Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

Far too long since I've posted, but it's really time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! I know it's tough times out there, especially in the job market, and I do wish all of my family, friends, colleagues, and former "candidates" the best New Year!

The deadly cost of not training

Mind you, I only had time for a quick skim of this article, but from what I've read, I can't agree more. It's title "IT's top 5 training mistakes" pretty much sums up the focus. What I find most interesting is in my own experience companies roll out software packages and seem to care very little if the actual person sitting in front of the computer has any idea of how to really make it work. The Microsoft Office suite is a classic case in point. It's not that Office doesn't have an amazing breadth of features, it does. It's more that the average user may use only 10% of those features and still consider themselves highly computer literate and a power user. That's why Office is really quite vulnerable in the future. The web 2.0-based, totally online, Office replacements don't have to be feature-rich, they have to do that 10% really, really well.

That's not to say that users shouldn't be trained to use use some of the missing 90% of the features that they ignore or have no idea exists. This is where IT really falls down. I believe that all organizations need a position entitled the "Director of Staff Efficiency." In this role, you would literally watch each team for a week to see what they do. What you'd find would be truly scary. Examples would be 100's of hours wasted on typing and retyping the same emails due to a lack of knowledge of how to use simple templates. Excel users who again, repeat reports over and over in extremely manual ways fraught with the potential of human error that could be, and should be, completely automated. Web users who really have no idea how to efficiently manage their online sourcing or information research. Nothing earth shattering from the technology side, but deadly time-killers and big shots to a corporate bottom line.

Yes, I know that the big buzz word nowadays is business process automation (BPA), but I'm talking about process review on a much, much lower level. It's time to get into the trenches, tackle your training needs, and focus on efficiency. Let's face it, nobody likes repeating manual processes over and over but this is the life of many American workers even if they sit behind spiffy new computer with the latest and greatest software. You'll have happier employees, better quality output, and faster, more efficient project completion.

Bye Bye Google!

Well, 1 year has come and gone and I find myself with just a few days left here at Google in Santa Monica. As my year contract comes to a close, I wanted to thank everyone at Google for a fantastic experience, great people, and a wonderful learning opportunity. Google is truly a unique environment in general, and this particularly true of their staffing organization. That being said, I'm on the look out for my next opportunity.

It's my hope that I will be able to find a management role in technical recruiting an a progressive organization hopefully a bit closer to home (Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, or even downtown LA off of a train line are key target area for me). I love working with companies who specialize in open-source development. Why? I'm very interested in education in general and truly believe that the internet, and open-source, provides a parallel learning path for engineers (parallel to more "traditional" educational institutions). I'm not referring to online colleges/universities. I'm referring to the organic, cooperative, collaborative learning that open-source inspires. Working in such an environment where I can play a key role in bringing in exceptional talent from this unique pool of candidates is my ideal. I'd also be very interested in considering roles in staffing programs, corporate evangelism and outreach to technology communities as opposed to traditional recruiting.

Wish me luck!

OLPC giving up on core principles?

Please tell me it ain't so! In a recent article by Business Week, there are hints that OLPC, the makers of the XO laptop for children (i.e., the $100 laptop) is rolling over and giving up their moral principles by handing over the farm to Microsoft.

From the Business Week article:
"OLPC will hand more of the development and support of its XO laptop and its core software to technology companies, including Red Hat (RHT), the leading distributor of the Linux open-source operating system, and Microsoft (MSFT), which is just now putting the finishing touches on a version of Windows for the XO machine."

Let's put this in perspective...

First, I'm one of the people who jumped at the chance to contribute to the OLPC's "Give One Get One" program where were allowed to purchase two XO units and one would go to you, one to a needy child. All good so far. When I got my machine, I was just thrilled and taken back to my days when I got my hands on my first Mac 128K. Here's a machine that needed refinement but had lots of promise. I could see how this little machine could change the lives of children all over the world. While I was a little surprised at the number of "rough edges" in the OS and software, it's clear that there are a lot of people involved in cleaning things up. I like to think that the XO in the next 6 months will really be quite remarkable, even more than it is already.

