Re: [Rails] Need a good RoR developer

[Ryan Bigg]

Time for another Job Advertisement Dissection!

Hi, I'm looking for qualified Ruby on Rails developers to work on a
client web portal project in Midtown Manhattan for a large financial
research company.

"A large financial research company". Would it, by any chance, have a name? It's incredibly smart (right up there with Einstein, Hawking & Co.) to name the company you're advertising for! Also this helps people to go "Oh look! A reputable company!" or the other way which we won't talk about :)

Ruby / Ruby on Rails developer with strong object oriented programming
background. Good understanding of model driven architecture, MVC, RDBS
and data modeling.

No need to repeat yourself three times! "Strong object oriented programming background" and MVC comes standard with Ruby on Rails.

 

- BS. in Computer Science (or closely related field)

Personally I don't see why people want a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or <insert other complicated degree here>. What does this prove? That they have the money to do a course that probably didn't teach them a single thing about Ruby on Rails? That they have large amounts of money to throw around and, instead of spending it on that nice Audi A6 they saw a few weeks ago.
 

- 1+ years of Ruby on Rails or 2+ years predominantly using the Ruby
language

It's a bit hard to use Ruby on Rails without using Ruby! Here you repeat your need for a Ruby on Rails developer for a 4th time.

- Demonstrated experience/knowledge building high-volume and customer
facing database-driven web applications.

Buzzwords! *generates mental image of PHB*

Web applications is a favourite of mine. I'd still prefer to call them "web sites", but I'm just old school.
  

- Experience building n-tier Internet applications in Ruby on Rails

Repeated for a 5th time, the need of a Ruby on Rails developer is.

- Strong object-oriented design and development skills

And 6th!

- Good understanding of test-driven development methodology

Should come standard with any half-decent Ruby on Rails developer. If they aren't writing tests they are a fraud!
 

- Thorough knowledge of relational databases, schema design and
implementation, and SQL query design.

Again, any half-decent Ruby on Rails developer knows enough of this to be competent. SQL query design MAY come in handy, but in 99.9% of times Rails can do it for you.

- Hands on experience with Javascript, AJAX, HTTP, XHTML and Web
Services using both SOAP and REST.

Javascript IS Ajax! God. HTTP is a protocol and real programmers don't interact with it much at all. XHTML should, again (!), come standard. Ruby on Rails follows more of a REST structure, having knowledge of SOAP is good and all, but REST is where Ruby on Rails is at.

- Good ability to translate requirements and functional specifications
into working applications with minimum guidance.

"We tell you to do something, you just go away and do it without us having to tell you again." does a better job I believe. Yes, it's more blunt, but people in today's world need blunt wording to get it into their heads.
 

- Good communication skills and ability to interface with business
users

I speak English. I've competently demonstrated that I know English enough to read your posts and interpret it into a way that I can understand, even though English is my primary language, some people massacre it enough to make me wish it wasn't, although other people using other languages probably do the same to theirs. Prime examples of this include replacing common words such as "you", "are", "to/too", "great" with "u", "r", "2" and "gr8" respectively.

I must make fun of the use of the word "interface". There are 23 synonyms for this word, and you happened to use "interface". Wouldn't "work with" or just "interact" be better wording? "Business users" are not robots, yet. We have no method of interfacing with them other than written/verbal communicating. Sticking a USB cable into a "business user" will probably land you in a large court case. Other words include (thanks to thesaurus.reference.com):

collaborate, combine, connect, contact, cooperate, interface, interplay, interreact, join, merge, mesh, network, reach out, relate, touch, touch base*, unite

all linked for your convenience (and my laziness, direct copy+paste)
 

Majority of work must be done on site at client.

Which is in Manhattan... too bad you didn't specify what company for. We'll just have to hop around Manhattan looking for a "large financial company". I'm sure there can't be too many of those in New York.
 

   * Compensation: Negotiable: Hourly, daily or fixed price

You mean "Pay rate" right? When I see the word "compensation" I think of it like some fund established to pay victims of a horrible incident.

