This is my repsonse to (e:jim,46321). I was going to make it a comment but in the interest of reaching 25,000 - its a new post.

I agree with you on most of it. Well, the part that this is what actually happens most of the time, but I don't think it is always the best approach.

As you know at my company, so many of the people hired were based on relationships with other people already working there. You can easily draw a flow chart of how most of the people were related in one way or another before working together at Roswell. I am constantly amazed at the back story for each of the people I work with. Its like watching an episode of Lost when they do the backstories.

Unfortunately, that doesn't always work out so great. We hired a couple related people in the past that used a lot of of available resources and delivered nothing. It actually happend twice in a row.

So during the last round of hires I didn't even think about people I know and went strictly off of interviews and resumes that came from public job postings. The two programmers that I had a hand in hiring turned out to be great. They are both getting stuff done fast and figuring out stuff easily.

While I agree that hiring poeople you know is what happens most of the time, I actually think mixing a little randomness into the selection really helps development.

My own hiring (e:paul,32326) was like a random mix of randomness and relationship. One of my students found the job posting for Roswell in the Buffalo News and brought it to me so I applied randomly not knowing anyone - or so I thought. It turned out during the interview, that my to be boss's wife was a child hood friend. I like to think I was hired on my portfolio, code samples, resume and education.

Anyhow, I radically changed the way we work and if I was a yet another Buffalo State ASP classic programmer I might have just accepted the status quo.

Wasn't it the same with your new job? Imagine instead that the visual fox pro people hired their visual fox pro friends, are there any of those even around, lol? Anyways, I am sure you get what I mean.

Not that people you know can't be qualified. I just think there are so many qualified programmers out there that its a bad idea to not have public interviews to get an idea about the competition. We actually don't have a choice about this being a government institution so at least we always get resumes from those related and those not to compare.

Universities recognize this too. The reason you traditionally cannot be hired by your Alma Mater is because they figure you ascribe to the same techiques and doctrine as the people who you studied under. If you are hired the ideas never really change and evolve as rapidly as they would with fresh blood.

Moreover, I find it way easier to work with new people that I do not know whatsoever, as I am not as concerned about hurting their feelings or they about mine.

Still I think you are right that most hiring is based on relationships/connections.

Anyone who has eaten army rations knows how discusting they are. I have this distict memory of turkey cubes in gravy. Anyways, we were at the Uncle Sams Army Navy surplus the other day looking for costumes and they have a multitude of rations for sale. Who the fuck buys and eats rations for fun? You couldn't pay me. To make it even crazier, they were so expensive. Check out this tray of potatoes and gravy for $30 freakin dollars.



I was also grossed out by the dustiness of the used gas masks. I mean how do you know what they are covered in?





So I didn't find a costume. I am now down to the toga idea.

On the other end of the spectrum was this yummy lunch special from Saigon on Elmwood.

We decided it was time to break down and buy the reusable wegman's
bags. They are $.99 per bag and we got 8. Now to see if we can
remember to bring them each time.

I am working on the new surebert toolkit while (e:terry) listens to his BioChemsitry class online. I swear it sounds like she keeps talking about a "fatty asshole, carny teen" but I think it is something else.

I have been working on the toolkit for like four days now. I think today is the last day.

Here is a fun pic form halloween 1994. What was (e:iriesara), raggedy ann or a prostitute? What was I? What was Heather?


Here is the up close.

Why me, why today? I know I use my computers really hard, and I have
everything backed up but I really don't want to have to deal with this.

Let's just hope it's a freak incident and a disk utily can repair it
and not that the drive is just dead.