Author: admin

About one month ago (okay, actually a month and half — I’ve been busy) I was hired to be part of the Toptal network.  (You can read about my hiring experience here.)  So far the experience has, overall, been awesome.  But like any job there are pros and cons.

Continue reading Toptal: 1 Month Later (and counting…)

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)

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.

Continue reading Review: Toptal hiring process

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