[patio11]

Finding a development job online is great. Its just the job sites which suck. One of these things is not like the other.

Most hiring decisions are made through the informal networks. That has, historically, been one of the great benefits of going to a really good school, because you get to make weak ties with folks who will eventually probably be in a position to help you out (and vice versa). Participation online is a staggeringly good way to make weak ties.

Meanwhile, the "Send out a hundred resumes and then wait by the phone" is jobseeking for the truly clueless (and, sadly relatedly, the entry level -- I swear, there should be a class on this at college). It virtually guarantees that any company putting up a job will get a hundred resumes for it, most of them from people who have no capability to actually do the job. Additionally, all the people who are poor candidates on day N will probably still need jobs on day N+1, and they'll probably still be sending resumes. It doesn't take a genius to predict what this does to your applicant pool after iterating for a while.

I think if you're really good your jobseeking process is less likely to involve seeking out companies and more likely to involve saying "I am available for work" in a semi-public fashion, but that is another discussion altogether.

[cookiecaper]

>I think if you're really good your jobseeking process is less likely to involve seeking out companies and more likely to involve saying "I am available for work" in a semi-public fashion, but that is another discussion altogether.

This is interesting. Do you think one has to have a high-profile outlet to qualify as "really good", and when you say "really good", what kind of percentile are you talking? Do you mean, like, exceedingly better than average, or do you mean "actually" good, instead of one of the mass-resume-senders?

I think I'm an OK programmer in the disciplines I know, but I don't really maintain a blog and as far as I know I don't have a bunch of regular readers of my profile here.

Do you expect every person worthy of hire to be able to just say "I need work" and automatically get offers?

[eru]

Just for the amusement value [1]: My company is looking for programmers. Or more specifically we are looking for people to work at our office in Cambrigde, UK, of Citrix. Almost everything we do is open source and my very own team is hacking with Ocaml (but the other teams us more `normal' languages).

Please drop me a line if you are interested. My mail is [e-mail].

[1] I was going to submit a "Tell HN" or something like this anyway. You can also find some more text on our recent post on the Haskell mailing list (http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/177...).Of course Citrix.com also has some job offers, but like someone said, going directly is better for you, since your CV does not land on a company-wide pile.

P.S. I got my job (and some other interviews) through contacts I made at the ICFP 2009 conference.

[arghnoname]

The networking thing sucks if you're not really interesting in networking but are fairly good at the actual job you want to get.

Social people who are good at getting recognized and being liked have an advantage. I've seen relatively high profile people not be quite up to their billing, and vice versa. As someone who is quite low-profile, I'm not sure what the solution is short of biting the bullet and putting yourself out there.

[isthisanything]

I agree with you about the title not being completely accurate, because I am blaming the job sites, not the internet. Thanks for the correction.