to that job I could go the EEOC and say that the requirements are BS and I am qualified and should have been hired."

Hell I'd pay you the $5.10/HR out of my own pocket to see your dumb ass sitting there making $5.10/HR with two PhDs.
-m

Re:Real posting...

[ReciprocityProject]

Excellent point!

But the SAT isn't an IQ test.

Re:Real posting...

[Nogami_Saeko]

Classic ;)

The other good one was from MadTV...

"Talk faster... Talk FASTER... TALK FASTER..."

N.

Re:Real posting...

[Anonymous Coward]

IQ tests mean very little at any point.

That is a theory conceived by those with average scores. ;-)

Stephen Jay Gould did the cannonical debunking of them in 'the mismeasure of man'.

To quote an interesting analysis of "The Mismeasure of Man":

"The biologist Bernard Davis (1983; see also Gould, 1984; Davis, 1984) called attention to the fact that reviews in the popular and literary press, such as The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books, were almost universally effusive in their approbation, whereas most reviews in scientific journals, such as Science (Samelson, 1982), Nature, and Science '82, tended to be critical on a number of counts. Davis cited Jensen's (1982) review in Contemporary Education Review as "the most extensive scientific analysis," but mentioned, as an exception, a generally laudatory review by Morrison that appeared in Scientific American because that joumal's editorial staff had "long seen the study of the genetics of intelligence as a threat to social justice" (Davis, 1983, p. 45)."

So, it appears the science involved in "The Mismeasure of Man" is suspect at best, and that there is a strong political motivation to the work.

When I was at high school I posted some IQ scores that were well outside the standard range - 160 to 180. That is because the school was a selective school and we had a weekly coaching session on the exam to get into the upper school. My scores went from upper decile to 2 to 3 standard deviations above the mean. All through coaching and practice.

From your writing it is clear you're highly intelligent. If you weren't, you never would have been able to score as well as you did on the tests, regardless of the amount of coaching. The SATs are even harder than some IQ tests, since the math portion involves lots of problem-solving.

Most people who take the tests aren't coached, regardless. I took the SATs once, with no special studying or coaching, and scored 750V/690M. That was top 1/10 of 1% in verbal, and top 1% in math.

Then when we got into the upper school we were told that research shows that the results are innate. I said the results had to be faulty since the entitre class of us had shown the same type of improvement (not necessarily as extreeme). Thats the point where I discovered that English public schools can hire some awfully stupid geography teachers. The science staff backed me up though.

You should read the link I included above carefully. I agree that everyone will show improvement through study, but the peak intelligence that people will reach is largely innate, in my opinion. I've tried very hard to teach certain concepts to certain people, and it was just basically impossible. These were not abnormal people, just "not that bright".

I've also had long discussions with a couple of (as it happens) female friends who state "I'm just not good at math". I felt they've received some kind of mental block related to sexual roles at an early age, and should just start studying it until they "get it". But they both claim that their minds just flat out "can't handle math". Laziness or hardwiring? You decide. (Both claim they would like to know math for various reasons.)

Odd thing was that despite all that testing the school never picked up the fact I have a form of dyslexia.

Obviously you've overcome that handicap. Congratulations.

Re:Real posting...

[idontgno]

Leaving aside that reference to a dead language usually implies a joke

Hey, you insensitive clod,....

Damn, I just realized I don't know how to say "fluent in Sanskrit" in Sanskrit. Another fine "insensitive clod" joke ruined.

Wanted - Linux Admin

[dioxide]

required-
5 years linux experiance
thorough knowlege of perl, c, php, shell scripting
ability to travel
BA in CS

was some kind of admin job for a new company
they offered us $8 an hour.

be grateful for what you have

[egomaniac]

I work at a dot-com company. One you've heard of, trust me. Anyway, we survived the Internet bubble bursting, and most of us kept our jobs, but things were still tough around here for a couple of years.

After finding out that the raises one year would be much smaller than expected, a coworker of mine complained about it. I looked at him in bafflement, and told him he should be thankful to be getting a raise at all. He should be happy to have a job at all.

For that matter, I later reflected, he should be happy simply that he makes enough money to have food to eat, to provide for himself and his loved ones, and not to have to go to bed wondering where his next meal will be coming from. All of us that can say that should be thankful for it.

Yes, the job the submitter pointed to isn't spectacular pay, but it's enough to feed and clothe yourself in comfort. That's more than most people in the world can say. Try to keep a sense of perspective while you're busy complaining about things.

Re:be grateful for what you have

[Anonymous Coward]

And the corporation you work for should be happy it's just staying afloat, maybe making a small profit every once in a while. Further, the executives of that corporation should be happy drawing a small salary with year-to-year increases commensurate with that of you and your co-worker.

I mean, come ON. This "well, at least we're making enough to get by!" attitude is being seriously exploited by those with "let's take all we possibly can" attitudes. Yes, it's good to be satisfied with what you have in a philosophical sense, but when you're dealing with the world of capitalism it makes perfect sense to do everything you possibly can (including unionization, etc.) to get as much compensation for your services as humanly possible.

Re:be grateful for what you have

[Xzzy]

I sympathize your idealism, I mean yes many of us are very fortunate, but it's cuddly statements like yours that motivate employers to exploit their workers.

If they think they can get you to do it without quitting, THEY WILL.

Just because I'm luckier than most in the world, doesn't mean I have to stand there and let some corporate goon give it to me in the ass.

How about this one...

[acrolein]

I once saw one that said "No Mullets, please."

Reminds me of a little game

[Jubii]

Looking at that job posting, you could almost play a game of Bullshit Bingo with it...

foreign workers

[flacco]

if you see any truly unbelievably low pay rates, you can bet they're placing the ad just to fulfill a legal requirement before hiring a foreign worker for peanuts.

The job posting for when it leaves...

