[Baypiggies] [JOB] Software Engineer, Cloud Fabric Team, Nimbula Inc.

[Jeff Enderwick]

Maybe it was a carefully crafted test to see if job seekers without CS
degrees were sharp enough to surmise that equivalent knowledge would be
likely acceptable. Very smart; effectively implementing a filter by *not*
adding Aahz' missing text (I smell a business process patent for that HR
manager!)  ;-).

In my very limited experience, hiring managers don't spend the time to
engineer these requirements to such a degree. If you see a job posting that
you like then you just go for it. If they're smart, then they hire you
anyway. If they're stiff, then you are likely better off not being there.

I may have a skewed sample set, but it seems that every (non-goog?) job
solicitation posted to this list gets the crap beat out of it, with the
biggest magnet being that series of Chomp postings (okay, I admit it - I
took part in those :-). In all seriousness, these may be good
companies/people trying to hire? $.02...

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 9:49 PM, Alex Martelli <aleax at google.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 9:03 PM, Jeff Enderwick <jeff.enderwick at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Aahz,
> > I wouldn't make the leap from not being lawyerly about the job
> requirements
> > to not being able to write correct code! I think all of us who read it
> (even
> > those who don't have CS sheepskin) realized that equivalent knowledge
> would
> > likely be gladly accepted in lieu. Finding great people is so hard!
> Anyone
> > who is overly strict on that sort of requirement is sure to suffer.
>
> If they're serious about this hiring and its importance, and if you're
> right that what they say is A MUST (*VERY* strong wording!) is not
> indeed a must, they're pretty weird people -- why did they
> deliberately choose that (you assume incorrect) wording?!.  By far the
> most common wording includes, as Aahz mentioned, "or equivalent
> experience", after all -- IF, that is, one IS willing to evaluate
> candidates with a different degree but lots of experience.
>
> I'm saying they "deliberately chose" that
> odious-to-all-other-degree-holders wording, because of the assumption
> that they ARE serious about the importance of this hire, and therefore
> must have given it all due care and attention.  If they *accidentally*
> pick wrong (and odious;-) wording DESPITE paying very careful
> attention to what they're saying (because they consider this hire
> important), then they're even weirder than I hypothesized above.
>
> All in all, I think that your assumption that they don't really mean
> what they say (despite saying it with so precise and forceful a choice
> of words), one way or another, has to be extremely insulting to them
> -- even more than I would like to be, and that's saying something;-).
>
>
> Alex
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/baypiggies/attachments/20100701/6d19b11a/attachment.html>