How’s the IT Job Market?

[sdduuuude]

If you are in academia and have never worked in the industry, I’d say you are definitely not in the top 20%.

That isn’t to say you can’t be successful or move quickly to the top 20%.

Nothing substitutes for experience.

[bob2007]

davelj,

“As an unlikely example, my CPA is starting to outsource certain tax accounting tasks to a firm in India. Now, he hasn’t let anyone go in order to do this but he plans on outsourcing more and more as the firm grows instead of hiring more folks directly.”

If he is sending your tax info to india, shouldn’t you be worried?

[bob2007]

davelj,

“As an unlikely example, my CPA is starting to outsource certain tax accounting tasks to a firm in India. Now, he hasn’t let anyone go in order to do this but he plans on outsourcing more and more as the firm grows instead of hiring more folks directly.”

If he is sending your tax info to india, shouldn’t you be worried?

[bob2007]

davelj,

“As an unlikely example, my CPA is starting to outsource certain tax accounting tasks to a firm in India. Now, he hasn’t let anyone go in order to do this but he plans on outsourcing more and more as the firm grows instead of hiring more folks directly.”

If he is sending your tax info to india, shouldn’t you be worried?

[bob2007]

davelj,

“As an unlikely example, my CPA is starting to outsource certain tax accounting tasks to a firm in India. Now, he hasn’t let anyone go in order to do this but he plans on outsourcing more and more as the firm grows instead of hiring more folks directly.”

If he is sending your tax info to india, shouldn’t you be worried?

[bob2007]

davelj,

“As an unlikely example, my CPA is starting to outsource certain tax accounting tasks to a firm in India. Now, he hasn’t let anyone go in order to do this but he plans on outsourcing more and more as the firm grows instead of hiring more folks directly.”

If he is sending your tax info to india, shouldn’t you be worried?

[Coronita]

[quote=anxvariety]Wow, I come back and it’s 2 pages long.

I’ve never had trouble getting a job… I’d guess I’ve gone on 8 interviews and gotten 7 jobs, that is until lately.

My last job I got by making a posting on Craigslist writing about all the things I didn’t like about the software industry. So 2 weeks later I got a reply to it… he asked me to come in, they might have a position for me. Once I showed up, the guy who was doing the hiring was like “lets talk money”. After a while he said, “you know it’s less about money and more about liking where you work”… so I started to think this company wasn’t serious. Next, I met with the owner I told him I’d work for minimum wage for 3 months to prove myself, if he gave me a high potential assessment after that 3 months. So he said, no don’t take minimum wage – take $XX,XXX/yr and after 3 months if you’re good we’ll give you $XXX,XXX/yr. After 3 months they were happy to give me the $XXX,XXX pay without a question.

Problem with the positions I’m looking at these days – it seems like alot of them have been burned by folks because they’re asking for technical interviews, code samples etc.. I am never willing to do those before first talking to the place to see what they’re about. One place wanted me to send code from a project I worked on… I thought they’d respect the fact that I said I needed permission before sending code, but they were just rude about it.

We’ll see how the search goes this new year.

Thanks for all the tips and insights.

[/quote]

Not trying to turn this into a geek of geek thread….Anx, Your mileage willvery. Some companies/personalities are just fascinated with certain interview styles that I never understood.

A few colleagues of mine were always fascinated with some of these “techniques”. There were always these companies that love to ask these “brain teaser” questions. And myself and one of my closest colleagues here in SD all share the same “WTF?” Supposedly they are suppose to get motivate you into “how you think”. But come on, some of these questions where like do you have anything better to do. And the irony is that they use the same damn questions all over the place in san diego. I guess it’s because the san diego community is so small and talent just moves around and recycle the same questions over and over again. I probably know most of these answers just from hearing my colleagues talk about them, and in the past in my younger days, I had to “pretend” to think what i was actually “discovering the answers” as i went along. And frankly, thoughout what I have seen, there are plenty of folks that could architect,design,implement,operationalize a brand new capability and flunk those idiotic questions. At the same times, there are plenty of PHD’s that would invent these crappy question who couldn’t design a simple scalable service if their life depended on it. go figure.

Anyway, hang in there. This environment isn’t a walk in the park so probably more randomness and less so your skillset. But again, if you have any past colleagues, managers,contacts, now’s it’s probably be more helpful to make some phone calls than apply through traditional means. That’s why I do a lot of talking these days with others, more so than normally. Just because you never know. There were a couple of positions that I came across recently, but they were up in L.A. and required some commuting. If you’re interested, I can send you the recruiter’s info.

