Development Job : Interview Questions?

I was asked a question a few hours ago, "how would you kill a named process"... This annoyed me on two levels, firstly, as I was put on the spot, but secondly I had already blogged about this exact problem just a few weeks ago...

The quiz master knew this, or rather they should have, given all the information they had about me, including this blog... So to ask tells me more about them, than my answering would tell them about me.

It tells me that they're working to a bare minimum investigative level, they're looking perhaps too much to their goal (which it to get answers they like) rather than checking anything produced before.

This would be a little like asking Sir John Geilgud, whilst interviewing for a country play.... "Have you done any acting?"

It frustrates me.

Its all a question of metier

I've had one of those moments, taking the wife to a new hair dressers, I had to sit and after giving up the pile of decidedly feminine magazines as a bad job I used my phone to crib up on a problem I'm having setting Code Collaborator up properly.

The problem aside, it's just one of those things, I needed to read the info.

About fifteen minutes into my reading and with many female voices cackling merrily away their 11 o'clock comes in with her husband in tow.  He takes the seat with me and we do the usual nod of the head and tut at the flapping the girls are all doing cooing and fawning over one another.  It really is all a bit beyond me, some form of communication is taking place, but I'm not certain what kind.

Alas, five minutes after our perfunctory nod and his going through the self same magazines he strikes up a conversation "you reading something good?"

I reply, good naturedly and we're washed over with a wave of cackling.

"Computers eh?" he says it like it's some mystery force in the universe, "our lads into them, doing his A-Levels".

I listen again, "Yeah he wants to go into using them, looking at his degree options and he got into Nottingham".

So, I do the dutiful thing, I ask what degree... I'm expecting computing, programming, systems or something...mathematical maybe physics at an outside edge.

"He's going to do English Literature"

I don't really think about it, I just ask what's the link to computers then?

"Wants to work with them".

And I can't help it, but we're in this rabbit hole and I ask "How does he jump from English Literature to working with computers?"

The guy fumbles a little here, I think this maybe the first moment he's thought about the tenuousness of the connection from A-Levels in Sociology, English Lit and Physical Education, a degree in English Literature and the wish to work in Computers.  But he gathers himself in a flash.

"He uses a right good laptop for his home work".

Game over, good night vienna, sensible has left the building.

Our conversation peters out some at this moment and I just leave him to this thoughts as my wife's done, but I can't help think about the metier here.  Computing is a goal, or the lad enjoys playing games, but he's studying completely unrelated topics, with no seeming extra curricular things, and he'll no doubt be out trying to get any computer related job, I don't know what, maybe sweeping out server rooms.  But he'll be cheaper than a qualified person in a computer academic bent.

Programmer Between Jobs...

Announcement time, I'm unemployed... Yes, as of the 28th December 2018 I have not been gainfully employed.  But fear not, I am starting my new job on Wednesday 2nd January.

I've covered this in a nattering brief on my YouTube, which I now link, but stick with this post for more information.

I've never really spoken directly about the job I've had and how its evolved over the years I've been with it, so I was at that role for 14 years.  That's a very long time, especially in today's markets, but as you all know I keep myself busy and informed on these very pages.

I did work in what's euphemistically called "the pay to play industry", this is the gambling industry to the rest of the world, but saying that I didn't write the actual games.  I was a systems engineer, so I wrote software which drove the money accepting and paying hardware, and especially software which worked to store the current state of a machine, avoid frauds, count, collate and communicate metrics to central servers or offline (USB) uploads.

And I did all this according to a set of quite strict legal guidelines and requirements, so we're not talking about the much media covered "crack cocaine of gambling the FOBT", we're talking at most about £1 stake machines, family game machines, questions and answer style stuff.  The more cuddly end of the market if you're asking me.

