[LA.pm] contrasting London and LA

[Todd Cranston-Cuebas]

Nicholas,

As an organization, Ticketmaster has supported the growth of engineers. We
have a number of positions where people who are not "full-fledged" engineers
can join the organization and get exposure to our development teams, QA
groups, operations teams, etc. For instance, we have roles in our
application support group where you get a birds-eye view of the systems and
teams that come together to essentially become Ticketmaster.com. In this
role, the app support engineer can build their perl skills writing utilities
for their team while seeing how a very large, enterprise-wide system works.
A junior engineer has to be willing to spend some time in this role to learn
and grow and understand that they will not be heads down coding all day.
They will be learning and supporting a mission-critical application.

On the other hand, we do also bring in very bright junior engineers directly
into our engineering teams. Typically, these associate-level engineers are
really quite exceptional in terms of their drive, ambition, love of the
technology as a whole, etc., but clearly may lack real-world work
experience, skills, and knowledge. Basically, I do my best to keep my eyes
out for talent that can be groomed into a solid engineer. Drive, ambition,
and a proven ability to "create" through either open-source projects or even
part-time employment during school, all help. In our case, being solid in
perl is really a major plus. I can't always make these roles available, but
we do our best to accommodate the available market (i.e., if someone is
available with these basic traits, we'll do our best to make a role
available).

Todd

> -----Original Message-----
> From: losangeles-pm-bounces+tcc=ticketmaster.com at pm.org 
> [mailto:losangeles-pm-bounces+tcc=ticketmaster.com at pm.org] On 
> Behalf Of Nicholas Clark
> Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 10:46 AM
> To: Duong Vu
> Cc: losangeles-pm at pm.org
> Subject: Re: [LA.pm] contrasting London and LA
> 
> I read this:
> 
> > On 8/15/06, Eric Gradman <ehgrad at yahoo-inc.com> wrote:
> 
> > > that he was learning Java.  I asked him why, and he 
> explained that 
> > > former colleagues at Idealab had complained that due to 
> the extreme 
> > > difficulty of finding competent Perl programmers, they were 
> > > increasingly starting new development projects in Java.  My jaw 
> > > dropped, and I spent the rest of the interview in shock.
> 
> And was about to write this very reply:
> 
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 10:32:53AM -0700, Duong Vu wrote:
> > One of the things I've observe in our industry, and not 
> just the Perl 
> > market, is that everyone wants seasoned veterans. No one 
> seems to be 
> > willing to hire junior anything in IT anymore.
> > 
> > In order for there more competent Perl developers with experience, 
> > Perl companies need to be willing to hire and train young 
> undeveloped 
> > talents. Young kids out of college will commit themselves 
> to what ever 
> > pays the bills more often than what suites their personal 
> interests or 
> > likes. And very often, these kids won't know what they like yet.
> > Java/.Net with its many more  jobs will be much more attractive to 
> > them.
> > 
> > In order for there to be more Perl shops, there need to be 
> more Perl 
> > developers. And if we want more Perl developers, we need to 
> recruit, 
> > train, and give them enough experiences so they are desirable.
> 
> (So now I'm guilty of the Usenet sin not trimming any of it)
> 
> The only thing I can add is that nowhere I've worked has had 
> any sort of process of mentoring junior perl programmers into 
> competent, senior perl programmers. Every firm seems to 
> expect to hire senior people straight out, which isn't 
> sustainable, as it gives no consideration to who is going to 
> train the next iteration.
> 
> This sort of naive policy *does* work with C, C++ or Java 
> programmers (for example, and for accountants, for that 
> matter), because there are degree courses churning them out, 
> and there are large consulting firms that recruit smart young 
> things straight out of university and indoctrinate them into 
> their way of doing things. Although based on a straw poll of 
> one at a previous job, whilst the C++ programmer we hired 
> ex-Logica was competent, he didn't have anywhere near the 
> breadth of knowledge that the self taught open source hacking 
> C++ programmer knew. So I'm not convinced that these mass 
> production factories are the answer either.
> 
> So, next question, how many recruiters/hiring managers on 
> this list are looking to recruit smart juniors and mentor them up?
> 
> Nicholas Clark
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