I Don't Agree That There Really Is a Tech Worker Shortage

Rockstars blow their paychecks up their nose, cheat on their wives and girlfriends with groupies, trash hotel rooms then die young, or perhaps live to a ripe old age of poverty and destitution.

I have gotten to the point that when someone advertises for a rockstar, I don't even apply.

Do you know what a bozo filter is? Have a look at mine:

http://www.warplife.com/mdc/resume/

At the very top of every single page of my site are links to two essays about my - quite severe - mental illness, as well as the first chapter of a book about how engineers get people killed by screwing up on the job.

In the US, it's flatly illegal to discriminate against the mentally ill for reasons of employment. The specific reason I am a coder and not a physicist is that I write good code even when I am hallucinating.

If they get past that, then have a look at how a whole bunch of people really have been killed by clueless engineers - as when an incompetently designed truss bridge took the lives of one thousand steelworkers back in the day - perhaps they don't want to hire me because I would hold the entire company to the same standards I hold myself to.

I haven't always been that way. I've written a whole lot of code I'd rather that no one ever get to look at. I've written quite a lot of really stupid programs, just because we all knew they would sell really well.

But I'll be fifty-one years old soon.

I'm concerned about whether anyone will remember me after I'm gone.

They sure aren't going to remember that I did a stellar job writing the test tools for Apple's MacTCP.

I know all about 2-D image processing but not about pattern recognition.

I've done some algorithmically complex stuff, like Live Picture, which was a combination vector/bitmap graphic editor, which enabled one to do prepress graphic work for magazines and product packaging, by compositing 200 MB bitmap graphics on a 32 MB 68040 Macintosh.

Unfortunately, Adobe's marketing people were far better than ours. Our program was far superior to Photoshop, but no one could figure out how to actually sell it.

Given that, could you use me?

I'd rather not relocate, but if I did relocate, Cambridge would be a top choice for me. I've been there a few times, and once lived in mid-coast Maine.

I was refused a job at Amazon just two days ago, because I am mentally ill.

My website makes that plainly apparent. That's called "Voluntary Self-Identification" in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I am dead certain that I am a far, far better coder than most of those who are already employed by Amazon.

While yes, Zuckerberg said that in 2007 I don't see any evidence that he's changed his attitude.

I never said that I myself ever applied to work at Facebook - and I never will. If I already know I won't like my place of work, I won't even apply.

However, I'm not the only fifty year-old coder who's looking for a job.

All that the UNITED STATES JUSTICE DEPARTMENT - not the applicant - would have to prove is that just one facebook employee turned down an applicant because he was forty or more years old.

Now are you going to tell me that that doesn't happen at facebook anymore?

I seem to have struck a chord with this post. A lot more comments than I expected, and sixty points added to my karma.

Thank you for helping me reach an important decision. For some time now I've been puzzling over the idea of offering a consulting service in which I would screen resumes for a fee. After a chat with a friend who is a manager with an eCommerce startup, I've decided to pursue it.

I didn't have a clue as to how to get started. He suggested I do it for free for a little while, to build my reputation. That's what I'm going to do.

I expect it would help to register a domain for this specific service, rather than use the rather eccentric website I presently have. I don't know yet what the domain will be. I need to catch some ZZZs, so I'll deal with it tomorrow.

I mentioned this in one of my comments below. Someone pointed out that background check services already do this. Actually I would be quite different from a background check, in that I would screen resumes _before_ the interviews, so you don't have to interview clearly unqualified candidates.

Also I'd be looking into their technical qualifications, not their criminal record or record histories.

This is just what headhunters are supposed to do. It's not that they couldn't screen resumes - but they don't.

-- Mike

Strangely enough, I don't want to find work as a mobile app developer. Were you being ironic?