ITRecruiterNYC

We can hear you know

2011-02-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

Hiring managers in the IT industry rejoice! The iPhone is now on Verizon.

Interestingly, I'm sticking with AT&T b/c there should be alot more spectrum to play with in NYC moving forward :)

Return to blogging

2010-06-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

Over the last year I've gotten away from writing, focusing more on networking / phone work. But for several reasons I'm going to return to more writing.

Here's my current frustration -- how do you identify doers vs. dabblers? When you are recruiting for the HF, prop groups, etc. it is imperative that you find doers -- people who dig into problems, try to understand what's going on under the covers, will roll their own ORM to solve a problem, whatever. But how do you find such people?

Especially in the realm of software development, many times the best coders are not the guys going to networking events or writing long LinkedIn profiles (sometimes they do).

Hmm, need some ideas ... I'm tired of talking to the mediocrity that surrounds us ...

Company loyalty

2008-06-03T10:13:00.001-07:00

Guess he really like his company

Super PHP search

2008-05-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

I needed a little break from finance recruiting, so I've taken on a PHP search for a very well known firm which is super ... energizing. I like dealing with smart people and this search is putting me into contact with all the best PHP people on the planet. What's so cool about this search is that it has taken me years to build a genealogy of Wall Street developers whereas I've been able to assemble a pretty solid taxonomy of PHP in just a couple of weeks. Obviously, PHP people tend to blog and contribute to open source code more frequently than finance folks, so that helps. But it's also fun to follow a thread and then BAM you run into someone else who you knew from another thread.

Why headhunting isn't evil

2008-05-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

Well, this is my _apologia pro vita sua_ moment. I dislike many things about recruiters, recruiting practices, etc. but yet I am a headhunter and I don't think it's an evil job. Here's why:

We live in a talent driven economy -- there are not enough people with the skills we need to fill the jobs we have. Even during this economic downturn, layoffs, etc. we have never been as busy as we are right now. Why? Because good people are hard to find.

Now, in the old days, good people were hard to find, but it was hard for them to know how much they were worth. Enter the middleman, he's talking to candidates all day, gathering compensation information, evaluating where people are in the market, etc. He's an information disseminator, telling candidates how much they are worth and telling clients how much they should pay, given the market. Without recruiters distributing this information, you have big disparities in compensation! And I think when there are disparities, the losers are most employees (though some people win by being grossly overpaid, but this generally gets fixed fairly quickly).

So, that's reason number one, information dissemination, which leads to better compensation for everyone.

Training a new recruiter

2008-04-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry, been busy lately. We're working on bringing another recruiter on our team -- not EASY! It's good b/c it reminds me of why people dislike recruiters -- and reminds me to be empathetic when talking to candidates -- for all they know, I'm just another guy with a phone looking to make buck who doesn't know the difference between Java and C++.

Busy first quarter

2008-04-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

Lax on my posting, I've been super busy.

1) We're looking to expand - we're interviewing recruiters to join our team, which is a very odd experience (I'll go into detail in a bit).

2) We're closing deals at an outstanding clip -- I've done some really interesting placements in the last three months, from a couple of developers at start ups, a number of placements at the big three I-banks, and two major quant deals. I like the fact that I'm finding interesting people and jobs that really fit what they are looking for. This is the busiest/most productive I've ever been as a recruiter.

3) Finally feeling better (somewhat).

How many people is it possible to know?

2008-01-01T09:02:00.000-08:00

This is the great question I've been wondering -- how many people can a person know. I figure it's possible to know every active pro baseball player, all the hall of famers, and many of the minor leaguers.
Let's suppose you know all the players on the 40 man roster -- that 1200 people (30 teams by 40 players). That seems like a reasonable number of people to know. Let's add a couple of thousand who are are former players -- let's say another 1ooo. And let's say you keep up with the draft and college, so you know another 1000 that way. So all told you know about 3000 players.

How many more beyond that can you know? Where does the limit of memory come into play?

The number of technologists and quants in NYC is finite, but is it knowable? What would be the most efficient way to learn about all these people?