[SamTheButcher]

CA-AB-Downtown Edmonton-Help Desk Tier 1 & 2 - Bilingual French<br>
Description:<br>
5 Tier 1 & 2 Helpdesk candidates required for our downtown, Fortune 500 client. Must be Bilingual French. Must know Windows XP, MS Office Professional, Office 2000, Lotus Notes, and Novell. WINNT is nice to have. 2-4 years experience in technical PC support and/or Helpline operations in a client/server environment. Experience supporting Intel based operating system. Good soft skills required (positive attitude, team player/self starter, communication skills, excellent listening skills, flexible, strong personal time management, task oriented, must be eager and willing to learn.) Fluency in the English language, articulate, and flexible with duties. Diploma or degree preferred- Microcomputer Specialist (GMCC), Computer Systems Technologist (NAIT), Computing Science (UofA), etc. Must be available for varying shifts in this 24/7 environment. All applicants must be bilingual French, or you need not apply.<br>
Requirements:<br>
Diploma or degree from a recognized institution, preferrably in relevant field, or equivalent working experience.<br>
Software List: Some or all would be preferred.<br>
Integral ? Benefits<br>
Integral - Payroll<br>
SAP and SAP Client<br>
AOD (Access On Demand DB)<br>
AIP ? Aspect integrator Platform<br>
ASCC - Advanced Supply Chain Collaboration<br>
AutoCAD<br>
AutoCa d Lite<br>
AutoVIEW<br>
BAAN System ( Canada )<br>
BOL ? Business OnLine<br>
CADKEY<br>
CAWP Helpdesk<br>
CCRP process owner for Canada.<br>
Chameleon (Xwindows)<br>
CIT ? application<br>
CIT - Cash In Time Notes Database (server issues)<br>
Coach - Time keeping software<br>
Columbus Citrix;<br>
CompSCOT, MQ Queries, MQ Series,<br>
Cosmos<br>
CRS<br>
C RS - Customer Reporting System<br>
CSP (Commerce Solutions Project)<br>
CSP and OMCT, If it is determined to be a database problem<br>
CTI Admin Support; BOL - Business OnLine; Commerce Engine;<br>
CTI Applic. Support<br>
EDMS<br>
EDS - Electrical design software<br>
eSMART<br>
eTB complaint/problem; eTB (Easy To Buy)<br>
FAS US-PCS-Norwalk<br>
FDTN - All Others<br>
FDTN - Installation<br>
FDTN - New User<br>
FDTN - ODBC Error<br>
FDTN - SPIN Website<br>
First View<br>
FTP Site - Canada<br>
GAD Server issues<br>
Global License Server Triad-Flex/LM, Pro-E<br>
Global Notes Database<br>
GP Time Entry - Electronic Timesheet System (ETS) - password resets<br>
Greco CNC Software<br>
Group Processes Project Information database<br>
Hummingbird ExCeed<br>
Hyperion Retrieve - WINFORM<br>
IS Supportline US-Notes Support-Americas Database<br>
JMIP Notes Database<br>
MACPAC ViewNow<br>
MANMAN (VIMS)<br>
Masterfile - server issues<br>
Masterfile ( same as above)<br>
MAXIMO server<br>
Microstation CAD<br>
Minitab<br>
MDS - Mechanical design software<br>
ME10 - 2D Cad system - Canda<br>
MQ Queries, MQ Series,<br>
Netscape Communicator<br>
Netting -Notes A Zurich supported Notes accounting database<br>
New CA network accounts<br>
New GIA/SRA account requests, Defective token returns<br>
Norton Anti Virus 4.5 Corp edition to 2003<br>
Notes file restore requests for Canada, Columbus, Raleigh and Windsor<br>
Nuclio (also known as '7-space' to monitor our network)<br>
NuTCracker - Runs Unix apps in NT<br>
OMCT - Open Content Merging Technologies ( same is CSP )<br>
Open Connect (Java VT Terminal Emulation) (Warminster)<br>
Oracle, Remedy database,<

Re:The job posting for when it leaves...

[RevMike]

Karma Whore :)

Plus, why all the <br> tags? And didn't your mommy teach you to use xhtml? Use <br /> instead.

On-Call Outlook/Exchange Admin

[BigRedFish]

As soon as I see 'Administer Outlook/Exchange' and 'on-call 24/7', I don't care how much it pays.

Besides, I don't have 5 years experience with 2K/XP. I don't know if they do that to weed out liars or what, but it's a big red flag to me that the employer is reality-challenged.

Worst I've seen

[KFury]

This one's just awful

Mirrored copy:

Employment

Notice from the President
There has recently been a slight increase in customer activity and
Signalogic now has several projects pending and a few new ones active.
Because of this we are looking for embedded system engineers. However,
based on a few recent interviews, I feel the need to explain the
situation to people who may not have realized yet just how competitive
the engineering field has become in 2 years, and how many U.S. jobs are
moving permanently overseas to India, China, Russia, and other
locations. Many engineering jobs, especially ones with specialized
requirements and straightforward performance measurement, simply are not
coming back, regardless of what the various economic experts and pundits
happen to think.

Below are some requirements; please read carefully. You need to be 100%
comfortable with these before even considering to apply at Signalogic.
Your resume must be accompanied by a cover letter that includes 3 or so
paragraphs which explain clearly and thoughtfully why you are suitable
and why you meet the requirements. Otherwise, you will receive no
response from Signalogic one way or another regarding your resume and
any other information that you might send to us.

Skills. You must be able to perform expertly at least TWO (2) of
the skills listed below:
* complex logic design, including high-speed signal integrity,
simulation, skilled at Verilog and VHDL development, including
multi-programmer approaches to project development, knowledge of Xilinx
and Altera tools
* complex (up to 14 layer) board design including advanced
component identification and specification, schematic capture, guidance
and specification of layout process, and communication with PCB fab
* microprocessor and DSP programming, BOTH, including advanced
algorithms, IDEs such as CCS and CodeWarrior, assembly language
programming, peripheral drivers, and peripheral and other hardware-level
debug
* low-level drivers under WinXP, Linux, or Win9x for boards that
you design or debug
* interface library (e.g. DLL or shared object) software
development

We are willing to teach you skills listed above other
than the two or more that you already know.

