Ask them how well they score on The Joel Test (see also this post with some suggested updates). This won't necessarily teach you about how much legacy code they have floating around, but it's a useful barometer. Part of what favorably impressed me about the place I am working now is that the VP I talked to (1) knew what it was, and (2) knew how they scored.
Ask how refactoring is viewed, if time is scheduled for specific cleanups of known "code rot"; if at least it is possible to include refactoring of relevant code as part of building new features. A too loose policy (which I've never seen but I suppose is possible) could be as bad as not budgeting for it at all; either can produce "legacy" quality code. Intelligent refactoring is part of the cost of maintenance (code "taxes", even).
You can always ask, and they can always refuse. I do ask about why the position needs filling, but I haven't asked about turnover rates, partly because I didn't think to (true confessions: I just recently read Peopleware), partly because it seemed like something they wouldn't tell anyway. (The last place I interviewed at wouldn't tell me how many developers they had; I've worked there about a year and it's a fine place to work, but that was strange and I understand it comes from higher up. Fortunately, it's not a symptom of Terrible Things.) I wouldn't be surprised that a place wouldn't want to reveal turnover rates to someone that might not end up working there, or could even, if they were interviewing in a particular narrow field, end up working for a competitor.
It's a bit like employers asking about salary history: I don't get offended if they ask, but I politely refuse to reveal it. It is certainly a huge benefit to them to know it if they can get it. I mentioned to a co-worker that I never tell companies salary history, and he said something like, "You can do that?" Yes. Yes you can.
Thanks, I've thought about that but been concerned that they would reject it due to being from (meaning From header, not origin IP) a domain other than theirs. But I can always give it a try.
I have never used or checked an email address supplied by an ISP. I've been running my own mail server for ages. Many ISPs require you to actually set up the email accounts they supply (pick email names in their domain(s)), so they should know I hadn't done that. It's somewhat funny when they advertise X email addresses with an account, as if they're doing you a huge favor, given their near-zero marginal cost.
Side rant: while for much of the time I ran a mail server I had business class Internet with a static IP, but lately I've been running it on a residential IP, and it's retarded that some servers bounce mail because it's from a dynamic IP. Worse, though, are those servers that silently drop mail from a dynamic IP. I understand why they do it—because it's less CPU-intensive than, say, Bayesian analysis.
If an employer doesn't know better than to use a degree as a way to get a foot in the door at best, and do proper skills interviewing, they deserve the crap they get, which is equally possible to get from either poor accredited institutions or people that squeaked through good ones. State accreditation doesn't ensure a good hire and lack of it doesn't ensure a bad one.
In fact, I would go so far as to say the game where the state gets to accept bribes to decide who gets to be "accredited" or not is a moral outrage, not private accreditation, which is worth only its reputation (consider Underwriters' Laboratories, for example, in the sphere of evaluating and certifying electronics; how long after they started approving crap until their reputation would be ruined?).
Who are you - or anybody - to say what "trade schools" should or should not be teaching? Not everyone, for example, wants to study theoretical computer science as opposed to learning the basics of programming. Outside of actual fraud, what a person teaches or learns and what degree they want to stamp on it and what agency accredits the degree should be no business of the state, but open to competition.
Are you claiming that salaries in Atlanta (the one in Georgia, right?) are at $228k for developers? Or are you translating it to a contracting/consulting rate? Or is that just your way to say that there are no good candidates for openings in Atlanta?
For $228k I'd probably move to Atlanta tomorrow if the job was interesting at all.
Why do you think a wealthy person couldn't bribe a cop to plant some evidence (seems drugs would be easiest) and arrest and jail anyone they like (or, rather, don't like) now? And given the state's courts will take the cop's word over their victim's, they wouldn't even need to bribe a judge; and the jury would baa right along.
Yelling "fire" in a theater is not a question of freedom of speech but of property rights:
In short, a person does not have a "right to freedom of speech"; what he does have is the right to hire a hall and address the people who enter the premises. He does not have a "right to freedom of the press"; what he does have is the right to write or publish a pamphlet, and to sell that pamphlet to those who are willing to buy it (or to give it away to those who are willing to accept it). Thus, what he has in each of these cases is property rights, including the right of free contract and transfer which form a part of such rights of ownership. There is no extra "right of free speech" or free press beyond the property rights that a person may have in any given case.
Furthermore, couching the analysis in terms of a "right to free speech" instead of property rights leads to confusion and the weakening of the very concept of rights. The most famous example is Justice Holmes's contention that no one has the right to shout "Fire" falsely in a crowded theater, and therefore that the right to freedom of speech cannot be absolute, but must be weakened and tempered by considerations of "public policy." And yet, if we analyze the problem in terms of property rights we will see that no weakening of the absoluteness of rights is necessary.
