I fully reject that "Why bring a child into this world facing..." argument. (And I'm going to skip the fact that this is probably the best time in the history of the world to be born.) Sure there are big problems in the world. My son may help FIX some of those problems.
And if not, he may end up being the mayor of Bartertown.
Missoula is actually relatively temperate compared to the surrounding area — it's encircled by mountains, which helps quite a bit.
I also kind of dig the clean, chilly weather they get during the winter, so I'm a bit biased on this question. I don't know that it gets as cold as someplace like, NYC or Chicago, though, which is something :)
I'm actually puzzled by all the Linode-bashing here. I'm not personally a Linode customer (or associated with them in any way) but this seems like a good thing.
To my knowledge (and I may have missed something) Linode is one of the first VPS providers to do IPV6. So I thought this was awesome.
If lots of other VPS providers start doing IPV6, and don't charge for a /64, or charge less than Linode does, Linode will have to change their fees or lose customers. But until that happens, why bash Linode for an as-yet unspecified charge?
Dakim, Inc. is the leading provider of brain fitness among America's senior living providers. We help seniors use rigorous cognitive exercise to prevent or slow the development of dementia. At least, that's what our marketing people say. I say it slightly differently: "We help seniors remember their grandchildren for a few months or years longer than they would otherwise."
We started in 2005, are venture-funded, and are not yet profitable. We're raising our 2nd round of venture funding right now. All employees get stock options, and we have medical, dental, and vision coverage.
We're looking for people who will work out of our Santa Monica, CA office. It's a casual office environment with really good coffee, and people often bring their dogs in to work. Today there's a Neapolitan Mastiff (http://twitpic.com/cwjfl) and a Chihuahua here.
Our touchscreen appliance (visible in the picture at the link above) runs Ubuntu Linux, and most of our infrastructure is Linux-based, with a few Windows (SQL Server) and OS X boxes. Our GUI software is written in REALbasic, and our system administration scripts are BASH and Python.
We're also in the process of developing a software-only installable product that will run on OS X and Windows.
Our desktops are OS X or Linux (your choice) with two big-ass monitors per person. We do well (but not 100%) on the Joel test, and are always looking for ways to make our work more efficient and productive.
Our biggest need right now is for someone in a combined Linux System Administration and QA Automation role. This would entail everything from installing and configuring Postfix to automating install testing for our Windows product.
We're also looking for QA Engineers for the Windows/OS X Product, and for additional support people, again, with Windows and OS X experience. Linux experience for both the QA Engineers and the support people is a huge plus.
To avoid getting put in the "Craigslist" mountain of resumes, send a cover letter and resume directly to me: schof at dakim.com
I have never (and would never) ask a candidate to allow me access to a private profile. However, I have rejected a candidate for what they posted on their blog.
Posting things on the public Internet that reflects poorly on the candidate shows a judgment issue that is a valid reason for rejecting a candidate.
In the case I'm thinking of, a cursory Google search on a candidate I would otherwise have hired showed that he had at least one job that he had quit without notice; this job was not listed on his resume. In addition, this first-person blog stated that he had shown up to work so hungover he could barely see, on more than one occasion.
Should I have hired this person, given the red flags I found via Google and that there were other equally-qualified candidates who did not have those red flags?
Both of the things you mention are directly work-related. Can you give some other examples of " things on the public Internet that reflects poorly on the candidate?"
For example, does posting something about anti-semitism reflect poorly on a candidate? How about a candidate that makes strong statements about the correlation between race and IQ?
Those kinds of social issues are relevant for two reasons.
1) If the candidate has to work on a team with others, then he has to get along with the team - or at the very least, the chemistry shouldn't be bad enough to affect performance.
2)I think it's perfectly acceptable to reject someone because you don't consider him to be morally upstanding. The second statement about correlating race and IQ is a bit ambiguous and subjective, but if, say the candidate was philosophically in favor of lynching and ethnic genocide, then I wouldn't care how good a hacker he is, I wouldn't feel right hiring him.
Posting race\IQ issue wouldn't, in my opinion, reflect poorly on the candidate even though I don't necessarily agree with it.
On the other hand, posting anti-semitic remarks probably would reflect poorly, depending on how they were phrased and the context (is it just pure hate or mere opposition to certain political stances...)
Whether they reflect poorly or not is a matter of personal philosophy. If I was face with someone who was blatantly racist, it would reflect poorly on their suitability for a job where they to interact with people who would take offense to such views. For such things, a decision would depend on how negative I anticipated that interaction to be. This is no different from not hiring someone based on their poor social skills during an interview. It is in public and they must expect it to be scrutinized and associated with them.
Eh, I'd say you aren't being fair, no. Not that any interview process is really fair. I once worked with a guy who told me stories about waking up at work at his desk, not remembering how he got there. He never did anything remotely like that working with me. For 3 years he was sharp, punctual, and competent.
And frankly, the reason and manner in which someone left their last job is a piss-poor reason for not hiring someone. What if there was sexual harassment? Stuff like that you can't know from a google search or even an interview.
As an employer, I reserve the right to use any public data obtained from web/Usenet searches to understand where a candidate is coming from in his/her professional life. It's basic due diligence, whether legal or ethical or not, and I expect prospective co-workers to do the same to me. Moral: don't be a dick or a moron online, at least not in connection with your real name.
That said, the real peril is that of mistaken identity. I almost missed out on a (mostly) enjoyable 2+ year relationship because my Google search revealed that the woman I was chatting with was an activist for various evangelical Christian causes. Fortunately, before breaking contact with her, I asked her about it, and soon realized that Google was leading me astray.
I'm an experienced Debian/Ubuntu guy, and decided to start playing with OpenBSD. A hardware compatibility issue[1] made me go back to Ubuntu Server, but I came away with two main impressions:
1) It's actually pretty easy to install, once you get past the whole "it's different" bit. I had no real trouble.
2) Updating/upgrading is a PITA. Having to upgrade by patching source code -- WTF?
What do you do if you have a fleet of 100s of OpenBSD machines? I may be spoiled by apt, but I can upgrade the several hundred machines I'm responsible for in an almost trivial manner. (And updating a single machine with apt is absolutely trivial.) That doesn't seem to be possible with OpenBSD. (I suppose you could write a custom shell script to do the update, and distribute that to your machines, but...certainly not trivial.)
What's more, I would be willing (if not completely comfortable) to update a remote Ubuntu/Debian box to the next release -- that doesn't seem like a good idea (or even possible under some circumstances) with OpenBSD.
This seems even stranger when you consider the security reputation of OpenBSD, and how important updates are for security, even for something as well-audited and well-written as OpenBSD.
And if not, he may end up being the mayor of Bartertown.