   * This is a contract job.

How long? Any chance of extension?

   * Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job
poster.

My principal was an asshat. I'm sure you wouldn't want to speak with him. Even the teachers thought he was. (I'm assuming you mean the headmaster, and yes, I'm joking)
 

   * Please, no phone calls about this job!

Damn! I was just about to call you on the number you liste... oh wait! You never listed a number! I guess it was left out along with the description of the company too! 

And I'm done. See you next job advertisement post.

--
Ryan Bigg
http://www.frozenplague.net
Feel free to add me to MSN and/or GTalk as this email.

[Ryan Bigg]

Wow this looks almost IDENTICAL to the OTHER large financial company in Manhattan's job posting!

http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/browse_thread/thread/2948802cc56e6de7

Amazing!

[kopf1988]

I'm confused about that last part, lol.

Anybody near Manhatten? This guy NEEDS a programmer bad... wait, I
mean he needs a bad programmer. What he really needs is somebody with
an english major.

-RYan
http://www.ryankopf.com

On Jan 17, 10:41 pm, "Ryan Bigg" <radarliste...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Wow this looks almost IDENTICAL to the OTHER large financial company in
> Manhattan's job posting!
>

> http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/browse_thread/thread/...
>
> Amazing!

[MohsinHijazee]

Great Dissection!
Here, I had a chance of looking at job, they wanted a guy with five
years of experience handing Windows XP while the XP itself was
released just 2 years ago!

On Jan 18, 9:47 am, kopf1988 <kopf1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm confused about that last part, lol.
>
> Anybody near Manhatten? This guy NEEDS a programmer bad... wait, I
> mean he needs a bad programmer. What he really needs is somebody with
> an english major.
>

> -RYanhttp://www.ryankopf.com

[Keynan Pratt]

Hiring manager or not get some one with some experience to draft the
add. Your just embarrassing yourself.

Most of this community is not in Manhattan so If you can set things up
so we can telecommute you might get a couple resumes.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

[Keynan Pratt]

*you're

you saw nothing

[manu.sharma]

Haa haaa haa ahaaa haaaa....this was superb!


On Jan 18, 12:03 pm, Keynan Pratt <rails-mailing-l...@andreas-s.net>
wrote:

[John Ivanoff]

When an employer looks for a ROR developer, gets a name and decides to
look on the web to see how this person has contributed to the ROR
community, I'm sure these posts will reflect well.

Offering a way to write a job description might have been a better
response.

John

[Ryan Bigg]

If and when I establish my own company I will be surely doing a
background check on the people whom I'm hiring. I'll be looking for
people with a sense of humour, and the ability to actually apply
themselves to a task. If somebody would like to hire me (please do!
I'm out of a job as of next week, contract expiry and so on) they may
do so, I will probably even find a way to get myself there.

If people post vague job advertisements on here then sure I'm going to
point out the fallacies of it! I am also offering a way to write a job
description by pointing out the mistakes. In this case such things as
the following can be improved:

1) Naming the company
2) Providing an address less vague than "Manhattan"
3) Describing what tasks will be undertaken.

My job, at current, is not to tell people how to write job
advertisements. This would be a fantastic job! I am a programmer, a
satirist and I'd like to think I contribute a large portion of my time
to this community, 638 posts in the last two months can't be bad!

If you'd like me to describe how to write a job advertisement (and
it's approaching 1am here), here goes:

1) Look at other job advertisements. Gaze upon their cookie cutter
format, using buzzwords and other useless information.
2) Don't be like them. Make your own. I don't care if they're a 5000+
employee company. They suck.
3) Be unique. Put humour in it if you can. Make people remember your
advertisement.
4) Don't repeat yourself! If I cared about a word in the job
advertisement it would've stood out and I would've remembered it.

Please take what I wrote in my previous post as humour.

