Notes – Headhunter Trade Secrets for Finding a New Job During a Recession

From Stephen Viscusi’s blog entry Headhunter Trade Secrets for Finding a New Job During a Recession:

It’s important to humanize who you are…have your boss know you as “a person,” not just an employee.

It is easier to fire an employee who you know nothing about personally, or who you can’t relate to as a person.

“Bulletproofing” yourself requires being a bit Mommy and a bit Machiavelli.

If your boss does approach you about letting you go, and they always use these same line, “It’s not personal, it is a numbers thing,” you should definitely call his/her bluff! Ask your boss, “What’s the numbers thing, boss? What is the number?” Tell your boss that you’re willing to take a pay cut of 20 percent less for a year, or you’ll work three days instead of five…It really works!

Employers hire people who they like personally, and they fire people they don’t know or don’t like, regardless of performance. During a recession, they can get away with this.

Where Are All the Qualified Programmers?

Wed 12 Dec 2007
Posted by Scott Westfall
http://blog.slickedit.com/?p=180

FTA: When Mr. Gates decries the lack of available programmers, he offers the solution that we should increase the number of H-1b visas. Indeed, if there truly is a shortage then this seems like a reasonable solution. However, this is more likely a ploy to address the true problem that these companies aren’t willing to admit: there aren’t enough programmers available at the salary they are willing to pay.
…
Even without relying too much on years of experience, most companies put too much emphasis on experience with a specific combination of technologies. This includes things like Oracle, Struts, .NET, XML, etc. I consider these to be extrinsic abilities. Knowledge of these things must be specifically learned and aren’t generally applicable to other areas. In contrast, intrinsic abilities are more portable and can be applied in many areas. These include problem solving, communication, and the ability to learn quickly.
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If we had an opening on this team, many companies would make the mistake of requiring a couple years of experience in XML since it is so important to the project. A good programmer, who learns quickly, would be able to get up to speed on our use of XML in no more than a day.
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When hiring, consider what you truly need in your candidates. Don’t fall into the trap of just listing all the technologies you use. Determine which can be learned on the job and which truly require experience.

Powershell’s popularity is rocketing skywards

TIOBE Programming Community Index for July 2008

July Headline: Powershell’s popularity is rocketing skywards

The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be found here.

Pos. Jul 2008	Pos. Jul 2007	Delta in Position	Progr. Language	Ratings Jul 2008	Delta Jul 2007	Status
1	1		Java	21.345%	+0.33%	A
2	2		C	15.945%	-0.42%	A
3	3		C++	10.693%	+0.19%	A
4	4		(Visual) Basic	10.447%	+0.72%	A
5	5		PHP	9.525%	+0.87%	A
6	6		Perl	5.131%	-0.20%	A
7	8		Python	4.973%	+1.95%	A
8	7		C#	4.000%	+0.29%	A
9	9		JavaScript	2.757%	+0.24%	A
10	10		Ruby	2.735%	+0.64%	A