Now, I have to say that I think that the OLPC program has some definite, well... biases. First, the whole program is based strongly on a constructivist learning model which, by and large, I think is good although totally strict constructivism causes some problems of it's own. For instance, in strict constructivism children essentially guide their entire education which may have some limitations. Also, more traditional or "classic" education may be ignored or shunned to focus more on activities that are considered to be more applicable to today's world. That leaves out a lot of classic literature and subjects like Latin. Oh well, nothings perfect and there is no reason that a kid couldn't find the classics on Project Gutenberg and read them if they wanted on the XO!

On top of this emphasis on constructivism is a definite bias toward all things open-source. Closed source bad, open-source good. OK, again I can see that the OLPC program is doing all it can to maintain independence in the future direction of the laptop and it's OS and activities. In general, I agree with this approach but there are some limits. For instance, having a browser that does not, out of the box, support the Flash plug-in for video and animation is a big limitation in the real world. The supplied OS replacement for Flash just doesn't cut it since it doesn't work in too many instances. I'm not sure if this decision was based more of a philosophical stance on OS software in general or an inability to make a deal with Adobe which would allow for unfettered distribution of Flash. This does not mean that I don't support OS software and in fact, when at all practical, I strongly support using open-source. Considering that simply having a Flash player proved to be a big problem I'm about to fall off my chair with the notion that Microsoft will play a major role in the XO's future (sorry if I don't buy Microsoft's recent announcement of welcoming the OS world with open arms). That's why I go back to my original thought "Say it isn't so." Only time will tell but this new announcement is, to say the least, bewildering.

Scarcity of OS engineers --> Higher Salaries for 08

Interesting blog by Lora Bentley pointing out that with the release of the newly announced Adobe Air and MySQL's acquisition by Sun Micrososystems, the drive for hiring open-source engineers is on. With this renewed vigor in hiring in the OS sector is a commensurate jump in salaries amounting to a 7.6% boost anticipated in this year. Not bad given that people are predicting a recession. Perhaps as dollars compress, corporations are finally getting the kick in the pants needed to take OS technology seriously which, in turn, drives the market for those with expertise in this sector.

One point, at first I was a little confused by the addition of Adobe's Air in the original post, but on investigation, it does appear that Adobe has been releasing more of their code to OS and has built Air very much to meet the needs of OS engineers (see Kevin Lynch interview in Wired).

Drain King is No King

OK, I should preface this rant against a product by pointing out that the Drain King pipe clearing system may be just great under the right conditions. Unfortunately, this nifty tool for unplugging or unclogging a pipe had well... serious problems when I put it to use.

Let me set the stage. My kitchen sink began to fill up with water after the faucet would run for 2-3 minutes. The stoppage wasn't 100% and the water would drain very, very slowly once backed up. Since it took so long to back up, I figured that the clog must be pretty far down the line. The big problem came if someone tried to run the dishwasher since the washer drained into the same line which would lead to water backing up to the sink pretty fast. While I know next to nothing about plumbing, I did know that I needed to get in there somehow and get the line open.

My first approach was to hit my local Albertson's supermarket and pick up a bottle of that super gooey thick acid gel to pour down the pipes. I tried that for two days figuring that the pipe might clear but... nope nothing. OK, now I had a pipe with gel which still drained like a snail.

Next, I tried to go to the traps outside the house. See, I told you I know nothing about plumbing and should have figured out that this would take me to the bigger sewer lines rather than unplug the pipes from a sink. Well, snaking the traps didn't work but it didn't hurt either (other than the smell!).