[AndyV]

@John, I couldn't agree more. It's almost fruitless to respond to
each of the points, but here are some of the main ones:

* Why omit the company name?
Because there are contract whores who will be more interested in the
Gold Plate than the actual work to be done. The absolute insistence
here on getting a company name certainly reflects that. By avoiding
the name the poster actually will get people who are interested in
_doing the work_. The more you advance in your career the more that
you'll recognize that the type of work that you do is generally more
important than the name on the check you receive (well, the one
besides yours anyway).

* RoR = OOP, MVC?
Yes, Rails is an Object oriented, MVC framework, but that does not
mean that every RoR hack is very good at OOP or MVC. For example, the
Google group post that I followed to your blog and eventually here did
a great job... of mixing business logic into the controller. THAT IS
NOT MVC. The previous one explained how to set a bit ("default") on
one object in a collection. Simple enough, but what the recommended
solution did not recognize was that the action was really an action
that dealt with the collection and that setting that 'default'
attribute on one object in the collection was just a mechanical means
to an end. That was poor OOP. Physician, heal thyself.

* 2+ yrs of Ruby or 1+ yrs Ruby on Rails
This is one of the worst offenses in this "insightful" dissection.
The implication is that there are developers in the world whose
primary work has been in Ruby but with absolutely no use of Rails.
For example, there are several GUI frameworks that make cross-platform
desktop development possible in Ruby. A friend of mine has written
some beautiful code that does very efficient bitmap processing as a
command line utility. Again, no Rails but plenty of beautiful Ruby.
What the Rails community in general should recognize, as this
financial firm in Manhattan has, is that a solid knowledge of Ruby is
*more* important that Rails experience. That is, a great Ruby
programmer with no Rails experience will be much more productive than
a Rails hack with no real Ruby knowledge. You might consider these
broader implications before pontificating.

* Javascript is AJAX!
No, it's not. As elsewhere you seem to fail to recognize that it's an
instance in a collection. AJAX is Javascript. The relationship is
the other way around. AJAX is a very specific use of Javascript and
it you simply rely on the Rails helpers (I suspect that you do) then
you have a great deal to learn.

[kopf1988]

> * 2+ yrs of Ruby or 1+ yrs Ruby on Rails
> This is one of the worst offenses in this "insightful" dissection.

I think I've found my new best friend, lol. I used to use Perl for all
my cgi applications, and I shudder to think of the thought these days.
Then, though, I found Ruby and switched all my combobulated apps to
the language and have been much more productive ever since. I got
absolutely NO help, though, because everyone asked "WHY NOT USE
RAILS???" Ruby is a fantastic language in and of itself, and should be
appreciated as such. 1+ Ruby experience or 2+ Rails experience is more
appropriate. Rails is more complicated if your jumping in from
nowhere, but if you know Ruby it is a breeze (emphasis on the ease).

-Ryan

> > > > Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Rick DeNatale]

On 1/30/08, AndyV <ar...@cornell.edu> wrote:

> * Why omit the company name?
> Because there are contract whores who will be more interested in the
> Gold Plate than the actual work to be done.

More likely that the job posting is from a head hunter who is trying
to keep prospective respondents from bypassing them and their
commission.

And often when two job postings look suspiciously familiar it's
because they are from two different head hunters competing to fill the
same job for the same client.

--
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/

[Ryan Bigg]

On Jan 31, 2008 5:52 AM, AndyV <ar...@cornell.edu> wrote:

@John, I couldn't agree more.  It's almost fruitless to respond to
each of the points, but here are some of the main ones:

* Why omit the company name?
Because there are contract whores who will be more interested in the
Gold Plate than the actual work to be done.  The absolute insistence
here on getting a company name certainly reflects that.  By avoiding
the name the poster actually will get people who are interested in
_doing the work_.  The more you advance in your career the more that
you'll recognize that the type of work that you do is generally more
important than the name on the check you receive (well, the one
besides yours anyway).

I want to know what kind of company I'm working for. If a company name is given to me and I know that they treat their employees like crap then I don't want to work for them.