Salary level. If you seek year-2000 or prior salary levels, then
you will be disappointed with our offer. Regardless of how many years of
experience you have, if you cannot perform ALL of the items listed
above, then our offer to you will be in the 45 to 65k range, and no
higher.

At each of the skill items listed above I am expert, and
currently I have NO salary. Plus I work 14 hrs per day, and another 16
hrs on the weekend. Other engineers here also work hard, and they too
are experts. Imagine other companies with engineers trying to compete
with that, and then multiply that to about 15 or so companies in our
market area around the world. That should show you clearly, with no room
for doubt, that for surviving companies who are managing to grow and
introduce new products and technology under the current difficult
economic conditions, competition is stiff!!! You had better be good if
you want a high salary, and you had better be able to prove it to me and
other Signalogic staff engineers. Otherwise, don't even think about
applying at Signalogic, and certainly do not complain about a low
initial offer. If you prove that you are worth a larger salary, then you
will be paid a higher salary. That's how it works now, that's how it's
going to stay, that's it. This is the 21st century, year-2000 thinking
is dead (it was bogus in the first place). I hope we are clear on that
subject!

Debug. You must be extremely good at debug. Any engineer can
design, only a few are talented enough and sharp enough to debug in a
reasonable amount of

Re:Worst I've seen

[timeOday]

People like this should do themselves a favor and just let their businesses die. Working long hours for free isn't business, it isn't a job, it's just stupid.

80 hour weeks for $45K/year is like $22.5K/year for 40 hour weeks - not even that, since the second 40 hours per week are a lot harder than the first 40. Sorry, but people who pride themselves on giving everything in exchange for nothing (and look down on others who won't) are fools. (Not that I wouldn't want such self-sacrificing fools to work for me if I owned a business, because I would.)

Re:Worst I've seen

[miracle69]

80 hour weeks for $45K/year is like $22.5K/year for 40 hour weeks - not even that, since the second 40 hours per week are a lot harder than the first 40. Sorry, but people who pride themselves on giving everything in exchange for nothing (and look down on others who won't) are fools.

Actually, they're residents.

This guy has laid out that what the position requires is professionalism and pride in your work. If you want to be a clock-monkey, don't show up. He clearly states that initially you get paid between 45 and 65k - and that once you prove yourself by making PRODUCTS THAT WORK (i.e. fufilling your job requirement), you get raises. And it's all tied to the bottom line, and laid out before you PRIOR to the interview.

And the reason you think he should shove it is because it's written to get rid of those of you who want to punch the clock.

You have a job to get a paycheck. You pick your career because you want to love what you do. Don't ever confuse the two.

Re:Worst I've seen

[jcr]

This is just a guy with Entrepeneur's disease. He expects that since he works for long hours with low pay, that you should, too. Of course, the deal isn't quite the same for both of you, since he's an owner and you're not, and you have very limited participation in the upside potential of the business.

Bottom line: Mr. Brower is looking for an engineer that he can't afford.

You're right

[siskbc]

Actually, the Canadian dollar is rising against the USD... when I traveled to Canada last march, I got about 1.6 canadian dollars, and now it's about 1.3

That's true, but I'm so used to heaping shit on the Canadian currency after *years* of it tanking that it's like a reflex now. ;)

US is still up a bit over the last 10 years tho.

Only thing about a weak dollar is it makes good German beer more expensive. Fucking Greenspan.

Too Much Experience Requiried?

[Emperor Tiberius]

I recall reading one for a Level III Linux system administrator. The pay wasn't too shabby, yet the requirements for employeement were sad. The position requiried you to have fifteen years of experience with Linux, and ten with Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server.

It was bad enough that they wanted MSCE certification in addition, but wanting fifteen years experience with Linux?! ROFL!

More Experience than Possible

[Eskarel]

Worst I ever saw was sometime last spring looking for 5 years of experience with .NET. The fact that even the eduactional version which had come out a good year or so earlier than the commercial product had not yet been out for two years didn't seem to bother them.

I'm not even entirely sure whether they had a version of VS .NET which would compile(as in the program not stuff it created) in the spring of 1998. Ahh well, such is lunacy.

Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure.

[finitimi]

The example given was for a staffing company looking to place a candidate somewhere. Such companies typically don't know what any of the skills they are asking for really are. They simply toss out a bunch of acronyms and hope that their lame buzzword-mining software will give them a "hit."

Employers and potential employees alike are best off avoiding such staffing companies, I think. It is a sad state of affairs when people actually think those charlatans will accomplish anything good.

You know you're dealing with HR when...

[HangingChad]

...they spell it SEQUEL instead of SQL. And you know the hiring authority didn't review the job posting.

County of riverside

[Monkelectric]

The country of Riverside, CA government routinely posts jobs to the public which REQUIRE 3-4 years experience on their inhouse software.

Can I complain about bad interviews to? I submitted a story about bad interviews but its been pending in the que for *6 weeks* (what does that mean?). I had an interview for qualcomm for a 1 month temp position, and the interviewer asked a bunch of jack-ass quesitons, but this one sent me over the edge "where do you see yourself in 5 years?". To this I replied, "Not working at qualcom for 4 years and 11 months!"

McDonalds

[GreenKiwi]

On a big billboard outside of McDonalds:
Now hiring losers!!!

I resemble that remark!

[GFW]

Although French-English bilingualism is common in the eastern provinces, it is rare in the west. Less than 7% in BC [ocol-clo.gc.ca] and Alberta [ocol-clo.gc.ca]. I would say this percentage is even smaller within the techie demographic.

I'm from Vancouver. I was inclined towards the sciences. I stopped taking French as soon as I could (it was hurting my GPA :-) ) The other poster who said Chinese would be much more useful in Vancouver is correct. My high school was more than 50% Chinese (most of whom had perfect English anyway)

Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure.

