Developers wanted
Christopher Hart
We're looking for some devs who might have crappy corporate jobs right now to join Le Site as full time salaried employees. We already have plenty of freelancers and we love them very much. We're hoping to add to our still-small core/internal team. It's really a career thing; we're young enough that we're looking for long-term relationships with somewhat experienced developers, no noobs please.
You'd be working with Mathieu Leduc-Hamel, Cyril Robert and Nicolas Cadou who some of you might know from the MP community :) There are another 8 or 9 guys from Le Site who mingle at the events, and we're looking to further improve our relationship with the community. By the way, we're free and open source friendly.
Anyone who knows django or pylons please email me directly if you might be interested. Thanks!
Christopher Hart
Technical Director, Le Site
Office (514) 759-1775 ext 113
Cell (514) 651-2789
381 Notre-Dame Ouest #200
Montréal PQ, H2Y 1V2
lesite.ca
facebook.com/lesite.webagency
Mathieu
be interested to work at Le Site.
Back in January, I met Le Site for a python developer job. After the
usual interview, I got an offer which I did accept. Then I gave my 2-
weeks notice to my previous job... Few days after, I got a call from
Le Site which told me that they cannot hire me anymore. As you could
imagine, I ended up without anything for few weeks (no unemployment
benefits of course!).
Few weeks after, Le Site called me back to offer me a Technical
Director position. I met them again and they were interested having me
to fill this position... never heard back about it!
Then, in April, I got contacted (again) and met the author of this
post about a python programmer job, was supposed to start working for
him after I signed a NDA... never got that NDA!
As a freelancer, such behavior could be acceptable but in the case you
have a stable full-time job, you might be better to asked for a signed
contract with security clauses before doing any move!
I am not here to blame anyone, I just want to avoid any painful
situations to be repeated again!
Cheers,
Mathieu
Martin Blais
I don't know anything specifically about "Le Site" and their hiring
practices but I can offer a slightly different interpretation of your
experience: most startups are struggling A LOT with hiring. Sifting
through a nearly infinite flood of unsuitable resumes is incredibly
taxing and takes dedicated effort from the part of someone usually
non-technical which usually doesn't know how to evaluate for technical
roles properly and thereafter from the part of developers who,
especially in small companies, often don't have the time (nor the
desire!) to review large piles of resumes, especially if they haven't
been filtered properly for relevance, which is often the case. It's a
power law: there are 10x less superstars than average people, and 10x
more bad developers than average ones. So companies get a _lot_ of bad
resumes.
The fact is that even if your profile is really good and suitable it
is very possible (even likely!) that your resume just happens not to
be getting in front of the right pair of eyes at the right time simply
because everyone is too busy putting out fires or whatever else.
Unless the shop is really well organized for processing this
efficiently (and it's _very_ difficult, I've never seen it done well
anywhere), they're probably just struggling with time and
organizational issues around recruiting. It's _so_ easy for someone's
resume to fall through the cracks, even if you're a superstar.
IMO the best way for you to revive this if you really want to go there
is to go to some meetup or event where the main developers of the firm
will be present and talk to them directly, in a friendly manner, find
out what problems they're having to solve at work, and make sure to
let them know you're still available for work. If you can, get
someone's direct contact info and make sure to follow up once. Always
keep in mind that it's possible that they do remember your profile and
are simply not interested for whatever reason--make sure not to push
them in an awkward position and be polite; it wouldn't necessarily
mean anything important about you (seriously... it's a weird world in
technology, lots of cultural silos, little you can do about, people
just like other people that are "like them," which usually means have
similar backgrounds and specialties). Sometimes someone has the right
skills but the wrong personality "fit," nothing to get worked up
about.
You wrote that you've been as far as getting interviewed, but to me
that still only means they _may_ be struggling with the masses pushing
at the door and just having a hard time to filter out the few relevant
people they need. It's the same everywhere.
Good luck,
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Yannick Gingras
> You wrote that you've been as far as getting interviewed, but to me
> at the door and just having a hard time to filter out the few relevant
> people they need. It's the same everywhere.
What I read is the he received an offer, which is certainly more
significant than just going through the interview successfully. In
any case, the advice to get something signed before you quite your
previous job is fair and sound and applies all the time.
--
Yannick Gingras
http://ygingras.net
http://montrealpython.org -- lead organizer
http://ajah.ca -- technical lead
Christopher Hart
Martin, great response. It sounds like you really understand the challenges faced by startups. In consulting and agency work, the difficulties you pointed out can be particularly acute because of the bootstrap-or-die necessity. At least in our case, we have had to reinvent ourselves without stopping to regroup, mainly due to ongoing commitments to large clients and an insatiable sales team ;)
It's true that Le Site has undergone some pretty massive, and sometimes chaotic changes in the last ten months. Here's some fun trivia for the kids at home: up until last January the company was a small but relatively successful .NET agency. At some point the founders had the admittedly awesome insight to completely switch to Python. One thing led to another, and now we're looking back at the bumpy road to what has become a more and more PEP 20 compliant operation (this has been the vision so far, and will continue to be the vision for the foreseeable future). No Dutch guys on staff yet though, and yes, the Zen goes way beyond code. Without sacrificing the viability of our business in the short run we have finally emerged from the storm with a solid scrum system, increased growth, stability, and more interesting work.
Next stop: become revered for our developer-run culture and make serious contributions to the global python web development and open source communities. For example, we are going to sponsor PyCon 2011 and fly to Atlanta. We're also going to open source much of our code once we have generalized it properly for our own reuse. In fact, we hope somebody new could help us by leading a few open source initiatives, as most of us are already so busy with other things and wish we could just invent more time for this.
It's precisely the kind of mutual support and looking-out-for-one-another attitude expressed by Mathieu Drapeau that Le Site values about the Montreal Python community. We wouldn't expect anything less when it comes to things like jobs and businesses that are so important.
Mathieu, your response really took me by surprise. Frankly I don't remember meeting you personally or causing this NDA-gate! I'm really quite sorry if I failed to send you a promised document. After searching my email and calendar I can find only one forwarded communication between you and our president about the potential to work on a project, and nothing between you and I at all. I spoke with Michael (our president) and he validated pretty much everything that you said about the back-and-forth. This leads me to think that there was just an unfortunate falling through the cracks of the kind so well summarized by Martin in this thread. Please contact me directly and I'd be happy to grab lunch to address any outstanding concerns you may have. I would also like to re-examine working together as it seems this might be a good idea despite the apparent mixup earlier in the year. Hope to hear back from you.
Thanks again to all, and please tell your friends about the opportunities.
Christopher Hart
Technical Director, Le Site
Office (514) 759-1775 ext 113
Cell (514) 651-2789
381 Notre-Dame Ouest #200
Montréal PQ, H2Y 1V2
lesite.ca
facebook.com/lesite.webagency
Christopher Hart
Last call for interviews before switching to craigslist etc. Thanks,
Christopher Hart
Technical Director, Le Site
Office (514) 759-1775 ext 113
Cell (514) 651-2789
381 Notre-Dame Ouest #200
Montréal PQ, H2Y 1V2
lesite.ca
facebook.com/lesite.webagency
