tankman

The pg apotheosis reminds me of an interesting Google talk by Robert Sutton where he reports that in research with monkeys, the dominant monkey receives a highly disproportionate amount of attention relative to that shared among subordinates and this phenomenon is theorized to be one of the reasons people in authority, such as management positions, tend to become less sympathetic to those below them. It's a very insightful talk for anyone with an interest in management dynamics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN1meJ6v5Fs

This is awesome. I can't think of anything it needs except, for your own sake, maybe a visible logo. I'm sold.

Questions:

(1) Are you using ExtJS, GWT, jQuery?

(2) What's on the backend?

(3) How will you make money from this?

(4) Since your source code is out in the open, do you have the (a) will and (b) resources to sue people in far corners of the world who will simply copy your js file, make a few tweaks and set up a competing business (assuming you have an answer to (3) above)?

Regardless of your answer to (4), I assume the problems inherent in that issue are the same reasons more people don't build businesses on the basis of a client-side js file.

"taking the piss" = "making fun of"

If you only permit 20 candidates and 20 jobs, some of the attending candidates will be only be qualified to apply for a fraction of the jobs - perhaps even just one or two.

For example, if a Django front-end expert shows up and only 1 company is looking for a Django front-end expert, then that candidate only gets 1 interview and goes home.

Since most candidates have particular specializations that make them more or less qualified for particular jobs, it seems unlikely that every candidate will be applying for every job. I actually wish hiring companies cared less about skill specializations than they do but that's just how it is - the Django specialist is often not going to be taken seriously for the Websphere position even if he lies awake most nights dreaming about J2EE (fortunately, this particular example is quite rare).

So, if each attending candidate only qualifies for a single job, then there is a possibility that the entire event will be over in 5 minutes. As a candidate I would be fine with that, since it's one extra interview under my belt and - since I didn't pay to attend - I don't lose anything. As the host, you will go home with $6,000 - minus expenses for the space, unless you hooked up a free space through a personal connection, in which case you came out with a nice profit. However, from the perspective of the hiring company, everyone may not be so happy about the return on their time and money.

"While blogging feuds are common, she believes the campaign against her is more likely to be because she is a woman in the male-dominated technology world."

What kind of threats?

How are they out-innovating American companies?

Maybe you will be as surprised as I was to hear the name Stephen King mentioned in the context of writing advice, but 896 Amazon reviewers can't be wrong:

Stephen King - On Writing:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743455967?tag=0596800673-20&c...;

This is what Roger Ebert said about the book:

"A lot of people were outraged that he [King] was honored at the National Book Awards, as if a popular writer could not be taken seriously. But after finding that his book On Writing had more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book since Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, I have gotten over my own snobbery."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Writing

"I'm in the process of getting job descriptions from the attendees."

How many attendees have you received commitments from?

Under different conditions this would be an easy backdoor for a recruiter to sneak in for free as a candidate to quietly gather resumes at the event. But since you only permit 20 candidates and 20 jobs, the event is small enough that you should be able to recognize this if it happenes. Of course, whether you could do much about it is another issue, short of physically ejecting someone from the room.

That's all you should need - it works pretty well from what I've seen in speed dating.

If you only permit 20 candidates and 20 jobs, some of the attending candidates will be only be qualified to apply for a fraction of the jobs - perhaps even just one or two.

For example, if a Django front-end expert shows up and only 1 company is looking for a Django front-end expert, then that candidate only gets 1 interview and goes home.

Since most candidates have particular specializations that make them more or less qualified for particular jobs, it seems unlikely that every candidate will be applying for every job. I actually wish hiring companies cared less about skill specializations than they do but that's just how it is - the Django specialist is often not going to be taken seriously for the Websphere position even if he lies awake most nights dreaming about J2EE (fortunately, this particular example is quite rare).

So, if each attending candidate only qualifies for a single job, then there is a possibility that the entire event will be over in 5 minutes. As a candidate I would be fine with that, since it's one extra interview under my belt and - since I didn't pay to attend - I don't lose anything. As the host, you will go home with $6,000 - minus expenses for the space, unless you hooked up a free space through a personal connection, in which case you came out with a nice profit. However, from the perspective of the hiring company, everyone may not be so happy about the return on their time and money.

- How will you enforce the 5-minute time limit?

Sometimes when people get into a groove and there's some chemistry - as in dating - it's hard to pull them apart. Are you going to use the same style of musical-chairs-style rotation that they use in speed dating where everyone has to physically move to the next location all at once?

It says "Participate in 20 interviews, each 5 minutes long."

What if 300 candidates show up and only 10 hiring companies?

In that case, will candidates be paired with companies on a first-come, first-served basis or do you have some other plan?

Is the programming test:

- online or offline?

- open book or closed book? (can the candidate use the internet?)

- timed or untimed?

"I have a good handle on who is hiring tech talent in NYC right now"

- Are you a recruiter?

- How will you identify a recruiter? Often they pretend to be a hiring company. And are you committed enough to the idea of them not attending that you are willing to turn down their offers to pay the $300 attendance fee?

1. Good idea.

2. Will recruiters be involved?

- Recruiters are always going to try to be involved in events like this. I guarantee that recruiters will try to attend by either posing as candidates in order to meet real candidates or by actually paying the $300 fee to attend as a hiring company. Maybe that's a good thing for hirelite's bottom line but is it a good thing for the event overall? This event seems like a good opportunity to cut recruiters out of the process but there doesn't seem to be any plan here to deal with this unavoidable contingency.

3. It says candidates who want to attend have to pass a programming test to qualify for free admittance.

- Wouldn't the programming test need to be tailored to the job each candidate is applying for - in which case it wouldn't make sense to give a test until during or after the event?

4. Is St Patrick's Day in NYC good or bad timing for a job interview?

5. In real speed dating, the 1-minute date is often strictly enforced. It says the interview will last 5 minutes. Is that a strict 5 minutes?