That sounds like a situation that a lot of developers find themselves in. Do you have any recommendations for people in similar situations?
How did you end up getting your next job?
I was in that situation once and the main reason that I was able to make the next move was because I was working on a side project which gave me the experience.
We are an on-line product distribution platform that helps connect on-line retailers to more consumers. We help our clients get a better return on investment with their chosen channels and increase profitability.
We have always been profitable and grown organically over the last 5 years. Recently we closed a series A investment round which is enabling us to ramp up growth. So this is a very exciting time to join the team as we grow and build out the product.
I understand and can relate to your situation. I also dislike the gotcha algorithmic questions.
However, I strongly believe that there should be some form of technical element to the interview process. I have participated in a few interview processes where a task was given to do in my own time which related to the job. These were no more than a couple of hours and were very simple tasks. I find this type of technical test much better than the algorithmic ones. Examples of ones I know about; scraping a website for specific values, creating a basic web proxy, rendering data into a chart on a webpage, programmatically mapping out points on google maps.
I am currently recruiting for .NET developers and I get everyone to code up a task that relates to the job. There are no gotchas or edge cases, it is just a very simplified version of something that they will have to deal with in the job.
I find this extremely useful as quick feed back into the style/competency of the candidate and you can quite easily see where they are coming from. I also use the result of the task as a discussion point during the on site interview process. Having a concrete example to discuss has proven very useful as it leaves no room for ambiguities or misinterpretation. I personally would be very hesitant to join a company that had no step involving anything technical.
Regarding your "you-will-be-fired-after-three-months-for-failure-to-perform", it is standard over here in the UK that you go through a probation period. This can be anything from 3 months to 6 months and during that time either party can end the employment with a shorter notice period. I am not sure where you are based but at least in the UK you will find companies doing exactly what you are describing.
2x .NET C# full stack developers.
1x API integration developer.
We are an on-line product distribution platform that helps connect on-line retailers to more consumers. We help our clients get a better return on investment with their chosen channels and increase profitability.
We have recently closed our first round of funding and want to use that to help us grow quicker than we have been doing organically over the last 5 years. We have always been profitable and have a proven revenue model, so this funding is purely to help us expand at a faster pace.
We are hiring for a multitude of roles but I am specificity looking here for a couple of .NET C# developers who have experience with ASP.MVC and are very comfortable spending a lot of time in JavaScript.
My current company does this also. The team is slightly smaller with 6 but we are in the process of taking on a couple more developers and the peer review process will still remain. The CTO like yourself reviews all code commits as a final sign off once the change has been through a more thorough peer review. So it is possible to do 100% peer reviews.
Your point 10 highlights exactly how I feel about it.
I would love to know where you have seen juniors get £45k. From the developers and companies I know in London this is very much not the case. As other people have mentioned, 18-30K would be more "normal".
Keeping your skills current is probably the most important point here. Could you please explain when you do this. Are you in a job that allows this within production projects? Or is this all on your own time outside of your day job? I know some companies run internal projects with the specific aim to help upskill employees in new technology.
[1] I run, always outside (rain or shine, regardless of season. Yes that means right through winter) and never with any music. I enjoy the time to think and reflect. Currently I am training for a marathon so running 4 times a week with the long runs being 2/3+ hours, I have plenty of time to mentally unwind and sort through my thoughts.
Intelligent Reach is a market leading on-line Digital marketing agency and technology vendor. Through direct client relationships with leading retailers such as Debenhams, House Of Fraser, Argos, Shop Direct, Carphone Warehouse, Halfords and through top media agency partnerships Intelligent Reach manages and optimises over £3bn in client revenue across Shopping Comparison, Affiliates, Marketplaces (eBay, Amazon and Play), Paid Search and Display channels. Intelligent Reach now has over 75 clients in the UK, US, Germany, France and Australia and is growing at a phenomenal rate.
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London (Victoria), UK | Full-time | .Net Web Developer (Full stack, with main focus on the front end.)
