http://blog.expensify.com/2011/03/25/ceo-friday-why-we-dont-hire-net-programmers/

Many people in Silicon Valley have quite strong anti-MS sentiment.

One of the stupidest articles I've read in a while.

First of all, .NET is not a language.  It is a platform.  Secondly, why .NET and not Java or C++?  If you are going to deride a successful platform, you need a little more support than the author provides.  His utter bullshit is trolling. 

Nobody can be this stupid.  He's in need of publicity or something.

I've done production-worthy C#, Java, and C++.  They all have their strengths and weaknesses.  I hate them all and love them all equally.  Each exposes my weaknesses when doing something complicated/complex.  That's where my pain comes from.

If you can't interview someone and flesh out whether they dragged a button onto a GUI and attached an event, or did something worthy of discussing that required understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the platform, then you need to be doing some other role in your business.

Simply rejecting a resume because it has .NET on it is stupider than stupid.  How the hell can you tell from the resume whether the platform was foisted upon the developer or not?  How is it always a choice?  WTF.

The stupid out there amazes me.

One of the stupidest articles I've read in a while.

First of all, .NET is not a language.  It is a platform.  Secondly, why .NET and not Java or C++?  If you are going to deride a successful platform, you need a little more support than the author provides.  His utter bullshit is trolling. 

Nobody can be this stupid.  He's in need of publicity or something.

I've done production-worthy C#, Java, and C++.  They all have their strengths and weaknesses.  I hate them all and love them all equally.  Each exposes my weaknesses when doing something complicated/complex.  That's where my pain comes from.

If you can't interview someone and flesh out whether they dragged a button onto a GUI and attached an event, or did something worthy of discussing that required understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the platform, then you need to be doing some other role in your business.

Simply rejecting a resume because it has .NET on it is stupider than stupid.  How the hell can you tell from the resume whether the platform was foisted upon the developer or not?  How is it always a choice? 

The stupid out there amazes me.

Dumb article. So if a C++ programmer learns C# he is suddenly unemployable, it has corrupted him?

C# has a far better API than C++. Any programmer would do well to study Microsoft's focus on tight functional API design. Anyone would do well to emulate them in building their own frameworks.

The commenters on that article know what's up:

"My ass crack has more intellect than this article."

Wow, that company is a total shithole. Look at this other article he wrote whining about hiring talent:

http://blog.expensify.com/2011/03/18/the-hunt-for-engineers-expensify-and-the-surprisingly-difficult-challenge-of-finding-the-right-people/

He says he doesn't care if you have a degree or are a US citizen. That means "we don't pay for degrees and we pay H1B wages".

Then he says what he does care about is:

"a great work ethic, almost to the point that some of your friends might call you masochistic. We work long, hard hours doing what we love, and if you’re the kind of person who wants to clock out at 5:00 or spend half the day surfing LOLCats, this isn’t the place for you."

So he wants underpaid foreign slaves who understand they need to work 10 hr days including Saturday.

These guys are fucking awesome. It's the worst of 1999 all over again.

http://blog.expensify.com/2010/03/26/6-person-startup-is-taking-off-and-needs-you-junior-web-designer/

> "I can guarantee you fun, an amazing opportunity to learn, and the siren’s call of *distant* riches. But only if you are *all* of the following:

> An incredibly hard worker, even when it’s not so fun. There is a ton of work to do, and a lot of it downright sucks. After all — we do the sucky work so our customers won’t need to. I need you to buck up and grind through div, spans, tables and more, without complaint or supervision, and come back asking for more.

> A cool person to be with. Not a crazy party animal, just someone we can trust, rely upon, hang out with, bounce ideas off of, and generally interact with in a positive way, both personally and professionally. In fact, this is one of the most stringent requirements we have: would you be fun to hang out with day and night on some remote, exotic beach? This isn’t a rhetorical question, either: every year we take the company overseas for a month (*on your own dime*, sorry) and work incredibly hard while having a ton of fun. We’ve done Thailand, Mexico, India, and Turkey. Where do you want to go this year?"




Siren's call of distant riches... distant as in you'll never get paid. Siren call as in we intend to use you up and leave you for dead, all the promises of the sirens were bait to give them human souls to consume.


You are REQUIRED to travel to Thailand with the CEO each year and pay your own expenses. WTF.