I then decided to hit the local hardware. There I had a choice between a traditional 25 foot 1/4 inch snake or something new... the Drain King. Well, I like things that are innovative so I was naturally attracted to the Drain King. This device connects to the end of a garden hose. You stuff it into a pipe and when the water is turned on, it inflates like a balloon to fill the pipe. Once the pipe is sealed, the Drain King pulses jets of high-pressure water down the pipe to blow out the clog. It claims to be able to blow out a clog up to 1000 feet away! That was perfect for me since I had no idea just how far down the clog was.

I got home and excited pulled out the pipes under the sink. I then inserted the Drain King and told my son to turn on the hose and wait by the spigot in case something went wrong. I was totally impressed. The Drain King inflated, filled the pipe and then the whole hose started to pulse. In my mind, I could see that clog being blasted away by the awesome power of the Drain King! The next thing I know, my son is yelling that there is water shooting off the roof like a geiser! I look out the window and tons of water spilling off the roof. It took a second but it hit me. The clog was way down the pipe past the point where the vent pipe was coming off of the drain pipe. The powerful water blast of the Drain King was shooting down line, hitting the clog, backing up and forcing the water to the path of least resistance... my vent pipe leading to the roof.

Now the real fun begins. With dirty water shooting from my roof like a jet from Moby Dick I had no choice but to scream "Turn it off!" Well, think this through and imagine things from my point of view. I'm looking into a pipe that is sealed by the inflated balloon of the Drain King. The hose is turned off, the balloon deflates. I have a pipe leading all the way to my roof filled with dirty, acid-gel-filled water and gravity does its stuff. The water comes rushing back down the vent pipe past the deflated Drain King and blasts me with a rush of nastiness. My floor is a river of muck. I'm saturated and my drain is as plugged as ever.

After a bit of much needed clean up, I went back to the hardware store and bought that old-fashioned snake. After about 25 minutes of snaking, I put the pipes back on and "Viola!" no more clog.

The moral of the story is that sometimes the old fashioned approach just works. Would I use a Drain King again? Yeah, but only if that drain clogs up almost immediately after putting water in the sink. Then at least there's a good chance that the clog is before the vent pipe. If that were the case, then there might have been enough pressure built up in the line to blast out that clog and the Drain King would have worked like advertised. If you get a clogged drain, give it a shot and let me know how it works. Be ready to change your clothes and mop the floor though!

Sunbeam CoffeeMaster

OK, I know that this is a bit out of my normal topic areas, but I have had a few people very interested in learning more about vacuum coffee makers. This is a photo of my Sunbeam "Double Bubble" CoffeeMaster. While you don't get to see the coffee brewing, the sleek lines of this unit are exceptional (c. 1930's).

My XO first impressions

OK, I'm addicted to my XO laptop. I participated the OLPC "Give 1 Get 1" program and received my XO just before Christmas. I'm very glad that I did since as an advocate for open-source software, I definitely love this move toward OS software AND hardware to address the unique problems of educating children across the world. That being said, I was also very excited to get my hands on one of the little green devices to put it through it's paces.

What do I think? Well, the XO as a box is just plain fun! There are a few rough spots in both hardware and software. First, I agree with most people that although the keyboard is quite water resistant, it is also very difficult to type on. I'm going to point out that I'm a fat-fingered 40+ year old so this criticism may have no application to a bunch of 6 year olds pounding on the little keyboard. For an adult though, it's just plain tough to get words into the box. The rest of the system is just great. The display is beautiful and crisp. I love being able to turn the back lighting off and still have a totally readable display. The wi-fi reception on my box has been great assuming that WPA encryption is off on the router. No complaints.
Now, on to the software and OS itself. Well... let's just say that the XO is currently a work in progress. There are quite a number of features that simply do not work at present. Some examples are:

• the brush size keys on the keyboard are inactive
• the touch sensitive pad does not work (although the main conductive pad in the middle for mouse movement is just fine)
• The various buttons to the left and right of the screen have limited use in the current version of the eBook reading program
• The famous "code" peeking key on the keyboard is not activated

There are a number of other minor issues here and there but most are just annoyances. Another example is that the current terminal program does not allow you to past in text. Given that the keyboard makes it torturous to enter long strings of directory paths, etc. this is a big pain since I often find myself wanted to paste in a quick one-liner from a web page into the terminal. Oh well, not critical, but just a factor.