Some good news

2007-12-18T06:19:00.001-08:00

From our friends at GS

Anyone want to work there? send me your res ... jkeenan AT cpi DASH search DOT com

The return of functional languages

2007-12-12T12:22:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting microtrend in Wall Street tech -- the use of functional languages. Very interesting, there's a Haskell group that is working in the Quant space at a major bank in NYC; a hedge fund is using a lot of OCaml; and now I hear a midtown bank is talking about using F#...

Beware of Social Networks

2007-12-06T11:11:00.000-08:00

I'm told a certain investment bank (that, coincidentally is not doing well) sent out a mass e-mail to their employees to beware of social networks... Hmm, I wonder what they have to be scared of?

Ivanisms

2007-11-19T07:30:00.000-08:00

While doing some research this morning I found a nice article today about recruiting A candidates and the dangers of B candidates. I always am seeking the A candidates, but this really summarizes why I stay away from B Candidates:

B players, on the other hand, are the bad hires. They are good enough that they often get things passably done. They may be sloppy or incomplete, but they always seem to have an external excuse. They are usually likeable enough (you hired them!) but there's something about them. They are the people who won't admit when they don't know something, and won't ask questions for fear of appearing dumb. And they are the people who start politics in the office. Because they can't keep up, because they're not an A player and know it, because they think economics is a "zero sum game", they start breeding discontent and negativity.

He's got another good article on retaining employees as well.

But I don't have any finance experience

2007-11-09T03:56:00.000-08:00

Yeah, and so what? There is an interesting rule I've noted in finance recruiting -- the better the group, the less important finance knowledge is. Wait, isn't that backwards? No, the better the group the less important is finance knowledge.
Why? Because the best groups need the best coders and realize the true scarcity of engineers at this level. Some of my biggest deals this year have been placing out of industry, out of state developers into front office groups at Morgan Stanley, Lehman, and Goldman Sachs for just this reason.
So if you are a great developer, let's talk.

Strategist Search

2007-11-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

Very exciting news, one of our clients is a building a strategy team in Fixed Income. For those unaware of what a strat is, it's a role created at Goldman many years ago for essentially a developer who gets paid from the business, rather than from IT. The idea is that if a developer is paid on the business, their interests are more inline with making money.

Very exciting search, so if you are a quant with strong coding skills or a coder with strong quant skills, we should be talking ...

C++ Program Trading

2007-10-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't think this would be a hard search. I have a well known bank looking for 5 C++ developers to add to their program trading team (just placed someone there). Why? Because they are rewriting the entire system.

So why can't I find anyone!!!

Feeling better

2007-10-17T03:50:00.001-07:00

Well, feeling much better now -- I was hit by a case of shingles which is essentially a recurrence of Chicken Pox (so it's a lie your mom tells you when she says it won't come back). For me, it wasn't so bad, but one of the side effects is intense anxiety -- so much so that I actually felt the anxiety in my spinal column and head! Talk about being aware of your moods.

I'm getting better, so we'll get so more postings up on here.

Sorry, I've been sick

2007-10-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

I'll spare the gory details (well, there aren't any), but I came down with a case of Shingles which is essentially a recurrence of chicken pox. It's not serious, but it's been a major energy drain.

Your not begging ...

2007-10-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

... your dispensing favors -- they're talking about college's asking for money, but I think the thought is applicable to any sales role:

It helps considerably to think of yourself not as a beggar but rather as if you’re “doing that person a favor,” LaMorte says. “People joke with me, ‘Oh no, here comes Debra, look out for your wallet.’ But I have to feel as though I am helping people focus their philanthropy in a way that gives them meaning and that will enhance their lives.

Great linkedin story

2007-09-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

on my honeymoon, but I can´t resist this. I was bugging my friend andrew who is a free lance writer to use LinkedIN more because I thought he might get some work ...

Andrew,
Howdy. I was just browsing Linkedin, looking for people who could write feature stories for Wired, and you popped up. Seems like you've got a lot of Wired-esque clips and experience.
If you're game, we should talk on the phone, or you should stop by the next time
you come through New York.
Cheers * Nick
Senior Editor> Wired Magazine> 4 Times Square> NY, NY 10036

Did I tell you I was getting married

2007-09-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well I am. So there. Wish me luck!

!!!!!!!

