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I'm on the verge of doing that at the moment.
Been tooing and froing all day with what I now realise is a recruitment agency, after responding to an email requesting a freelance teacher to deliver one days worth of training to beginners in JavaScript.
I get the feeling that the person answering the emails is of Indian descent (Based on the syntax structure of the writing) so the answers are short and blunt with no meaning, just a stuborn refusal to listen.
They keep pushig and pushing, must have CV or we don't proceed, as I've pointed out to them, I've not written a CV for over 10 years, my employer for the last 7 has been my own limited company.
But nope, Must Have CV in Microsoft Word Format, nothing else is acceptable.
My Linked-in profile, is my CV these days.
So I printed my Li-Profile to a PDF, then saved that PDF as a Word doc, sent that... reply: this is not a CV, this is linked-in, must have CV.
So I'm about to turn round and tell them a) get lost & B) you'll not find a technology trainer, at such short notice (Needed in 10 days time) that has relevent teaching experience, and lives so close to the client...
Bloody idiots, all of them.
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I remember being told of a requirement for 10 years' .NET when .NET was new.
Kevin
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Been there, experienced that myself
Director of Transmogrification Services
Shinobi of Query Language
Master of Yoda Conditional
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Frequently!
The other one I really love is the "let's make a really, really long list of every tech the recruitment twat has ever heard of" game:
The ideal candidate will have worked with: VAX, Hoover, Dyson, SCO-UNIX, HPUX, AIX, XENIX, Multix, C, X (there must be something called X), BCPL, C++, C#, B flat, F# (ooh! Get me! That's quite a new one isn't it?), P-SQL, T-SQL, Java, Javascript (in case it's something different from Java), AS400, I4GL, Informix, HTML, XML, JSON, WCF, WPF, Sinclair BASIC, Excel, Word, Fortran 5, ALGOL, CSS, PC World (I got my laptop from there!), DOS, DR-DOS, Oracle, Ruby on Toast, PHP, PGP, JPEG (Man, I'm on a roll!), Visual Basic, ASP, Apple stuff (Note to self: look up later), Facebook, Amazon, Red Tube, Donkey (it's obscure but my mate told me about it), OS2, PS2, PS3, PS4, X-Box, Windows (I've got Windows on here, it must be a thing), USB stick, Mouse, Keyboard, Hard drive, Floppy Disk, CAD, DVD, DVT, Frisbee, Freeway (Oh, hang on, that was the dog in Hart to Hart - knew I'd learned something in last night's pub quiz), Sharepoint, Biztalk, SMMS, REST, Spandex, Ultravox, MySQL, LINUX, Ubuntu, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu (Christ! That's a good list! How did I ever fail that CS degree?)
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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I have all of that - except the Apple stuff, I don't do Apple stuff for religious reasons.
Taking the last three items for example:
- I have had experience of several X-rays over many decades, both analog and digital.
- I have had more than 20 years experience of Yankee, several versions (I moved to the US back in the last Millenium!)
- I have had more than 20 years experience of Zulu - it is one of my favourite films!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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When can you start? (Please say last April, we've been advertising for ages!)
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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I did start last April. You need to pay me up right now. Don't ya know.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
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We'll pay you just as soon as we find someone who know's the 867 tech stacks that our payroll system is written in!
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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Just let me at that payroll system. I promise I will get paid. Trust me!
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Yankee!?
We done got enuf of them here in Atlanta. Don't want no more.
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There is something with X (XBase++, XSharp - as "xbase" language, X# - as "highl level assembler ... something with cosomos)
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You forgot experience with PG Tips!
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I take PG Tips as read - all good code-monkeys drink it!
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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Indeed - tea making (and drinking) is a fundamental and irreplaceable skill. It's the bedrock on which apprenticeships were built.
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On a roll yes, but forgot to mention the Absolute essentials: COBOL,MVS,VM,VSE,RPG,JCL,CICS,REXX,JCL,CL,VSAM,DB2.
Good that you mentioned AS400 though 
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And to my eternal shame, I missed out C-ISAM, too! Now those were the days ...
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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Is that a live requirement? Sadly, I do have experience in all of those, and in all cases my experience started over 20 years ago! 