ATTENTION: I need brillant genus capable of comprehending complex programmatical skills like div, spans, tables and more. No NET programmers need not apply. We use advanced modern languages like PHP, SPAN, TABLE and GREP.

In the list of requirements for applying he wants the name and phone number of your previous bosses, exactly how much you have made in compensation and bonus and benefits at each job, and what is the absolutely minimum you would be willing to accept in pay to work for him. If you can't answer these questions he advises "don't bother applying".

Here is my response,


About the company and the CEO:

"David Barrett founded Expensify in May 2008; Witold Stankiewicz joined him in August 2008, and together they launched an Alpha product at TechCrunch 50, taking home the "DemoPit 2nd Place" prize. In March 2009, they launched a Beta version and demoed it at FinovateStartup 2009."

There are so many in the IT world that are misinformed and spreading FUD.  For the most part we can ignore them but at the same time, let's also provide some informative responses.

I posted the profile of the site Expensify because I am guessing the CEO is a young startup person that has limited experience.  Working for or started something in 2008 that may or may not make it.  Plus some of the content on this blog and site seems very unprofessional (aka won't make a lot of money in the long term).

2008?  There are applications and sites out there that have been around for decades.  IBM and Microsoft are good example of companies that have been around a while.

They have seen it all and provide software for other corporations that are doing millions and billions of dollars across the world.

Microsoft and Oracle and IBM and these software companies come up with tools to solve problems that a typical business will encounter.  So they come up with the .NET platform.  Sun came up with the Java platform to solve a particular set of problems.  As a result, software developers work with .NET or Java or whatever to create applications.  It is really that simple.

And we are talking about millions of software developers and Billions of dollars.  It makes sense for a company to hire .NET developers to write .NET tools for users that use .NET applications.  If a CEO or CIO decides to NOT hire .NET developers or to stop developing their .NET based application, a company could lose millions of dollars with one stupid move.

And there is no reason to completely switch platforms just because you read some reddit or slashdot.

I am guessing that the author read something on reddit or slashdot, .NET sucks or Java sucks.  There are criticisms of the platforms but the platforms are still viable in business.

On programmers, language criticisms; If I were working with .NET and had a solid .NET architecture, I would hire .NET developers.  Same with J2EE.  That is business and how it works 99% of the time.  Google has some Java applications, I am sure they hire Java developers for Java development.  And their open software engineer positions reflect that.

If you don't have .NET or Java architecture and are trying new technologies and languages, I guess you could hire developers that have a wide-range skills.  It could be Haskell, Scala or Erlang or whatever.  It doesn't say anything about the intelligence of the developer or whether or not they will be able to developer a viable application or not.  It just means they are familiar with a particular tool.  The same can be said for a person with a PhD in physics that also happens to be an experience Haskell developer.  That particular person may be a smart, intelligent developer but if you want to create web-application, he may not be able to produce.

Hiring solely based on a developers' knowledge in a particular language, platform is pretty silly, especially if you haven't really mapped out what type of application you are developing.

One more comment.  On Java, .NET, C++, C, Python, Ruby, PHP; there are only a handful of mainstream general purpose languages out there.  The top ones have strengths and weaknesses in terms of language syntax but also platform.  Most of them could solve general web application business problems.  Once you start getting into languages that have less mature platforms, then you might waste resources reinventing the wheel.  For example, you may find it difficult writing typical banking website in Erlang.  Erlang is a great language but you may find it difficult to create a website with it in a couple of months.

Your blog entry is not scientific or valid criticism so there isn't much to rebut.  I just wanted to position some simple points when it comes to software developer, developers and hiring.

I would be surprised if this company lasts until next year.

This tard should read stuff like this:

http://drdobbs.com/java/229400307

(Yea, it is Java but he means Java as well as .NET)

Idiot and BB, you are both coming off as fanatics right now. What's up?

This was not a technical article. It was business with a bit, the smallest amount of technical. His point is correct too.

Startups require people with more diverse and technical knowledge, talk to .NET people, they can't do shit and trust me I know. Last week I saw a request fly past my desk about configuring a unix box with a LB because the .NET team on the client project didn't have a clue. (I know my point is weak, just needed an example)

.NET people learn there tools and work well with them, further abstraction and theory is often lacking from these types.

Fanatics in what way? What are you on about? Your post is from left field.

Since posting, I've been reading some of the internet reaction to this guy. It's not dissimilar from my own.