What I find most exciting about the laptop is not its current state but its potential. I feel like I did when I sat down in front of my first Macintosh 128K (yes, I do remember that and was alive back then in 1984). The potential of that little box was palpable and I get the same feeling with the XO. When I'm asked what I think about the laptop, I summarize it as "It has some problems right now, but basically it's very usable and I can see such enormous promise that I'm a huge fan." If viewed in that light, I think most would agree that the OLPC achieved a great success. Unfortunately, I'm concerned that there will be those out there who look at the XO and instead focus on its current limitations. This should not be a treated as a totally "ready for primetime" system but instead a system that is, and probably will remain, a work in progress which is the way all good open-source projects should be.

For those of you interested, please also note that there is a vast new growth in XO support being driven by those in the development community and supported further by tinkering new owners. Support will continue to be a big concern for the main organization since they can't possibly support each and every box, but the community is jumping in and I'm finding support to be excellent. If you need help consider posting to the newly unified OLPC Support Forum (I say newly unified since two separate efforts were combined to provide a central resource). Their are also numerous mailing lists and IRC available. The main OLPC wiki remains an essential source of current information.

Passing the Torch

After a year of running the Los Angeles Perl Mongers group, it's time for me to pass the torch. I'm really quite sad about this in some ways since it has been a great experience setting up the guest speakers and getting to know so many LA-Based perl hackers. That being said, my new job at Google really doesn't call too much for perl and honestly, I'm running out of time in a day. I really feel that the LA.pm deserves more attention that I can provide at this time. Stay tuned for new developments, but it does appear that there will be a leadership committee this time around, something that I strongly suggested since this is really more than a one-person job :)

SCALE 5X a Hit!

I spent the last weekend supporting two booths at the fifth annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 5X)! This was the best ever and I never even got to leave my booth. Normally, I attend as an "attendee" and just mix around, go to the various talks, etc. But, given that I'm the manager of technical recruiting for Ticketmaster, I had a duty to perform so I sat in my booth along with my teammates. While that doesn't sound very exciting, I really did enjoy myself. I find that the people who attend SCALE are just plain interesting. SCALE draws from a mixed crowd of open-source engineers, linux sysadmins, networking people, and your all-around technology hobbiest. Basically, it's a great bunch of people.

The grass-roots nature of this event is fostered in part by their ready support of local user groups. The people at SCALE will give a full booth space to local user groups who are willing to do a demonstration. This year I'm running the Los Angeles Perl Mongers (la.pm) so we decided to pull together a booth and demo. The people at SCALE were nice enough to put the booth directly across from my Ticketmaster booth so I could keep an eye on things. Actually, I ended up not needing to because the volunteers at the la.pm help up their end and kept that booth staffed and eager to answer questions (Thanks Juan, Nimish, Randall, Pablo, Rene, and Ateeq!).

Overall, SCALE is a wonderful event. It proved to be a great place for my organization to tell our story (global operations, commitment to open-source technologies, and a heavy emphasis on linux). The la.pm's booth was swamped by people interested in learning more about the organization, the monthly technical talks, etc. If you're in town next year during February, plan on going, it's a great weekend.

The Declining Impact of LinkedIn?

Well people, I fear that what I thought might happen, is in fact occurring. When LinkedIn implemented their "InMail" feature, where you can essentially bypass the normal chain of contacts typically needed to reach a given LinkedIn member, I feared that it would be the end to LinkedIn's health as a community. First, I objected to LinkedIn changing the game mid-season and allowing people to reach my contacts just by paying a price. Second, I was afraid that these unsolicited direct connections would ultimately lose validity, amounting essentially to social networking spam.

