Review: X-Team developer hiring process (hint: it sucks)

Continuing on the theme of how job hunting sucks, here’s another example of exactly what I’m talking about: X-Team International.

No, I’d never heard of them before either.

I found X Team through this job posting on Authentic Jobs.  It sounded like a good fit, so I applied, including a brief message why I thought I’d be a good fit.  Like you do.

Continue reading Review: X-Team developer hiring process (hint: it sucks)

Review: Toptal hiring process

I did it!  I successfully passed the grueling Toptal hiring process, and am now a Toptal-er.  The process of making it into the top 3%, however, definitely wasn’t easy.

There are already a bunch of blog posts out there about different people’s experiences (good or bad) with the Toptal hiring process.  Not surprisingly those that passed tend to have really good reviews of it, and those who failed… well, not so much.  I’d like to add my voice to the chorus in as balanced a tone as I can.

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Job hunting sucks – here’s a great example why

A few months ago, I decided I’d had enough of my 19-year-old CTO-of-a-boss chewing me out for not adding enough line breaks in my code, and for not being “verbooose” enough (rhymed with “caboose” the way he said it) in my commit descriptions.  Yeah.  So I embarked on the only other thing worse than working for a 19-year-old spoiled twat — job hunting.

Continue reading Job hunting sucks – here’s a great example why

Welcome to my new blog

Hi, I’m PROGRAMMER BEAR.  I like fishing, long walks in the forest, and computer programming.

I’m a web developer by day, so I’ll be talking about topics ranging from web technologies to more technical programming things, general work/life issues, and anything else that seems interesting to me.

Hopefully something I say here will someday prove useful to somebody.  That’s nice to think about anyway.