The company has photos on their site of their developers. Not a single one of them looks happy or well rested. They look mad and resentful and tired. And that's the "best face forward" - the company's about page.

I was thinking about this and I think the CEO, who looks like a total douchebag including wearing annoying hats, is actually writing to VCs. He knows VCs get a hard on for CEOs who are willing to fuck over their underlings and are good at hiring weak pussies who will put up with their shit out of desperation.

what' he doesn't say he won't consider .net. He says if you have .net even listed on your resume in passing you are useless and he is not interested. He then writes about how he can't find anyone. He then writes that he takes a 1 month vacation each year and forces the development team to go with him on their own dime where they have to continue working on his shit.

Another CEO who thinks making a company "In his own image" means no diversity of opinion and experience.

Sooner or later (probably sooner) he's going to have a need to fill and he'll have to look outside the firm because all his employees don't know anything about it.

Someone please post when this asshole's company goes tits up.

"Someone please post when this asshole's company goes tits up."

Yea, a 6 person company that was started in 2008.  Is it even safe to call that a company?  I bet half of the company involves family members or friends from college.

I bet the company won't last 2012.

"Startups require people with more diverse and technical knowledge, talk to .NET people, they can't do shit and trust me I know."

You sound just like the guy in the article - so .NET guys don't know the details of configuring a unix box, therefore they suck?

If I find out that a Unix box-jockey can't set up a basic WCF service, does that mean that unix guys are tards?

The funny part of this to me is, this isn't some hip n happenin hot new commodity that lives it large, its directors and employees being let in VIP style to all the trendiest bars and plied with free food and drugs then later sucked off tag team style by a horde of willing groupies! It's... an automated expenses system.

Looks kind of slick based on their website, though, I must admit. However I'm sure I've seen that "mail us your receipts and we sort it out" approach before, can't think where mind...

I think the takeaway here is how utterly irrational and fucked the programming hiring market is. Everyone has an opinion, a theory, a hypothesis about their candidates. Everyone has the candidate's number. And a candidate can be tainted irrevocably by association with absolutely anything that the hiring party doesn't like. If you need a job, it's no use being decent or hardworking at anything because it just doesn't matter. You may as well be a chameleon, lie and pose. There is this cultural context that you will be judged against and every place has its own local bullshit cargo cult of prejudgement.

"Looks kind of slick based on their website"

There's a lot of comments on the web about their system. "Bug ridden piece of shit" is the sort of comment it gets.

Just the sort of thing you want to read in a financial management program, the programmers can't even two numbers together and get the correct answer.

Sounds like typical startup mentality.  I didn't bother to read the tripe but is the CEO some fresh out of college kid (or college dropout) like all the rest?

.NET is a tool and people can use tools badly.  Yes, many .NET guys are just ignorant Morts that can just drag and drop or write spaghetti code in code-behind files, but not ALL of them are.

Sounds like a place I wouldn't want to work.  Too much ego and bullshit.

Why do we continue to see so much "live to work" mythology/bull shit in software development?  The 24/7 programmer is not a mentally healthy person.  Not to mention they are giving away labor for free so someone else can make the big bucks.

Anyhow...  I started out coding in C and C++ years and years ago when you had to write nearly all of your algorithms, controls, widgets, etc from scratch.  It was one of the most in efficient aspects of coding back then.  yet, this idiot values inefficient coders.

Use proper tools for the job at hand.  95% of your coding can be done by efficient higher level toolsets such as .NET and the remaining 5% can be done in C/C++.  Why would a start up want to reduce their ROI?  That is insane.  Something that a VC or investor will question.

Question for others.  I have never found so much bull shit and mythology in other fields that I have friends and family in.  Not in computer engineering (I have actually worked along side these folks), mechanical engineering, or civil engineering.  Why is software development so full of myths, poor logic, and general unhealthy lifestyles?

Because people think software devs live to write code.

Case in point, I had an interview Friday at a startup; in talking to the developers there (and, like every other place they were just going to do a mass hiring of a bunch of guys to throw shit out there) it came up that I would be expected to work until midnight or on weekends or take calls/do work after hours if necessary (without compensation, naturally) to meet a deadline, and that it wasn't common but it could happen to I should be aware.  It was touted as the "startup mentality".  That alone made me decide not to accept the job even if I am given an offer; I would be able to work with cutting edge technology but I refuse to schedule my life around a company that I am simply an employee for; if I was a partner or a shareholder then I could see putting in that extra effort, but as an employee?  No fucking way.

