Treating candidates like s%!t

[MarillionFan]

Thing is dodgy, I would have thought that any contractor that was needed abroad, and had the balls to haul ass over there every week, and the competence to organise it so it works like clockwork would be worth something in this market.

I'm not saying this makes me better than solely UK based contractors, but I am saying the kind of "why couldn't you get work in the UK?" Type of approach by most pimps is completely bonkers and utterly cretinous.

Alternatively it means that you're so crap that anyone English speaking wouldn't hire you, so you need to feck off to Ulan Batar where the hiring manager learned his English from watching MTV & old re-runs of the Waltons. To whit, it normally takes them 6-8 weeks to find out you're crap.

[NickFitz]

Other reasons include that as I don't have enough experience in xyz open source scripting framework, angular.js being the main blocker. So I have to learn it, and then lie on my cv?

How easy would it be for a seasoned developer to pick it up?

To be fair, Angular is idiotically complicated, for no good reason. It's like somebody read Design Patterns without properly understanding any of it, then did a close study of all the hideous and stupidly over-engineered architectural principles found in things like J2EE and its more malignant offspring, and decided to implement the whole lot of that in JavaScript, with a particular focus on including all those aspects that aren't actually relevant to JavaScript because of the fundamental ways the language differs from more old-fashioned languages like Java and C#.

The best news about Angular is that the core developers made a big thing of announcing that version 2, due later this year, would be based on a completely different set of architectural principles and would make no effort to offer any degree of backwards compatibility whatsoever. So now all those people who sold its use to their bosses as a long-term solution, well worth the initial investment of time and effort to master it, are feeling utterly betrayed.

Also, there's a general backlash against most of the things it posits as benefits, as people have realised that they're unspeakably bad ideas that lead to massive code bloat and crippling performance problems, and there are much better ways of achieving the same goals that don't have these issues.

So it might be worth learning if you want to be doing nothing but maintenance work on badly over-engineered legacy systems in a year or so, but personally I've shoved Angular down to the lower end of my "must get around to learning it properly" list.

The whole JavaScript "application framework" scene is an unholy mess of ill-thought-out idiocy at the best of times, but Angular is undoubtedly the worst of a bad lot. If I was you, I'd chalk that one up as "narrow escape"

[cojak]

Two can play this game.

I've just turned down a contract that I hadn't heard from in weeks, the agent was ticked that I hadn't informed hi that I'd found another contract. I breezely told him that if I don't hear from anyone after 5 days I'd assumed that I hadn't got the job.

I'm pretty sure that someone else had turned him down before he called me.

Life's like that - we hate them and they hate us.

[suityou01]

Two can play this game.

I've just turned down a contract that I hadn't heard from in weeks, the agent was ticked that I hadn't informed hi that I'd found another contract. I breezely told him that if I don't hear from anyone after 5 days I'd assumed that I hadn't got the job.

I'm pretty sure that someone else had turned him down before he called me.

Life's like that - we hate them and they hate us.

You story pleases me.

[suityou01]

To be fair, Angular is idiotically complicated, for no good reason. It's like somebody read Design Patterns without properly understanding any of it, then did a close study of all the hideous and stupidly over-engineered architectural principles found in things like J2EE and its more malignant offspring, and decided to implement the whole lot of that in JavaScript, with a particular focus on including all those aspects that aren't actually relevant to JavaScript because of the fundamental ways the language differs from more old-fashioned languages like Java and C#.

The best news about Angular is that the core developers made a big thing of announcing that version 2, due later this year, would be based on a completely different set of architectural principles and would make no effort to offer any degree of backwards compatibility whatsoever. So now all those people who sold its use to their bosses as a long-term solution, well worth the initial investment of time and effort to master it, are feeling utterly betrayed.

Also, there's a general backlash against most of the things it posits as benefits, as people have realised that they're unspeakably bad ideas that lead to massive code bloat and crippling performance problems, and there are much better ways of achieving the same goals that don't have these issues.

So it might be worth learning if you want to be doing nothing but maintenance work on badly over-engineered legacy systems in a year or so, but personally I've shoved Angular down to the lower end of my "must get around to learning it properly" list.