[Coronita]

[quote=anxvariety]Wow, I come back and it’s 2 pages long.

I’ve never had trouble getting a job… I’d guess I’ve gone on 8 interviews and gotten 7 jobs, that is until lately.

My last job I got by making a posting on Craigslist writing about all the things I didn’t like about the software industry. So 2 weeks later I got a reply to it… he asked me to come in, they might have a position for me. Once I showed up, the guy who was doing the hiring was like “lets talk money”. After a while he said, “you know it’s less about money and more about liking where you work”… so I started to think this company wasn’t serious. Next, I met with the owner I told him I’d work for minimum wage for 3 months to prove myself, if he gave me a high potential assessment after that 3 months. So he said, no don’t take minimum wage – take $XX,XXX/yr and after 3 months if you’re good we’ll give you $XXX,XXX/yr. After 3 months they were happy to give me the $XXX,XXX pay without a question.

Problem with the positions I’m looking at these days – it seems like alot of them have been burned by folks because they’re asking for technical interviews, code samples etc.. I am never willing to do those before first talking to the place to see what they’re about. One place wanted me to send code from a project I worked on… I thought they’d respect the fact that I said I needed permission before sending code, but they were just rude about it.

We’ll see how the search goes this new year.

Thanks for all the tips and insights.

[/quote]

Not trying to turn this into a geek of geek thread….Anx, Your mileage willvery. Some companies/personalities are just fascinated with certain interview styles that I never understood.

A few colleagues of mine were always fascinated with some of these “techniques”. There were always these companies that love to ask these “brain teaser” questions. And myself and one of my closest colleagues here in SD all share the same “WTF?” Supposedly they are suppose to get motivate you into “how you think”. But come on, some of these questions where like do you have anything better to do. And the irony is that they use the same damn questions all over the place in san diego. I guess it’s because the san diego community is so small and talent just moves around and recycle the same questions over and over again. I probably know most of these answers just from hearing my colleagues talk about them, and in the past in my younger days, I had to “pretend” to think what i was actually “discovering the answers” as i went along. And frankly, thoughout what I have seen, there are plenty of folks that could architect,design,implement,operationalize a brand new capability and flunk those idiotic questions. At the same times, there are plenty of PHD’s that would invent these crappy question who couldn’t design a simple scalable service if their life depended on it. go figure.

Anyway, hang in there. This environment isn’t a walk in the park so probably more randomness and less so your skillset. But again, if you have any past colleagues, managers,contacts, now’s it’s probably be more helpful to make some phone calls than apply through traditional means. That’s why I do a lot of talking these days with others, more so than normally. Just because you never know. There were a couple of positions that I came across recently, but they were up in L.A. and required some commuting. If you’re interested, I can send you the recruiter’s info.

[Coronita]

[quote=anxvariety]Wow, I come back and it’s 2 pages long.

I’ve never had trouble getting a job… I’d guess I’ve gone on 8 interviews and gotten 7 jobs, that is until lately.

My last job I got by making a posting on Craigslist writing about all the things I didn’t like about the software industry. So 2 weeks later I got a reply to it… he asked me to come in, they might have a position for me. Once I showed up, the guy who was doing the hiring was like “lets talk money”. After a while he said, “you know it’s less about money and more about liking where you work”… so I started to think this company wasn’t serious. Next, I met with the owner I told him I’d work for minimum wage for 3 months to prove myself, if he gave me a high potential assessment after that 3 months. So he said, no don’t take minimum wage – take $XX,XXX/yr and after 3 months if you’re good we’ll give you $XXX,XXX/yr. After 3 months they were happy to give me the $XXX,XXX pay without a question.

Problem with the positions I’m looking at these days – it seems like alot of them have been burned by folks because they’re asking for technical interviews, code samples etc.. I am never willing to do those before first talking to the place to see what they’re about. One place wanted me to send code from a project I worked on… I thought they’d respect the fact that I said I needed permission before sending code, but they were just rude about it.

We’ll see how the search goes this new year.

Thanks for all the tips and insights.

[/quote]

Not trying to turn this into a geek of geek thread….Anx, Your mileage willvery. Some companies/personalities are just fascinated with certain interview styles that I never understood.