I am leaving that industry, all that knowledge of BACTA standards and other stuff has been slowly ebbing out of my pores and leaving me, as I actually resigned in early October and in late October (when it became public knowledge in the office I was leaving) they placed me on gardening leave.  We'll gloss over that as some folks got their righteous fury out and pointed it in my direction; needless to say, being on gardening leave this long has let the move happen seamlessly, but it will be a shock to return to early morning rising to get into Nottingham City Center... Plus, no more day time tele... Oh thank god, no more daytime TV!

So, where am I going?  Well, I'm going to a company called The Multiplayer Guys, this is an actual game company, a computer game, console game crew with close ties to an actual game house Super Punk Games.

Now I can't share anything about what I'm going to be working on, but I'm carrying my C++, Windows and Linux experience high on my shoulders.  I'm eager to learn more about the Client Side structure of modern game engines and leverage my server-side and networking experience with the high-speed low latency efficient demands of a modern game.

So, yes, I know what game I'm going to be working on, that's the bit I can't share with you, maybe over time, but right now, nada, nothing, no comment... Move along, move along.

P.S.  I got an e-mail at 16:42 that my Laptop shipped, from China (despite being told the Lenovo reseller was in the Republic of Ireland) by UPS Global... I'm wondering if it'll be here within the week now, I really am.

Can you Learn to be a Programmer...

I was asked this very interesting question this week... "Can you learn to be a programmer?"... Lets be clear, the question is can you be a programmer, not can you learn to program.  I believe anyone can learn to use a programming language, to drive their computer to perform a task for them, after all computers are tools and everyone can learn to use any tool.

Be a person trying to write a batch script, create a spreadsheet to do their home accounts, throwing together some python to process a few text files or creating a whole compiled program of some kind, pretty much anyone can make themselves, with a book, a little internet searching and enough time, appear on that bell-curve of skill.

Does this therefore make everyone a programmer?  I think it most certainly does not.  I can pick up a saw and a hammer, I have in my time knocked out some dovetail joints and repaired the odd chest of draws, does that make me a carpenter?.. NOPE... And likewise, if that self same carpenter picked up their laptop and wrote a bit of C# to tally the number of planks they use they are not a programmer.  He has programmed, just as I have knocked some holes in wood, but one does not transgress nor deign to call oneself the other; it would be insulting to the skills in the craft inherent to each's own chose trade.

And there's the key phrase, chosen trade.  Anyone can program, but to be a programmer you've got to choose to apply yourself, either through some personal interest, a passion, experience and ability at the task.  You must strive to learn, to expand and to know your craft.

Very many folks come to try and be a programmer after learning simply to program, throwing a few lines of code together is not enough; certainly not in my mind it is not enough.

Why do I say this?  Well, I sat down this week with several lovely students at my old Alma Mater, and I was bereft to hear from Computer Studies and Systems and even Software Engineering Students that they hadn't really programmed anything before, they asked me "how do you get into programming", "what should I program to get better at it [programming]" and they indeed asked "can you learn to be a programmer".

I of course come from a different place in time, which they pointed out with their shock and awe, when I answered they should write programs to support what they are interested in, if they're interested in video film making, write a video encoder or player, if you like games, write some games, if you're not sure just write some programming tools you can use... Say you (like me) repeatedly have to created code to write our structured data (say XML) then write yourself a tool to generate that code in whatever language you need it (I have one written in Python, which generated XML loaders for C#, C++ and Python itself).  I did this because I needed a tool, specific to my needs.  But these students were a little shocked, they asked "why not just get it from github (or wherever)"... And they're right, you could most likely find exactly the solution you want from else where...But... Would you learn anything doing so?... No.

Folks, students if you are reading, you are there to learn, we are in the programming craft to learn, you will not learn without doing.  So, yes use whatever is at hand, get the jobs done, solve the problems of today, by using libraries or leveraging a package manager to get other resources into your projects.  But if you opt to use a library today (like I used tesseract recently to do some OCR for me) when you're done, take a moment, take stock, look what that library does, think how you might do it, try to implement your own even (variations on the same theme).

