You are right - I knew it to when I submitted my reply. Gosh I am lazy today :)

Also I never did finish my degree ;) 15 years in to the field I am finally going back to complete my bachelors not because I am at a dead end in my career, but because it is an incomplete personal goal that is bugging me personally and not professionally :)

Let's also state my bill rate is >40/hr...

Tes

Let me clarify my statement: It depends on what they are asking for; if you are applying for a Sr .NET Developer position and you have zero experience, then yes they will most likely not get the job. But if you are applying for a position that requires JQuery experience and you only have used MS AJAX toolkit but can demonstrate an understanding of JavaScript you have a shot.

The current job I just accepted a few weeks ago they were hoping I had MVC experience, but alas my previous gigs were all ASP.NET Webform, WinForm and Web Service development. But I was able to turn up to the interview, tell them I had no experience about MVC but discuss some of the aspects of the design approach and ask them some pointed questions about it. That peaked their interest, along with being able to answer the gambit of other technical questions they had correctly and they shrugged, “You’re a pretty decent .NET developer and SQL developer from looking at your resume, the code samples we asked you to write and questions you answered learning MVC while will take some time we know you are capable of it.”

And that is exactly it – it is not about impressing them with bullshit answers and responses, it is about demonstrating that you have technical skills, you have the ability to learn quickly and that you very least are familiar with a major design pattern out there. The fact of the matter is, in our field we will learn so many new technologies, frameworks etc throughout our career and we have to be willing to do so. That to me is the key, I have interviewed candidates that basically are: “I have always done it this way” attitude. Guess what? I have never offered them the job.

Do not feel dirty about doing .NET/MS SQL Server development; we were all young an idealistic and while you can still build a decent career without using the Microsoft stack why limit your options? In the end to me programming is programming, if I like what I am be tasked to do I don’t care what platform it is under and ultimately I am looking to pay the bills :)

Tes

Okay seriously:

* Started to play w/ Solaris on a sparc station at uni while learning C programming which got me interested in *nix.
* Installed Slackware Linux at home and really liked what I saw during my uni days.
* Spent time modifying hardcode on MU** servers and doing basic administration.
* Started working at another college where a bunch of us decided that Redhat Linux was the choice for some services we wanted to host.
* Started supporting a Linux based installation that acted as the firewall for the college I worked at.
* Started setting up Apache web servers and SMB shares for a few local companies.
* Did some side programming projects that involved dealing with some real time application needs under Linux.

While I was never a dedicated Linux admin or coder I keep those skills in my skillset arsenal. That is how I got in to Linux and I run a couple Gentoo boxes at home to support some of the stuff I am doing. I found during the Sysadmin part of my career keeping multi-OS skillsets honed was useful and during the programming part of my career (current part of my career) I spend most of my development in the .NET/MSSQL environment (it pays the bills really well) with the odd side project in Linux here and there.

So it all comes down to what you want to do when you grow-up; I scope my career based on what interests me - I have gone in to job interviews lacking a skillset they were wanting but ended up getting the job because I told them how I would learn it and I also gave an eager competent professional impression that I treat my job seriously and will learn whatever needs learned. I would conclude that while an impressive resume is always nice, the short comings can be made up by the soft skills.

I know not the exact answer you wanted...

Tes

I ate a penguin!

That is what I am wondering. Gartner is paid for by their sponsers, yes the large software companies. Look at the changes in their top quadrant enterprise ETL packages over the last year or so. I have personal experience with a top right hand quadrant package they recommended end up now being dropped off a leader ETL solution. Any one that had done anything with the solution for day would have scoffed and demanded their money back.

I always continue walking out of a store when some one asks "Can I see your receipt please?" I say, "Nope. This is now my property so hands off." and continue on my way. I had one dude at a well known chain of stores try to step in front of me, heh - I picked up the bags walked around him and I bowed my head and said, "Thank you sir, for returning my cart." quite loudly and left.

Honestly? The first time I did this I was shitting myself - I wanted to play by the rules and not get in trouble or cause trouble. The issue? That is WHAT they are programming us to do - follow the rules, look at your shoes and never look at 'authority' in the eye or question anything they do. If you accept this verbatim with out question then you just agreed to no longer live in a free country. Imagine myself as a strong male being worried about doing this to a freaking store clerk, how do people who are less physically able and emotionally as me able to do this when confronted by actual 'authority' figures? The answer is they cannot!

As Maria Mitchell once said: Question everything!

Tesen

Hey, I am one of those fuckwits! Okay was, I just put my notice in. Yeah I often worked long hours, honing my skillset and well the rest of my team disappeared. Now I am doing the job of three people, I am leaving for a straight 40 hour a week developer job where OT is paid at time and a half (and the people I have talked to at the new job said 40 hours is the norm with sometimes maybe needing to work 41 - 42 hours a week but that is seldom). Guess what? The two others on my team are not up to snuff and I had been telling them for a year now we went from 5 developers down to 4 then all of the sudden I was solo then we hired 2 more ppl who were not at intermediate level let alone Senior like me due to the 'cost' of local talent and we need to get more people!