It still baffles me that so many companies try this line of bullshit and treat it as a way of life that you should be willing to do anything and everything in your power to help the company, instead of treating a job like any other industry where sure when you are at work you do work, but after work it's your own time.

I think software development is plagued by something you could call "the really smart person's ego trap".

It goes something like this. Everyone who is proximate to software development believes that (a) they are the smartest person in the room, so (b) they know best. Plus software development has no real fixed base of knowledge as chemistry, physics, law, medicine, etc do. Anything in SW is as important as the speaker of the moment says it is.

That's it - that's our vulnerability.

This is both the asset that high tech company executives and programming managers have - "I am smartest so I get to pass judgement on all of the lowlife" - as well as the weapon and cudgel used against the candidates - "prove you are the smartest guy and we *might* hire you".

Basically our careers consist of jumping through arbitrary hoops that others invent to test us, which just demeans us as trick animals instead of thinking, creative humans.

Our reward, should we choose to participate, is to invent our own hoops that we get to test and demean others with. If successful, we get to be absolute fucking dickheads toward somebody else.

"Why is software development so full of myths, poor logic, and general unhealthy lifestyles?"

Software development is a new field and a diverse field.  There are no absolute right answers.  There is always a lot of grey.

Plus this guys is not a Architect or CIO of a billion dollar company with several hundred IT professionals.  He is CEO of a company started in 2008 that he claims has 6 employees.  Normally that is a shit stain in the business world.  We don't know if those employees are all his family members or temporary are what.

So, this guys information is not trustworthy.

But this guy saying "he won't hire .NET programmers" without defining his application architecture or what type of application he is developing, that doesn't make any sense.

"it came up that I would be expected to work until midnight or on weekends or take calls/do work after hours if necessary without compensation"

When you get to this point and you know you would not accept any over because they are fools, you really should take advantage of the opportunity and have some fun. Start asking to see examples of work THEY have done that doesn't suck. When they show you their main product, reiterate you mean stuff that isn't universally reviled among potential customers due to its numerous flaws. If they take offense say "Surely you know your products are shit - I thought that's why you brought me in, to see if I can help your straighten this out because you know you are in trouble? First thing to do though is fire all these guys who are so lousy they can't accomplish in 90 hrs a week that a half decent programmer could do in 10."

"believes that they are the smartest person in the room"

That is interesting. The truth is that if you do this stuff you are higher than average IQ. So let's say you are top 2%, that's 138 and up. So you meet 50 people and you are the smartest one in every encounter. After a while of this, especially if you are in some small town, you start to think you are a genius.

The problem is you might not have any business sense and you might be an antisocial loser. This CEO might be like that, but I am not convinced he is even IQ 100. He says "NET is a language." That's a pretty dumb statement to make if you actually know anything at all about development. It's like someone who thinks the internet is Google. There are actually a huge number that think that too, there was a study a couple years ago that found that out. Point is that someone that thinks that OBVIOUSLY doesn't know anything about development. Not knowing that NET is not a language is a fucking gigantic red flag that you don't understand technology AT ALL.

In his defense, he said he won't hire .NET programmers.  We don't know what he knows about the .NET ecosystem.  It could have just been a quick and dirty blog article that he didn't have time to edit.

Idiot responding in....

...wait for it...

...wait for it.

Say it say it. Bot bot bot?

YOU ARE WINNER!!

>Not knowing that NET is not a language is a fucking gigantic red flag that you don't understand technology AT ALL.

Meh I could forgive that part. I can't forgive, however, the simplistic sophistry and bigotry of his post. Further he is a bit out of touch for thinking that the whole .NET thing, falling under Microsoft's wing, is an easy target for derision. The whole "Hehe .NET sucks!" and then look around for agreement.

The guy is an idiot. I wouldn't touch his venture with a 40 foot pole, as that sort of idiocy is fatal.

There is microscopic merit to what he says. I don't know if he realizes it, but his beef seems to really be with automated UI design.

I really don't think his argument about burgers holds much water though. I can see what he's saying, and most of the time you do take the path of least resistance in .NET.