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Whew! That's a relief. If Pascal had been listed in there that would have certainly eliminated me. I mean, learning Pascal in college doesn't count as "real" work, right?
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An old client of mine had CVs through from an agency stating they had people with 5 years experience in the project they had just started, which was a brand new venture.
This space for rent
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: An old client of mine had CVs through from an agency stating they had people with 5 years experience in the project they had just started, which was a brand new venture.
So what you're saying is that both you and your client don't have time machines.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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Pretty much yup.
This space for rent
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Most of that comes from those useless Recruitment Firms (some even call themselves Head Hunters when all they are doing is feeding CV's into auto-scanners.)
Not just IT, 95% (no joke) of the consultants know nothing about the position they are trying to fill for their clients, (and BTW: 80% don't even understand the damn clients business...)
Randstart, Kelly, Robert Harris, Addeco, Acccenter, KPMG, Pricewaterhorse:" all fukin useless
...so anyway client rings up, "we need someone to program .. blah blah, .Net, javascript php ..."
they look at the covers of the magzines sent to them, headline article: "ms announces .Net Core 3 Preview 1"
OK, so for this job requirements are:
#1 10 years experience in .Net-Core with at least 5 years in .Net Core.3," (client said .Net) ... what else did the client say, oh yeah:
#2 5 years Java
umm what was that other one, some web thing, ahh, generalise that one
#3 10 years experience in Web Application Deployment
#4 ITIL, PHP, MS WINDOWS 10 CERTIFIED, MS SERVER EXPERIENCE, LINUX, C#, C++, VB, CITRIX, CISCO, SAMSUNG, LTE, ETL, ETD, JIT, LL.... would be an advantage
Those recruitment companies have spoiled the market,
problem is large companies are too lazy to care, easier to just keep rolling over staff till at least a few good ones stick - yeah there will be a shitload of useless (except at writing resume) hanger-oners, but give them 5 years they'll either leave or if luckly actually gain a little [OTJ] skill.
Message Signature
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Lopatir wrote: Those recruitment companies have spoiled the market
I've ranted so much about this over the years. And it's only getting worse. If the requirements are arbitrary and/or impossible, the requirements don't mean anything. I've seen postings where you'd think they were hiring you to recreate the whole of modern computing judging by the requirements. "Fake it 'til you make it" shouldn't be a job requirement.
Lopatir wrote: yeah there will be a shitload of useless (except at writing resume) hanger-oners, but give them 5 years they'll either leave or if luckly actually gain a little [OTJ] skill.
(credit to a classmate for mentioning this intern experience)
And then you run into a senior developer with a fileLoad function that takes minutes to load because they read the file byte-by-byte into a byte array they resize by a single byte every loop then convert that into a character array in the same fashion - resizing by a single character every loop. 
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I once worked on fixing some "real-time" code that couldn't keep up with real time - it was running at approximately 185% of CPU. Since it was to do with aircraft telemetry during test flights it was critical. My boss's boss assigned me to look at the code (written by my domineering, head of programming, boss) while he was away on a three-week touring vacation in Europe. The first thing I found was a sequential search of an array column for a unique item that noted where in the array it found it but still completed searching the entire array. It did this 32 times a second for up to 2000 array columns after having searched the column headers in a similar way for a string match to check which column it needed to search. First thing was to sort the array columns and then do a binary search (create and store an index to the column as they didn't change during the processing), then do a similar search of the columns for the data - and stop when it was found! Result = 34% of CPU and we achieved "Real-Time"! He was steaming mad when he got back and found out what I had done - but he couldn't do anything because his boss told me to do it (and backed me up) and it was actually working for the first time since the system was written. It was to replace an older system and they went ahead and switched to the replacement system in production immediately it could keep up - which was before he got back. He was later reassigned to "Special Projects" - and then fired for incompetence.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Forogar wrote: He was steaming mad when he got back and found out what I had done
I'll never understand this mindset. His code didn't meet requirements and you fixed it. Learning opportunity for him yet he wastes it on his ego. It's nice to see a story where the Dilbert principle[^] doesn't hold.
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