For, logically, the shouter is either a patron or the theater owner. If he is the theater owner, he is violating the property rights of the patrons in quiet enjoyment of the performance, for which he took their money in the first place. If he is another patron, then he is violating both the property right of the patrons to watching the performance and the property right of the owner, for he is violating the terms of his being there. For those terms surely include not violating the owner's property by disrupting the performance he is putting on. In either case, he may be prosecuted as a violator of property rights; therefore, when we concentrate on the property rights involved, we see that the Holmes case implies no need for the law to weaken the absolute nature of rights. (emphasis mine)
(Murray Rothbard, chapter 15, The Ethics of Liberty.)
I hate to break it to you, but the "courts of law" are part of the government, even though there is some separation of branches.
Sadly, it won't do you any good to point out that the prosecutor and the judge are both working for the state, however. It's a corrupt monopoly, but it's a profitable and comfortable one for those in power.
Sigh. No, the Republican party does not have a "downright hatred of government". Their PR department likes to indicate that sort of thing (that they will make significant cuts, not "hatred", of course), though, so I'm not surprised if you were fooled by looking at what they say rather than what they do. The best you can expect under Republicans is slower growth of government. Romney, ignoring the herd of elephants in the room (e.g., military and entitlement spending) chose to attack PBS of all things: might as well shave a nickel off your household budget and call yourself a fiscal conservative. Similarly, if you go by actions rather than PR, the Republicans are no more (and no less) warmongers than the Democrats.
It's very much like it's one party with two PR departments - and don't be fooled, neither candidate has any principles.
And unfortunately, either way the government gets in.
We also had Icons, with Logo; I think that was grade 10. They had the typing teacher teaching the class. Unsurprisingly, I learned most programming outside the class, or at least outside the curriculum, and read books to pass the time in less interesting classes.
"back in school to pick up more programming languages" - really? I can see going back to school to learn computer science-type things that are more difficult to learn on your own (or to get the paper that says you've jumped through the hoops so your resume passes the HR filter), but I find it hard to fathom going back to school to learn programming languages (as opposed to more abstract concepts) when it's so easy to install them locally and learn from a decent tutorial. Help me out here. What sort of school, what programming languages? A couple college courses to get up to speed on.NET?
But that depends on your choice of insurers; you should be able to buy insurance where you're in a separate pool from people intentionally doing things that increase their risk (like pyromaniac and non-pyromaniac home insurance pools, haha). ("Should" meaning that it seems to be something demanded and that would be provided if possible, not that anyone should have to provide it.) I believe smoker insurance is in fact higher because of the increased risk, actually. To the extent it's not, one can see the heavy hand of the state limiting competition among insurers (e.g., ban on buying out of state) and flexibility in plans (e.g., forcing coverage of IVF).
Particularly with respect to socialized medicine, two wrongs do not make a right, i.e., because you are forced to subsidize the care of smokers does not justify in turn using force (or threat of same) to stop people from smoking (even if it is in the context of a state job, which is funded by smoker tax dollars too).
... Secondly, the state of Florida does NOT allow you to disregard those signs. If a building has a conspiciously posted sign barring the concealment of weapons, then it is a felony (minimum 3 year sentence) to conceal a weapon inside that building. It can be a house, a church, an office building, whatever. It does not matter. You have to follow the wishes of the property owner. Failure to do so is tresspass, and since you are armed while committing a trespass, there are stiff penalties.
In practice, armed trespass only comes into effect once a person with authority to do so (property owner or employee) asks you to leave (source); and this is unlikely to happen if an individual is carrying a properly concealed firearm. So the GP was correct; the signs can be ignored; whether a person can be asked to leave or not has nothing to do with whether there is a sign posted or not. Contrast other states where properly formatted and placed signs make it actually illegal to enter with a firearm.
I have to agree about the OOP, though. I wrote a pretty large-scale ecommerce project in php, though, and it took me about 1/5 the time it would have taken in perl.
You mistyped "5x" as "1/5". HTH. (Either that, or you're hopelessly incompetent and need to write "a competent programmer can write" instead of "I wrote".)
Oh no, I was fine, I was still in school at the time (but graduating next semester) so just missed a day of classes, and they paid expenses to fly me down for the interviews and took us (a group from a variety of schools) out nights, it was a fun trip.
So flexibility matters, but specific skills matter far, far more if that's what the recruiter wants. (for developers: imagine you went to an interview, said I know C++, and the recruiter said 'brilliant, that shows you're flexible 'cos we only do java here':-)
That's basically how it happened for me at an interview with Trilogy in Austin, Texas (second set of interviews, "Microsoft style", they flew me down there for a long weekend, tour, several interviews, etc.). They knew I didn't know Java, so any interview questions specific to programming were asked in C++. They knew I'd be able to pick up Java. As it happens, I was offered the job but wasn't all that sure about taking it (mainly because I wasn't all that sure that I liked Java), despite the decent benefits and salary. Before I could make up my mind they had to withdraw the offer as they were letting people go (but I'm told reliably by someone that worked there that if I had accepted sooner I'd have been hired).
