Today...

[elfs]

Horse and Carriage

Today was a heck of day. I had two interviews, one with a recruiter and one for which I had to sign an NDA. The recruiter strongly recommended that I cut down on the confusion by crafting two resumes, one for my L33t Javascript Skillz, the other for the more staid middle-tier, and if I didn't want to keep getting server and system jobs I should take the C/C++ references off entirely.

She also recommended I craft an elevator pitch. "I'm a middle-tier application server developer who can use the modern frameworks-- Rails, Django, PHP-- to marshall your data into a web-ready form, and then I use HTML, CSS, and Javascript to present that data to clients in an attractive, accessible, and functional website." Something like that.

But being downtown for several hours gave me a chance to visit the beloved Pike Place Market, and listen to people on the radio babble about how we used to be the town of Doc Maynard and Ivar Haglund, but, y'know, it's time to move on. Well, fuck that. I like Seattle the way it is. Especially now, when the weather was beautiful, even if I was sweating in my corporate-ready uniform of sport coat and casual shirt. No tie, blessed be. I love Seattle. The brick facades and horse-drawn carriages, and horse cops, give you a chance to believe you're living in a place that is still civilized enough to have the resources for such frivolity.

Man fixes bus mirror

It's not always perfect here. The metro buses have these new mirrors that hang out over the curb when the bus brushes up against the cement, and this one obviously had a close encounter with a lamp post. I keep imagining what would have happened if that had connected with someone's head. I can't help but wonder if that's already happened.

And I also had an idea for an awful, awful joke. I might show it to you.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Show us the joke!

[tamino.livejournal.com]

I feel a little sheepish commenting, because I realize that my company never got back to you. I'm sorry about that. (I think they just couldn't stomach the thought of someone telecommuting from Seattle. Which is a shame, because we really do need someone with exactly your skill set.)

Your elevator pitch moved me to comment because... what the hell does any of that even *mean*? If someone told me they were a "middle-tier application server developer" I would look at the buzzword density and take that as proof positive that they were full of shit. Which you are definitely not.

If I were to write an elevator pitch for you it would go something like this: "I'm a software engineer with a specialty in web applications. I use off-the-shelf frameworks like Django and Rails to speed up development time and end up with a maintainable product, but I also have the computer science background to understand *why* things work instead of just *that* they work. If there's a performance bottleneck, I'll be able to fix it. If an off-the-shelf widget isn't working precisely the way *you* want it to, I'll build a better one for you. I bring to the table fifteen years of experience writing solid, reliable code, both in and out of the web."

YMMV. That was just my reaction. :-) Good luck, regardless -- I hope you end up with a pitch that gets results.