In this way you will learn more and experience more and feel more confident in your own skills.

Tech Job Interviews... Derp

I'm not saying who for, and I'm not saying what for, but over the last three months I've been on a little spree within the jobs market for my kind of career, I've been through phone interviews, technical tests and face to face meetings.

And I've noted a pattern in how things to, they go one of three basic ways...

The first is that the interviewer likes how I hold myself, how I present myself, but they've read nothing about me.  Now this is a large blog, I've written a book, and I publish quite a lot of information about how I work and what I do... To not read this is tantamount to negligence, either on the part of the interviewer or the recruitment folks putting you through for a role.

When I find myself in this situation however it lends itself to my favour, as I can answer questions posed to me, and beware that as thorough as the opposite party aimed to present themselves they've already demonstrated to me that I have to tick the boxes in their filter live, so to speak.

The next is that they've read the information about me but then they don't like me, either how I come across in person, or just some trivial problem like a technical tests; more about those in a moment.  Finding myself in this situation can be tough, for instance having a near four hour interview experience, face to face, meeting not one, not two but three lots of people and being invited to tour the work space, you'd be forgiven for thinking "I think I'm in here"... Just to be told "no" later (yes this actually happened, because I told a chap I don't like TDD, and he frothed at the mouth a little).

The final is where the interviewer has no interest in you as a human being, you have to tick the right boxes, and that's it.  I've had this twice recently, out of very many tests and interviews, one verbally and one via a written form.  Many years ago I graduated, and I walked as a new (one of the first in the UK actually) graduates with a pure software engineering degree... This essentially means I use a computer as a tool, to communicate, to process or gather information, whether I leverage that with C++, Python, Word or just as a paper weight makes no odds to me, so long as the task is done effectively, in a maintainable, secure and under-budget manner.  However, I walked into a room with five other people and was handed an A-Level maths paper... I sat there looking around the dingy room, looked at the paper's title and just got up and left.

This final situation is perhaps the hardest to explain, unless you've been there, you are you, you are a value you are an idea, you are a font of experience and the culmination of your life to date, you are not completing an A-Level maths paper, you are not writing a bit of data processing, you are certainly not some online multi-choice quiz.

But doing these menial tasks proves to someone that you know what you're doing... Apparently?  In the latter case it's almost as though the online quizzed expect you not to just google an answer... I myself would much rather just state "don't know"... but above that I'd rather NOT perform such odd tasks.

If I were to hire staff today, I'd sit down and talk to them, the CV is the main filter, do they have any skills I desire?  Do they have any insight or experience which is of use?  Talk to them.

Then, once I'm happy at the personal level I'd not ask them to perform some monkey tricks, I'd just hand them production code, or a snippet there of... "Comment on this", openly, freely.... The spelling, the layout, the coding approach, any bugs, any suggestions.  But I would not do this without knowing who they are, and never without myself being there, being a personal touch.

I don't know, maybe it's the vogue of today, maybe it's a never ending spiral, but it appears to me that slowly we are divorcing ourselves from one another, online.  This maybe something important to note, the most successful online communities, or sites, involve interacting with one another, take facebook or snapchat as examples, you don't get in there at the ground floor by asking impersonal questions in a static box.  You get the young, the scared, the ones willing to please answering those questions.  The rebels, the technologists like me, we tear up the rule book, we're here to innovate, not tell you where a non-mutable variable is attemptedly being assigned to in a subroutine to make you feel better.

Jobs : Value My CV

I just ran across this site which takes your CV (probably data mining everything about me) and it extracts your education, your experience and your personal insight to generate a value for you.

I've just put my CV through this, here's the Skill Cloud....

it's not exact, I know for a fact "Comics" is not on my CV anywhere, B2B software isn't either... BiLingual is a stretch as I speak poor GCSE school French... And a bit of English...

But the value it's placed on my CV is interesting....

That is a lot more than I earn.... A LOT more...

