Subj : Re: Question about minimal requirements in programming
To   : comp.programming
From : CTips
Date : Wed Jul 27 2005 07:27 pm

Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote:
>>From: CTips <ctips@bestweb.net>
>>we'd be willing to pay a *minimum* of $80kloc [+ bonus + relocation]
>>to someone whose got both solid programming skills and a good
>>computer-science + mathematical background ... And we still can't find
>>them :(
> 
> 
> I'm available, why haven't you been able to find me?

Hmm; probably because there are no hits on:
compiler {well, actually, compiler AND (VLIW OR SSA OR 
software-pipelining OR register-allocation OR back-end) AND NOT 
(synopsys)) }
operating system (really: operating-system AND kernel AND (amoeba OR 
chorus OR ...a bunch of other experimental oses...)
hard real-time
and some other systems work.

Looking at your resume (fortunately, you have an unusual name, and that 
+ william-lowell probably makes for a unique search), I would say that 
depending on which resume I saw, I might discard it immediately

Your posting on ba.jobs.resume - well, why would I bother? You want a 
J2EE/XML/AWT/swing job which promptly disqualifies you from wanting 
anything other than web-centric and/or GUI jobs. The only thing on that 
resume which is even roughly interesting is the "Packet-based 
client/server telecommunications, including handling interrupts from I/O 
devices". But I have no idea how complex this project was. Would it be 
enough to waste my time given that it is the only thing remotely 
interesting.

The other resume is more meaty, but again, it shows a LISP hacker, 
probably with some background in NLP. There is no description of the I/O 
device handling stuff. There is nothing on what you did in C. There is 
some FORTRAN work in the late 70s which might be interesting - it might 
show a certain level of numerical processing sophisitication, depending 
on exactly what was going on.

You have, as far as I can determine, only published one paper, even 
though you've been working at Stanford University. Again that by itself 
would not be a problem, but the presence of any other publications would 
have led to a stronger case.

Which professors did you work with at Standford? Would anyone from the 
C.S or EE depts be willing to speak for you? BTW: there are several 
recent start-ups by Stanford profs. If someone from Standford is willing 
to recommend you, then you talk to the IP licensing dept at Stanford and 
ask for a list of companies.

> (BTW Have you ever heard of the William Lowell Putnam competition?)

No. But after you mentioned it I looked it up. It's pretty good for 
high-school students. Based on what my Russian colleagues tell me, its 
quite close to the standard of what they had to tackle on their 
high-schools Math Olympiad team in Moscow.

> How about you setting up an audition for me, whereby I can prove my
> skills at writing software, and if I pass muster then you agree to hire
> me, OK?

I already posted a problem. I guess you haven't gotten the post yet.

  You list a few simple programming tasks that are brand-new
> applications/tools so I can't cheat by just copying something somebody
> else already wrote, but which would take only a couple days of work by
> a skilled programmer, and I'll pick one that I can complete in a couple
> days and set it up as a Web-serverside application for you to play with
> to see if it works as requested.  But I'm not going to spend two days of
> my labor unless you agree beforehand that if I succeed then you'll hire
> me. OK?

<Shrug> If you had a good enough history, or you had some substantial 
accomplishments which were pertinent to our work, you wouldn't need to 
prove yourself by doing this kind of thing. Since you don't, you'd have 
to do something to get past the screen we (and any other company) uses.

.