In Reply To #85

That really sucks. Hostile working environments are a real pain in the arse, especially when it's your managers creating the hostility.

I agree with Pseudo though, your best bet is to stay calm and hit them through official channels. From the sound of it you've got enough grounds to throw lawyers at them. Whether you can afford to do that or not is irrelevant, the threat alone is enough to provoke HR to take action to make the situation go away.

Then you stay just long enough to get the training you want and leave for a higher paying job anyway.

*Toasts*

I went out a while ago with a few friends on a Tuesday...then I realised that it was stupid going out on a Tuesday, so I went out the following Tuesday...

I now have my residence permit which is good, as it was the main thing I was worried about over the last few months with the whole moving country thing. Having lost all this weight since I got here, I now actually look closer to the 7-year-old photo of me which I gave them for the ID than I have in recent years. It also means I can stop walking around with my passport in my pocket, which was getting really annoying.

The bad news is that I seem to be coming down with a cold, which is seriously annoying timing given the trip to Berlin this weekend.

It's now been a month in the new job. A ton of work trying to make this place awesome.

Hostile working environments are always shit; several people I work with are looking for new jobs because of my boss's attitude. He's the sort of guy that would be OK as a friend, but as a boss comes across as arrogant and a bit aggressive. The problem we have is that it's a small company, and the person who deals with HR is his wife, so if anyone raises his attitude with her it's a dead end.

I gather you American types may call this a "Mom & Pop" company, and I can't advise avoiding them enough. My attitude is basically to work my hours, nothing more, and not to care. It's their company and they can run it how they like, even if that is into the ground.

My housemate, on the other hand, works for a national company and has a manager with a bad attitude who hasn't been dismissed/'moved on' largely due to the amount of bureaucracy involved. Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

In Reply To #95
There really isn't a 'sweet spot' of business structure that disables assholes from ruining a good place. If its small business (mom & pop) and mom or pop happens to be an asshole, it generally sucks to work there. Usually the place only gets by because an overworked good Samaritan 'manager' or leader makes it so. They protect the business from itself and usually burn themselves out in the process.

In big organizations firing people is so damned difficult. I work for Boeing (defense, space and security not planes) and our firing process is pretty damned convoluted. You have to put someone on a program that ensures they are really unable to do their job, but it reduces their job to almost nothing so most anyone could meet the requirements. However, working in an agile environment does have its perks. Just due to the team focused structure and decision making being in the hands of the direct contributors-- if someone is team poison they'll likely work their way out of the company due to peer influence and lack of feeling successful. We're fortunate in that we keep a very small start-up feeling while having the backing of a big company. Greater Boeing leaves us pretty much alone because we're so damned profitable.

The real key is, don't hire scrubs. When I hire I am extremely hard on people. Several times there has been some contesting against my lack of favor on a candidate for someone else's team (we review in groups) but I always come back to "I'd rather pass by 50 'good' employees looking for someone great, than hire one bad employee that will poison the whole team".

Our hiring process is pretty intense. We start with resumes/contacts from either career fairs, personal recommendations, school connections or occasionally cold drops, e.g., online applications to our job posting from strangers. We prefer in-person experience like references or career fairs because a brief in-person meeting helps cull the herd so much. If the skills and experience on the resume matches up-- we're not too specific on 'must know _____' but an overall demonstration of proficiency with technology is what we're looking for, we'll send our code test out. This is a small framework and a problem statement. This, again, culls a good portion of applicants. Anyone who even sends it in has a desire beyond passing to work with us. We review the code submitted (write tests motherfuckers, we even put sample ones in the framework) and if they've got the chops we'll do a phone interview with two people; this is usually the hiring manager and a lead or savvy folk. If that goes well we'll bring them in for an in-person interview. If you survive the whole interview you've pretty much worked a full day with us (~8 hours).

The interview is a staged process of elimination and we make that clear to the applicant. First and foremost is a pairing session with a developer. We take the code sample the applicant submitted and add features to it. We simulate the flexible nature of our client requests and such by breaking previous assumptions outlined in the problem statement. We'll have 2 developers switch out during the pairing, it is usually a 3 hour session with 1 1/4 hours with each developer and some breaks. This is really the make or break portion which is why we front load it. We don't want to interview someone for 4 hours who sells themselves great but when you sit down and actually work with them they're brain dead. You'd be amazed at how many people can talk right but can't produce for shit.