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Ask them how well they score on The Joel Test (see also this post with some suggested updates). This won't necessarily teach you about how much legacy code they have floating around, but it's a useful barometer. Part of what favorably impressed me about the place I am working now is that the VP I talked to (1) knew what it was, and (2) knew how they scored.
Ask how refactoring is viewed, if time is scheduled for specific cleanups of known "code rot"; if at least it is possible to include refactoring of relevant code as part of building new features. A too loose policy (which I've never seen but I suppose is possible) could be as bad as not budgeting for it at all; either can produce "legacy" quality code. Intelligent refactoring is part of the cost of maintenance (code "taxes", even).
You can always ask, and they can always refuse. I do ask about why the position needs filling, but I haven't asked about turnover rates, partly because I didn't think to (true confessions: I just recently read Peopleware), partly because it seemed like something they wouldn't tell anyway. (The last place I interviewed at wouldn't tell me how many developers they had; I've worked there about a year and it's a fine place to work, but that was strange and I understand it comes from higher up. Fortunately, it's not a symptom of Terrible Things.) I wouldn't be surprised that a place wouldn't want to reveal turnover rates to someone that might not end up working there, or could even, if they were interviewing in a particular narrow field, end up working for a competitor.
It's a bit like employers asking about salary history: I don't get offended if they ask, but I politely refuse to reveal it. It is certainly a huge benefit to them to know it if they can get it. I mentioned to a co-worker that I never tell companies salary history, and he said something like, "You can do that?" Yes. Yes you can.
Thanks, I've thought about that but been concerned that they would reject it due to being from (meaning From header, not origin IP) a domain other than theirs. But I can always give it a try.
I have never used or checked an email address supplied by an ISP. I've been running my own mail server for ages. Many ISPs require you to actually set up the email accounts they supply (pick email names in their domain(s)), so they should know I hadn't done that. It's somewhat funny when they advertise X email addresses with an account, as if they're doing you a huge favor, given their near-zero marginal cost.
Side rant: while for much of the time I ran a mail server I had business class Internet with a static IP, but lately I've been running it on a residential IP, and it's retarded that some servers bounce mail because it's from a dynamic IP. Worse, though, are those servers that silently drop mail from a dynamic IP. I understand why they do it—because it's less CPU-intensive than, say, Bayesian analysis.
Because having principles and being willing to stand by them must be insane, amirite?
It's not "piracy"; it's not "theft"; and it's not immoral although it may be illegal; it's "unapproved copying" at best.
If an employer doesn't know better than to use a degree as a way to get a foot in the door at best, and do proper skills interviewing, they deserve the crap they get, which is equally possible to get from either poor accredited institutions or people that squeaked through good ones. State accreditation doesn't ensure a good hire and lack of it doesn't ensure a bad one.
In fact, I would go so far as to say the game where the state gets to accept bribes to decide who gets to be "accredited" or not is a moral outrage, not private accreditation, which is worth only its reputation (consider Underwriters' Laboratories, for example, in the sphere of evaluating and certifying electronics; how long after they started approving crap until their reputation would be ruined?).
Who are you - or anybody - to say what "trade schools" should or should not be teaching? Not everyone, for example, wants to study theoretical computer science as opposed to learning the basics of programming. Outside of actual fraud, what a person teaches or learns and what degree they want to stamp on it and what agency accredits the degree should be no business of the state, but open to competition.
Are you claiming that salaries in Atlanta (the one in Georgia, right?) are at $228k for developers? Or are you translating it to a contracting/consulting rate? Or is that just your way to say that there are no good candidates for openings in Atlanta?
For $228k I'd probably move to Atlanta tomorrow if the job was interesting at all.
It's (precisely) like you've never heard of James J. Hill.
[citation needed]
"Republican" does not preclude "liberal" (at least in the modern sense of "progressive"; it might in the older "classical liberal" sense).
Have you read Drury's Advise and Consent?
Why do you think a wealthy person couldn't bribe a cop to plant some evidence (seems drugs would be easiest) and arrest and jail anyone they like (or, rather, don't like) now? And given the state's courts will take the cop's word over their victim's, they wouldn't even need to bribe a judge; and the jury would baa right along.
It's Kelo, not Keho, but otherwise a spot-on comment. I would like to think that this would be an obvious, slam-dunk decsion, but after Kelo and Reich
It's Raich, not Reich.... :)
Both wonderful rulings in the spirit of Wickard v. Filburn, too.
Yelling "fire" in a theater is not a question of freedom of speech but of property rights:
(Murray Rothbard, chapter 15, The Ethics of Liberty.)
I hate to break it to you, but the "courts of law" are part of the government, even though there is some separation of branches.
