Brains-n-Brawn and Employers
Every time I read Casey's stuff and he's posted about employers, I really lose respect for the PC Business climate these days. Here's a sample quote he posted “Basically the combination of the content of your site and the fact that you direct prospective employers to it has most of us concerned that you don't exercise the type of judgment that we need our company representatives to exercise.” from a potential employer.
This is but one of the many examples of how he's shunned by potential employers b/c of his site. Notice though that Brains-n-Brawn is NOT a Human Resources site. Nor is it a public relations site. It's a DEVELOPMENT site with a bunch of honest (and quite funny) personal observations. So Casey doesn't excercise the type of judgement that a company would want? That's unreal. What does this site show? Well, for one that he knows his stuff. There's no doubt some lazy HR kiss asses were too busy wishing they could get booth babes to even acknowledge them to pay attention to the RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE SITE. Yes, that part of it. With all the phony BS artists claiming to be developers, not to mention all the people out there who think being able to invoke MessageBox.Show(”Whatever”); makes them a developer, it's refreshing to see someone put their money where their mouth is. Say what you want about him, but there's no doubt he can back up his claims. And if you were his manager, does this look like the type of guy who's going to blow smoke up your a55 about projected deadlines? Does this look like a Yes man? There's no shortage of either of those two types and they cause more trouble than anyone cares to admit.
Then look at where he's lectured. Harvard, CMU, the Mobile Developer's Conference to name a few. He's Hmm, he's good enough to lecture students at two of our best universities, but he lacks the judgement that company x wants? He's got the judgement to be trusted by schools like this, and at a conference with thousands of people but not to work at company x? He's a Microsoft MVP and has held that honor in Two different categories. But he lacks the judgement this company wants? Two Master's degrees while lacking the necessary judgement to work for this company? And look at the articles there. Home grown speech rec running via web services and running on a PDA! This is clearly the work of someone desperately lacking 'judgement'. And even if you aren't lost in the irony of all of this...where is it written that what he writes about on his own time has any reflection of how one behaves at work?
So someone please tell me what I have to do to get rid of my judgement and trade it for some of this. Seriously, how in the hell can he get lectured by this many people about the content of Brains-n-brawn considering the sorry state of wayy tooo many software companies. I wish they'd filter out people that make BS claims about development time. I wish they'd censor what their marketing people decide to lie about (I'll give $10.00 to anyone who's responsible for software purchasing and never had anything seriously misrepresented). I wish they'd screen contractors for their credentials. Of all the lapses in 'judgement' in the modern business world, I challenge anyone to show where someone like Casey was responsible for one of them. It's actually quite a shame more people don't have his 'judgement'