Anyone hiring at the moment?

[James Laver]

On 22 Sep 2009, at 09:05, Richard Foley wrote:

> What, relocate to Amsterdam, whatever for?  Without investigation,  
> I'd be
> prepared to bet that booking.com does most of it's "booking" online,
> remotely.  So almost the entire client base is remote, all  
> transactions
> completed online, it's entire business model is remote.  Except the
> workers...

Having been to interview at booking and been offered the job, I very  
nearly took it. It seemed like a wonderful place to work, with people  
who knew what they were doing.

> Mostly, I come in to work in Rotterdam every other week to
> show my face so that the project managers can see that I appear to be
> working.  I'm being a bit unfair to my current employer here,  
> because I CAN
> work remotely half the time, but this doesn't excuse my still having  
> to sit
> at my desk like a bozo the other half of the time.  That the work is  
> still
> completed, more efficiently and with milestones reached, when I am  
> not in the
> office does not seem to register with most managers, as they appear  
> to need
> to see head counts sitting at desks rather than having work  
> completed on
> schedule.  It's not a results driven industry we're working in, it's  
> a people
> counting and mini-empire building industry.  Sigh...

Only at one company was I able to work from home and that was only  
very occasionally. It suffered the same breathing-down-necks situation  
you describe, and that certainly didn't get code written any faster.

Short answer is that interview is your time to evaluate the company as  
well as for them to evaluate you. If you're having an interview at  
9am, how many people are in (flexi-time)? How often do people seem to  
get up to make coffee (I contracted at a place where permies were  
afraid to make coffee for fear of raising the boss's ire)? Is the  
office horribly open plan and nasty if you have to work on site? Do  
the managers actually seem to have clue or are they going to piss you  
off? Generally do you get a gut feeling about the company?

If it doesn't feel right, just say no. I've dodged more a few bullets  
because of this (and friends who've wound up taking those bullets have  
said how much it sucks).

--James