You will be joining a small(6) but highly productive development team. This will be a high impact role building out new features and enhancements to our platform. You will be reporting directly to the technical co founder while working alongside other developers and QA to deliver high quality work. Some benefits of working at Intelligent Reach are;
-Casual office environment
-Fresh fruit
-Unlimited Nespresso
-Flexi time
-Indoor football Fridays
What we use:
JavaScript | jQuery | HighCharts | TypeScript |
ASP MVC 4 | C# .Net 4.5 | MS SQL Server 2012| SSAS | SSIS | MS Testing Framework |
TFS 2012
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Applying:
When applying please put in the subject: Developer HN Oct 2013
I am one of the developers you will be working with, so please feel free to contact me personally with any questions or to find out more about the role.
[email protected]
Intelligent Reach is a market leading on-line Digital marketing agency and technology vendor. Through direct client relationships with leading retailers such as Debenhams, House Of Fraser, Argos, Shop Direct, Carphone Warehouse, Halfords and through top media agency partnerships Intelligent Reach manages and optimises over £3bn in client revenue across Shopping Comparison, Affiliates, Marketplaces (eBay, Amazon and Play), Paid Search and Display channels. Intelligent Reach now has over 75 clients in the UK, US, Germany, France and Australia and is growing at a phenomenal rate.
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Currently looking to fill two developer roles, one senior and one junior:
London (Victoria), UK | Full-time | Software Developer (Full stack, with main focus on the front end.
You will be joining a small(6) but highly productive development team. This will be a high impact role building out new features and enhancements to our platform. You will be reporting directly to the technical co founder while working alongside other developers and QA to deliver high quality work. Some benefits of working at Intelligent Reach are;
-Casual office environment
-Fresh fruit
-Unlimited Nespresso
-Flexi time
-Indoor football Fridays
Advantageous to have experience with SQL Server Analysis Server and MDX queries.
JavaScript | jQuery | HighCharts | TypeScript |
ASP MVC 4 | C# .Net 4.5 | MS SQL Server 2012| SSAS | SSIS | MS Testing Framework |
TFS 2012
==================================
Applying:
When applying please put in the subject: Developer HN Sep 2013
I am one of the developers you will be working with, so please feel free to contact me personally with any questions or to find out more about the role.
[email protected]
I second this. I am hiring for junior and senior developer roles currently. For candidates fresh out of university/college I will have a look at their grades. For anyone that has real work experience, I will focus on that and won't bother with grades or university/college.
Someone once told me that grades do not matter once you get your first job, after that you are only as good as your last job. In my personal experience I think this is rather accurate.
It is interesting to note that a lot of feedback discusses employees taking less vacation time. This happens for a variety of reasons which have been highlighted and obviously differs from company to company and how the culture is lead from the top. This would not be my first thought when introducing an unlimited vacation policy. From the employers point of view it would be how do we manage and foster a culture that prevents employees abusing this policy, not how do we make sure employees actually take enough vacation.
One company I know has introduced a bonus for taking a set minimum number of days to try and make sure that their employees are taking a decent amount of holiday each year. So for example if you take 20+ days off in the year you will get a annual bonus of £1000.
The startup that I work for is built on .NET using C# and ASP MVC. Licensing costs were not a barrier/concern as we were part of the BizSpark[1] program. This gave us free access to all the Microsoft software we needed. We only recently graduated out of that so it will be interesting to see what affect that has on some of our future tech decisions/directions.
Visual Studio is an amazing IDE and C# is a top notch language. The price you pay for that is worth it and shouldn't be an issue for a profitable startup (which you should be by the time you graduate the BizSpark program). Like others have said, the bigger issue is that it ties you down to all the other Microsoft licenses such as Windows server.
I know of other startups that are using C# and .NET and run a mix of Windows and Linux(Mono) servers. This has forced some decisions for them though, such as rolling some of their own frameworks/tools that work nicely with Mono.