[llywrch]

> Supposedly the companies do this so they can say they could not fill the position and off-shore it.

Mebbe. However, following the principle that one should first look to stupidity before one claims that there is conspiracy, I'd say that requirements like our example arises when a manager tells the job shop, ``I need someone with 6 years of experience with Windows. You know -- NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP." And the recruiter then decides to simplify the requirements by stating that the position requires ``6 years of experience with Windows XP."

And six months later, the recruiter can't understand why he isn't making his quota.

Geoff

Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure.

[DrCode]

Those that irked me the most were the ones with explicit version requirements, like:

3 years with Java V1.31a7c
2 years Swing V2.93xL
Must have this experience on a Sun station running Solaris 5.839.

The above is an exaggeration, but only slightly.

from what i've seen

[nudicle]

CmdrTaco does the worst job posting...

My Job

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

Fine... this isn't a job posting, this is an actual description of my job duties, but I'll make it look like one:

• Senior SQL Administrator/Programmer (PostgreSQL)
• Senior Web Applications Developer (PHP). E-Commerce experience an asset.
• Toolchain/Plugin Developer (C/C++). Develop PostgreSQL plugins and in-house applications.
• Senior Network Administrator on a heterogeneous FreeBSD/Linux/WindowsXP environment. Must possess strong skills in server application deployment and windows interoperability. Must possess a background in firewall and network design.
• BCS/BEE and/or 10+ years of proven software design experience.
• Background in cryptography is an asset.
• Must be willing to work overtime when necessary at 1x pay.

Benefits Package: none, contract basis, terminatable at any time without severance package
Pay: $14 Canadian/hour

Wait a minute... what am I doing? Is anyone looking for a developer (or hardware engineer for that matter)?

Good luck filling this one...

[Tomy]

Worst I've ever seen was something like:


Linux Kernel Engineer ...
Please submit resume in MS Word format.

'Knowing' isn't enough...

[DrCode]

When I was job-searching last year, it wasn't enough to know a language or API. With all the free tools available, most of us can teach ourselves pretty much anything necessary in a matter of weeks. But most of the abusive job ads had specific requirements for years of paid experience.

I recall going through one ad, getting excited because I really did have the experience they wanted (Unix, C++, etc.). But then I came to the deal-killer, in all caps: "APPLICANT MUST HAVE THIS EXPERIENCE WORKING FOR A MEDICAL EQUIPMENT SUPPLIER."

Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure.

[Andy_R]

I have over 5 years part-time experience of Windows 2000.

I've used it 20 hours a week from 2000 to 2003, and 20 other hours a week from 2000 to 2003.

Rediculous Experience Requirements

[Fapestniegd]

Applicants must have 10 Years Windows 2000 experience or 10 Years Solaris 9 experience.

too true to be funny

[jgarry]

I posted this a while back, and some people thought it was too true to be funny. Others saw the humor.

How to decode an Oracle DBA Want-Ad

College job listings were the worst

[amuro98]

I remember looking for intern/co-op positions through my school's placement center.

One year, a major computer hardware company came to campus looking ONLY for Ph.D students willing to do 3 month intern positions at minimum wage. Uh.... Turns out their HR department was a bit overzealous.

Another firm was an IT contracting company. They came to campus looking for new grads with a bachelors in computer science or engineering, and 5 years IT experience... After the representative told the several people that they were wasting his time because they didn't have enough experience, he was escorted off campus and told never to return.

I also recall a major financial institution wanted to hire CS students with 3 years of programming experience for the summer to - and I'm not making this up - *STAND INSIDE THE WALLS TO MAKE SURE THE NETWORK CABLES DIDN"T COME LOOSE OR BREAK*. The job was located in New York City, paid $5/hr, no assisted living, and you were *required* to live within 10 miles of the office. Oh yes, and you were also required to wear a suit at all times (though I have no idea how you were supposed to keep it clean standing inside crawlspaces all day long...)

This company, too, was kicked off campus and told never to return.

Re:College job listings were the worst

[LuxFX]

I met a guy once that (claimed to at least) used ferrets for running cable. He would tie the cable to the ferret and stick him in the ceiling. Then he would open the other end and shake the food/toy/treat/whatever to get the ferret to come over. He said it worked very well.

Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure.

[tigga]

"Requirements: 5 years experience with Windows 2000..."

How about dogs years?

Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure.

[Brandybuck]

Requirements: 5 years experience with Windows 2000...

We're actually seeking candidates with three years of XP experience. We also brought in an instructor with a resume listing five years of .NET experience.

Sometimes the requirements aren't impossible, just extremely improbable. When I applied here for an entry SQA job several years ago, I was told that I need to have a Bachelors degree in Software Quality Assurance. At the time, there was only one college in the US that offered such a degree. Everyplace else was just a techschool certificate. I was told by the HR rep to first get a degree, then get 5 years of experience, then come back and reapply.

Out of 18 SQA personnel, none had these qualifications. If he could have listed a masters or doctorate in Software Quality Assurance, I'm sure he would have.

I went over his head to the manager with the req, and got hired. The HR rep never did talk to me afterwards.

I've got one that's worse.

[twitter]

It's the one that was not there. I've been out of work for more than a year now. Idiots like Jeff there have full reign to abuse his people because there are no other offers. I've never ever seen someone really willing to train people in the job specific skills companies so desperatly need. Well, good luck to the idiots who demand skills they won't pay to develop. They have fucked themselves and we all will pay a terrible price.

Re:fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

[bladernr]

You only think you can tell. If you really know so much, you would have caught the spec error that you sent to India AND having fucked up, you could fix it yourself. Fuck you for your attitude and get to work, bitch.

Interesting that you assume as an executive I don't know much about the IT systems I oversee. Would it suprise you to learn that I have published papers, articles, and a book on the subjects of distributed and parallel computing as well as object-oriented design theory? I rose through the ranks with technical skills, not business skills. I learned my business skills on the job.

