Building a Better Job Search Site

Job hunting is a massive industry, but unfortunately it’s one that that always leaves job hunters feeling unsatisfied. Monster and Dice are painful to use. The hierarchy trees of job categories are often incorrect and confusing to someone who is looking for a job.

I’d love to see something different.

Competition

When we look at technology we use everyday, the great success stories all have one thing in common: competition. They all achieved their success despite healthy competition, or perhaps because of it.

9 Ways to Know When to Jump Ship at a Startup

For the last couple of months I’ve been plagued with wondering if I should stay at my current startup. I’ve been approached with a few different job offers that I haven’t followed up on, and maybe it’s time I pursued greener pastures. In the words of the Clash: should I stay or should I go now?

Overtime Considered Harmful

In the past month I’ve worked over 100 hours of overtime to ensure that a project deadline was met when unforeseen issues put the entire project at risk. When you’re a high tech worker then this can happen often enough that it feels like a way of life. What I find strange is that I’ve caught myself bragging about the hours I’ve spent tied to my job. In what sick world should living off of food from Styrofoam containers and an intravenous espresso drip be considered an admirable accomplishment?

Coworkers Considered Harmful

I hit a realization this weekend that I’ve hit many times before. There’s an inordinate number of times when I’m in the office late not because of my own time management failures but because of the people I work with.

Magazine Review: October 2007 Issue of Inc. Magazine

I came to a rather startling discovery in the past month: magazines are just blogs with the added luxury of being able to read them while on the toilet or in the bathtub (but hopefully not both).

I picked up the October issue of Inc. magazine because Joel Spolsky of Joel On Software has joined the magazine. I’m a Joel fan-boy. Internet Duct Tape was inspired by Joel on Software. Here are some random thoughts from spending a rainy Saturday flipping through the pages. Can this possibly be entertaining or of value to my readers? I have no idea.

9 Techniques to Promoting Your Social Web Application

How do you build a web app that has traction, gain users and hopefully explodes virally? I’ve been paying attention to this space for far too long and this is a round-up of the tricks and techniques successful and not-so-successful social web applications use to promote themselves.

The Problem With Social Web Applications

This is an exciting time because unlike traditional software that runs on your computer [1], web applications are created as social software where you have a friends list, collaborate on a document with multiple people and it is easily to share information and communicate. The downside is these networks consume a lot of attention and too much time is wasted building profiles and adding friends — for some of these sites building a profile and adding friends is the only utility they have.

How to find out if you are passionate about your career or if you are just wilfing

I was reading an interesting post about a new weblogism [1] called ‘wilfing’. “What was I looking for?” describes getting trapped in an Internet rats nest - you had good intentions of doing a work related search but the siren call of the Internet was too much and you went.

How do you know if your following a calling, pursuing a career or working at a job?

Lions, Tigers and Managers Oh My - The IT Animal Kingdom (by guest blogger logtar)

This is a guest post by logtar.

Now that I have liberated myself from the last zoo I worked at, I feel that it is my duty to document the IT (Information Technology) ecosystem for those that happen to enter it. I’m intending this as a good PSA (Public Service Announcement) for all the non-IT people out there. It is no accident that I have made all of the managers predators. You may find yourself fitting one of the animal profiles.

An Introduction to Reputation Management (by guest blogger Tim Nash)

This is a guest post by Tim Nash of Venture Skills

There a three basic areas to reputation management:

1. Finding out what people are saying about you
2. Creating a persona or brand image
3. If needed defending this image

But why is this important to us?

Is your web identity a help or a hindrance to your employability?

Recruiters use web anonymity to find more information out about job applicants. Is your web identity a help or a hindrance to your employability? Thoughts on web identity and job search from a pseudo-anonymous blogger

The Work Manifesto

This was so good that I felt I had to share it verbatim. It is by Pamela Slim from Escape from Cubicle Nation (via Gaping Void). It nicely sums up a very important rule that people so often miss out on in life: be passionate (not obsessed) about your job and it will enrich the [...]

New tech meme: How to become a Venture Capitalist

Guy Kawasaki brings it home and writes about what he knows with a piece about becoming a venture capitalist and an online survey to see if you have the chops. Could this be a new quiz meme for startup tech bloggers?
It won’t really take off because it doesn’t tell me which Star Wars VC I [...]

Firefox 2.0 Boss Key extension - Productivity and Networking Information Component

This is a rather self-explanatory Firefox extension for the workplace.
PaNIC is set to be activated by the Alt key and the tick ` symbol up there by the 1 on your keyboard.
Press those two buttons at the same time, and all of your tabs in Firefox will get killed instantly, and replaced with a [...]

Peace at Last - The Joy of Telecommuting from Home

AndyC has a funny piece on the joys of telecommuting from home. I’ll must warn you that he’s British, so he might not actually be funny — just British.
engtech on reading/watching anything British: “hahahhahaha, omg he said tea instead of coffee!! this is z0 funny! He’s typing/talking in an accent!”
That isn’t a horrible slag that [...]

Aaron Swartz on becoming a DotCom millionaire

Aaron Swartz of Reddit fame is blogging about the experience of becoming a DotCom millionaire this week after Reddit was bought by Cond�Nast/Wired magazine (Aaron’s collection of web clippings on the acquisition). It’s a very interesting read for those of us working at startups in high tech. The fact that he’s a good writer only [...]

How to screen candidates with phone interviews

Joel has another great post on phone interviews. He focuses on asking questions on programming skills and office politics, with an emphasis on putting forth incorrect assertions and seeing if the interviewee pipes up. “Smart programmers have a certain affinity for the truth, and they’ll call you on it.” He also gives a list of [...]

Paul Graham on Why Startups Fail

Paul Graham has an essay on the 18 reasons why start-ups fail. I especially like how he sums it up to a single sentence: “In a sense there’s just one mistake that kills start-ups: not making something users want.“

Bridging the gap between business and technology

Fellow WP blogger Mr. Angry has an excellent post on bridging the gap between the business wants and technological realities. The best products always come from people who are passionately working on something they will actually use, but that doesn’t put food in the fridge. Instead we’re left with two different camps — the [...]