2007-09-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

How often do you use the ! in e-mail??? I find myself using it all the time, at first I thought it was some kind of iconoclast usage, a rebel against my English teachers who abhorred its use. then I read this:

thee authors, astonishingly, come out in favor of exclamation points (“ ‘Thanks!!!!’ is way friendlier than ‘Thanks’ ”), abbreviations (“Is LOL . . . really inherently more opaque than FYI?”), and emoticons (those smiley faces and the like may “bug many people but they make us smile”).

Sichuan HotPot

2007-09-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

if anyone is interested, I'm organizing a hot pot outing here in NYC. Must like very spicy food!

Place is called DuoYi, it's on 39th between 5th and 6th. I got the name from a guy from Sichuan. Hopefully it will be good.

Typing while talking

2007-08-30T11:57:00.001-07:00

Had a candidate caught up in this, should add to the list. And I blew it by not warning him. Client called "we're going to pass, we thought he was googling the answers." Googling the answers, oh, wait, that's because he's a compulsive computer note taker, he's always taking notes with his PC while he's on the phone with me! Client, "nice try Keenan."
Well, that got us to thinking -- when speaking to recruiters, I fingers are flying on the keys. Does that sound like we're not paying attention? Let me know

Second photo

2007-08-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

That didn't work -- and thanks for NOT letting me know, blogger. So, upon further review, the photo must be less than 50k. Why?

Wait, that wasn't the problem. For some reason I need to have this address:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y3sdvLC8wFo/RtLr-Fz_mrI/AAAAAAAAAAU/iummFUCwX2o/s320/jenandme.jpg

Instead of this
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y3sdvLC8wFo/RtLr-Fz_mrI/AAAAAAAAAAU/iummFUCwX2o/s1600-h/jenandme.jpg

Very confusing. And again, on your profile, you can fill out a bunch of fields -- that are exactly the same on Orkut! Why Google? Why can't all your apps get along, this is simple stuff. Everything is attached to my Google ID.

What I look like

2007-08-27T08:19:00.001-07:00

Man, someone at Google needs to start integrating these apps! To post a photo in your profile, you need to link to an existing web page! So, the work around is to create a post and then link back to the posting! Even though I already have my photo uploaded on Orkut. Don't you think they would just autocreate a picasa account for you? so weird.

That's me with my soon to be bride -- T-minus 12 days, 5 hours, and 48 minutes.

You can call me JohnBhai

2007-08-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

My brother in law just invited me a to a new social networking site (as if we needed any more!) It's called Yaari and is Desi based. It'll be interesting to see how well it takes on Orkut.

But, the best part is, I was able to get the user name JohnBhai, which is Gujrati for John Boy (I guess Hindi is more commonly transliterated as JohnBahiya). Sweet!

Cream rises to the top

2007-08-24T15:27:00.000-07:00

My friend Ted sent this to me, I thought it fits into what we try to do -- smart people always find their way to the top (but I don't mind helping them out along the way)

Since you know this story ends well, you won’t be surprised to hear that he was editor-in-chief of the law review. At 45 years old, Sarles started at Mayer Brown, where he made partner in just seven years. “I don’t know if it was because my work was good or because the firm felt sorry for me,” he says.

You can read the whole thing at the WSJ blog

Fake it till you make it

2007-08-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

In my acting days, one of my favorite sayings was "fake it till you make it." The idea is, you're on stage, you're not connecting with the character, don't just become emotionally unresponsive, relax, go through the motions until you get into the groove.

Hiring is similar. There is an arms race with technical interviews -- as candidates become better prepared, the questions become more asinine. Why? Risk management. No one wants to hire a liability and it is hard to figure out how good a coder is based on a short (8 hours) interview.

There are two major approaches -- the CS approach (used by GS most of anyone) is to ask a bunch of questions that you would get as an undergrad -- brain teasers, reversing linked lists, sort algos, reverse a string, etc. The idea here is, if you are smart, you will be able to pick up any language. Coding language is a tool, the programmer is the artist, he can work with any tool, a la Pablo Picasso.

The other line of thought is, we need serious depth in understanding a language -- the Morgan Stanley/Bloomberg approach. Being smart is great, but if you are really smart, then you will understanding threading, the garbage collector, the stack, the heap, the vtable, etc. If you don't have the depth of knowledge, we're not here to train you.