I have hired as many people since the "bubble-burst" in March 2000 in the US as in India (actually, probably a bit more in the US). Of course, that probably interfers with your world-view of my type. I have also spent no training money in India, but plenty in the US. I require my outsourcing company to provide trained people, but I hire "fresh" people and train them routinely. Of course, that probably interferes with your world-view of my type as well.

You are free to think I am overpaid, but I can point to plenty of my fellow executives (defined as Director level and above by most business-experts) that make well less that highly-skilled software engineers.

The spec error I missed was buried in hundreds of pages of specs, reviewed by teams of people. You may find this hard to believe, but I have never in my life seen a perfect spec. If you pick up great works of fine literature, you can easily find spelling and gramatical errors. The mistake that I missed was a single missing word.

But, you obviously have a view that no one can change. I feel sorry for people who are so convinced they know everything.

The worst job I saw

[dayton967]

The worst job I saw was about 3 years ago.. The job required a MCSE in a pure unix shop. I called up and asked how many windows machines were in the environment, and there were none. When asked why does it require an MCSE, the statement was that they were best qualified to operate the servers. Go figure..

Business knowledge is still a damn rarity

[Mandelbrute]

Which is a pity, we need less managers who focus on their "power animal" and whatever that latest management fad is - while giving away half the companies assets to their mates. It doesn't matter how good a programmer you are, there are secretaries that get paid more than you do. They get to stay in five star accomodation during the week, get flown home on weekend, and for a work expense they could claim little frilly ... on second thoughts they can keep their jobs - but shareholders should know that they are paying for that sort of thing.

A little less corruption and more competance in business would be a good thing. I now work for a company with very transpanent accounting, and have a compentent boss. A previous boss failed to supply electricity to a major city for over a month, but I'm sure "Quality" was maintained.

Bad Job Description

[CastrTroy]

Everybody here is interpreting the job description all wrong. Kelly Services (the name of the company) is a consultant company that hooks people up with jobs. You apply, they hire you. Then, they whore you off to other companies. The long list of requirements is just so that they can whore you off to the maximum number of their clients. You'll probably only ever have to do 2 things on that list.

They really should have made this clearer in the description though

Re:Bad Job Description

[Clover_Kicker]

Eh, I'm not so sure.

I've seen Kelly's people doing the exact same job for 3 or 4 years.

Kelly's are fun people to work for, when they fire you they don't have the balls to talk to you at the office, they call you at home and tell you not to come in. They mail you your stuff.

One I ran into a few years ago...

[MadAnthony02]

was a tech support job for the forest service. The duties were typical hardware/software support, and it had the usual list of of skills - Windows, Novell, Office, virus removal, hardware troubleshooting and repair, ect. Until you got to the last one, which was something like "knowledge and experience with tree husbandry"

Yes, I know it was the forest service, but the duties didn't mention anything tree-related, and one would imagine you could fix the computer of someone in the forest service without forestry skills. I kind of wondered if they had someone in mind they wanted to promote who had worked there, and that was their way of eliminating outsiders.

Oddest requirements

[Mandelbrute]

Must be able to use word processor X.

This sort of requirement has settled down to MS Word now, but not long ago technical staff that could work out how to use any word processing package in detail with less than five minutes with a manual (or ten without) were not considered unless they listed a particular word processing package on their resume. I had about twelve listed on mine for such situations, from Chiwriter up. All this is irrelevant, however, when you submit the resume as a PDF file and the employement agent doesn't know how to read it.

Focus on the Family

[BanjoBob]

Here in Colorado Springs, we have a very Christian organization that claims to project values and morals through their very profitable enterprise. They run ads all the time such as director of information technology ($28,000 / yr) and web designer for even less. They never get anybody to work for them and those that do just use them as a stepping stone. If FotF was really a Christian and moral company, they'd pay moral wages.

Re:Focus on the Family

[Slime-dogg]

A lot of times, these Christian organizations are living on donations, or the coffers of a tightwad church. It's the story in many denominations, with exception of the blind-leading-blind (but pay us with $$) evangelicals.

Most positions in Christian (or any religion, I imagine) organizations are not going to be high paying or glamorous. There are people out there that would accept the position based on the fact that they are a Christian organization alone, such is the way faith is. I'm not too sure how much the cost of living in Colorado Springs is, but if it's as much as Boulder, it'd be rather difficult to keep the position without another job.

There's no such thing as moral wages. Wages don't do actions based on ethical decisions. The organization probably pays what it can. That $28k may be one of the highest paid positions that they've got.

Re:Focus on the Family

[phallstrom]

Haven't seen the job you're talking about they have a Sr. Internet Engineer at $44K/year at the moment... I'd say that's pretty reasonable...

-philip

Re:fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

[CheeseMonkey]

twitter wrote:

You only think you can tell... [blahblahblah] ... People who know what they are doing don't look down on others and say things like "they don't know as much as they think they do."

Hm. I can't help but notice the humor here. And by humor I mean "the fact that you are a complete and total hypocritical asshole"

Honestly, how can you smack this guy down for claiming he knows something about what other people do right after you've presumed to know all about his job and what he knows or doesn't know?

You are a tool, my friend, in every sense of the word. And your attitude completely betrays the truth of this statement... you're very bitter about your tool status. Sorry. Maybe next life!

Worst job listings

[mcstout]

The worst I saw was from a second-tier aerospace company that expected you to basically have a PhD in databases, on in Computer Science, and a third in the new acronyms that've popped up in the last two years (e.g. 14 years experience in Mod_Perl). After two pages of acronyms and the ability to design and fabricate CPU's in your home as well as write MacOs X in Assembler without taking notes, the position requires up to 75% travel. You should be able to pick your own jobs and own a mansion at that level; but the position won't let you see your mansion for 9 months out of the year! Finally the sentance that nobody on Earth could live up to: "Only those applicants having ALL of the listed qualifications will be considered". I almost emailed the company and asked to meet the successful applicant. -Trogdor the Burninator for President

Re:Unfair moderation

[t0qer]

One more thing I just gotta add here... the Coupe De Gra, quoted from your very own journal.

http://slashdot.org/~NoMoreNicksLeft/journal/465 9
Got mis-moderated by a troupe of chimpanzees masquerading as slashdot readers. Some idiot accused me of cutting and pasting a list of OS's I claimed to use.
Sort of like the pot calling the kettle black.

