The coders dresscode

I found this pretty funny, it's a pretty much "who's who" in terms of forefathers of Software, and you can see a recurring theme when it comes to appearance and dresscode.  So, when you're interviewing Developers, you need to have an open mind 

"In vogue" C# related technologies

I recently asked the C# Pro's Group on LI what technologies are floating their boat at the moment and here are some of the answers I received;

"As manager over development, I get most excited about Team Foundation Server and the enhancements that are being released. It's about time that we move into a modern era of source control and I've found it to be exceptional for doing what we need ... in addition to the built-in test suites. 

As a hands-to-keyboard coder, I also love ReSharper (don't leave home without it, Visual Studio always seems to be one step behind them), controls. 

I'm also excited about the potential of the data dude edition of Visual Studio but it has a ways to go before it replaces some of the other third-party tools out there for data modeling and scripting"

"Even if it's not necessarily C#, for me it's RIA with WPF/Silverlight. 

It allows to develop really interactive web applications. "

"RIA Development: Silverlight 2, ASP.NET MVC (currently tech preview I think),ASP.NET AJAX, XSLT and XHTML, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (with SP1) and Microsoft Expression Blend 2 (again with SP1). 

Backend Development: C# 3.0, .NET Framework 3.5 (with SP1), WCF (Windows Communication Foundation for SOA application development). 

Windows Development: WPF 3.5, SQL Server, LINQ, Parrallels, Windows Mobile 6. 

I'd focus on ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight 2 for web Development, WCF for SOA development and WPF for windows development. Be sure to use the latest C#3.0 enhancements including LINQ. "

"LINQ for collections is a great elegant way to make queries to a bunch of data. 

Silverlight 2 is a great improvement to the web GUIs, but it needs to be more mature as it's just in the beginning. Early adopters will face some difficulties because the user base isn't as big as the ASP.NET ."

"I think most C# devs tend to salivate over purely Microsoft-produced stuff, but something else that I think will soon get everyone excited is jQuery:http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and-microsoft.aspx"

"ASP.Net MVC is something I'm playing around with right now and it's definitely very nice. Mix it up with LINQ, WCF and jQuery stuff and you've got a nice little research project on your hands. 

Start getting used to REST too."

"1. Salivating, eh? Parallel programming is the first candidate. Just doing its babysteps in .NET but looks *very* promising. (Keep tabs on Joe Duffy and Daniel Moth blogs and, of course, http://blogs.msdn.com/pfxteam ). 

2. Data contracts. Compile time checks for pre- and post-conditions in your internal and external APIs. (Check out at http://research.microsoft.com/contracts/ ). It's not actually a C# feature but a .NET library, so any .NET language can give it a try. IMPORTANT NOTE: research license only (yet), not sure about the plans. 

3. Entity Framework goes next. Well, let's admit LINQ to SQL is dead (hmm?) so if you haven't invested in any existing ORM yet, EF is something you *should* have a look at.. and it's more than a mere mapper, as some people say :). 



As for already mentioned here and widely adopted technologies, 

* MVC is really powerful, especially for large scale web apps (if you're just starting or can afford the migration). They in MS have done a great job for smooth integration with "good old" ASP.NET - cool things like charts (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/11/24/new-asp-net-charting-control-lt-asp-chart-runat-quot-server-quot-gt.aspx ) can be easily integrated into an MVC app. 

* WCF is cool although it's quite old and doesn't seem to be getting a lot of frenzy because it's not about pretty UI :) "

"Even if the question is "for c# developers" I really appreciate PowerShell to automate deploys of Web Application http://www.codeproject.com/KB/install/DeploySite.aspx"

"Hello Noel, 

Great Question! 

All of the above are great answers. Nth Penguin (the company I work for) has a C# generation tool called WebWidgetry that's a plug-in for Visual Studio (open source GPL). 

We have some very powerful features that will be added in upcoming releases. As it sits today, you can build a SOA enabled, long running, single page AJAX application in a fraction of the time you'd spend using other .NET tools. 

Check it out at: www.nthpenguin.com "

All of the above have given me plenty of reading to follow up on but all good information

Software Sucks!

Check out this interesting essay on why Software sucks;

http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/46-why-software-sucks/

Overview

I was recently asked to give an overview of the Irish Recruitment Industry, here is an excerpt;

The Irish Recruitment Industry is feeling the effects of the industries it serves, and many specialist recruitment companies that have been reliant on customers within one of the industries that have been affected by the downturn are also inheriting a weaker revenue stream.  This type of company is certain to fail unless they can realign their modus operandi, or have sufficient cash reserves to weather the storm.  The Recruitment industry is the same as any other, in that the coming months are bound to experience further change.

 

 There has been much speculation in recent times as to what type of acquisitions lay in store and whether or not we are on the brink of seeing another “Marlborough” situation where one of the larger recruitment companies goes under.  The fact that CPL, (Ireland’s biggest in terms of recruitment) issued a profit warning earlier this year lent credence to this in a way.  My personal belief is that some of the bigger recruitment companies will seek to acquire a number of “niche” recruiters or smaller firms that are doing well within industries that are experiencing growth in addition to downsizing their focus on Multinationals and running a mile from capital-intensive Managed Services operations where more of the bigger companies seek to minimise the risk of employing salaried people to run operations that are not strategically important. 