* RoR = OOP, MVC?
Yes, Rails is an Object oriented, MVC framework, but that does not
mean that every RoR hack is very good at OOP or MVC.  For example, the
Google group post that I followed to your blog and eventually here did
a great job... of mixing business logic into the controller.  THAT IS
NOT MVC.  The previous one explained how to set a bit ("default") on
one object in a collection.  Simple enough, but what the recommended
solution did not recognize was that the action was really an action
that dealt with the collection and that setting that 'default'
attribute on one object in the collection was just a mechanical means
to an end.  That was poor OOP.  Physician, heal thyself.

And I suppose you're infallible? What I suggested was to the best of my knowledge and I sometimes make mistakes. How would you do it?

* 2+ yrs of Ruby or 1+ yrs Ruby on Rails
This is one of the worst offenses in this "insightful" dissection.

Awesome!

The implication is that there are developers in the world whose
primary work has been in Ruby but with absolutely no use of Rails.
For example, there are several GUI frameworks that make cross-platform
desktop development possible in Ruby.  A friend of mine has written
some beautiful code that does very efficient bitmap processing as a
command line utility.  Again, no Rails but plenty of beautiful Ruby.
What the Rails community in general should recognize, as this
financial firm in Manhattan has, is that a solid knowledge of Ruby is
*more* important that Rails experience.  That is, a great Ruby
programmer with no Rails experience will be much more productive than
a Rails hack with no real Ruby knowledge.  You might consider these
broader implications before pontificating.

Triple word score for pontificating there.

The point was making was that somebody with Rails experience cannot have Rails experience without having at least some Ruby experience. Yes, they may not be versed in the "Ways of the Ruby" as well as a straight-out Ruby developer, but they should know their way around these things.

* Javascript is AJAX!
No, it's not.  As elsewhere you seem to fail to recognize that it's an
instance in a collection.

Zuh?
 

 AJAX is Javascript. The relationship is
the other way around.

Um, right... that's what I mean, AJAX is written in Javascript.

 AJAX is a very specific use of Javascript and
it you simply rely on the Rails helpers (I suspect that you do) then
you have a great deal to learn.

Which rails helpers? link_to_remote and so on? These are much easier to type than Ajax.Request('/some/page', { :asynchronous => true, :yada => yada })

[AndyV]

> I want to know what kind of company I'm working for. If a company name is
> given to me and I know that they treat their employees like crap then I
> don't want to work for them.

That's the point of an interview. Good luck landing one.

> And I suppose you're infallible? What I suggested was to the best of my
> knowledge and I sometimes make mistakes. How would you do it?

I am far, far from infallible. In this over-the-top dissection,
however, you hold yourself as something more than the "average"
developer. You speak to these points with such an air of superiority
that you should have made the suggestion. It's been a major point of
discussion since Koz and Jamis talked about it (and later blogged
about it) at last year's RailsConf.

> The point was making was that somebody with Rails experience cannot have
> Rails experience without having at least some Ruby experience. Yes, they may
> not be versed in the "Ways of the Ruby" as well as a straight-out Ruby
> developer, but they should know their way around these things.

I completely understand your point, but you belittle the job listing
by saying "Here you repeat your need for a Ruby on Rails developer for
a 4th time." No, they did not. They really suggested they needed a
Ruby programmer (first) who may have experience with Rails (second).
You completely ignore the logic behind this.

> Which rails helpers? link_to_remote and so on? These are much easier to type
> than Ajax.Request('/some/page', { :asynchronous => true, :yada => yada })

Yes, that's much simpler to write. But there is also a great deal of
power behind javascript in it's own right, and some situations in
which you don't have the helpers around to write code for you. That
just might be why they've included a who directory for javascripts and
even give you an application.js for collecting frequently used js.
Nah, too obvious. Use the helpers.

[AndyV]

I got into the party with Rails, but found Black's "Ruby for Rails"
very early. Amazing book. Now it's really the beauty and power of
Ruby that makes Rails so much fun with which to work.

Planning on going to RailsConf?

> > > > > Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.-Hide quoted text -