A few colleagues of mine were always fascinated with some of these “techniques”. There were always these companies that love to ask these “brain teaser” questions. And myself and one of my closest colleagues here in SD all share the same “WTF?” Supposedly they are suppose to get motivate you into “how you think”. But come on, some of these questions where like do you have anything better to do. And the irony is that they use the same damn questions all over the place in san diego. I guess it’s because the san diego community is so small and talent just moves around and recycle the same questions over and over again. I probably know most of these answers just from hearing my colleagues talk about them, and in the past in my younger days, I had to “pretend” to think what i was actually “discovering the answers” as i went along. And frankly, thoughout what I have seen, there are plenty of folks that could architect,design,implement,operationalize a brand new capability and flunk those idiotic questions. At the same times, there are plenty of PHD’s that would invent these crappy question who couldn’t design a simple scalable service if their life depended on it. go figure.

Anyway, hang in there. This environment isn’t a walk in the park so probably more randomness and less so your skillset. But again, if you have any past colleagues, managers,contacts, now’s it’s probably be more helpful to make some phone calls than apply through traditional means. That’s why I do a lot of talking these days with others, more so than normally. Just because you never know. There were a couple of positions that I came across recently, but they were up in L.A. and required some commuting. If you’re interested, I can send you the recruiter’s info.

[Coronita]

[quote=anxvariety]Wow, I come back and it’s 2 pages long.

I’ve never had trouble getting a job… I’d guess I’ve gone on 8 interviews and gotten 7 jobs, that is until lately.

My last job I got by making a posting on Craigslist writing about all the things I didn’t like about the software industry. So 2 weeks later I got a reply to it… he asked me to come in, they might have a position for me. Once I showed up, the guy who was doing the hiring was like “lets talk money”. After a while he said, “you know it’s less about money and more about liking where you work”… so I started to think this company wasn’t serious. Next, I met with the owner I told him I’d work for minimum wage for 3 months to prove myself, if he gave me a high potential assessment after that 3 months. So he said, no don’t take minimum wage – take $XX,XXX/yr and after 3 months if you’re good we’ll give you $XXX,XXX/yr. After 3 months they were happy to give me the $XXX,XXX pay without a question.

Problem with the positions I’m looking at these days – it seems like alot of them have been burned by folks because they’re asking for technical interviews, code samples etc.. I am never willing to do those before first talking to the place to see what they’re about. One place wanted me to send code from a project I worked on… I thought they’d respect the fact that I said I needed permission before sending code, but they were just rude about it.

We’ll see how the search goes this new year.

Thanks for all the tips and insights.

[/quote]

Not trying to turn this into a geek of geek thread….Anx, Your mileage willvery. Some companies/personalities are just fascinated with certain interview styles that I never understood.

A few colleagues of mine were always fascinated with some of these “techniques”. There were always these companies that love to ask these “brain teaser” questions. And myself and one of my closest colleagues here in SD all share the same “WTF?” Supposedly they are suppose to get motivate you into “how you think”. But come on, some of these questions where like do you have anything better to do. And the irony is that they use the same damn questions all over the place in san diego. I guess it’s because the san diego community is so small and talent just moves around and recycle the same questions over and over again. I probably know most of these answers just from hearing my colleagues talk about them, and in the past in my younger days, I had to “pretend” to think what i was actually “discovering the answers” as i went along. And frankly, thoughout what I have seen, there are plenty of folks that could architect,design,implement,operationalize a brand new capability and flunk those idiotic questions. At the same times, there are plenty of PHD’s that would invent these crappy question who couldn’t design a simple scalable service if their life depended on it. go figure.

Anyway, hang in there. This environment isn’t a walk in the park so probably more randomness and less so your skillset. But again, if you have any past colleagues, managers,contacts, now’s it’s probably be more helpful to make some phone calls than apply through traditional means. That’s why I do a lot of talking these days with others, more so than normally. Just because you never know. There were a couple of positions that I came across recently, but they were up in L.A. and required some commuting. If you’re interested, I can send you the recruiter’s info.

[Coronita]

[quote=anxvariety]Wow, I come back and it’s 2 pages long.

I’ve never had trouble getting a job… I’d guess I’ve gone on 8 interviews and gotten 7 jobs, that is until lately.

My last job I got by making a posting on Craigslist writing about all the things I didn’t like about the software industry. So 2 weeks later I got a reply to it… he asked me to come in, they might have a position for me. Once I showed up, the guy who was doing the hiring was like “lets talk money”. After a while he said, “you know it’s less about money and more about liking where you work”… so I started to think this company wasn’t serious. Next, I met with the owner I told him I’d work for minimum wage for 3 months to prove myself, if he gave me a high potential assessment after that 3 months. So he said, no don’t take minimum wage – take $XX,XXX/yr and after 3 months if you’re good we’ll give you $XXX,XXX/yr. After 3 months they were happy to give me the $XXX,XXX pay without a question.

