Wed, 17 Dec 08 - Please Sir Can I Have a Job

OK, so I was made redundant from reevoo just over a week ago and my initial holiday mood is now wearing off. I have a couple of things to follow up but I definitely don’t have anything concrete so I’m putting this out there on the off chance someone wants to employ me (permanent or contract).

This is a direct copy of an email I sent someone when they requested a CV. It’s not very comprehensive but it hopefully gives some indication of what I’m able to do.

Employment

I spent just over three years at reevoo.com, until being made redundant on Monday 8th Dec 2008.

Skills

• Ruby. A splendid little language.
• Rails. Although I started using Rails in August 2005, I’ve definitely missed out on some of the more recent changes.
• Javascript. Should only be used to enhance existing functionality and should (probably) never be required for a site.
• Testing. I’m completely sold on testing at all levels (test/unit up to selenium, or an equivalent).
• CSS. I’m not brilliant with CSS and although I can get reasonable results it’ll take me longer than it would someone that really knows their stuff.
• HTML. I love clean and semantically marked up HTML.
• Pair Programming. I prefer to pair program, particularly on production code.

Desired workplace

• I want to work with smart people.
• I want to work on software that has a purpose I believe in.
• I want to work somewhere that I’m able to question decisions and have my questions listened to.
• I want to work with open source software.
• I want to contribute back to the open source community.

Likes

• Simple solutions (apache and webby over a rails app, for example).
• Learning and sharing knowledge.
• Prioritising by always working on the next most important thing
• Helping people through technology
• The disruptive nature of technology

Dislikes

• SEO. In my opinion, it’s as simple as doing the right thing (follow web standards, provide something useful and think about the user).
• Websites that don’t get the web (activeplaces.com, nationalrail.co.uk)
• Websites that are poorly marked up, therefore making scraping them hard :-) (particularly bank websites)

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