I’m looking for feedback: how would YOU like to use your CV data? Export it as an RSS feed? Export to Word so you can send it to old-fashioned headhunters? If I get enough requests for a feature I’ll add it.

I hammered the app out during this weekend after more than a year(!) of procrastinating on updating my CV. To prevent such further procrastinations, I created this little utility so I can always keep it up to date and shiny.

Subdomain accounts aren’t quite functional yet, but by next week I promise you your very own YOU.cvpow.com. So get the usernames while they’re hot, kids. And check out my own cvPow here: http://www.mariya.biz.

In news of somewhat less importance, I caved in and joined Twitter. I must admit, as dumb as I’ve always thought the idea was, I’m hooked and currently ill with a terrible case of Twitterrhea. Catch me there: http://twitter.com/quodestveritas.

Here’s an addendum: pressure programmers with only one task at a time. For example, if you have a project with three critical tasks and a week to do them, do not assign all three tasks to a single programmer, and give him next week as a deadline. Instead, assign the first task with a one-day deadline, pressure him to get it delivered, and repeat with the other two.

If they are assigned three “critical” tasks at the same time, many programmers will stop being productive. Some are simply so overwhelmed and stressed that productivity drops. Some feel that if “everything is critical”, nothing really is. And if you prod them about task X, they can always say, “but I’m working on Y and Z!” and they’ll probably be right.

But put one item on their plate as “critical” and “due today!”, and they feel motivated to get it done. They’re pressured, yes, but they can actually think about what they’re doing instead of worrying about the two other hovering deadlines. And should they fail to finish that one task, without a good reason, you can reasonably chew them out for missing deadlines.

Of course, it is your job as a project manager to decide on a reasonable implementation timeframe for each task (That’s if you’re familiar with the code; if not, you have to talk to your progammers instead of guessing, and remember to pad the estimates!). It’s also your job to shield the programmers from management, which will otherwise undoubtedly swing by to check in on tasks U, V and W.

You see, the amount of love you feel for a codebase tends to be inversely proportional to the compensation. The reason, when you think about it, is simple. Legacy code has  by definition been around for a while, and if someone is willing to invest into maintaining it, instead of re-writing it from scratch, the software likely a) is rich in features and b) has users. Those are signs that the company has cash.

A good strategy, if you’re a freelance coder, is to have one or two long-term contracts maintaining code for someone who can pay, and take on fun, creative startup projects once in a while. And cheer up! Eventually, the clients with the legacy code will cave in and give the go-ahead to rebuild it all from scratch.

It’s also your fault that I have to explain “why I charge three times more than the guy you found on Craigslist”. Be fair to you and me. Track your hours. Bill accordingly.

How much is fair? I’ll give that some more thought and write a post later.

The fun at this jewelry outfit begins with the domain name: steveclarkweb.com. I admit, it’s hard to find a good one, and steveclark.com is registered by a New Jersey ambulance chaser. But steveclarkweb? You don’t want “jewelry” or “designs” or “creations” to differentiate you from hordes of other Steve Clarks? No: a domain name has a far more important function. Even before people see your site, it should explicitly let them know that it is, in fact, on the web.

The tagline is also very important to this end. Steve Clark describes his site as “The Online Jewelry Showcase of Steven Clark.” There is space for ten words, and online is one of them. Wise choice, my friend, because I was under the false impression that I could jump through the screen and see real jewelry. Thanks for clearing that up!

But you know, I’m still not sure what this page is for. Is it for walking dogs? Will it make me a cheeseburger? Is it an alternative to The Google? I have to read the Basic Overview on the homepage to find out:

This website is designed to allow for shopping one of the finest fashion jewelry lines in the USA. It is meant to be available to my existing customers and to help find new ones.

So even though I still don’t know what kind of jewelry you sell, how much it costs, or even if you sell wholesale or retail, I am lucky to have received much more useful information:

1. I’m in a virtual jewelry showcase, not a real one,
2. this “website” of which you speak is designed to allow for shopping, and
3. I am eligible to partake in this shopping experience if I have shopped here before, or even if I have not.

Truly online web-based internet homepage website marketing at its best!

UPDATE: Don’t get me started on requiring logins to view the catalog. Or that you have to personally message the guy to even get a login. I mean, that’s such lax security… you should have to apply in person to be eligible.

Ah yes, and at long last, this blog has moved from WordPress’s servers to this snazzy domain. Yay!

Hell no. Tihomir Nakov just released a list of dumbass questions Google asks during its job interviews.

They include:

• How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
  
• How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
• You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

If you have ever been interviewed for an IT job, I bet your ass in that blender that you’ve been exposed to this bullshit.

Let me make one thing clear: I am a decent developer. I can do what I claim I can do. Give me a real software problem at an interview and I will pull infrastructure design, algorithms and a DB schema out of my behind. However, when I’m dressed in an itchy wool suit with nylons creeping up the aforementioned behind and I’m worrying about sweating all over the interviewer during our handshake, the last thing I want to do is solve extra credit word problems from a fourth grade math test. Ok?

Would you ask a doctor how many daisies are at the end of a rainbow? No, you’d see if he can tell genital warts from a common cold. Would you ask a mechanical engineer how many lollipops are in a candy store? No, you’d ask him to design a fucking bridge. What is it about IT interviews that makes them so bullshit-permeable?

I don’t think I should get into a long list of dumb Web 2.0 ideas because I would be here till doomsday. But here’s a sampling from Techcrunch’s recent headlines:

• CouchSwap (which has a competitor!): as if social networking applications didn’t have enough creeps, you can now invite them into your home to use your couch! Safe AND Brilliant!
• Amazon Fresh: Not making enough money being the hugest online bookseller ever? Copy a 90’s grocery company that went bankrupt!
• Shelfari: Are you smart??? People will never know unless you show them your bookshelf with Shelfari. Plus, if it weren’t a valuable networking tool would Amazon give Shelfari $1million?! Of course not. So join now!

I mean, why aren’t companies like this going to fail just like they did in the 90’s? Oh, I know! Because Web 2.0 companies are called mystupididea.com or stoopedajdea.com instead of estupididea.com, and because the fonts are twice as big, and because the logos are twice as shiny and categories are now called tags!

Why am I annoyed? Besides liking to point out stupidities, I have another axe to grind. After 2001, the disgraced self-made coders had trouble finding a job. That means people needed a computer science education to have it good in the field, and I got one. When the Web 2.0 craziness started up, a new slew of self-made PHP and RoR script kiddies entered the scene, so when the 2.0 bubble bursts, the IT economy is going to take a serious kick in the behind and there will again be a surplus of coders. Which means that I might very well be out of a job. Thanks, bubble blowers!