I think we're there now.

I have spoken to a number of heavy LinkedIn users, all recruiters, and I have to say that LinkedIn must be making a bundle on InMailing. I too submitted to the "well if they're all doing it" excuse and bought a LinkedIn membership. I guess at the time I figured that the company has to make money somehow even if I do have serious reservations. That being said, I have noticed that the number of people who will respond to a nicely worded, friendly InMail is dropping and dropping fast. I think there is going to be a special category in the spam box for LinkedIn unsolicited contacts!

Do I have an answer, well no I actually don't now that Pandora's box has been opened, but I do wish in a way that the system remained closed. I guess I'm idealistic, but in the long run, I think it would have been healthier for the LinkedIn social network community to keep the chain of contact intact. I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Recruiting the Recruiter: Lost in your own backyard

For the past few months I've been looking for a recruiter to join my team. While I did have the chance to interview quite a number of strong recruiters, I was taken by the number of recruiters who gave me no indication of their ability to actually recruit hard-to-find technical talent. I noticed that the recruiters didn't seem to think it was important to demonstrate their research prowess, something that I highly prize and believe is essential for any solid recruiter.

For instance, after many face-to-face interviews, I came across only 2 recruiters who actually took the time to learn about my company. I'm not talking about in-depth analysis here. I'm talking about the bare-bones basics. This is just shocking technical recruiters! How am I to trust that you'll have the guts and gumption to find those elusive technical geeks if you can't even investigate the company that you're interviewing with! I'd expect you to run NetCraft "What's that site running..." screens on my company's domain name to determine what server we're using and perhaps our underlying technology (e.g., mod_perl on linux). I'd expect you to look up and learn all of our technology job postings so you'll have a sense of what kind of talent we need, where our main technology centers are, and what makes us "tick" as an organization. I'd like you to hunt down and provide me with some names of core members of my team! Instead, there was little pre-interview preparation at all.

I realize that these are heady days again for technical recruiters and recruiters in general but remember, the market will shift again as it always does and it just makes good sense to build your reputation any time you can.

Just a thought.

Been an extremely long time since I posted to the blog. What I'm finding in the recruiting world is interesting enough to get me off my duff and typing away. Mid-level people... in the past they were everywhere. Where are you now? Well, I can only guess but I think we're finally seeing the impact of the last 2-3 years of a lousy technology economy. We don't have solid mid-levels any longer. Back in 2000 when things looked so bleak, I'm assuming that new people in the technology field either changed directions or just decided to stay in school. Now it's 2004 and things are heating up. Finding those mid-levels with some solid work experience is becoming my new headache. There used to be a time when finding seniors was a chore (back when our web-based technologies were all new) but now its the mids. Plenty of seniors out there though and a lot of people who are looking at the market again as juniors or associates. So, if you're a mid-level and looking for work, now is a great time for you!

OK, Here's one of the most original additions to a resume I've seen in a long time! My hat goes off to Sripresanna Narayanasamy! He had a brilliant idea to list each place he'd consider for relocation and he listed each and every area code. Brilliant! His resume popped right up when I did a resume search for people within our search area code. Great idea worth repeating. Check out his resume.

Going off to the EREXPO tomorrow. Should be very interesting to hear about the newest techniques and gadgets for recruiting (believe or not... there are recruiter geeks out there!). If I run into something really pretty out there, I'll post it right away. I'll pay particular attention to techniques and technologies that force your excellent resumes to float to the top.

Like most industries, there were a lot of players in the software world during the dot-com boom, all fighting for a piece of a targeted market. After the crash, a number of players died or were consumed leaving just a few leaders to swallow up the remaining customer base. An example would be the CRM software industry. I haven't really seen this consolidation in the recruiting/HR software world. In fact, I would say that there are actually more choices for recruiting folk for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) nowadays covering a very large range of costs of implementation. I'm excited to see who shows up at the show!

