Dobra polska firma

W ramach polskiego JUGa robię ostatnio cykl promujący ciekawe polskie firmy – ciekawe głównie produktowo / technicznie.

Innymi słowy, firma powinna mieć własny produkt informatyczny, być w 100% polska (lub chociaż w większości udziałowców mieć polskich, preferencja jest, by była przez Polaków – a jeszcze lepiej w Polsce – założona).

Kilka takich znalazłem / znałem sam.

 

Recruitment process idea – crucial people matter

I just filled out a survey about ideal employer. And while I did it I had an idea:

Focus on crucial people. Actively find them, pull them in, then give them two privileges.

1. Ask them for ONE incredible person they want to work with. Name, surname, contact point. They recommend, you go to hire.
2. Tell them to name two juniors they want to teach. These two get job offer, with salary within junior’s ranges but influenced by “how good/skilled/enter your criteria here of a junior is that person”, rated by the recommender.

Now, with one crucial guy, you possibly get two more and next crucial guy.

Why you should do throw-away interviews

Throw-away interviews are interviews that serve as a market- or company-probe, or as a mean to  conquer your stage-fright or keep yourself in shape.

However a few times people frowned when I mentioned this, which always led to a short discussion after which so far everybody was convinced about the practice’s merits. I’m detailing the arguments here. In a nutshell, failing to plan (here, practise) is planning to fail.

I’ll first detail two main reasons and then deal with usual counters I hear, Q&A style.

Informatyczne kody PKD

This is for people who want to start their own IT-related company in Poland, it summarizes PKD codes available and their profiles. Language: Polish. TL;DR: take 6201Z and 6202Z if you want to write programs / put systems together for money.

Dla ludzi pragnących założyć własną firmę informatyczną / komputerową / programistyczną w Polsce i zastanawiających się “jakie PKD wybrać”. Streszczając: weź 6201Z, 6202Z jak chcesz programować / projektować systemy zarobkowo.

Preparations for changing jobs

This entry is dedicated to inform everyone of every possible way (that I know!) of preparing for changing jobs when it comes to dusting off their skills and obtaining new ones. Aside from one section (“Stage fright?”), I won’t tell you how to conquer your psyche or make up your mind whether it’s time, rather I assume you’ve already done so and are now looking for “how” rather than “why”.

I’ll discuss sites that help get in shape, show ways to practice and show ways to measure your progress. In a nutshell – plan what to focus on, assess yourself, act on findings / practice!

Oh, and this was sitting as a draft for quite too long – being a perfectionist doesn’t help getting things out quickly!

Time for something new

I’ve penned my letter of resignation and am now looking for a new job. I intend to describe my adventures along the way and this is the very first step: why and what am I after. All the steps will be tagged with “time for something new”, as is this one, which kicks off the series.

Prospective employers and questions

I’m collecting information on what kinds of questions are interesting and should be asked. Below is a survey I created, if you have time, please fill it. It’s 6 questions total, including 2 yes/no questions and one choose your role question. So quite a quick thing.

Survey

Questions for prospective employers

Money

• Salary range?
• Which day of the month do salaries get transferred?

General

1. Office hours are?
   1. Overtime – how much, how often, how it’s paid?
   2. Do you practice flexible hours?
2. Dress code? Business-casual, suits and ties,  nobody cares? T-shirts/shorts/sandals?
3. Is there a shower in the office?

Commuting

I do that by car or by bicycle.

1. Will I get parking spots?
2. Work from home is allowed? If commuting will be very lengthy I’ll be interested in working in the office only for a few days, instead of full week.

Work

1. What hardware will I get to work on it? Can I ask for something more and get it?
2. Do you enforce MS Windows or some IDE or some other OS/ technology / tool to be used while working?
3. What kind of production and development environment you guys have?
   1. Java version?
   2. Frameworks, servers, libraries?
   3. Other dominant technologies (Clojure, JS, CFML, SQL standard and DB)?

Quality

• How long does a build last?
• How good test coverage is in my (in spe) project?
• Do you use a CI sever? Sonar?
• Code reviews? Pair-programming? Allowed, enforced, frowned upon?
• Version control system?

Other

1. What are training prospects?
   1. Do you have a wiki? A library? Conduct internal trainings? Send people to trainings? Have a conference budget?
2. Will I be able to influence project-related decisions? How?
3. How empowered is my team?
   1. If we are asked to do something we find utterly silly, are we expected to say no or are we expected to deliver as true professionals?
   2. Who gives us orders?
   3. Who are our clients?

Thank you.

PS. As promised, I expanded upon original idea, for which I thank Andrzej.

Job offer – what to ask?

Job offer – what to ask?

Really cool entry by Andrzej. Just wanted to store here for reference, to later build upon it.