Now? They have three consultants coming in to back fill my position (next week is my last week) - at what cost? More than they fucking are paying me and I told my director, dude you know why I am leaving? To get my fucking life back! I have a wife and a child who I do not get to see as much as I want. See you put all your eggs in one basket even though I was telling you we needed more people and now guess what? You're paying extra for consultants!

I am one of these dudes that just has to get the job done and guess what? I was at burn out level, I took 2 weeks earlier this year and came back relaxed which lasted a day at most before insta-stress back. Sometimes we get hung up on getting the job done and do not realize we're getting fucked until we get to the point of snapping.The issue is, we are told to work hard as children - work hard and the rewards will come to you. Uhhuh, not anymore! Not even certain it ever was - but it is an easy thing to get hung in, especially if you like what you are doing and it is very easy for companies to manipulate you in to doing it through minor rewards etc.

Tes

See I am in somewhat of a disagreement with that statement.

Professionalism is not just about your clothing; here is a tip: professionalism is about doing your job well, giving it everything you have and fitting in to your environment. If your environment dictates jeans, t-shirt then so be it! Your boss will decide what is appropriate for your environment or your HR department.

You may not realize this, but over-dressing for a job and overshadowing your boss and co-workers in a relaxed environment actually is not professional, as it can be condescending and hostile to your peers and superiors.

My 100% constant work dress as a developer:

Black pants, black shoes, black socks (yes I've seen ppl wear gray, white, red etc with the forementioned), black belt and a nicely colored shirt, sometimes plain color sometimes with discrete pattern on it (if it takes more than 2 seconds to analyze the pattern... nope aint going to be worn). Now depending on the color shirt, the exposure of my t-shirt I normally wear will define the color of t-shirt.

When I was supporting a manufacturing environment's network and computer based production systems jeans and collared shirt since I was crawling around alsorts of oil, yuck and other stuff.

Oh and if you are female there is a fine line between a nice shirt, with slight exposure to "Hey I am a slut, promote me or let me blow you." The latter you may be able to pull off if you do not have the attitude to go with it.

Tes

Thank you, sir! That just made me chuckle :)

2 years for my mother, the anti-rejection drugs, the previous cancer treatments and the act of nuking her immune system for the BMT just weakened her way to much. She ended up in rejection and then died of Pneumonia because even the industrial strength antibiotics they gave her could not help.

I was not implying she needed to put up with borderline sexual harassment. But one of the things you need to make candidates aware of is the environment has been guy orientated and that is no excuse to put up with something that makes her feel uncomfortable. I.e. she needs to speak out or inform her manager, often it is simple as a manager going: “Hey guys, knock it off it aint cool.” And it is solved. Most guys tend not to realize they are going over the line or approaching it. Sometime just a simple correction is all that is needed.

My current place of employment where I am in the process of departing from (my choice, they have no idea I am looking) we were a bunch of guys with one very laid back woman on our team. Sometimes we would step over the line; in fact my manager came out once and told a couple co-workers, “Guys, Sally (not her real name) is in the room!” We were lucky that Sally is extremely laid back and pokes fun back at us and would tell us when we cross the line. Fast forward a couple years, she is now in a different group (not because of us) and we hired new people (three women) to work on our team.

Of the new hires that are women, and one is very uptight, very demanding for a new hire of things being setup to accommodate her and her way of thinking etc. She refuses to join in on team discussions and she refuses to go out of her way to learn. She expects people to cater to her, change the way we act (she dislikes joking in the work place), she refuses our managers orders that I am the senior guy on the team and when he is not around she is to take direction from me. Because of her nature, her constant complaining to management about anything and everything they are afraid to manage her and set her straight and they let her through her probation period; the other female new hires are friendly, they joke around and like a laid back environment. Heck we guys listen to them talking about the guy they saw last night and sometimes across a border that should not discussed at work. We shrug it off, it happens and move on.

Why am I telling you this? Personalities can kill a work place, sure your team may seem to be a bunch of unprofessional dorks, but again what is your environment like? There is being unprofessional, then there is joviality, sometimes the humor crosses the line, let them know when and most adults are reasonable and apologize and clean it up. The fact of the matter is when you have a team that joke around, then it is a team that bonds and works well together and supports each other. Joking and social interaction builds camaraderie and it sets your team up to work well in stressful situations and work through the issue no matter how many hours it takes.

If you hired this new girl, then obviously you discussed the work environment and hopefully she interviewed with some of your team members. If you failed to tell her about the environment and you failed to let her know that if some humor makes her feel uncomfortable to tell the offender or you as her manager so you can tell them to knock off, then you failed in your job and have set your team up to fail. If the new hire understands this and is cool about it, then see how she works out and how she interacts – the one uptight woman I mentioned I told management to extend her probation period another three months and they did not. Once she crossed that three month barrier then the real complaining/whining began. DO NOT make this mistake, the probation period is there for a reason - they do not work out byebye.

Tesen