Monthly Archive for May, 2009

A new kind of Fail Whale

I was up for the go live of the Wolfram|Alpha site this morning and there is a new ‘Fail Whale‘ that I am sure everyone will be talking about soon.

I'm sorry Dave. I am afraid I can't do that.

Brush up on those “Double Zero” skills

I love recruiters. I really do. It really comes down to different skill sets for different roles. With over  a decade in this software game now I have learnt a few skills that makes my time salable to the highest bidder. Over time I have taken some skills off my cv as it generates false hits for roles that I have no interest in doing.

Having said all that I am always happy to talk to a recruiter or read their emails. Sometimes they start with ‘ Sorry if this is not right for you… ‘ you get the idea. I would rather build the relationship with them when I don’t need them than have to try and sell myself and my skill-set to someone who has no idea who I am when I do desperately need a new client.

I have a handful of recruiters that I work with I guess, but every now and then I get a call that even makes me chuckle. The guy was running through the specification for a new role that had ‘just come in’. It was all sounding pretty good until he read out “Must have ‘Double Zero’ skills”. For a moment I thought I was going to be required to save the world from some evil dictator.

“I think you mean Oh-Oh”, I said.

“No it says ‘Double Zero’”.

“It actually says Oh-Oh. It stands for Object Oriented. They are looking for object oriented skills.” I was being patient with him.

“Well you learn something every day.” He gave a little embarressed laugh.

And while we have a little chuckle over this incident I really hope he does learn something every day because I certainly am. There is so much happening in the wonderful world of software development not to be. I am currently  working on my Flex 3, WDA, ABAP, ABAP OO, PHP, Python, Dojo and one or two other things for good measure.