The whole JavaScript "application framework" scene is an unholy mess of ill-thought-out idiocy at the best of times, but Angular is undoubtedly the worst of a bad lot. If I was you, I'd chalk that one up as "narrow escape"

Smells about right to me. Then again over engineered and obscenely complex can also mean kerching.

[psychocandy]

Two can play this game.

I've just turned down a contract that I hadn't heard from in weeks, the agent was ticked that I hadn't informed hi that I'd found another contract. I breezely told him that if I don't hear from anyone after 5 days I'd assumed that I hadn't got the job.

I'm pretty sure that someone else had turned him down before he called me.

Life's like that - we hate them and they hate us.

Yeh I had that once. I think they like to think that there are contractors out there who go for interview then dont bother applying for others because they're waiting for the first one. Sure agents would like it to be like that.

In my case, it was a month later too. Obviously the role had either been put on hold or I was 2nd/3rd choice and agency was miffed that he couldnt close the deal with just one phone call.

Then again, heard a story from an agent once (quite friendly with this guy and hes one of the good ones) about a client who got send a load of CVs then 6 MONTHS later phoned agent and said, can you invite A, B, and C for an interview. Then was a bit put out when agent told them they were all unavailable now and the client would need to look at new CVs now.

[Contractoid]

Yeh I had that once. I think they like to think that there are contractors out there who go for interview then dont bother applying for others because they're waiting for the first one. Sure agents would like it to be like that.

In my case, it was a month later too. Obviously the role had either been put on hold or I was 2nd/3rd choice and agency was miffed that he couldnt close the deal with just one phone call.

Then again, heard a story from an agent once (quite friendly with this guy and hes one of the good ones) about a client who got send a load of CVs then 6 MONTHS later phoned agent and said, can you invite A, B, and C for an interview. Then was a bit put out when agent told them they were all unavailable now and the client would need to look at new CVs now.

All this just makes me laugh, big belly time .

I honestly think there are agents and clients alike that live in a kind of dream world whereby contractors and permies alike exist in some quantum like state of either "unavailable" or "available, just for us and only for us and should only want to be working / employed by us"

Being more specific about the contracting side of things I am constantly amazed about the ignorance displayed by agents and clients about contractor motivations discussed routinely on this and other forums.

I try to keep my sanity by just sitting back and having a good old chuckle about how absurd this whole setup is

[PerfectStorm]

In my most recent batch of job searching, all the ones finding me permanent roles were mostly good at coming back with feedback. If you're a good candidate, there's no point burning bridges is there?

Then someone said "do you fancy contracting"...

[lukemg]

Feedback - wtf ? NEVER bother asking for this, client will be saying it's a no and the agent will say ok, that is the end of it.
EVEN if they do give feedback, the first time an agent tells some b**lend contractor and he/she kicks off about it. WHAT ? I never said that, I can do x,y,z blah blah blah. Agent resolves NEVER to contact another client to tell them no.
AND if they do bother to tell you anything, it will be sorry, it was really close but a bloke who worked there before just edged it - this makes you feel better but its still a no and usually BS

Fire and forget CV.
Go to interview, forget till you hear from them. If they want you they will be in touch constantly, if not it's a NO, move on.
I thought everyone knew this apart from proper newbies...

[TykeMerc]

Feedback - wtf ? NEVER bother asking for this, client will be saying it's a no and the agent will say ok, that is the end of it.
EVEN if they do give feedback, the first time an agent tells some b**lend contractor and he/she kicks off about it. WHAT ? I never said that, I can do x,y,z blah blah blah. Agent resolves NEVER to contact another client to tell them no.
AND if they do bother to tell you anything, it will be sorry, it was really close but a bloke who worked there before just edged it - this makes you feel better but its still a no and usually BS

Fire and forget CV.
Go to interview, forget till you hear from them. If they want you they will be in touch constantly, if not it's a NO, move on.
I thought everyone knew this apart from proper newbies...

Pretty much what he said.

Clients won't give feedback in case it comes back to bite them because someone takes offence, same reason they won't give references.
Agents will be talking to the successful candidate or finding new ones or on the next role so don't care or want to waste the bandwidth on those who failed.

It's crappy, but it's reality and a fact of contracting.