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highlander

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It's certainly OK to ask. Think about what you are prepared to negotiate if the client seems inflexible. For example, does your fee really need to be paid upfront? Sometimes if you are dealing with a large/inflexible client it can be hard to get them to do anything outside their 'standard shape' of deal, but of course that depends on your bargaining power and the level of influence of your client within the organisation.

There's enough evidence that plastics leak harmful chemicals into our food that I don't want to eat anything that's been sitting in a plastic bag in warm water for hours on end. No thanks.

#define CTO 12 years ago

Hey, well it was obviously the right way for you all at the time. I was just surprised because I haven't seen execs interviewed that way, but my experience is heavily skewed towards very large companies. The more typical pattern I've seen has been (over a few weeks) an informal meeting, lunch/dinner then a few hours of in-house/panel interviews.

#define CTO 12 years ago

We then set up interviews with Marc: four days of back-to-back 1:1 or 1:2 meetings with everyone on the team from 10a-6p, as well as a talk to the whole company.

When the article says Marc had become available, should we assume he wasn't working at the time? That just seems way over the top. I can't imagine asking any serious/heavyweight candidate to 'interview' that way in the UK. I'm curious to know what others think.

Yahoo Directory has certainly been neglected and customers stopped using it in favor of search. However, I think there's still an opportunity for a directory 'done well'. Browsing hierarchically is a different mode of discovery. Customers approach it in a different way and that can help them to discover sites that they wouldn't otherwise find through search and news.

If you want to work in tech in the UK but don't like the downsides of London, it's worth considering Edinburgh. The tech scene is really taking off here, with plenty of jobs (see this list of tech companies http://www.nobugs.org/deved/). There is much more an 'ecosystem' of tech employers than there was a few years ago. Maybe you will make 75-80% of a London salary (your mileage may vary) but your living costs are way lower. You can live in a beautiful 2 bedroom Georgian apartment in central Edinburgh for £800/month and walk to work. The annual cultural festivals bring some great music, comedy, theatre, film and art to the city. The only major downside (IMO) is the weather, consistently a few degrees cooler than London.

I also take issue with the idea that "an active GitHub account should be enough for most programming jobs" but for different reasons. Good programmers do more than just 'programming' or 'coding to a spec'.

What industry verticals has the programmer worked in? A good programmer can add valuable domain expertise and they know the right questions to ask. How have they contributed to the businesses and products they have worked on? To what extent have they mentored and led other programmers? Have they got non-programming experience that could be potentially useful? What methodologies are they experienced with?

I wonder how this will fare compared to the efforts of the BCS (British Computer Society), who have tried to push 'certification' for years with their MBCS (Member of the British Computer Society), Chartered Engineer and Chartered IT Professional certifications. I got all three years ago and then ditched them because (i) I have yet to find an employer who gives a flying XXXX about them, (ii) some employers see them as a 'warning sign' of mediocrity like 'Sun Certified Java Programmer' became and (iii) I had to pay every year to renew them.

This reminds me of working for a software tools company in the late 90's, selling IDEs and metrics tools to investment banks and telcos. One day, a potential customer called to ask about the price of a license. "1500", my boss said. "1500 what?", asked the customer. "Where are you?". It's a good thing the customer wasn't in Japan...

Back up a level...do you really want to pay someone to watch the other person you paid to clean the house? Why not just hire a reliable cleaner that can work without supervision?

Attention entrepreneurs: there is a real opportunity, at least in the UK, for a bank built the right way from the ground up. I'm talking about contemporary systems, real product ownership in the technology group where IT isn't just an outsourced cost, automated testing and continuous integration in the systems. Most of the efforts at 'new banks' in the UK have been built on the foundations of ancient, creaking mainframe systems. There is a lot of important logic in those legacy systems for sure, but I think progress could be made in building fresh solutions by starting at the relatively simple end of things e.g. customer setup, identity verification and basic savings accounts. Could built out from there to offer more complex products. The upsides of a fresh approach: lower maintenance costs, higher reliability, more operations can be carried out in realtime etc.

It's interesting. I can see that the Audi R8 is a technical masterpiece and I find it visually attractive. However, I find it hard to get over the fact that it's an Audi and it shares design elements and some components with cars that I would consider to be quite mundane (e.g. standard A3). Marques like Aston Martin and Porsche seem more special to me because they only make 'special' cars - there are no mundane cars with these components or visual design.

Is it possible that he gave LinkedIn access to his email account and he has your address in his email? Alternatively, could he have viewed your LinkedIn page? Maybe LinkedIn recommend connections that way also.

What's new apart from the web front end? I thought every city has had businesses like this for years. Here in Scotland, we have a number of 'Waterless' car cleaning services who will come to your home of place of work.

This struck a chord with me. I grew up in rural Scotland, learning to program my MSX and the BBC Micros they had in our school. I picked up a lot of 'tech culture' from Byte magazine, which would sporadically appear in our local newsagent. Although I have been to the US a few times now, I've only been to the valley once, but walking through Palo Alto listening to everyone around talking tech I had the strangest feeling that in some way I felt 'at home'.

Boiling vegetables ----------------> Steaming vegetables

Ready meals -----------------------> Eating mostly simple food (chicken, prawns, veg, brown pasta)

Red meat --------------------------> Mostly white meat

Smoked fish -----------------------> Unsmoked fish, also prawns and mussels

Out of shape ----------------------> In shape (running, weights at home and weekly personal training)

Wonky teeth -----------------------> Straight teeth

No vitamins/cod liver oil ---------> Multivitamins (hoping for longer telemeres) and cod liver oil

Work goals -----------------------> Also have personal goals (run half marathon, travel to a particular destination etc.)

Dumb phone ------------------------> Smart phone

Hotmail ---------------------------> GMail

Paper to-do list ------------------> Online to-do list