How valid their valuation is, what metrics or heuristics they apply isn't made clear, it might just be a simple look up and tick the box followed by summing a set of weighted values.  But for my location this is not a realistic estimate, no-one would pay this for me here.

Based out of London, New York or anywhere in California then maybe, but here in the middle of England.  No way.

But I take this that my current employers are getting an absolute steal employing me... Not least as I just noticed I'm 37 hours unpaid overtime... Hmmm, gotta sort that out.

Administrator : Fired Employee Stole Software Serials!

Today I've had to deal with a security issue for a friend, a certain department manager had a machine with a set of serial numbers for each of his developers tool stack, quite expensive stuff, these were stored in a text file on his desktop in a folder called "serials".

The problem?  Before Christmas an individual was asked to leave the company, his parting gift?... He stole all the software.

They knew this because he got a little drunk with a common friend of the manager over New Years and boasted he'd be starting his own company with the same software stack... We're talking about £4000 worth of software.

The machine the chap was working on (windows 7) was pretty locked down, he could not  install, nor run a cloner, nor could he add a drive or boot from CD/USB or even get into the BIOS settings to take the software directly off as it was installed.

My friend, investigating, suspected that the chap had simply taken the serial numbers, the manager frankly denied this.  His machine was checked, no-one had been accessing it other than him, there was no file sharing set up and it too could not be booted into anything other than the Windows 7 installation on the machine....

There was no-way, in the managements eyes, that the software could go missing... My friend suspected different... And so co-opted me to help, getting a copy of the disk I was not able to log-on, but I could see a whole bunch of scripts run at start up, whenever ANY user logged onto the system, they ran a series of scripts, one of which was a batch file (slaps forehead).

This batch file was stored as a regular file in a folder "C:\devscripts" and could be written too... I had a hunch this was where something could go wrong, but couldn't initially see how, the file looked unchanged... But then I noticed a hidden folder... a git repo metadata folder... in the same directory.... It seems the source of both this folder and the file was a git repo, so updates to the devscripts would be stored and commited to the git repo... and pulled to each machine every-reboot.

But the git-repo was open for ANYONE to commit to!

The developer had simply, within the massive cloud of commits, committed a new batch file to the repo.  This new script started the python interpreter with the command line "-m http.server 8080 C:\Users\<manager>".

The development machines used port 8080 for the remote debugger, and let this connection start without warning the user that a new firewall rule was required.

The developer then simply used "wget --spider" to pull all the files from the managers desktop, this included a bunch of documents about staff performance and of course the serials folder in it's entirety.

Once he had all these files, just before the festive break and his departure he committed the original script again which removed the starting of python.  He did this in the midst of the sprints to the break no-one noticed that their commit numbering had slipped by a place!

If he had reverted the repo he'd have needed the managers approval, but as it was the script just went from green to a yellow to a green against their sign off system, so no-one paid it any attention that the revisions had slipped in date & time.  And that the sign-off system didn't treat the signature of the commit as being different was a bug in the system.

So the lessons to learn...

• Don't let batch files start as the root user on a machine, EVER!
• Don't update said files from a public or even open internal source
• Don't just ignore any subtle changes (like the commit number order changing) when you observe them!

And when you fire a developer, fire them!  Don't let them sit there with anything connected to your network, you just fired them!  They'll want revenge!

Personal Update: Networking the House

About six months ago, I told you all I'd bought some really nice shielded cat 5 cable, and I planned to install this between the router in the living room and the office, well today I've finally taken that leap, drilling through victorian ceiling and soot, missing twentieth century power lines and an awkwardly placed floor joist....

My ping which was round 83ms TTL is now 7ms, I have my full download speed from my supplier, and indeed I am.  But it was a bloody messy process.

I have sacrificed a few ethernet plugs to the gods getting the wire down and through, the first wire I pushed through just disappeared, I think along the back of the victorian cornice in the living room; one day I may find it.

