Perl Skills Test

[Joel Bernstein]

On 27 September 2011 17:44, David Cantrell <david at cantrell.org.uk> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 03:08:13PM +0100, David Dorward wrote:
> > On 27 Sep 2011, at 14:51, Jones, Christopher wrote:
> > > PS I've since improved my blagging skills, would be happy with less
> money, and might spot a few more problems with the script than I did 4 years
> ago. Just in case Auntie is still hiring.....
> > They are, I got double spammed by jobstheword about a BBC job this
> morning.
>
> Auntie is ALWAYS looking for perl people.  ALWAYS.
>

Thing is, they only seem to pay market rates for contractors. I only ever
see "Grade 7D" permanent Perl jobs advertised, though. According to a recent
FOI request, Grade 7 on Day rate conditions translates to a maximum of about
£45k. Which doesn't seem to be in line with what the larger London Perl
employers offer for experienced staff. When I've asked BBC recruiters about
this, they say stuff like "well no, grade 8 programmers would be 'Lead
Developer' positions and those are much rarer and tend to be internally
promoted" which doesn't bode well.

Send CVs to whoever the hell you know here, and they'll get passed
> around to whichever group is hiring that week.


Is it actually worth doing this for anybody who has any expectation of not
taking a pay cut?

There's a recent FOI request (with pay grade <-> salary band chart) here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/foi/classes/disclosure_logs/rfi20110278_pay_scales_lowest_paid_staff.pdf

Maybe I've got this wrong, but I don't much like the idea of applying for a
permanent job with little scope to negotiate the rate regardless of skills
and experience, where (conventionally, without FOI requests) I don't know
(until I get the inevitable low-ball offer) if it's even worth my time
applying... I want to be wrong about this, please explain it to me?

/joel