[LRUG] What do people want to do with their career?

[Sidu Ponnappa]

> All of which pretty much reduce the posting "to we want a code monkey of type Foo with skills x, y and z"

Agreed, hence our approach: http://c42.in/careers

> My main approach was to try to take on nice people who were passionate about 'doing it right' even if they didn't know > how to do it right yet, and then spend time training them on the languages and tools.

The hard part IMO is maintaining the financial buffers to tide you
over periods when there are folks learning but not generating revenue.

Best,
Sidu Ponnappa.
http://twitter.com/ponnappa


On 22 March 2012 13:55, Chris Parsons <chris.p at rsons.org> wrote:
>
> On 22 Mar 2012, at 06:47, Anthony Green wrote:
>
> I'm continually disappointed by the quality of the recruitment offerings.
> All of which pretty much reduce the posting "to we want a code monkey of
> type Foo with skills x, y and z"
>
> I always admired Eden and Chris Parson's holistic belief when taking on
> staff. For BBC Future Media, the security of our income model means there's
> occasionally room for individuals who share those same values to try and
> emulate Chris' approach.
>
> Is it economic uncertainty that means companies don't follow the Eden way or
> just a lack of maturity in our industry?
>
>
> Well, Eden closed :) mostly through taking on too much fixed cost and (with
> hindsight) not having a London presence...
>
> However, even if I'd known we'd shut I wouldn't have compromised my
> recruitment approach - as an agency (and indeed any co) it's your absolute
> lifeblood.
>
> My main approach was to try to take on nice people who were passionate about
> 'doing it right' even if they didn't know how to do it right yet, and then
> spend time training them on the languages and tools. I only ever hired a
> couple of people as Rubyists - most were PHP or Java people when I took them
> on. I could never have afforded to take those who were already total experts
> - I only took on more senior staff after we were a certain size.
>
> I'm not in a position to hire now on my own behalf, but when asked by others
> for advice, I still recommend taking this sort of long term approach to
> people. If you want to be all short term with people, hire contractors.
>
> Chris
>
> --
> Chris Parsons
> chris.p at rsons.org
> http://twitter.com/chrismdp
> http://pa.rsons.org
>
>
>
>
>
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