SAT score rescaling

[David Jao]

Actually, there is a legitimate point here which you seem to have missed: the scaled SAT scores were renormalized in 1996 in order to raise the average SAT score in each section back up to 500. This renormalizing means that post-1996 scores are about 50 points higher on average than what the equivalent raw test performance would have earned on a pre-1996 instance of the exam.

I'm not going to comment about whether or not 1220 is a "good" score, but it is definitely a better score back in the day than it is now.

Sometimes it's not the public postings....

[buckeyeguy]

it's the forwarded resume, that gets to a recruiter, who calls you and asks "hey, great company wants to talk to you". [In fact, this is from a conversation that happened this past week]

Okay, what are they like?
"Great company, very busy, lots of growth."
Do tell. What kind of shop do they have?
"75 to 100 servers."
So they're not quite sure how big they are. You've been talking to a clueless manager, then.
(Pause) "Yeah, he wants you bad."
How bad? How many people are supporting these...
"uh, closer to 100 servers"
...yeah, how many people for these 100-ish boxes?
"3 on staff right now."
So they either had a cost-cutting purge or the previously overworked staffers walked before they keeled over.
"So then, do you want to talk to them?"

So sometimes it's the postings you *don't* see that you should worry about.

If you see crap on our site, please either email

[cnewmark]

questions@craigslist.org, or if it's really bad, send it to abuse@craigslist.org.

Thanks!

Craig

Hey, I'm hiring a lot

[EmagGeek]

I have Tons of Positions(TM) open right now... we develop software to perform Radar Cross Section Analysis.


Now, for those of you who clicked before reading on, the only drawback is that I have no money, so there is no pay :) It's all just for fun, but still something you can do to keep your skills up and have something to put on your resume if you're between jobs. There are about half a dozen of us right now.. it isn't such a bad gig :)

Wiretapping??

[Avihson]

Someone is blowing smoke at you!
As a Sysadmin you have full rights to anything on the servers and LAN that you or your employers own. Wiretapping does not come into play unless the government does it, or the government has somone do it as their agent. The only type of recording employers can not do is voice without the notifying their employees that they are subject to monitoring and recording. (However in Penna, you have to have the consent of both parties for a voice recording.)

Email belongs to the boss, all your surfing habits belong to the boss. Hell anything you do on your home machine is subject to whatever your employer wants to do if you connect to their network and use just one piece of software supplied by them.

Tell your source to try looking at the laws on search and siezure before giving you false legal info.
There is no "Title X", Many statutes and laws have titles that exceed X (10 in Roman Numerals) but Title X of what law? what statute?
IANAL, but IAALS (I am a Law Student) and I suggest that you try reading:
ISBN 0-8493-1192-6, Cyber Crime Investigator's Field Guide by Bruce Middleton, Appendix G
or just go to US DOJ Computer Crime
The Search and Seizure manual is here: S&S Manual.pfd
HTML
Short excerpt from page 7 of the pdf:
4. Private Searches
The Fourth Amendment does not apply to searches conducted by private parties who are not acting as agents of the government.
The Fourth Amendment "is wholly inapplicable to a search or seizure, even an unreasonable one, effected by a private individual not acting as an agent of the Government or with the participation or knowledge of any governmental official." United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984) (internal quotation omitted). As a result, no violation of the Fourth Amendment occurs when a private individual acting on his own accord conducts a search and makes the results available to law enforcement. See id. For example, in United States v. Hall, 142 F.3d 988 (7th Cir. 1998), the defendant took his computer to a private computer specialist for repairs. In the course of evaluating the defendant's computer, the repairman observed that many files stored on the computer had filenames characteristic of child pornography.
The repairman accessed the files, saw that they did in fact contain child pornography, and then contacted the state police. The tip led to a warrant, the defendant's arrest, and his conviction for child pornography offenses. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit rejected the defendant's claim that the repairman's warrantless search through the computer violated the Fourth Amendment.
Because the repairman's search was conducted on his own, the court held, the Fourth Amendment did not apply to the search or his later description of the evidence to the state police. See id. at 993. See also United States v. Kennedy, 81 F. Supp. 2d 1103, 1112 (D. Kan. 2000)
(concluding that searches of defendant's computer over the Internet by an anonymous caller and employees of a private ISP did not violate Fourth Amendment because there was no evidence that the government was involved in the search).

c) Employer Searches in Private-Sector Workplaces Warrantless workplace searches by private employers rarely violate the Fourth Amendment. So long as the employer is not acting as an instrument or agent of the Government at the time of the search, the search is a private search and the Fourth Amendment does not apply. See Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n, 489 U.S. 602, 614 (1989).

Now, if you or your employer is privy to illegal activity online, you are duty bound to report it, or face the consequences as a conspirator. Whoever is giving you that "title X" line is setting you up for a fall!

Re:From my company's job board

[EmagGeek]

Seems to me they're just doing their required posting so they can later say "hey, there were no qualified applicants - now we have to hire an H1-B"

One of the tricks big companies use to underpay H1-B's is to give them an 'entry level' position. The government has tables that list the average salary for a given position, and the job must pay an entry level worker that amount give or take something like 12%.

Companies always pay exacly 12% less than that number.

I wish I could remember where I read that. It was a fairly recent article somewhere, maybe on cnn or even here. Who knows...

Another evil bastard tool is the L-1. If a company is multinational, they can bring a foreign "guest" in on an L-1 Visa, which has no requirements whatsoever. They can be paid the prevailing wage IN THEIR HOME COUNTRY for as long as they're here, and there's no limit whatsoever on how long they can be here.