Also, it should also be pretty interesting to get a pulse on the job market out there! The next posting should be from the field. :)

Have to point out my article in TheOpenEnterprise! OK, it's not my article since it really was written by Jason Levitt, but it was an interview with me getting a job in the open source job market. If you've been reading my blog you'll see some overlap there. Jason's a great guy and did an excellent job. I'm always a bit nervous about talking to reporters. I've had a few bad experiences where I'm quoted saying things that never left my mouth. Jason was really right on target and was a pleasure to talk to. He's also quite familiar with and slashdotted! That's really pretty cool and generated just tons of email, calls, etc. Most of the comments seemed rather good, others were pure flaming. Oh well ;)

Wow! It's been far too long. Since my last posting I can see a shift in the market that is interesting. It's beginning to heat up on the high-end positions. What I mean by that is that very senior-level engineers, administrators, etc. are beginning to poke their heads up for the first time in over a year and looking around to see what's out there. It's a bit like the WWII bombing raids on London. It was simply much safer to duck-and-cover and stay in those bomb shelters until things settled down. I'm seeing the first signs of the battle-hardened, best-of-breed knocking off the dust, opening the hatches, and squinting in the bright daylight.

It's also interesting that they are getting scooped up quickly. That shouldn't be surprising given their level of skills. It just means that recruiters must be more efficient and move quickly. In other words, don't window shop too long. If you see a person with excellent skills and a great work ethic, make the decision and make an offer! That's good news for an industry that has had some serious tough times lately.

Last week at ApacheCon I called together a BOF "Birds of a Feather" session to discuss the open source job market. I wanted to get a feel for what people were seeing out there in the industry. Not surprisingly, I heard that things are tough. Quite a few people attending the session indicated that they have been looking around for some time. It was also clear that this room had some talented engineers who specialize in apache development. In most cases, having the ability to work virtually could have proven to be a big win-win. However, despite out techno-focused workplaces, doing your job off site is still a hard pill to swallow for a lot of companies. I can see why and really can't argue that it's better to allow off-site workers. Let's face it, there is simply something to be said about that face-to-face contact. However, if you build a design methodogy/process where virtual workers are encouraged, there are some truly amazing people out there waiting to hear from you...

Great day at the ApacheCon conference. A lot of tremendously bright, fun, and interesting apache engineers made their way to Las Vegas for the big event. Great presentations covering all things Apache. My focus was the mod_perl work (great presentaton today by Geoffrey Young). Looking forward to Stas' presentation tomorrow. Tomorrow morning I requested a "Birds of a Feather" (i.e., BOF) session to discuss current trends in the job market in the open source web development community. Stay tuned... tomorrow I'll report on this meeting which should be quite interesting since apache developers cover most programming languages (e.g., perl, java, PHP, python, ruby, etc.).

OK, let's address the money issue again! I've been thinking this over since there are many different angles on this question. How is an employer to respond to a candidate who is applying for a position with a significantly lower level of required skills than the candidate actually has? As an example, if you've been a senior developer in your last four jobs and you have 15 years of development experience under your belt, what is the proper reaction to you applying for an associate- to mid-level position?

1. You're clearly not mid-level


2. You were, in all likelihood, making significantly more money in your previous jobs


3. You probably were used to using a lot of brain power and not doing as much grunt work

Honestly, I don't have a solid answer for this. If the market is tight, you might be considered a real "bargain" if you'll drop your salary requirements. On the other hand, if the market picks up, let's face it, you'll bolt!

This is very similar to the situation an employer faces when considering a consultant who has suddenly seen the light and decides that going regular hire fits his/her present needs. Let's face it, it only fits their present needs because the market stinks and there's no work. Again, if that market perks up, KAAABOOOM! they're out of there like they were shot from a cannon.

Neither situation is ideal if your goal is to build a balanced, stable team. Any comments?