Bonkers

[dan]

Nicholas Clark wrote:
> On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 01:43:35PM +0100, Dirk Koopman wrote:
>> I believe that there is a 
>> very simple explanation:-
>>
>> Not enough money is being offered.

> Er, I don't feel that that actually answers the question in the text of mine
> that you quoted. It explains why no-one is filling these vacancies, but:
> 
> Why aren't the people on this list who work for firms making any effort
> to mention that they have vacancies? After all, there is a london.pm
> jobs list for that very purpose...

Was that an actual question or a rhetorical question?  I would assume 
"because a mention could be construed as a recommendation", and who'd 
recommend a job at a company that they considered didn't sufficiently 
value them as an employee?

Yes, I know there's more to "value" than the net pay alone (others have 
made that point too), but it's not a bad proxy and I think a lot of 
people probably say "not enough money" as a shorthand for "not enough 
money to put up with this shit".

Which, er, dunno, was that the answer you were expecting?

>> However, the flip side of this is that they will move away from perl 
>> (too expensive, no workers) and go and find some other language which is 
>> more popular which has lots of cheap, young and enthusiastic workers.
> 
> If the employers can get the job done in this way for the same or less cost,
> then they are not making a mistake by making this transition.

As "seen it all before" jaded curmudgeons we are presumably expected to 
protest that this transition is akin to outsourcing your phone support 
to a call centre in Bangalore - the kind of decision that looks good on 
paper, but will come back and bite you later.  I suspect however that 
it's not nearly that bad and may not even be measurable if you go 
*looking* for it - "cheap young and enthusiastic" will be impressed 
enough by getting the occasional pizza for their unpaid and unlogged 
overtime  that they will haul themselves out of the tar pits and 
development deadends their lack of experience creates without any 
significant ill-effect on the company.



-dan