My eventual trick was to use a 20mm polymer pipe to encase the wire, and also to guide it down the wall in the lower room, this resulted in the wire being out of sight (least colourwise) against the light coloured walls.

Technology: "Yeah, I know"...

This is a state of mind, I'm pretty sure, it's something I've personally never been able to pull off; if I don't know what I'm talking about it's soon overwhelmingly obvious, and I'm sure throughout my life people have spotted this; what amazes me however is how often, especially in technology, people get into this mind set of "yes" and "I know", when patently they know fuck all.

Case in point, I was just reading how to use "BitBake", I've never used it before, today was the first time I've sat down with the manual and tried to get to grips with it, however, the person who had directed me to get to use this, wondered over, poking around what I was up to... "Reading the BitBake manual, it's very boring"... Their response was the nodded body language "yes yes yes"... But they remained looking over me, as if they expected a demonstration of something more, so I said "It'd very boring, just reading"...

They didn't say they had any experience with Bitbake, but their response was just one of those... "yes I know all about it" kind of moments, those moments where you think, "fuck off, you don't know shit".

People getting that body language vibe out annoy me.

I used to work with a guy who did this everyday, about every topic, about every possible thing, he never wanted to say he knew fuck all, but made out he did.  Even to the point that I was using code I'd written, in a class only I had ever seen, and he came asking what it was, so I said... "Oh part of the Node XML, have you heard of it"... "yes"... of course he'd heard of it... "Interesting, since I just wrote it"... Silence.

Same shit, different fella... I hate it, if you don't know what something is folks, go ask, go read, go learn, don't make out you know.

But then to those of you not as honest as me, if you do have this gift, rememeber it'll come back to bite you, when you're in that meeting saying "yes" to everything, one-day you'll be asked to deliver, and that means a shit load more work to do, because you've admitted you already know most of that stuff!... Good luck!

Story Time - My Best Worst Day

Really this is a worst, best, kind of day thing... but first, let me set the scene, I graduated and had a good job I never really applied myself at; but luckily I got head hunted and promised riches beyond my wildest dreams in another job.  Fantastic!  Also I'd gone through five years of secondary school then two years of college and had a massive crush on a girl, and she was now my girl friend... only took me five years beyond the end of college to get her, but I got her...

So, I'm at this nice new job, and I've got the girl I wanted, but... She's a bitch... She hates me really, she was fine until she graduated as a junior school teacher, at which point she became so supercilious and strange she never turned off, and came home and was just a pain in my rear, you know she was either moaning about work, moaning about being a woman (yes this means moaning about periods) or hanging out with her ex - who used to and I believe carried on beating her.. More about that later.

All was going okay, I moved into the new job... But had to spend more and more time trying to please this bemoaning pain in the arse and got more and more tired, things at work got a big sketchy, they didn't really know what they wanted me to do, or understand the technology I could offer them - this was the days of the early internet and people wanted a "program" to happen in browsers but there were basic problems like I was barred from using the internet... To write Internet based applications.... YAWN...

Long and the short a day came when I knew something was going on; my spider senses were twinkling; I got into work, and someone had been on my PC, my password was changed, I was locked out of the network and there was that little note "just pop by and see Vanessa"... Meah, I knew it, I was canned, so off I went canned... Gone, I knew it, and I left no big deal... I'd even thought the writing was on the wall for a week because of a business problem, and project cancellation.

Anyway, I get into the car park, call the girl... No answer... In fact my call was actively rejected, hmm, weird, got some news about me for once, not you... Either that, or she was busy coming on, or coming off or enjoying the seeming fifteen minutes of level brain flight between the two states.  So I called the folks... And I remember laughing as they answered... "Well, that job is down the shitter"....

I wish I'd never said this to my Mother as since then and now (18 odd years) she's never shut the fuck up about it, I've been in my current job for 11 years, and never lost it, yet she's convinced I'm going to loose this job any minute... Not be made redundant or leave, but actively fired for being a douch or something... Yeah, she'd not make a great character reference for me.