 

The more dynamic recruitment companies are looking further afield and are aligning themselves with customers that are within more favourable periods of growth in industries such as renewable energy and information technology.  Optimism, confidence and opportunism will dictate as to who will be most successful in the coming year.  

Better matching technology

One of the things that consistently comes up when talking about Recruiting is how to improve the matching technology to make a technical recruiter's life easier. It's long understood that Monster is very limited and Recruiters can only source effectively by being string experts. Why shoudl we not expect more? Why aren't more companies trying to do more? Is it a case Monster are too big? Big opportunity for a panel of top technical recruiters, a Dev Team, a Test Team and a Technical Architect to get in a room and get onto it. Match.com is a company trying to push better matching technology but it is limited to the US. There is huge opportunity in the market if someone could take this on

How not to recruit - Part 2

I received an email from an agency recruiter yesterday which was a real peach, and a prime example of how not to recruit. She claimed she knew me, and that we had worked together previously (false - I only do direct sourcing). She sent me a CV for a Developer role (without specifying which role it was). The CV turned out to be that of a Manual Tester..... She also claimed the candidate was really interested in working with a competitor of our company!! That was the best part for me. I wonder how the candidate would feel if he was aware his details were being spammed around in such a useless way.

New Linkedin Group for QA and Test Pro's

There doesn't seem to be too many places these guys hang out on line geared towards the Irish Market - SQA Forums is a total mess so I have created a LI Group for QA and Test Professionals. It's a place to discuss both automated and manual test methodologies with like-minded individuals. The invitation to join the Group is here

Post a job on Linkedin for 1/6th of the price

check out http://opennetworkers.info

linkedin groups

Imagine my surprise to receive a mail from Linkedin saying that the Groups function will no longer be abusable, and members will only be able to have a max of 50 Groups on their profile from now on. This will limit the ability to source from specific tech groups who have unfortunately been over-run by overzealous recruiters for some time now. Real people with real tech skills looking to join a real Group have been turned off by being contacted about jobs from having their details associated with a Group, despite having a profile indicating they are not on the prowl. I run my own group on Linkedin and get multiple requests from dozens of individuals who have no visible connection with the subject of the Group, they simply want another badge for their profile. People with this type of ambition ruin it for the rest of us, and now LI have taken some action.

it's been quite some time since I posted last, I've been really busy working with some start-up technical companies, helping them build their technical teams to be based out of Ireland. There has been a lot of media attention recently regarding the economy and jobs. I read an article recently that stated that only 7% of Irish private sector companies are hiring at the moment. I find this very hard to believe as I have seen nothing but growth but then again I am working with mostly high-tech so it's not as balanced as the findings of the article.

I came across some interesting articles on technical competency interviewing methods but will wait until I have confirmed permission to post from the Creator, but cool stuff nonetheless.

Anyway, here is something cool just released from Microsoft http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/experienceIt/ExperienceIt.aspx

interesting metaphorically as it's like an inverse version of Google Earth, looking at the galaxies

Good Networking Overview

Came across this while doing some network building and thought it was a nice overview of online networking. Interesting in that it is very much geared towards technical people being able to find their own next role through strong networking - making the Recruiter redundant

MS approach Yahoo

MS have made an informal approach to swallow up Yahoo, offering 60% more than a recent closing price on their shares. This would change the landscape of the online advertising world significantly and put a lot of pressure on Google. Ful article here. Interesting that Yahoo had profits of 660 million USD last year, which Microsoft generate in around 12 days

Yahoo to fire 1,000 worldwide

Yahoo are set to let 1,000 people go worldwide in the wake of a period of undeperforming shares and uncertainty. Full article here

Some light reading

Things are pretty hectic at the moment but never too busy to do some reading, here are some blogs I have been reading lately, the first one is from Peter Nguyen who keeps a blog called the Linked User Manual, well worth a read. I believe I mentioned this one before but Techgazing is also well worth reading regularly, and contains information on Ajay Jain's new book on Linkedin that I have not received yet, but when I do, I will post a review. I made some contributions as a Linkediner to some of the questions Ajay posted when conducting research for this book.

New Year, New Challenges!

So, a belated Happy New Year to one and all, thanks for your emails of kind words. I have been swamped since returning to work, and one thing looks clear for the New Year - more of the same. By this I mean more and more technical hiring and fewer and fewer candidates. We are all going to have to get better at automating and identifying candidates quicker than other Recruiters. Here are some more links from just before Christmas in a similar vein - interesting statistics in technical Hiring amidst all this talk of downturns and recession in our local economy and on a Global scale with the recent history in the US. Technology-wise there is a lot of development hiring ongoing but interestingly there are a very high proportion of Linux & Solaris environment open roles in Java Dev, and a slight fall-off in levels of .Net hiring