Work experience wise she's done 3-1/2 years of software development. But her first job used PowerBuilder which is a 4th Generation Language (4GL). I forget how the various programming language generations are defined. 3GL is basically C, C++, Java and their contemporaries. Go in there and edit code and compile and run. 4GL for the most part are point-and-click, drag-and-drop components and program the components. Lots of writing snippets of code in various GUI objects. Visual Basic, Oracle Developer 2000 and a few others are all 4GLs. Admittedly, it's a lot easier to develop applications in 4GLs, but the code tends to be bigger, slower, and sort of generic looking. And it doesn't prove that you can really program.

Her other job was developing a "web-based feedback engine" which is sort of a fancy way of saying surveys. Java Servlet, Javascript and HTML (and those last two don't count as far as I'm concerned). A Java application using AWT and Swing for designing the surveys. Again, based on the product description, I can't imagine that this took a lot of coding, not compared to a real program. And here I'm showing a chauvanistic attitude. But frankly, there's a world of difference between coding a few-thousand-lines programming project and coding a few thousand lines as part of a much larger entity.

In any case, what I'm really looking for with the work experience is how long you've been at each job, what skills you've learned, why did you join, why did you leave, what were the work conditions like? Only the first two at best are ever on a resume, hence I have to ask these questions. Red flags are being in a job (or worse yet, a series of jobs) less than a year, not learning any skills at a particular job, joining for the money, leaving for money or because you got bored (granted, this one is hard to answer to my complete satisfaction), having had a really busy work schedule. I'm not looking for people who want or expect to work 60 hours a week. That indicates to me that you're not efficient or that you're too easy to push around or that you don't know any better. People with a balanced work/non-work schedule are happier and better at their jobs overall.

I really want to know how you've grown in each job, especially for younger applicants. In our profession you're expected to keep improving yourself throughout your life. Do you take online classes, read books, take real courses either at a college or done by some sort of tech service? Does your company support employee self-enrichment and have you taken advantage of those opportunities? I myself would probably not score all that well here, but I do want people who want to learn.

One of the problems that I see is that there are lots of technical people out there. On one hand it is true that the US has enough homegrown technical people to fulfill the requirements of its businesses. The problem on the other hand is that for the most part that technical pool is more qualified to do IT and web development and smaller in-house projects rather than big commercial applications. We don't have enough MS/PhD (or good BS with experience) people to satisfy the major software companies.

And so they look for talent outside the US. It's never been about money (although that is a consideration). Sure, we pay foreigners less, but we also have to train them more (for language and culture acclimation) and pay for the visas and anything else. The salary difference is only a small part of the total expense of an employee. Hiring straight out of universities has the same problem (still need to train people and have more fringe benefits) plus there's more competition from other companies. It's kind of funny that on the one hand we have headlines about how companies are saying there's a tech shortage and on the other hand we have headlines proclaiming the downturn in the economy and the increase in the available labor pool due to layoffs and dot-com bankruptcies.

Anyway, Jiandong also arrived a bit early. First off, looking at his resume, it was way too detailed. Too wordy, even though it was just over two pages. Five years as a CS lecturer at Wuhan University (China), another three years working at a couple of Japanese firms, a couple of years working for two firms in California. Too many buzzwords, not enough description of what he did. I'm the first to talk to him since Sushant is with Rosalia and I want her to get to Prasad next.

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