A Perl Contract Or Spiralling Down the Rabbit Hole

T.A. of Newton, MA e-mails about a Perl contract in Snottybridge (Cambridge) saying

My client is looking for an Engineer to work with Perl and improve some in house applications.

I followed up with a call and it appears that U of Harvārd has some webapps of mixed Perl/PHP backends and they want to do a bit of cleanup. My position was along the lines of

Improving Perl applications can be tricky as Perl (unfortunately) allows people to write unreadable code.

I would like to see some of the offending code first (perhaps under NDA).

Alas it wasn't meant to be: the hiring manager wants people to pass a knowledge test and come interview in-person on a set date.

Being that atm I am busy and know better and am not jumping for joy at the thought of working for such a exalted institution I conveyed them my warm wishes of all the luck in the world finding a Perl guru interested in maintaining a (potentially disastrous) code base and bid them adieu.

-ulianov

P.S. The parking situation in Snottybridge is catastrophic so one more reason to "say no to the Tee" ;)

Ode to a Failed Perl Interview

I've been put in touch with S*mantec network ops by a nice local agency and they set me up for a phone interview for today (very considerate of the agency as I had no wish to trek around the metropolis to Markham for a screening).

The interview was geared around support of network monitoring systems in a network ops environment. The have mountains of Perl code that need maintaining/fixing and that was cool. All well except at the end I queried them about how much Python they want and they said perhaps & possibly a lot and that was the end of it as that's a "P"-word for me (Python).

The other steps that I did not take were solving a non-trivial problem in Perl and a face-to-face with the team.

This is a comical situation: they have a pressing need for a Perl guru (which are not as easy to find as people may think) to keep their code base alive and they go thru a lot of trouble to probe a candidate's Perl knowledge yet they forfeit that for a nebulous future need of a Python minion.

-ulianov

On Skills that I am Not Very Fond of

Sometimes one has to do professional things (shameful things) and then deny doing them to no end. Paul Venezia enumerates such a trait:

Veteran Unix admin trait No. 8: We know more about Windows than we'll ever let on

For me things that I know but would never list on my Resume lest swarms of recruiting drones would fall upon me [their cognitive abilities/reading proficiency extend only as far as looking up buzzwords by hitting Ctrl+F in Word] are:

• Perl scripting on Win32
• Java, Swing and servlets
• LAMP webapps (P is Perl in this case)
• PHP
• GUI apps in general.

In a pinch when I want to secure a job (maybe it's 5 minutes from home) I may elect to flog such skills and sweeten the deal for my clients.

-ulianov

A Recruiter Misfires on an Ottawa Job

Z.L. of Newton, MA writes:

I hope this email finds you well. My name is Z.L. and I am a Technical Recruiter for Deleted’s engineering team based in Newton, Massachusetts. I saw your skills and experience on Dice.com and wanted to reach out to you to see if you would ever consider a web developer position with Deleted. The position entails working with Javascript and PERL. We have a number of exciting projects going on in our Ottawa branch and your skills match up really well with the caliber of candidates we are looking for right now. If you are interested in learning more please don’t hesitate to contact me.

The only thing he got right is my love of Perl but he did not catch my dislike for LAMP jobs, be them Perl or PHP. What's worse he did not read one line of my Resume.

-ulianov

Why are Perl Jobs Paid so Low?

B.N. of Cleveland, OH phoned and e-mailed me about a f/t perm. Perl job in Boston, MA (description below).

I talked to him and he said that the pay is max 100K+benefits.

Now the job require a lot of experience and skill yet the pay level is low IMO. I wonder why it is so? I have had calls about Perl jobs in the past 6 months and they seem to be on the low side of the pay scale in the US and downright laughable in Canada (CAD 65K).

I reckon Perl jobs are classified as Sysadmin (or worse LAMP) jobs. This is too bad as Perl is fun and has been used to build large systems that are not oriented towards serving Web pages.

-ulianov

Candidates must have extensive knowledge of:
1) Unix OS, HTTP/S
2) C++, NSAPI, PERL, HTML, JavaScript
3) High-throughput software design techniques and strategies
4) Multi-processing code design patterns
5) Connection management and multi-threading application design
6) Systems design for application deployment
7) Software version control and build practices using Clearcase and ANT
8) Publish / Subscribe metaphor
9) Shared memory management and data cache.

Ideal candidates would also have experience in:
1) Financial services industry
2) Market symbology and financial instrument attributes
3) Basic systems administration duties
4) Network technology including TCP/IP, DNS and traffic load balancing
5) Database modeling and design, specifically Oracle and be proficient in writing PL/SQL, complex queries.

Perl in NYC

Got contacted by J. McG. from NYC for a PERL Developer/Architect in NYC with B**omberg.

Well NYC is a bit high on the cost of living scale and knowing that in NYC in the financial industry they charge $150/h so I asked for that.

J. McG. said no, f/t only so I quoted 150K/year. The guy called, he had a thick NYC accent (think Sopranos -- a bit scary).

He painted a rosy picture with me in it and said that yeah, relocation+ 150K base+bonus is OK.

He also wanted to know that I am committed or something like that, that is me jumping with joy.

Brief detour: I never commit to anything until I talk to some technical people inside so I get an idea about the scope of the work.

He did not like me not signing in blood and asking for 150K base. So is life.

-ulianov