Scottish Elises

Morning.

Looking for one maybe two .net developers for a development team based in Dundee Technology Park. If you know anyone that is interested please drop me a PM.

Details here:
http://careers.stackoverflow.com/uk/job ... ro-systems

Thanks for looking.
Scott

Lol

Kudos to you for having your Joel Test results in your job ad. Surprised you're not using CI or nightly automated builds though - that would definitely make me think twice if I were looking.

Which segues neatly into the rest of this thread hijack...

We're looking for .Net developers of all levels (from Graduate to Senior) in Glasgow: http://www.eqtr.com/join-us/current-vac ... developer/

interesting!
Do you use source control?
Yes
Can you make a build in one step?
No
Do you make daily builds?
No
Do you have a bug database?
Yes
Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
No
Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
No
Do you have a spec?
No
Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
Yes
Do you use the best tools money can buy?
No
Do you have testers?
No
Do new candidates write code during their interview?
No
Do you do hallway usability testing?
No

puffin wrote:Surprised you're not using CI or nightly automated builds though - that would definitely make me think twice if I were looking

That is really interesting , thanks for the feedback. TBH we are working towards daily builds and continuous deployment (well its the aim but not started yet), its the sheer complexity and integration among 100s of projects that make this so difficult for a small dev team to achieve.

PhilA wrote:interesting!
Do you use source control?
Yes
Can you make a build in one step?
No
Do you make daily builds?
No
Do you have a bug database?
Yes
Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
No
Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
No
Do you have a spec?
No
Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
Yes
Do you use the best tools money can buy?
No
Do you have testers?
No
Do new candidates write code during their interview?
No
Do you do hallway usability testing?
No

Thats really interesting too Phil. Sounds like we have many common issues especially when it comes to getting a decent spec , we constantly argue with who ever is working with the customer (outwith our office) to get enough information to write full design. Our guys over the last few years have been really good at trying to professionalise our development process but still have some way to go.

I don't see nightly builds as being universally a necessary or even worthwhile thing.

We don't make them ... we have 250,000 lines of code in one project, for example, and it takes a few seconds to build. We don't check in code that won't compile and we generally review any check in that is complex.

Is this best practice? Probably not.

Does it work? Yes.

Cheers,
Robin

Nightly builds combined with nightly unit tests and code coverage is an excellent tool IMHO, we find lots of issues that have been introduced into code this way. We also run FxCop nightly on the code so we see any bad coding introduced. Our next step is too create automatic component tests so we can run these nightly so all components can be tested on production machine and the results await you in the morning.

Anyone fancy a SE software pros meetup? I think it could be quite interesting to compare notes and processes and find out what we all do. Like LinkedIn, but useful and with beer.

graeme wrote:Anyone fancy a SE software pros meetup? I think it could be quite interesting to compare notes and processes and find out what we all do. Like LinkedIn, but useful and with beer and strippers.

Might get some uptake now

Is it something we said ... or are the number of developers looking for jobs in Scotland at an all time low ?

Little response to advert (originally on S1jobs and later on stackcarreers).

Looking for a dev with experience , a graduate and a technical customer support role. Trying universities direct now. Have always been anti-recruitment company normally because they piss us off so much with cold calls. How is everyone else finding the market place for candidates ?

Tough. Very tough in Aberdeen.

Victoria (C++/C# dev) was made redundant in December when the company she was working for went bust. The agencies got wind of it, and her phone lit up that very day. She had a pick of jobs starting next day but a company swooped in and made the entire team an offer! I had agencies phoning ME asking for her mobile number!!

We're really struggling here in Dundee for developers too (GFI Software), so much so we opened an Edinburgh office just to attract those that dreaded the thought of moving to or commuting to Dundee. We're still way behind in terms of recruitment as well, but then again, what do i care..... leaving in 28 days after 7 years!!

Dave

It's really tough. We had some "frank discussions" with a large university not a million miles from here as to why they produced more or less NO graduates that were seeking work in Scotland. Turns out a huge majority of the course is made up of non-eu overseas students (which is fine with me - I have nothing against foreigners coming here to study provided the finances are sorted) and the rest were from England and EU; a tiny number from Scotland (and thus likely to stay here). The vast majority of the non-EU leave the country as soon as they're done with their degrees - they have a lot of options elsewhere with a British degree and our visa scheme makes it unattractive for employers to sponsor them to stay in the country. We've had a few apply, but not many.

Our last two hires (both excellent) have been from Greece and Spain. Both EU citizens so no visa nonsense to sort.

The number of British students entering into compsci has been falling steadily over the last decade - 25% down I believe (read that on the register a while back, I think - EDIT: actually it was the BBC article on Google sponsoring Raspberry Pi purchases for schools in UK).

In the short term my advice is to recruit from elsewhere in the EU.

In the long term I think we need to be looking at apprenticeships as the quality of the fresh graduates we do see is very poor.

Colin - do you need much software engineering in the heating and sh*t business?

Cheers,
Robin

Although i'm no coder we are having exactly the same issues looking for BI / ETL people. The contract market is so buoyant in London that we simply cannot attract people to Livi. Even non-perms who we used to be fine for are saying yes then finding something else before i can complete a CRC.

We took a couple of direct grads who have been good but it was hard work getting them, perversely we've had the most success taking people from our contact centres and training them up! It's a painful way to do it though.