perldiver

To all of those people who have been kind enough to be my friends over the years, and who may be filling quite reasonably hurt / abandoned / pissed / puzzled / something at the fact that I've been completely non-responsive for over a month now: I apologize.

I'm not dead, I'm just at a new job. Details below, but first:

We're hiring senior PHP developers! Optimal candidate has:

• Five years experience of professional PHP programming
• Fluency in at least one computer language aside from PHP (Perl would be good),
  
• Reasonable proficiency in SQL--you don't need to be a guru, but you better be able to explain the differences between the various kinds of JOINs.  (We're a Postgres shop, for the record.)
• Has a solid understanding of computer science fundamentals (algorithms, data structures, etc)
• A good grounding in Unix.  Again, you don't need to be a guru, but you need to be able to use the command line to do basic things like chmod, chown, apache_ctl, pg_ctl, etc.
• Is in the New York tri-state area.  We're going to want you to put in some face-time at the beginning, although once you've established yourself and gotten up to speed, telecommuting is an option.
• Is available to start immediately--like, Monday 3/10/2008.  The work we need done is due at the end of March; we need you right now, not in two weeks.  That said, if you meet the other requirements but can't start for a while, apply anyway--we'll still need you in the future.
  

Pay will be appropriate for a senior person who is dealing with New York cost of living...regardless of whether you are actually living here or telecommuting.


So, details of my job for friends and family:

I'm the Director of Programming at Pica9, a marketing automation company with a client list out of the Fortune 100 (names like Dell, Hilton, Marriott, Farmers, Allstate, etc).  The company has been around for about 7 years and, in my opinion, is about to 'cross the chasm"--a new team of very high-powered, very effective managers and Board of Directors members has been brought on, the infrastructure and technology are moving out of the "startup" phase and into the "grown up" phase, there are deep questions being asked about how to optimize the business model--not just the product, but the business model itself--and there is significant interest from multiple VCs.  If we make our numbers for the quarter (which involves getting all the work currently in house done on time; see above-mentioned need for new hires), there will be bonuses for everyone in the company and the VCs are very likely to hand us $5-10 million on an acceptable term sheet.  If we miss the quarter, we'll probably still get the money, but we'll get less and it will have more stringent terms.  Either way, we're going to get a major infusion of capital very soon, which we're going to use to staff up and finish growing out our new technology.  This is a really good time to get onboard, because we're strapping on a rocket and the countdown is running.

As DoP, I'm supposed to run the programming team and make sure that everything gets done on time.  I report directly to the VP of Technology, who is a great guy and a very effective boss.  He was kind enough to look at the project list when I got here and say "Tell you what, you take the three big ones and deal with those--I'll deal with the 20+ little ones.  That'll give you a fighting chance to get your head around things before getting nibbled to death by ducks."  (That's the meaning, but not a direct quote--he's Canadian, so there were more "eh"s in there.)

I really like pretty much everyone I work with, and I've very impressed with some of the programmers who report to me--they are inexperienced (i.e., the senior guy on the team has about 1.5 years of professional programming experience) but they are willing to work hard, they are eager to learn new things, they learn fast, they ask questions when they don't know things, and they do damn good work considering their lack of experience.

Given all of the above, I'm working my butt off...I've been doing 12-14 hours a day every weekday and then putting in time on the weekends too.  Honestly, I'm loving it.

So that's why I've been dark for the last six or seven weeks.  Sorry it took me so long to get around to informing everyone.

--Dks