Not fair man!

[ionpro]

I'm a tier 1 tech support guy and it only took me three tries to figure out how to answer the phone! cut us some slack!

(This is true, btw. The phones here are completely counter-intuitive on how you answer them in headset mode)

There's a site for jobs like this...

[Brewdles]

Fuck that job

here it is

[kuroth]

About Us
We're I-bought-cheesy-puffs-on-the-interweb.com, a startup Fortune 23,500,000 company with a fantastic new idea! We're going to sell home-delivered cheese puffs over the interweb!

Project Requirements
We'd need the sun, the moon, and the stars, as well as your first born child and a hand job. All source code must be provided, and you must assign all copyrights to us. We need this project completed within the next three hours. Contractor will be required to provide lifetime support for code base, even if we let the neighbor kid muck about in the source code (Janice says that he's a web developer, so he must be qualified. Besides, he's in the 10th grade now, we're sure he knows what he's doing).

Contractor Requirements

• 5-7 years of experience in developing large-scale database-driven interweb applications in whatever language we arbitrarily choose because the kid that mows the CEO's lawn says it's kewl.
  
• 7-10 years of hands on experience administering FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, and Windows systems. Developer will be required to provide support for desktop users as part of his or her job.
  
• 7-10 years of hands-on experience administering relational databases.
  
• PhD in Computer Science
  
• MCP/MCSE/OCM/OCP/ABACAB certifications. All of them.
  
• Special consideration will be given to applicants who can lend us a web server until we get started.
  

Compensation
We offer a generous compensation package that includes free soda (Wednesdays only) and all the pretzels you can eat! Yay!

We'll also give you a title! Yes, you'll be the Supervisory Director of Internet Architectural Engineering (Junior)! That's the kind if title that you can almost pay a mortgage with! Almost.

Unfortunately, we can't offer compensation in the form of pay or benefits right now. When the interweb cheese puffs delivery service takes off, though, we'll pay you really, really well. Promise!

Subsidized drugs? Bullshit. Shorter patents.

[theshowmecanuck]

I am Canadian but I am living in the States, and have been for 3 1/2 years. You are right, for some people, the medical system is much better. And yes, people who have good jobs have a higher standard of living than those in similar jobs in most any other country.

However you missed the boat on drugs. Drugs are NOT subsidized in Canada. Nor is dental work, nor are eyeglasses. But, patent life in Canada is shorter. This means there is more competion, and medicine is cheaper. Ah well, you are right Canada does have slow health care. Charging $50.00 to the the morons that show up at the emergency ward with the sniffles (a non emergency) instead of the doctor's office would help Canada afford something better. It happens all the time. This is the one lesson from American health insurance that Canadians could well learn from. It costs about 3 or 4 times the price of a doctor's office visit to go to the emergency room... and that is just to be triaged before treatment!

However... and now a major rant against American health care: You're probably the type who never bothered to notice the clerk at a local store wince because he or she is in pain from a back injury. And you probably don't give a shit that they can't get it fixed becuase they can't afford it on the wage they make, the store they work at doesn't provide health insurance, and they make too much to get medicade. Just as long as you can get your MRI in a day, who gives a fuck about the 70,000,000 who can't get any MRI? But then again, maybe you are also one of those hypocrytical born again Christian assholes who says universal medicare is not for you because the people who can't afford health insurance should stop whining and get a real job like I hear these dickheads say all the time. Like Jesus when healing a lame begger ever stopped to say, "do you have an HMO or a PPO? What, no insurance? Sorry piss off."

It is amazing that a county that outspends by far any other country in the world per capita in health care, doesn't care to make sure everyone is covered. That is the black side of American health care. On the other hand, you may need a long time to get an MRI in Canada, but you will get it whether you are employed or not. And if it is an emergency, you will get it in minutes. Urgent, in hours. Nice to have, you have to wait. I had a shoulder operation after I was hurt... after I was laid off from a company. I wouldn't have been able to afford it here. Canada has also either the first on second healtiest population in the world according the the U.N. That is because everyone has access to basic health care. The mattress store clerk in Ballwin, MO. wouldn't have to live in chronic pain. The U.S. by the way, falls way down the list, below Canada and many of the European Union countries who all have universal health care.

So you want to knock universal health care? And people keep saying Americans are selfish. Can you imagine that? Get a clue.

Not bad...

[http101]

For $19.00 an hour on a 2-year contract? I'm there. I got shafted by HP, yes, Hewlett Packard, for $15.00 an hour and got hosed after busting my ass for 5 months. Just one day, "Oh, we love your work, you're great, you work hard, we're downsizing, goodbye." "Can I get my stuff from my desk?" "No, we're boxing it up for you as we speak." Thank you very fucking much. BTW, can we pass a couple more H1-B Visas, I DON'T THINK WE HAVE ENOUGH SWAMIS IN THIS NATION YET. I LIKE GOING TO BED AT NIGHT KNOWING I CAN BE FIRED AT ANY MOMENT AND THAT MY DAUGHTER WILL PROBABLY STARVE IF I CAN'T PROVIDE FOR HER FOOD.

IF WE DON'T UNIONIZE INFO-TECH, NONE OF US WILL BE LEFT TO SPEAK FOR.

UNIONIZE NOW!

Re:Saved this one for an occation such as this

[gcaseye6677]

Translation: Our computer system is a complete mess. We don't even know exactly what software we are running. We're lucky if Windows even boots without errors. We need someone to take care of all of our computer needs, and to help the boys in the lumberyard when things get busy. As a bonus, the candidate would be able to communicate better than our high school dropout foreman, who wrote this job ad. Be sure to include salary history so we know who is desperate enough to work for the minimum wage that we would like to offer. And please, apply now. We can't even send out invoices until those nasty DLL conflicts are resolved.