I always supply my candidates with a 4 page list of questions to expect. I don't care if they've done much threading or know the garbage collector or have worked with 30 STL containers. I want to know if they can learn enough, fast enough, to pass the interview. Listen, if they are not smart, then they will never be able to pass. But if they are smart, they can learn something and be able to pass -- that's what I think clients are really looking for.

It's always funny when I speak to people -- they'll have done a couple of interviews, been embarrassed they didn't know something trivial. The smart people take it as a challenge, study my questions, and get to really know the language they have been working with. Firms hire more people, my people need less interviews, and they feel like they've learned something. Makes you wonder why nobody else is doing it.

I don't get no respect

2007-08-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

So, I wanted to join up a Meetup group b/c I thought it would be fun to hear about how people are using technology on the street and I pride myself on being more knowledgeable than the other recruiters in the marketplace. I figure, what's the harm, the list of members of public, so it's not like I would recruit from the meeting. Plus, I know half the people there!

"However we're trying very
hard to keep this meetup ultra-techy and focused towards
collaborating on realworld issues"

I would understand, but of course the firm that hosts the Meetup also has their recruiters as members. Of course, they are just hosting the Meetup, they aren't using it for any other reasons :)

Incredible Site

2007-08-16T06:26:00.000-07:00

Of course, it is down right now, but YubNub is incredible. This article from Slate surmises it better than me.

The best alternative search engine I've stumbled across, YubNub, isn't a search engine at all. It calls itself a "command line"—a term familiar to DOS and Unix junkies—and serves as more of a Google-enhancer than a Google-replacer. YubNub gives you the tools to make searching with Google or Yahoo more efficient. Say you want to look for pictures of Paris Hilton in Google Images. You type "gim"—the site's shorthand for Google Images—and "paris hilton," and it takes you right to the page. Same goes for Google News ("gnews"), Wikipedia ("wp"), IMDB ("imdb"), Slashdot ("/"), Digg ("digg"), Dictionary.com ("d"), and a gajillion others.

Oh yeah, it is very, very cool.

Leverage

2007-08-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

This note is a bit alarming. There are three ways to make A LOT of money. One, pick stocks well (Warren Buffett and James Simons. The second is starting an incredible software company. And the third way is real estate -- see what Mort Zuckerman has accomplished.

What they have in common is leverage. Suppose you have a sharp eye and know a good deal -- you buy a piece of property for 100,000 and put 10,000 down. You make some minor modifications, you market the property better, place increase 25% in value in one year. You sell for 125,000. Now your increase on investment is not 25%, it's 250% (your 10,000 is now $25,000). Nice.

I think what happened here is a bunch of hedgies bought MBS securities with two ideas in mind -- one, they thought the MBS securities would give them a nice steady return. Two, they thought the securities could be used as collateral to increase the amount of leverage in purchasing equities.

That's why we see patterns emerging where at some point during the day, a bunch of equities are sold. And then, later in that day, there is a huge rally. The sell off is occurring b/c as the MBS securities start to lose value, the banks are demanding the funds put up more collateral. Plus, I bet the banks are tightening their margin rules and asking for more in the bank to cover the loans. So then you are a hedge fund, you need to have cash on hand to keep your leveraged positions around, there is limited liquidity in the credit markets, so your safest (only) option is to drop your equities.

Now on the other side, I'm a trader -- there is nothing fundamental in most of the market to justify the sell off of these equities. So I start buying up.

The next day, same thing happens, funds need to sell to cover -- so I sell too! And then at the end of the day I buy back the shares. Nice!

Somebody is making a lot of money right now.

Excellence

2007-08-15T06:33:00.000-07:00

A candidate asked me a question last night that gave me pause (not unusual as one of my weaknesses is not being exceptional quick witted). "You're only interest in this is the fee. If you were my friend, you wouldn't be asking me to do this interview."

Hmm. I was caught. I couldn't say the fee didn't matter, of course it does. But it really why I was being so persistent. So -- why was I being so persistent.

Excellence -- I don't want to wax to philosophical, but one of the attractions of platonic thought to me was the idea of excellence -- to do the best that you can do. To turn it around -- why do you write code? To help people? That's what people say when they come out of school. It idealistic and it's unrealistic. Who does more good for society, the person building an efficient trading system or the person building MS Word? How many millions (billions) of people are impacted by an efficient trading system -- do you have a 401k?

