The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Cover letters and discrimination

Cover letters and discrimination

The article is a statement on the bad shape of the tech industry and how desparate people are to land available positions. I wonder if these ideas would have even cropped up during the boom days when everyone with the least skills got employed.

I am seeing the opposite happening in India. When I joined about 18 months ago, I went through 6 rounds of interviews, including one weeklong architecture/design test. Now there is a desparate need for more people and even architects (or what goes for it in these parts) get hired with a couple of rounds of phone interview. Existing employees crib about the standards being down, while HR points out that there are only so many "smart" folks and we need more than that number.

I guess we are seeing a different form of "beggars cannot be choosers" :)

Vaidhy Mayilrangam
Monday, January 26, 2004

"Now there is a desparate need for more people and even architects"

Bye-bye offshoring for cost savings. And hello cost overruns and late deliverables!

Philo

Philo
Monday, January 26, 2004

Indeed the standards there are dropping. Some Indian guys where I work have resigned in recent months to move back to India, where they have taken up Architect positions after being just average developers here. And they're not lying about their positions; I've seen the evidence myself.

T. Norman
Monday, January 26, 2004

Philo,

Cost overruns and quality of deliverables have nothing to do with onsite or off-shore. CMM was formed for a reason.. Fred Brooks Mythical Man-month was written for the same reason..

There are issues with off-shoring as there are with anything else, but these are not offshore specific issues :)

Vaidhy Mayilrangam
Monday, January 26, 2004

Norman,

The issue is that in a volume business, you need more generalists who can speak rather than a few specialists.. But coming back to the topic at hand... My point is that when there is pressure to hire, most of us would give the benifit of doubt to the applicant while if there are few positions and a large number of applicants, we all would find ways to kick out most of the resumes :)

Joel goes by cover letter and grammer.. someone else might do it by the font used in the resume.. It is a question of finding out how far one is willing to go to get a job..In fact, some headhunters go to the extreme of specifying the template that should be used...

(I am just playing devil's advocate here... I know that written skills are at least as important, if not more, than oral communication. I have been the cleanup guy once too often.)

Vaidhy Mayilrangam
Monday, January 26, 2004

Philo's point is that the cost savings of offshoring are going to disappear because the incompetent architects and coders will cause the project to go off the rails.

Stephen Jones
Monday, January 26, 2004

"architects (or what goes for it in these parts) get hired with a couple of rounds of phone interview"

Sounds like the US in '98. Enjoy it for the next couple of years, the US certainly did. Just watch out, by 2007 you'll have hordes of foriegn-car-driving nouveau yuppie types working at the curry hut, their jobs now in China and Estonia.

Anonymous Coward
Monday, January 26, 2004

For 99% of projects that come to offshore, you need a lot of average people, not a small group of very good people... But we can take the off-shore discussion offline or on another thread..

Vaidhy Mayilrangam
Monday, January 26, 2004

Then the project likely could have been done cheaper locally by a small group of good people instead of sending it offshore.

NoName
Monday, January 26, 2004