Anyway, job canned, I get in the car and I drive home with a feeling of a great weight having been lifted from my shoulders.

But I'm driving home to she who must rule my life without actually wanting to commit to me, or sleep with me, or be nice...

And I open the front door, and nearly piss myself laughing even harder, pushed back through the door are her keys, she's left...

That's why she didn't answer the phone... So I have a scout around the house, yes the tampons, the always panty liners, the cloths and even a picture of her all gone, thank god.

I immediately celebrate with a trip to the shops, buy a huge £20 beef joint and roast it and eat great slices of it on fresh bakery bread... something I was banned from cooking, because she doesn't like the taste or smell... 

Either way you cut this, it should have been a terrible day... Employment lost, girlfriend of four years gone... 

You know what, it was the best fucking day ever!

Mr Xelous Mailing....

I've just done something which even I think is strange, I've just sent an e-mail to a person, at their place of work, directly asking for a job.

I have never done this before, I've had jobs applied for from adverts, I've gone into trade shows and been approached and head-hunted by others... But I've never just sent a message or cold called someone.

I'm pretty sure if I were receiving such messages - as I'm sure this person is - they'd just have them spam filtered, my mail is just spam, but I have a small warm spot deep inside hoping the recipient reads the mail and I hear something back.

It is a very small hope in this yammering, chattering, gnashing world, but hey you never know...

The reason for my sending this missive is three fold, first I think I need a new job... second I'd like to work for them... and third my personal research/coding time is very much pointed in the direction they appear to me moving, least from their current published information, they're looking at C++, I'm looking at C++... They have a history with volume rendering, I want a history with volume rendering... They have a company, I'd like to work for a company....

I'd just like to earn a little more than I do now, to live comfortably and work from home doing something I love.  With a house with two man-lab rooms all to myself, I think it maybe time I try to make the most of it, the most of myself.

And hey if the recipient of that mail is here.. "Hi"... or should that be "Hej"?

Work Stress Survival

Now then, the big reveal about what has been stressing me, I've survived my third round of redundancy threats... I've been at the place I work just over 10 years now, which is not to be sniffed at, however, I've survived one company folding into another, then that holding company selling its interests to a third firm, and then that third firm closing the products I work on.

Luckily for me a new position was created to take up the development tension in another department, but right now I've just moved my desk, sadly, from the old location I'd worked in with so many varied people... Dozens of people...

Drunken Irish men, work shy Cambridge tramps, Programmers from Macao who could not Program, a middle eastern gentleman whom spent all day on the company phone screaming in some unknown language and got fired soon after for embezzlement and this is not to mention the more normal mental cases one accrues in the technology field, the standard LARPers, MMO junkies, hackers, dweebs, geeks and nerds...

All those people, all those pointless, never finished, undelivered projects... And I sit here now, the ONLY one of them to have delivered any product in the last 2 years and I think myself lucky to have the new position.

So, the new location, the physicial one, has a new view, I can see most of the car park and a sliver of sky through my window view, this is only the second time I've had a window seat whilst I've been working since even before my graduation, so in nearly 16 years professional development I've spent far more of my time in the dark...

I've got the same desk and kit, just moved around, and I might move it around again by 90 degree's when a load of junk from the previous occupier is shifted.

So there you go, stressful, not least because the day I found out about the potential redundancy was the day after we'd signed for the new house.

New Job Title

The Big Reveal "Software Engineer".

The big reveal for what's been stressing me at work... Redundancy, specifically the retirement of the system I had worked on for the last 8 years and the disposal of the department I've worked as part of for the last 10 years.

Now, working anywhere for 10 years is a big ask in this day and age, so to suddenly be told you're going is a big worry.

All the members of the department were basically redundant from the roles we were all in, however, one new role in a different department was to be created... So was there going to be a big race for this one new role?

