Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Låb 126 is on the Prowl Again

I got an e-mail from J.P. of Låb 126 which ran (honey side up):
My name is J.P.and I work for Låb 126. If you’re not familiar with us, Låb 126 is a wholly owned R&D subsidiary of Amazon located in Silicon Valley. We design and engineer high-profile, portable, hand-held consumer electronics products, including the hugely successful line of Kindle eReaders and HD tablets.

I read a little about your work and extensive technical background, specifically your deep expertise with embedded systems, Linux kernel programming, ARM architecture, and divers SW development experience. I have a couple of development teams that would like to speak with you about some very interesting engineering opportunities here at our R&D site in Cupertino and Sunnyvale, CA. We're selectively looking for highly talented engineers to join our design and development teams working on both existing and next generation products, as well as number of "stealth projects" in emerging technologies that we feel will be "game changers" and soon be seen and used by millions of people.

In fairness he actually looked at my Resume however he did not put forth a job description or spoke of the the-what-that-corporate-recruiters-do-not-name ($$).

Having interviewed with this outfit before and having wasted my time on boring-to-tears whiteboard exercises [they did not bother to make it interesting] I kind of snapped at him:

Has Låb 126's interviewing style improved since my last in 2008? [...] As recall it the interview was dreary. [...] I have a strong preference for recruiters who come forth with a job description as the conversation has a subject. I do not like to discuss vague opportunities.
Not all battles are to be won, eh?

-ulianov

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Yet another "Dumb‭šhit Can‭‭ådian Agency™"

Got a call yesterday from a local agency about a TFS/build automation contract. This is a one-liner in a 700-line Resume and something I've done after getting drafted. [Mistake corrected, changed document to read "TFŠ".]

Being that the contract is local I engaged the recruiter. All went well, client wants a phone interview [3-cheers!] but after that the recruiter wants me to go to the HQ of the Agency so they get to know me. The said HQ is quite far and I have no wish to waste 1/2 day to see their faces but she insists on being their procedure.

She was shocked, shocked, shocked when I told her flatly that I won't move my carcass to Vaughan to make their acquaintance.

-ulianov

On hiding things in plain sight from "Control-F Recruiters™"

Lately I've been called by recruiters who ControlEffed and latched on small/unimportant/unsavoury bits of work from my past.

So I've been going to great lengths to disguise the baggage -- I have morphed the skills into:

  • Andrōid [they think I do mobile apps when I've done kernel/NDK stuff],
  • ÄS/400 [spawn of Sātan],
  • Javā [I only care about the emebbed/runtime side of it, they want EE Struts/Hibernate sh*t],
  • PĤP,
  • M$ TFŠ [the other spawn of Satān]
If they actually read the document with their own eyes they will find the stuff otherwise automated searching be dāmned.

-ulianov