051 JSJ Finding a Job

Panel AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:02 - Panelist employment backgrounds 04:34 - Programming job market Networking 06:31 - How to get a job doing what you like BetterServers Skunkworks project 09:36 - Qualifications 11:40 - How you find jobs Being active in online and offline communities Mailing list advertisement Recruiters and job boards 15:51 - Resumes 19:27 - Interviews “I don’t know.” Pairing 24:50 - Company fit 095 RR People and Team Dynamics with Joe O’Brien Contract to hire work 30:47 - What makes somewhere a good place to work? Autonomy 40:32 - Freelancing The Ruby Freelancers Show Picks Psych Season 7 (AJ) The Fradio - MediaBox (AJ) Das Keyboard Model S Ultimate Mechanical Keyboard (Jamison) 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal by Dan Miller (Chuck) No More Mondays: Fire Yourself -- and Other Revolutionary Ways to Discover Your True Calling at Work by Dan Miller (Chuck) 48 Days Podcast (Chuck) From the Dust (AJ) Next Week Node.js 0.10 Release with Isaac Schlueter Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at  Bluebox.net.] [This episode is sponsored by Component One, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to Wijmo.com and check them out.] CHUCK:  Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 51 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel, we have AJ O’Neal. AJ:  Yo! Yo! Yo! Chuck, did you realize that this is like our anniversary? CHUCK:  Our anniversary was in January actually. Though, we missed a handful of episodes. Otherwise, it would be. Yeah. AJ:  Yeah, whatever. I don’t know whether or not I'm alive. I don’t know when our anniversary is. I don’t know nothing. CHUCK:  [Laughs] We also have Jamison Dance. JAMISON:  Hey guys! CHUCK:  I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. And this week, we’re going to be talking about finding a job. I'm a little curious. AJ, you're freelance now, aren’t you? AJ:  Yeah, kind of. CHUCK:  Kind of. AJ:  Mostly, I'm just working on projects that I've been wanting to work on. I haven't actually sought out a lot of work. CHUCK:  Oh, okay. And Jamison is empris -- or employed. JAMISON:  [Laughs] Or happily employed. CHUCK:  I'm freelance as well, been a freelance for a few years now. So, and I know that Tim went freelance. I don’t know if that stuck or not. It sounded like it has, at least, until he decides he wants to be somewhere else. JAMISON:  Merrick and Joe are both employed though. CHUCK:  Yeah. They both work at Domo. JAMISON:  They're like half and half, I guess, now. CHUCK:  So, how many places have you guys worked at as programmers? AJ:  I just worked at BYU and SpotterRF. JAMISON:  I have worked at four places. But one of them, I did PHP and Drupal. I don’t know if I could count that as a programmer then. CHUCK:  [Laughs] You plucked out the bad memories. JAMISON:  Yeah. Well, it was great for the time. It was [inaudible]. CHUCK:  Yeah. I did IT at BYU. I didn’t ever actually work for them as a programmer. And then, I ran tech support at Mozy and I did programming there but it wasn’t part of my job description. My job description was to run the Tech Support Department. So, people would call in with problems with Mozy and we would help fix them. But we needed an Issue Management System, our ticketing system, whatever you want to call it. And we also needed some kind of knowledge base. And the company really didn’t want to spring for it. So, I wound up building it. AJ:  Cool! [Chuckles] CHUCK:  And that’s kind of how I made the transition into programming because after working on that for a while,