The answer is no, I was the only applicant from the old department for the new role, and  early last week all the other members - all my old troubles - departed with their cheques, and today I got my new job title and indicated where I'll be moving to.

The only real rub is, for 10 years I've worked with a pair of headphones on, listening to music, my iPod or whatever, rather than the quite loud office ambience in here.  I mean I work in a gaming area, so there's squawks and chirps, whistling, shouting, swearing and banging all the time... But the new department no headphones.  Now I'm a big believer that headphones are a bigger pro than a con, I accept you can be isolated from talking to people - or rather not listen in on whatever they're up to, but as soon as someone engages with you you can whip them off and be there... But their main pro is that they afford a level of self, a level of separation, especially important for a developer concentrating on code.

I strongly believe in the results of studies proving music creates stable brain waves allowing concentration to improve, literally you are able to zone out your audio senses, which otherwise would have you jump or skit at any thump or bump.

Apart from that however, the new role consists of working on supporting lots of systems created over time, but also some new little bits and bobs which seem to be excellent.

This has, of course, been bothering me, and until Thursday last week I was still only getting between 2 and 4 hours sleep a night with worry.  However, I've since cleaned out all the junk left by my departed colleagues - thanks for leaving so much shit - and I've been set about new little challenges before Christmas.

CV's

I can't tell you why, least not right now, but I've just had to sit down and write up my CV.

I hate CV's... I help my mates do theirs from time to time, but I've been with my current employer over 9 years (it is in fact 10 years very soon) so I don't have call for a CV.

So the one I've just put together its kind of like a "this is me, ask me owt you want" kind of thing, I mean I'm midway through my 30's and been a professional programmer for nearing 14 years, so I guess what Comprehensive School I went to, and what GCSE's I got is pretty much pointless to stick on there.

As a consequence my CV is like two solid pages just recaps of my jobs, references and then a little introduction as to who I am written in the third person.

Now to hit the streets with it.  And one of the things I remember about the last time I went through a round of recruitment is that recruiters always - ALWAYS - change the contact information, this is of course to protect their revenue stream, they ask for their fee (which at one time was 10%) for finding the right candidate.  The trouble is, we're in a depression, things are hard, so I'd rather a potential new employer have my contact details, not use a recruiter and give me - or invest in my desktop equipment they give me - that fee.

I'm letting my CV circulate of its own will, but I will say this, I've just posted it off to a company I've been in awe of in Nottingham...

I have a funny feeling I went to an interview with these guys when they were based out at Sandiacre, but I was not told who they were, and I think I pretty much failed that interview because of my own lacklustre interest in what they were talking to me about back them.

But I'd suffer any amount of tribulations to get to interview again, not least just to talk to them and know who they are.

I mean, as a serious C++ fan boy, games are the performance item to look at for me.  More than the sedate world of the desktop, so I'd love to talk tech with them, but to work with them.... Droool.

Mind you, would I prove to be too much of a know it all bastard?...

Not a post for the Vicker to read - Strange Job Interviews

I was just watching this...

And it reminded me of perhaps the most awkward moment I've ever had in a job interview.

The interview was down in Cambridge, for a programming job, in an office about 700 yards from the Imperial War Museum Duxford... Which, to be honest, was the main draw for me.

Anyway, I remember being led up four flights of stairs, and into an attic room, where the walls were freshly plastered, this was a young, new company, there was a long table and I was sat at one end and then five guys came in.  Four took seats with note pads and stared at me whilst one chap stood by a flip chart of paper.

No-one said a word to me, I stood to shake hands, but they didn't come near, neither did they say a word, they were all very pale pasty looking geeks.  Now, I am also a geek, but back then I was freshly graduated, I had a romping sex life and I had the remnants of training hard at karate on me, so I didn't look too bad with a big mop of hair and a clean crisp suit on I was the anti-pole of these scraggly guys.

They all spoke with posher then you, style Cambridge accents, and they all held their nose when they realised I was a graduate from an ex-polytechnic...

But still they didn't say a word to me...

