Re: programming job market in bay area in US

> From: Christer Ericson <christer_ericson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> you should not be sitting around waiting for recruiters.

I'm not sitting around in that sense. I'm actively involved in several
personal projects, and I've been taking classes, and I've been
occasionally harassing recruiters to find me a job (but not harassing
them too often or the'd get pissed at me and my efforts would be
counter-productive).

Question: How often should I contact a recruiter/agency asking if they
have found a job for me yet?

> You should be sending your resume to every company you can find
> hiring for anything even remotely resembling your skill set.

I do that. But it's very rare that I find a job ad where if I remove
70% of the parts I don't qualify the remaining 30% are good.

> You shouldn't be selfpruning your job search effort at this point:
> let the employers do that.

So I should just spam them with responses to ads I don't qualify for?
It's been more than ten years since I saw even one ad I qualified for.
So for all these ten years I should have been spamming anyone who posts
any job remotely related to software programming?

I need your advice, and generalities are no good because I have no
standard by which to judge conformity to vague generalities. I need
your advice on a few sample job ads so as to calibrate my idea of what
you mean by "anything even remotely resembling your skill set".

First let's look at ba.jobs.offered:
As of this morning, June 27, the most recent job ad that deals with
software programming whatsoever and is near enough that I'd be able to
get to work, is this from June 07 (nearly three weeks ago):
http://www.google.se/groups?selm=1118190108.902464.71470%40o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com
Running down the specific requirements one by one:

>> ? Knowledge of web site operational environments.

I have no idea what is meant by that, whether they mean knowledge of
internals of Apache and related server technology (I have no such
experience whatsoever), or know about public_html vs. cgi-bin and able
to locate WebPages or CGI scripts in the appropriate directory and set
permissions correctly (I have been doing that since the end of 2000,
although just a day ago I finally learned where to put .htaccess so as
to enable PHP here).

>> ? Excellent general software development and delivery skills

I have excellent general software development skills, however with the
exception of posting public runnables at the Stanford A.I. Lab or the
various M.I.T. ITS hosts for locals to use I've never delivered a
product to end users and have no idea how to find any end users for my
software. Even the CGi applications I post for anyone in the world to
use, nobody uses. I have no idea how to get anyone to try them and give
me feedback what they think of them.

>> ? Proven ability to design and deliver mission critical scalable systems

I've never been involved in any enterprise where anything was mission
critical, so I have no idea what would be involved.

>> ? Experience developing distributed applications

For a class I developed a simple client/server RMI application on
localhost, but have never had access to separate systems whereby it
could actually be used in the way that was intended. Long ago I
developed client/server systems running over a dialup modem port
between my personal computer and a shell account.

>> ? Knowledge of TCP/IP, SNMP, SOAP

I read the spec for TCP/IP before it went into service, and didn't like
it. It has too much overhead, making small-block transactions horribly
inefficient, precluding many kinds of interactive applications. Packet
switching is a stupid idea except when military robustness is needed in
the face of active enemy attacks. Packet linking is good enough and
much more efficient. PCNET protocol is near optimal for packet linking.

I've read about SOAP in connection with .NET and J2EE. I've never had
any opportunity to implement anything using it.

I don't even know what SNMP means, although I think I saw that
abbreviation sometime, probably in another job ad. Let me look it up on
Google ... found it: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1157.html
a simple protocol by which management information for a
network element may be inspected or altered by logically remote
users.
I've never had authorization to tamper with the internal workings of
any network, so of course I've never had any way to play with this
protocol. So count zero experience here.

>> ? Development of network management systems a plus

Ditto.

>> ? Experience in developing in at least two of the following: JAVA,
>> Python, Perl, C++

I'm fluent at Java (why is it all caps in the ad?? It's not an acronym,
is it??), have written simple programs in the other three.

>> ? Basic project management skills.

I've never been given any authority to command or manage any project
that involved anyone other than myself.

>> ? Experience with source control/ configuration management systems
>> such as CVS, ClearCase, or SourceSafe

I've never had any access to any such facilities. I looked up CVS a few
weeks ago in investigation of jargon in another job ad, and suspect the
other two are similar hence not worth looking up at this time.

>> ? Ability to develop high quality projects on time and under budget

Yes, I believe I could do this, if I'm allowed to use a decent
programming language to do the development. Lisp or Java, yes. Python
or Perl, maybe. C or C++, no.

>> ? 7+ years developing commercial software, or equivalent

I have no experience whatsoever developing commercial software.
My 22 years software develoment experience is all in R/D and utlities
and private applications, except for 2.5 weeks in 1992 when I was
working on a commercial product to automatically track lineaments in
bitmapped/raster images to construct parameterizations of them.
I.e. given a raster like this:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWX
------------------------ 1
------------*------*---- 2
-----------------------* 3
------**-------------**- 4
--------**------*---*--- 5
-*--------*------***---- 6
-----------*------------ 7
-----------*------------ 8
----------*---------*--- 9
----------*-------*----*10
---*-----*---------*----11
------------------------12
It'd recognize the two curvy lines, discard all the isolated pixels,
track a contour around each of the curvy lines, then compute the midline
of each contour from end to end, generating parameterizations like
these: G4,H4,I5,J5,K6,L7,L8,K9,K10,J11 Q5,R6,S6,T6,U5,V4,W4,X3
(depending on how the initial scanning went, either sequence could be
reversed, and the sequences could appear in either order, i.e. each
parameterized is symmetric start/finish, and the different curves are a
set rather than an ordered list). (Of course in the program both x and
y are numbers, neither letters. I used letters here to make it easier
to explain.) Those crude parameterizations would then be fed into a
curve-fitting algorithm to generate a formal mathematical
representation as a spline or somesuch. Those mathematical
parameterizations would then be fed into the customer's data analysis
program, such as matching the mathematical expression against some
physical model. Where did the bitmapped images come from? By scanning
graphs in published scientific/engineering articles where the original
machine-readable data was not available to the reader.

>> ? BS or MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or similar
discipline, or equivalent experience

I have only BS in mathematics plus 22 years software programming experience.

>> ? Successfully shipped at least 2 major software projects

I've never shipped any software product of any kind.

So should I apply for the job since it's remotely similar to what I've
had experience in? Yes or No please.
.

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