Problem with the positions I’m looking at these days – it seems like alot of them have been burned by folks because they’re asking for technical interviews, code samples etc.. I am never willing to do those before first talking to the place to see what they’re about. One place wanted me to send code from a project I worked on… I thought they’d respect the fact that I said I needed permission before sending code, but they were just rude about it.

We’ll see how the search goes this new year.

Thanks for all the tips and insights.

[/quote]

Not trying to turn this into a geek of geek thread….Anx, Your mileage willvery. Some companies/personalities are just fascinated with certain interview styles that I never understood.

A few colleagues of mine were always fascinated with some of these “techniques”. There were always these companies that love to ask these “brain teaser” questions. And myself and one of my closest colleagues here in SD all share the same “WTF?” Supposedly they are suppose to get motivate you into “how you think”. But come on, some of these questions where like do you have anything better to do. And the irony is that they use the same damn questions all over the place in san diego. I guess it’s because the san diego community is so small and talent just moves around and recycle the same questions over and over again. I probably know most of these answers just from hearing my colleagues talk about them, and in the past in my younger days, I had to “pretend” to think what i was actually “discovering the answers” as i went along. And frankly, thoughout what I have seen, there are plenty of folks that could architect,design,implement,operationalize a brand new capability and flunk those idiotic questions. At the same times, there are plenty of PHD’s that would invent these crappy question who couldn’t design a simple scalable service if their life depended on it. go figure.

Anyway, hang in there. This environment isn’t a walk in the park so probably more randomness and less so your skillset. But again, if you have any past colleagues, managers,contacts, now’s it’s probably be more helpful to make some phone calls than apply through traditional means. That’s why I do a lot of talking these days with others, more so than normally. Just because you never know. There were a couple of positions that I came across recently, but they were up in L.A. and required some commuting. If you’re interested, I can send you the recruiter’s info.

[anxvariety]

Thanks for the responses.

I would try and work with/network with some of my old associates but I’m in a different state now(literally).. if they would have allowed some flexibility as far as telecommuting I’d probably still work there to begin with.

I guess I’m underestimating the difficulty in growing roots in a completely new city/state.

I had an interview for a small contract recently and they sent me these 5 questions about ”how do you feel when you code” etc, lame stuff. So I replied back and said not interested. They called back and said OK nevermind, you can start tomorrow.

I guess I just became disillusioned through using Dice and Craigslist lately – but I’m glad to hear you all confirm that those sites are playing some game/resume farming.

Thanks again for the advice and recommendations.

[anxvariety]

Thanks for the responses.

I would try and work with/network with some of my old associates but I’m in a different state now(literally).. if they would have allowed some flexibility as far as telecommuting I’d probably still work there to begin with.

I guess I’m underestimating the difficulty in growing roots in a completely new city/state.

I had an interview for a small contract recently and they sent me these 5 questions about ”how do you feel when you code” etc, lame stuff. So I replied back and said not interested. They called back and said OK nevermind, you can start tomorrow.

I guess I just became disillusioned through using Dice and Craigslist lately – but I’m glad to hear you all confirm that those sites are playing some game/resume farming.

Thanks again for the advice and recommendations.

[anxvariety]

Thanks for the responses.

I would try and work with/network with some of my old associates but I’m in a different state now(literally).. if they would have allowed some flexibility as far as telecommuting I’d probably still work there to begin with.

I guess I’m underestimating the difficulty in growing roots in a completely new city/state.

I had an interview for a small contract recently and they sent me these 5 questions about ”how do you feel when you code” etc, lame stuff. So I replied back and said not interested. They called back and said OK nevermind, you can start tomorrow.

I guess I just became disillusioned through using Dice and Craigslist lately – but I’m glad to hear you all confirm that those sites are playing some game/resume farming.

Thanks again for the advice and recommendations.

[anxvariety]

Thanks for the responses.

I would try and work with/network with some of my old associates but I’m in a different state now(literally).. if they would have allowed some flexibility as far as telecommuting I’d probably still work there to begin with.

I guess I’m underestimating the difficulty in growing roots in a completely new city/state.

I had an interview for a small contract recently and they sent me these 5 questions about ”how do you feel when you code” etc, lame stuff. So I replied back and said not interested. They called back and said OK nevermind, you can start tomorrow.

I guess I just became disillusioned through using Dice and Craigslist lately – but I’m glad to hear you all confirm that those sites are playing some game/resume farming.

Thanks again for the advice and recommendations.

[Author]

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