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Comment Re:the way to go (Score 1) 743

by Call Me Black Cloud (#38009298) Attached to: Tough Tests Flunk Good Programming Job Candidates
Wow, where did you get all that from? Did I say I wanted cheery people? Didn't I say I was rigorous in screening and interviewing? I don't need what I call "factory programmers"...the widget assemblers as you put it. I've got roadies; I need rock stars. I want people smarter than me. I never dismissed tech skills - but I don't want only tech skills. The smartest candidate isn't necessarily the best candidate.

Yesterday I conducted 2 interviews. The first was a factory programmer - there's no way she would succeed on the project I'm hiring for. I think we spent 30 minutes with her (me and two other senior developers). The programmers on our team (of which I'm one) solve problems, probably learning new skills along the way, and ship code. Ever read A Message to Garcia? I need Rowans. Rowans succeed on this project.

The second interview got to almost the 2 hour point when the project manager came in to say we've gone long enough. We covered everything his resume claimed he knew, had him rough out a design on the whiteboard, and went over the other things (i.e. attitude-related) we look for: success at and away from work, ability to collaborate, flexibility, self-motivation, drive for results, decision making. He was a Rowan. Hopefully HR can put together a decent enough package to seal the deal.

Smart candidates respect the rigor of our process. Very few companies ask for code and writing samples prior to the review...our team does. There are plenty of places a factory programmer can go...companies where a manager does the interview so it's easy to look smart. The large company I work for is one of those places...but the project I'm on isn't like that.

Nice misread of my post.

Comment Re:the way to go (Score 2) 743

by Call Me Black Cloud (#37943414) Attached to: Tough Tests Flunk Good Programming Job Candidates
I do the tech interviewing for our project and we are pretty rigorous in our screening and our interviews. The make or break quality, though, is attitude.

You can teach skills but you can't teach attitude. In fact, my summer intern this year wasn't even a programmer - he was a double major in math and econ - but his spirit and attitude were outstanding so I brought him on (sort of a Pygmalion test of skills vs attitude).

After his internship was up we hired him as a part-time programmer, with an eye towards full-time employment if he wants to go that route. He fits in great with our team and he's picking up programming very fast (he'd only had one Java class previously).

Remember, you're interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you.
Japan

Ask Slashdot: Radiation Detection For Tokyo Resident? 371

Posted by timothy from the if-you're-warm-you're-too-close dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I'm an American who is living in Tokyo. Stories have started popping up about 'radiation hot spots' in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures so I have begun to worry. I live on the first floor of my apartment building and right by our washing machine there is a gutter out there that is clogged with rain water and mud, which has me especially worried because my wife and I are planning to have kids soon. Obviously no one from the government is going to come by to check our gutter so I feel the need to take matters into my own hands. I have absolutely no idea so I'm asking you guys. What kind of radiation detector should I get? A Geiger Counter? If it measures Gamma rays is that enough? Are alpha and beta dangerous too? I know no one has all the answers regarding radiation but any advice you guys could give me would be great."
Transportation

Submission + - 175 MPH Student-Built EV Smashes Speed Record (byu.edu) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A team of Brigham Young University students recently smashed the world land speed record for electric vehicles by hitting a top speed of 175 miles per hour in their self-built electric car. The car, named “Electric Blue,” reached high speeds thanks to lithium iron phosphate batteries and its streamlined design, which is capped by a tail fin for speed and agility.

Submission + - 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Thirteen years ago, two teams of astronomers and physicists independently made the same stark discovery: Not only is the universe expanding like a vast inflating balloon, but its expansion is speeding up. And, the two teams are recognised with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Half of the prize will go to Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, who led the Supernova Cosmology Project. The other half will be shared by Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, who led the High-z Supernova Search Team, and Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who worked on High-z.

In essence, they proved that Einstein's "biggest mistake" (the cosmological constant, to create a 'stable universe') was actually a clever theoretical prediction that there was something else happening — dark energy."
Hardware

Submission + - David Caminer, creator of the first business compu (reghardware.com)

Submitted by linatux
linatux writes: Chris Bidmead at reghardware.com has written a fascinating article on "LEO" — the first business computer.

"A programming language, even at assembly level, would have been a help. LEO came with no such luxury. But it took Caminer's team only two years to tame the beast, and in November 1951 it was proudly running "The Bakery Valuations Job" to track and cost the labour and material of cakes, biscuits and bread moving through Lyons various profit centres."
China

Submission + - US Congressman takes aim at China over IP theft (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "U.S. government officials need to put more pressure on their Chinese counterparts to stop a "pervasive" cyber-espionage campaign targeting U.S. companies, says Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Espionage sponsored by the Chinese government has resulted in "brazen and wide-scale theft of intellectual property of foreign commercial competitors.""

Submission + - 80% of Arctic Ozone Lost (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
iONiUM
iONiUM writes: "From the article, 'About 20km (13 miles) above the ground, 80% of the ozone was lost, they say. The cause was an unusually long spell of cold weather at altitude. In cold conditions, the chlorine chemicals that destroy ozone are at their most active.'
This is the first time in history that the Arctic ozone has been depleted to such extensive levels. This will mean high UV problems for Russia, Greenland and Norway."

Submission + - Two Out Of Three Tech Firms Offshore Jobs (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: About 65% of U.S. tech companies now send jobs offshore, according to a survey of CIOs and senior IT leaders at 275 companies by the Society of Information Management. The survey also showed the employee turnover rate has remained constant since last year at 5.5%. From 2006 to 2011, employee turnover averaged 5.92%. Also, the average tenure of a CIO hovers at 4.36 years. "Nobody is confident that the economy is turned around," said Jerry Luftman, a management professor at Stevens Institute of Technology.
Iphone

Sprint Bets Big On the iPhone 366

Posted by Soulskill from the over-a-barrel dept.
hazytodd was one of several readers to tip news of Sprint Nextel's plan to grab a piece of the iPhone action in order to halt the company's downward slide. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Sprint has committed to buying 30.5 million iPhones over the next five years (summary of paywalled WSJ story), which at retail rates works out to roughly $20 billion. "To sell that many iPhones, Sprint would have to double its rolls of contract customers, convert all of them to the Apple device or a combination of the two." A separate rumor at Boy Genius Report suggests the iPhone 5 may be a Sprint exclusive until sometime next year, with Verizon and AT&T getting the upgraded iPhone 4S until then. Apple is holding an event to unveil the new phone tomorrow.

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