Subj : Re: How much should I charge for fixed-price software contract? To : comp.programming From : Richard Heathfield Date : Wed Aug 17 2005 06:27 am Chris Sonnack wrote: > Richard Heathfield writes: > >>> So you do what I've done in the past. Put your URL under your email >>> address on your submitted resume. Around here, we do NOT accept HTML >>> resumes. Electronically, Word docs or PDF docs are accepted, >> >> Accepting Word docs and PDF docs is fair enough - you can accept what >> you like, obviously - but it seems strange that you should reject HTML >> resumes. > > Some of it, I'm sure, is a general corporate conservativeness. The > internet was a "new fangled thang" until fairly recently. (You can get > away with that when the company is 100+ years old and had 20 billion USD > in sales last year. :-) I am fairly sure HTML pre-dates PDF. If you reject HTML for being too new-fangled, then you are being inconsistent by accepting PDF. In fact, you are being even more inconsistent by accepting any Microsoft Word document later than about Version 2. > > And some of it probably is, "Hey, show me you can step up." I wore a > tie to the interviews I had last year as one way to show I could step > up, but I doubt *anyone* expected they'd ever see me that way again. I can, if I absolutely have to, create a Word document. I can, if I absolutely have to, "step up" (or down, in this case). But I choose not to, because it's such an unpleasant process. If this means I'm going to miss out on a particular job, so be it. > It's just a sign of respect and willingness. I don't think it's a sign of disrespect to a potential client or employer to send them a file in a format they can read easily. > >> It seems to me that you are potentially excluding some very skilled >> applicants, who happen neither to possess nor to desire the software >> required for creating Word or PDF files. Or is that your intent? > > I wouldn't say the intent is as stated, but with the authoring tools > available today, just making a website is pretty meaningless. You lost me, but I think that I... > > *IF* the position were for an web author, that would be very different > kettle of fish, but as a general policy, few managers/supervisors will > bother exploring an external webpage (which may well be blocked by the > ever vigilant firewall). ....yes, I thought so. I wasn't talking about sending a URL, although frankly I don't see anything terribly bad about that, but about an actual file which happens to have an HTML extension, sent as an email attachment in precisely the same way that a Word document might be sent. If the Word file can get through, I see no reason why the HTML file shouldn't get through. > > And frankly, I don't entirely disagree with the view that "the web" is > a toy thing, not really real. Nobody actually mentioned the Web. What we are discussing is a highly portable document format which can be used to create documents trivially and freely, using a simple text editor. Those documents can be sent as email attachments just as easily as Word documents. They can actually be read more easily than Word docs, of course, since they don't require a copy of Word to be available. > I'm sure that will change in time (as it > did with fax and then email), but when you consider that pornography > is the biggest slice of "the web" and lots of kooks and hate mongers > make up another slice, you can perhaps understand why a conservative, > company might treat it with some contempt (I know I often do). The Web is a large collection of collections of (collections of...!) information. Some of that information is useful to me. Much of it is not. I am not overly concerned with the existence of a large amount of extraneous material on the Web, since searching is rapid nowadays and in any case one man's extraneous is another man's vital. I don't treat it with contempt, but with pragmatism. But your point about kooks and hate mongers is valid, which is why I certainly wouldn't put my CV up on the Web (because a CV contains personal information, which is grist to any kook's mill). -- Richard Heathfield "Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999 http://www.cpax.org.uk mail: rjh at above domain .