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| Location, location, location | I live in the mountains halfway between Los Gatos and Scotts Valley CA. I won't commute further north than San Jose on the east side of the bay and the 85 corridor towards Mountain View on the west side of the bay. Milpitas, Palo Alto, and points beyond are not practical. Deep south San Jose is good, as are Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz, Capitola, etc. Watsonville is a 'maybe'. |
| Relocation | I love my home, and my wife works in the valley too. Moving just isn't an option I can consider. |
| Travel | My personal life (see "Sweatshops" below) is too complex to allow for business travel. An occasional trip (one a year or so) is possible if it's planned at least three months in advance. |
| Recruiters I don't know | I already know several fine recruiters that I can call if needed. If you're a recruiter hiring for a single company, that's OK -- you're doing what any manager would do. If you work for a search firm, please understand that I already have contacts in that business. |
| OO as a religion | OO (in any form) is a tool. Some tasks are amenable to it, others aren't. I have lived in a shop where OO is "The One True Answer". (Yes, you really could hear the quotation marks!) I'm too pragmatic to get along well in an environment like that. |
| Latest and greatest fever | Living on the bleeding edge is fine, but there comes a point where you're too far out there. I'm a practical developer. I just want to get things done, and in many cases I've found that working with the newest fad impedes progress rather than making things easier. |
| Business software | Ho-hum. I am a split personality -- technical and artistic. Business software (in most any form) is totally dull to me. Sorry. |
| IT or MIS jobs | System administration is a necessary thing, but different organizations need different things to get their jobs done -- particularly engineering groups. By the time a group gets the label "IT" or "MIS" it's often trying to be all things to all people... usually unsuccessfully in my experience. I prefer to have a more focused customer group than those departments allow. |
| Politically charged environments | I am not a political animal. I find companies where people are back stabbing and trashing each other for personal gain distracting and demoralizing. If I can see that coming, I'll avoid it. (The challenge is that it takes a political animal to recognize the situation in advance.) |
| Sweatshops | Unlike some engineers, I have a complex life. I teach a class on one weeknight, take classes on other nights, fence, and try to do some art in the remaining free time. I won't work 100 hours a week forever. I'll do it when I have to -- for a couple of weeks to get a project done -- but making it a lifestyle won't happen. I already tried that and I didn't like it... it took me weeks to remember my wife's name. |
| Certain technologies | Past experience leads me to the conclusion that I do not want to work certain products if I can avoid them. If what you're doing uses one of those things I won't be interested. Sorry. |
| Dress clothes | This is a pet peeve of mine dating back to a practical joke in 1988 or so. Engineers don't dress up for work (at least not in California) and I find doing so much more of a distraction than anything else. On top of that, since I live so far from the valley, changing clothes for an interview isn't particularly convenient either. Thus, I wear normal clothes to interviews; a coat & tie are not to be found. |
| Carrying a pager | I've had multiple jobs where I carried a pager or phone and was on the hook when live systems crashed. I did not enjoy the experience, and I won't do it again. I have no problem with having my name and phone number available to those who are responding when things go wrong. They can call me if something I am involved in is so sick they cannot get it back online, and I am always willing to pitch in when that happens, but I don't want to be the one who has to get up at 3am whenever some server crashes. |
| Companies and/or people offended by this page | I'm an engineer with 19 years of experience. Employers pay engineers to have opinions about how things should be done in addition to doing the work. I've expressed some of my opinions here. If you don't like that, please hire someone else. |
If you're still here and you still think you have the job for me, thank you for your interest and tenacity. You can email the details to me via my contact page. I make no promises except that I will read your email.