Another installment of "how not to job-hunt"
(or "what skills not to have") in which
Scott, our antagonist, actually gets a reply
from a coverletter to a jobs.perl.org position,
and where Scott makes an observation on what
Perl employers really want.
I actually got an email back from a job I applied
for! It said, "Don't ever speak to me this way
again". Lesson: in order to get a reply from a
job application, I have to be offensive to the
point of the damning myself for the position.
This job was interesting because it was both
telecommute and in-town.
My email was a follow-on to an initial
cover letter that was written just for the
position, with great care (if comments were
enabled, some cock jockey would completely
botch his comprehsion roll and post
"well you shouldn't send emails like that -
no wonder you haven't gotten a job!").
The cover letter was perfectly polite and
cordial but it encluded a P.S. of:
P.S: I'm serious about working
with you. Please do the favor of
acknowledging this email, even if you've
already selected someone else, so that I know
you recieved it. I think a one minute reply
is a reasonable request given this
personalized cover letter. Thank you.
No reply. Typical.
Almost two weeks letter, I send:
Hey, I haven't heard from you. What's up with that? Are you having trouble
getting ahold of me? Looking for more SIP experience? Am I overqualified?
Underqualified? It blows my mind I can spend an hour a day writing coverletters
and get nothing more than a mass-cc'd poorly written Perl quiz every
month or so in reply. I know the response from jobs.perl.org can be overwheling
(I've hired from there in the past - I know), but, c'mon, I'm local to you.
I wrote a book. I help coordinate the local Perl Users Group meetings. Pay
attention to me! =P
Okay, now for the "observations".
These observations are a "note to self"
type thing, and not directly based on the
above.
The question plaging my mind, is, given my
(largely relatively new found) qualifications,
why wouldn't people want to even consider me
for positions?
Or, why are they so eager to burn bridges with
me?
What Perl employers want from Perl employees,
or, why these people use Perl at all:
They use Perl because Perl programmers are
submissive, docile, and eager.
They have no concept of productivity and
have no means by which to judge it and frankly,
it isn't all that much of a priority anyway,
not compared to the matter of control.
Let me be clear: most Perl employers want to
dominate employees.
But this makes for idiotic, brain-dead,
technophobic companies that can't make money
off of any technical or employee skill level.
Java employers, on the other hand, pay
huge sums of money to their collective
employee pool (as Java programmers demand
more money and more Java programmers are
required - almost every Java program is
a team effort).
Java programmers have their own lingo of
project management, design, refactoring,
architecture, and so on, making discussion
of development a thoroughly technical
process management can't participlate in,
so management delegates technical tasks
and decisions to the Java programmers.
This a complete
worse is better" arrangement.
And, before you'll accept techies running the
show, you'll have to become non-technophobic.
All of the little Perl-using outfits I've
run into job hunting are completely technophobic.
And the dot com boom of course made these
little business-wanna-be-tech companies
more technophobic.
I guess this doesn't make Java actually
technically superior, but it does make it
more socially appropriate.
Usual shtick. If you have a comment, email me at scott@slowass.net, and if by some miracle it happens
to be on-topic (not that that has
ever happened), I'll quote you.
-scott