I think it wasn't too many days ago I mentioned abstraction rotting the mind or some such. I think maybe he just puts way too much weight into it. It isn't worth asking about as though it's a third eye. There's plenty of other things that still must be thought out to make things happen.

I'd argue that reinventing the wheel everyday because you haven't tried .NET.... that is worse.

>Why is software development so full of myths, poor logic, and general unhealthy lifestyles?

Because most observers have no fucking clue what development is. Most mismanagers see it as typing: "Want more ROI? Get those code monkeys typing faster!" 

There is no science involved and our country has devolved to the point where no opinion is more valuable than any other opinion. And if the other side has actual facts involved, well, those are still opinions. We used to have a word that described "knowing good from bad" and over the past couple decades turned that word into an insult. That word? discrimination.

Finally, we can blame the fucking mismanagers. Every god damned business school makes the claim that managing is itself scientific and does not need to know any of the particulars of the industry that is being managed.

>it came up that I would be expected to work until midnight or on weekends or take calls/do work after hours if necessary (without compensation, naturally) to meet a deadline, and that it wasn't common but it could happen to I should be aware.  It was touted as the "startup mentality".

As workers in computer related occupations, we are defined as "exempt" employees under federal law. That means exempt from overtime in the absence of a union contract otherwise. Which is why there is so much effort placed into making us all hate unions. Or in outlawing unions where folks don't hate them.
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/29/8/213
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.pdf

Wow, I did not realize we are exempt from minimum wage also. Some years ago when I talked to a labor attorney he said under the law I didn't have to be paid overtime, but they couldn't slip below minimum wage when taking into account pay and all hours. Now even that has changed! When did it change on the minimum wage part?

Huh, and it specifically says programmers only and doesn't apply to different sorts of engineers, guys that work with hardware, networking guys, database guys, etc. Only programmers and analysts.

Yeah, we get totally fucked don't we?

In my case I liked the job apart from that; my current job uses shit technology and is a real cowboy environment where the wrong ways are actually pushed over the good ways (got my code rejected for using design patterns and abstractions instead of code-behind and raw Datasets), but I'm not dealing with having to structure my life around a job.

I'm not making the $105,000 that recent grads with no experience are making, according to companies that want to bring in cheap H1B labor.

It looked like the overtime exemtion kicked in only when maikng more than $27.63 an hour which results in a higher income on 48wk x 40hr employment than what our 457 visa slaveworkers must be paid - 47,480AUD per annum as at 1 July 2010 - even when 1.00AUD = 1.05USD.

BTW there's no overtime paid in Oz either to IT workers - unless you're working under a union award.

If they may pay you $455 a week, minimum wage doesn't apply. So let's say you are in crunch time and work 16 hrs M-F and 12 hrs on Saturday and 4 hrs on Sunday. I've worked this schedule, it's common for startups in crunch mode.

That's 16*5+12+4=96 hrs a week.
Minimum wage in the Bay Area is $9.92. So if you are working starbucks and made to work 96 hrs you get:

40 hrs x $9.92
20 hrs x $9.92 x 1.5
36 hrs x $9.92 x 2

total: $1507.84 That's how much a minimum wage worker in SF is paid for working 96 hrs in a week.
You just got paid $455 for the same hours worked at your SF startup.

Are you making less than minimum wage? Yes. Do minimum wage laws apply? Nope.

Where do you get $455?

Iff you are making > $27.63 an hour then you can be worked indefnitely but wouldn't you then be clearing $1105.20 pw or are you positing some 16 hr/wk threshhold that deems you a FTE?

If so, IT has its balls caught in a vise.

$455 is from the federal DOL site that was linked to. Minimum wage doesn't apply if the company pays at least $455/wk or $27/hr. The $27/hr is obviously a red herring since there's no situation where it would be relevant compared to the $455/wk rule.

"To qualify for the computer employee exemption, the employee must be compensated either on a salary or fee basis at a rate not less than $455 per week OR, if compensated on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour"

http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.pdf

Got it. I confess to not reading the second of Peter's links too closely.

$455/40 = $11.37/hr. I'd say you'd have to pretty dumb or desperate to take a $23661 salary.

You'd do 2x better on our 457 (if you could stomach being tied to your sponsor).

Sure, but you can even be making double that and be making less that a minimum wage hourly worker if he were working the same hours. Not that he would, no company pays that much overtime, which is the whole point. They only force that much overtime when it is "free" to them, which is the point of this law.