Sadly, it won't do you any good to point out that the prosecutor and the judge are both working for the state, however. It's a corrupt monopoly, but it's a profitable and comfortable one for those in power.
Just like the fashion industry disappeared because it didn't have IP protection?
Sigh. No, the Republican party does not have a "downright hatred of government". Their PR department likes to indicate that sort of thing (that they will make significant cuts, not "hatred", of course), though, so I'm not surprised if you were fooled by looking at what they say rather than what they do. The best you can expect under Republicans is slower growth of government. Romney, ignoring the herd of elephants in the room (e.g., military and entitlement spending) chose to attack PBS of all things: might as well shave a nickel off your household budget and call yourself a fiscal conservative. Similarly, if you go by actions rather than PR, the Republicans are no more (and no less) warmongers than the Democrats.
It's very much like it's one party with two PR departments - and don't be fooled, neither candidate has any principles.
And unfortunately, either way the government gets in.
We also had Icons, with Logo; I think that was grade 10. They had the typing teacher teaching the class. Unsurprisingly, I learned most programming outside the class, or at least outside the curriculum, and read books to pass the time in less interesting classes.
"back in school to pick up more programming languages" - really? I can see going back to school to learn computer science-type things that are more difficult to learn on your own (or to get the paper that says you've jumped through the hoops so your resume passes the HR filter), but I find it hard to fathom going back to school to learn programming languages (as opposed to more abstract concepts) when it's so easy to install them locally and learn from a decent tutorial. Help me out here. What sort of school, what programming languages? A couple college courses to get up to speed on .NET?
But that depends on your choice of insurers; you should be able to buy insurance where you're in a separate pool from people intentionally doing things that increase their risk (like pyromaniac and non-pyromaniac home insurance pools, haha). ("Should" meaning that it seems to be something demanded and that would be provided if possible, not that anyone should have to provide it.) I believe smoker insurance is in fact higher because of the increased risk, actually. To the extent it's not, one can see the heavy hand of the state limiting competition among insurers (e.g., ban on buying out of state) and flexibility in plans (e.g., forcing coverage of IVF).
Particularly with respect to socialized medicine, two wrongs do not make a right, i.e., because you are forced to subsidize the care of smokers does not justify in turn using force (or threat of same) to stop people from smoking (even if it is in the context of a state job, which is funded by smoker tax dollars too).
... Secondly, the state of Florida does NOT allow you to disregard those signs. If a building has a conspiciously posted sign barring the concealment of weapons, then it is a felony (minimum 3 year sentence) to conceal a weapon inside that building. It can be a house, a church, an office building, whatever. It does not matter. You have to follow the wishes of the property owner. Failure to do so is tresspass, and since you are armed while committing a trespass, there are stiff penalties.
In practice, armed trespass only comes into effect once a person with authority to do so (property owner or employee) asks you to leave (source); and this is unlikely to happen if an individual is carrying a properly concealed firearm. So the GP was correct; the signs can be ignored; whether a person can be asked to leave or not has nothing to do with whether there is a sign posted or not. Contrast other states where properly formatted and placed signs make it actually illegal to enter with a firearm.
Alright, you talked me into it: here's a perl version:
perl -le 'print "votes cast: ",1+int rand 16200'
Succinctness is power.
czth
I have to agree about the OOP, though. I wrote a pretty large-scale ecommerce project in php, though, and it took me about 1/5 the time it would have taken in perl.
You mistyped "5x" as "1/5". HTH. (Either that, or you're hopelessly incompetent and need to write "a competent programmer can write" instead of "I wrote".)
czth
> Exceptions are required for enterprise quality applications.
I don't think that they're required, look at perl & C.
Perl has exceptions. Look at the 'Error' module, e.g.:
Also has various other blocks ('otherwise' 'except' etc.).
czth
Oh no, I was fine, I was still in school at the time (but graduating next semester) so just missed a day of classes, and they paid expenses to fly me down for the interviews and took us (a group from a variety of schools) out nights, it was a fun trip.
czth
So flexibility matters, but specific skills matter far, far more if that's what the recruiter wants. (for developers: imagine you went to an interview, said I know C++, and the recruiter said 'brilliant, that shows you're flexible 'cos we only do java here' :-)
That's basically how it happened for me at an interview with Trilogy in Austin, Texas (second set of interviews, "Microsoft style", they flew me down there for a long weekend, tour, several interviews, etc.). They knew I didn't know Java, so any interview questions specific to programming were asked in C++. They knew I'd be able to pick up Java. As it happens, I was offered the job but wasn't all that sure about taking it (mainly because I wasn't all that sure that I liked Java), despite the decent benefits and salary. Before I could make up my mind they had to withdraw the offer as they were letting people go (but I'm told reliably by someone that worked there that if I had accepted sooner I'd have been hired).
czth