Re:fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

[0x0d0a]

Interesting that you assume as an executive I don't know much about the IT systems I oversee. Would it suprise you to learn that I have published papers, articles, and a book on the subjects of distributed and parallel computing as well as object-oriented design theory? I rose through the ranks with technical skills, not business skills. I learned my business skills on the job.

Then you are a rarity, and might well be worth what you are paid.

The irritation expressed on Slashdot (at least from me, as well as many others) is aimed at managers who did *not* rise from the ranks, who do *not* understand the domain they manage (understandable, as currently business schools churn out generic, non-domain-specific graduates) who reached their current pay level through cronyism rather than even a vague approximation of a meritocracy.

I am vaguely curious as to what business skills you feel are so crucial and so difficult to acquire, however. I agree that certainly, not every engineer can make a decent manager. However, I also think that a lot of folks either mix marketing- or sales-related skills with business skills, or overestimate the difficulty necessary to acquire (not fine-tune) business skills. (Of course, I also feel that the same applies to web programming, which probably wouldn't sit well with many folks on Slashdot.)

Re:HR and CEO's holding their breath

[nullard]

A union can say, "If you move those jobs overseas, the rest of us will strike." That means that when the next worm comes along, the network will be hosed. Suddenly there's a profit motive for hiring local workers. We could also get portable heath care and pensions. But no, lets avoid collective bargaining so that we can all be screwed individually.

The following is a general rant, not directly in reply to the parent.

I'm sick of people here trashing the Socialists. I'm not saying that they're perfect, but if it weren't for them, we'd be working 100hr 7-day weeks. That's right, the socialists brought us such terrible things as weekends off, medical benefits, safety regulations, and the 40hr work week. That's what you get when you put people before profit. It can work in a 100% capitalistic society too -- just add human, social, and environmental costs into the profit/loss equations and you'd have a much fairer system.

If we had fair trade laws, there wouldn't be a benefit to moving work to India because it would be balanced by a penalty tariff against India for having poor working conditions. By putting all of the worlds workers of equal footing, we could end this off-shoring trend. We could make all American companies pay the U.S. minimum wage to all of their workers everywhere. That would bring jobs back home real fast.

Worst? Land mine disposal

[anticypher]

I have a friend who clears mines with the ICRC in former war zones like Rwanda and Serbia. Depending on who the sub-contractor is, there might be an ambulance and a medical team next to the operation, or there might not. The descriptions of injuries they sustain are pretty gruesome.

Those stories make me appreciate the relatively low risk the IT industry is, but I have been arrested once because of a stupid fuckwit recruiter. The job was for a security cleared individual, with a security rating that matched some acronym on my CV. The fuckwit recruiter scum just assumed because I had the TLA and the word security, that was enough. He never told me the "security clearance" part, or the "Ministry of Defence" part, just that the employer was the national phone company, and they needed a security analyst specialising in big secure networks to work at a client site for a few weeks filling in for a sick Cisco specialist.

I showed up at the unmarked HQ of the ministry of defence in a country which doesn't have a sense of humour. So they kept me for a few days. Non-stop questioning with no food or water, sleep deprivation, bright lights and a painfully loud klaxxon every time my head nodded or I closed my eyes. Meanwhile they checked out my story, and eventually decided I was the victim of a fuckhead agency. Then I was allowed back to my hotel, ordered to return the next day to start work. So for one day I was the star techie in the group, the project manager had tons of technical questions for me, and lots of shooting the breeze. They then expelled me from the country later that friday afternoon. The sleazy headhunter guy was fired before I even got back, the company said he had been an independent, and refused to deal with me. I never got my new 486 laptop back, or paid for my lost week. I had to get a new passport, because they put a big red stamp in it stating "expelled permanently for economic espionage". Quite worrying for a while, since a spying charge there carried the death penalty.

I vet all my contracts very carefully now, and refuse all jobs that ask "can you start tomorrow or next monday".

the AC

wanted: religious time-traveling kevlar wearers

[herdingcats]

looking for a change?

Design for the Lord!

Time Travel Testing

V.P. Ops Afghanistan

AOL skills

[Adler]

i once saw, and have a screen shot of, a job ad asking for, and im not making this up "1137 A01" skills, this was for a level 1 support specialist in san diego. i stil wonder if it was a joke or not.

Re:bladernr, How can I become you?

[bladernr]

How can I become you?

What do I have to learn? How can I best learn it?

Know more than just a programming language. I will give you a for instance: if you are in telecom, buy and read IEC's "The Basics of Telecommunications."

Read a good book on corporate finance. When the boss is having budget problems, help him work them out. Few managers really understand finance and the difference between Capitalizated Expenses and true expenses, and how to capitalize assets. Get the boss to start asking you questions on how to do his job.

Learn other people's jobs on your team. You want to be the "go-to" guy on stuff. It results in more hours, but more visibility. You want to be the guy sitting in requirements-gathering meetings with business owners. The more people who know (and respect) you, the better.

Don't be the guy in the trenches, be the one that people trust.

Above all, liberaly use the phase "I don't know." You want to use it so much, that when you say you do know something, there is not a doubt in anyone's mind that you are telling the truth. That builds trust. Trust builds respect. Respect=promotions.

Also, more personally (because my wife is in this situation), if you are in a company where you won't advance because it is too "good-ole-boy-system" or whatever, move on. Most companies these days really are a meritocracy, but I suspect that a third of them still are "the club" type places. You don't want to be in those systems. Work somewhere were your hard-work, knowledge and desire are rewarded (which is most, but not nearly all, companies).

Of course, I don't have all the answers. This is how I built my career, and I think it works. We all have to find our groove and work in it. But things like integrity and work-ethic transcend all industry and most political concerns.

Ridiculous requirements

[Hentai]

What I'm tired of seeing:

In 1995 it was 5 years experience in COM/DCOM. In 1997 it was 5 years experience in Java. In 2002 it was 5 years experience in .NET.

Why the hell do these companies keep asking for 5 years experience in technologies less than 3 years old?