Next thing, the interview began... they asked me lots of maths like questions, then about my knowledge of internet payment systems - which at that time - before even PayPal was sod all.

And then whilst the chap by the flip chart started to draw something, one of them around the table suddenly asked...

"How do you stand about anal sex?  Either male on female, or male to male"

Stunned I just opened my mouth and closed it again... Was this an invitation?  Did they look so pasty as they didn't leave the office, I'd not seen a woman in the entire place so I was a little disturbed and didn't want to be cock-blocking or volunteering to sausage jockey any of this lot.. not for a job.

"I'm sorry?"

And another spoke...

"You know, fisting, BSDM, real hard core"

There was absolutely no anchor for my brain on this, it was not mentioned in the job description, I had nothing to go on...

"Well, I've been around"

Was my only reply...

"No, not you, videos, pictures that sort of thing?"

Pictures, I had the most gorgeous girlfriend at the time whom I could get to drop suck and swallow she was so horny... so I was not up on the old lads mag end of the market.

Then it clicked, their work, their business was porn, it was internet porn... They looked so pasty as they made their money being online pretending to be the female to male chatters online and charging for it whilst videos played.  And I was being hired because I had a few modules listed on my CV of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language processing (my favourite module truth be told).

They wanted me to write a chat box, but their approach, the advert, their pay all turned me off the whole thing, they themselves made it all so seedy.

Perhaps there was money in it, I think the legality of the hardcore stuff they were talking about in Britain - at that time - was questionable, and so they did host their services overseas, so the job security was tenuous at best.

I never chased up the company, they no longer exist, and I didn't take the job, but I'd have liked to know how much money - if any - they raked out the masturbatory habits of the world.

IT Hiring Duds

So, I was reading this, and just nodding along... This is nothing new, for about the last decade I've been seeing Asian origin graduates leaving the UK going home to get jobs, and they clearly may be making up the successful amount of IT hires out there.  I myself shared the very end of my final year digs with four chaps from Malaysia...

Link

But, the whole phenomenon of poor IT hires is nothing new.  I come from a mid-way generation of IT trained persons, I did my A-Level and degree in the shadow of the 8bit and 16bit computer businesses of the 80's, where money was king and getting rich with IT easy.

The intellectual challenge back then was not to excel at the subject, but instead to proove you knew what the heck you were doing with anything... I remember one interview where I walked into a room and was just pointed at a running PC and told to change the CPU for another the chap handed me... Then I remember an interview which was to sit down and do a 4 page (pretty bloody terrible) mathematics paper (which incidentally I refused to do - on principle that they were going to be interviewing a Software Engineer on the topic of Mathematics they may as well check your doctor is okay by handing them a joint of beef to carve - and I walked out)...

But whilst I was training there continued to be this under tow of other hires around me, whom were not IT trained, they might have a computer at home, they might have; at the time; had exposure to a BBS or the infantile internet and so they were considered a good hire, they were a quater the price of me with my six years dedicated academia and years of experience - they're well over a tenth the cost of myself now.

And they still get hired, they still proove to be ineffectual in the roles, they still prove to be useless and they still move on after 2-3 months.

There have been many here where I am working now, one famous case the chap appeared, never spoke to anyone, made accusations about everyone being Christian pigs, copied all the software from the cabinet and spent all day on the phone to "home" which was the other side of the world... He got fired in the end... But just taking one look at him, when he started, I knew he was another of these dead-end hires, it was painted all over his face along with the shit eating grin he had...

They still get hired, they still exist, the UK has suffered them since the 90's and still suffers them right now, they talk the talk, but don't walk the walk, and I'm so happy to see this is a universal problem.

P.S. If my bosses are reading, I'd love to be on the hiring committee for programmers/technical people coming to the company!

Breakout...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/02/steve_jobs_most_influential_gamer/

Why is this?  Is it because of "Breakout" or because he's dead?.. I don't think this is a deserved award at all.