If they survive the pairing session what follows is a series of interviews across the organization, usually 4-5. They'll interview with other developers, testers, graphics folk, documentation and usually the hiring manager's boss. Sometimes its 2 people, other times just 1 on 1. The majority of our interviewing is done by the people the candidate will work with on a daily basis, not just a bunch of managers. We also want them evaluated beyond just developers hence all the company getting involved. After each interview the interviewer[s] have the option to end it right there or let them go on to the next. If anyone feels strongly negative about a candidate we don't waste other people's time; small reservations are saved for the group discussion.

If they get through the full day it is usually a good sign. After they leave or the next day everyone involved will meet and we'll have a discussion about what everyone thought. Even at this stage it is possible to bounce someone because small reservations each person had might all match up and reveal something unwanted. That is a little rare, but it has happened. If they're great, we hire'em!

It might sound a little rough, but we've got awesome people and anyone who is a good fit will actually have fun throughout the interview. As will our interviewers. We love doing this stuff.

Oh if you can't tell... I've been hiring lately. It's on my mind even after friday night drinks.

That's intense.

I was able to take part in the interviews for my replacement a few months ago. For a sysadmin role, you can tell a lot about what a person knows just by chatting, so it is a lot simpler.

The guy with the best CV was clearly just throwing names of software he had used once or twice before, and spun it well on paper. The winning candidate can sit there and have a conversation with you about how you've used that software differently or similarly at your respective companies.

We didn't really have a big enough field of applicants to drill down further in the interviews, so I am a bit wary of my replacement's problem solving skills, but on knowledge alone he was so far ahead of the rest that he was still the obvious choice.

In Reply To #96

Those kinds of interviews are useful on both sides. I had one like that this summer. The first round was with one of their senior devs, and I really had a blast talking to the guy, and was pretty interested in working with him. The next round was with their lead, and I hated the guy like poison. I declined to go any further because I wasn't going to fit in with the team. I was going to make them miserable and they were going to make me miserable. I was going to fight with their lead constantly. This is very good information to have before you take the job.

The recruiter viewed the whole thing as a disaster. I viewed it as a very successful interview (as, I imagine, the dickhead I wouldn't have gotten on with did).

Interesting news that Microsoft may soon be retiring Windows Live Messenger and replacing it with Skype on services that integrated with it.

A quick look on my Trillian contact list and most of my contacts seem to be Skype, AIM or Google Talk these days, so I am not sure this will affect too many people.

So Windows is up to 8 now? What the fuck? My gaming machine still uses XP. I really should upgrade at some point since XP can't use more than 3 gigs of RAM or some such. But I'm too cheap and too lazy to buy a new Windows and install it. I've got 7 on my laptop and it's pretty ok.

In Reply To #100

8 seems to be a love-it-or-leave-it kinda OS at the moment. A lot of people (myself included, after trying the preview) aren't impressed by the two completely different GUI concepts that they've mashed together. I'm sure it's great for tablets but I have no interest in tablets, and I don't want a compromised desktop OS.

I plan to remain on 7 for the forseeable future.

In Reply To #101

I've been considering switching to Mac... but those things are pricey. Might as well just go get my good old computer fixed

In Reply To #102

I briefly pondered it when the MacBook Pro Retina came out, as it was the only laptop that ticked all of my boxes, as far as hardware specs and profile went. In the end though, I counted the games and other pieces of software that would either not run, or would run poorly on OSX, and decided it wasn't worth the switch... yet.

In Reply To #103

Seeing how I do most gaming on consoles now, I really don't see much of an issue with the switch. The only thing that stops me is their price.

In Reply To #104

Yeah not surprising. I understand some 90% of gaming company profits come from console now. And the most popular notebooks being sold for a couple of years now have been Macs.

I can see why Microsoft would be worried, but at least they have one of those major consoles.