The next stage is, I'm in it for the money -- my wife went to law school and that must have been the motivation of 50% of her class at her firm when she graduated -- make money to pay off my debt so I can get the job that I really want. That's soulless, and it gives you an empty feeling at the end of the day. I don't know anyone who can stay in business every day where the goal is money.

No, money is a result, not a goal. It is a way to measure one's excellence. This is not semantics. Your motivation is to be the best -- being compensated well is a reflection of how good you are.

That's what I am seeking in recruiting -- excellence. To be known as the best technical recruiter in New York City. Yes, it's arrogant and it has a fair degree of hubris. But does anyone enter Major League Baseball to be "pretty good?" No, you want to be the best. That's what I want to be, the best recruiter in the business. That's my motivation -- I want to place you at my client because I think it is the best position for you. If I don't believe that, I won't do it. Simple as that.

High Frequency Trading

2007-08-15T06:27:00.000-07:00

This is a cool article on high frequency trading that a colleague sent me. Take a looking

The New New Recruiting model

2007-08-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

We're doing some pretty exciting stuff over at Continuity Partners these days. Basically we're trying to blend some "old school" recruiting techniques with some of the newer methods. Here's how:

One of the biggest misconceptions people have about recruiters in the finance IT space is that we know most (all) of the hiring managers. Not true. Most recruiters try to fake it with dropping names here and there -- "I'm going to introduce to Peter Carr's group" or "Has anyone spoken to you about Rohit D'Souza's group." Sometimes people know a particular company particularly well. Or the oldest trick in the book -- "You work in equity derivs at Citibank. Do you work for Tom Jones (a fake manager name)" and then the candidate responds with the actual manager's name and you recruit him.

We're going to change all that. Now that the tools are available -- Google, databases, etc. -- we are going to get to know every single person in front office technology at every major bank and hedge fund. Think about it. Who would you want to work with on a job search -- a recruiter with some knowledge of one or two clients or a recruiter who knows every front office person in the industry -- both managers and your future coworkers? That is what is going to set CPI apart from every other firm in the business.

For the next 20 weeks (that's how many we have left in the year) my goal is to make contact with 50 new people every week. That's 1000 new contacts who I can help either today or tomorrow or years down the road. So, if you get a call from me at work or at home or you get an e-mail from me, I just want to get to know you.

Let's talk.

How ghetto is Orkut?

2007-08-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

If Facebook is a lexus (clean design, fast), LinkedIn is a Cadillac (big and powerful), what is Orkut? It's ugly, it's has the equivalent of roll down windows (have to manually write e-mail addresses to invite people, no tool to import addresses from your contacts and compare to current users!) and it has the lamest color palette this side of the year 2000.

On the other hand, unsurprisingly, the search is really good. And there is good representation among the Desi population on Orkut.

Quant funds being hit

2007-08-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

This article for the NYTimes is very interesting. Basically, it says that the major quant focused funds have been hit by the down turn in the equities and structured products market. What is interesting, is that you would think the funds would have models set up to anticipate this correction and would have shorts out to cover their losses. I mean, it's only 800 points that the DJIA has lost! Plus, in general, volatility should be good for a fund as they can make the money on the speed of the execution. You'd expect the mutual funds to lose money.

I'm going to ponder this a little more ...

Links!

2007-08-13T07:24:00.000-07:00

I have not been diligent enough about putting up a blog roll. Shame on me, that is to be corrected immediately.

Conversations I am tired of having

2007-08-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

If you have ever recruited in NYC, this could be funny.

1. If you are not yet a VP, I cannot get you a VP title.
2. Listen, salaries are capped, I cannot get you a 150k base.
3. You can take the tie and jacket off when you get to the office.
4. No, they will not write the bonus amount on the offer letter, that's not how it is done.
5. They are not going to buy you. They're going to make you a reasonable offer.

Doostang, you're insane

2007-08-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

More idiocy from Doostang:

Hey John,

Thanks for your email – we’ll let a few pass through (like your’s). Basically our members aren’t coders – mostly finance/entertainment/consulting etc people.

Thanks,

Mareza

Funny, if you run a search for developer or "software engineer" you get more than 1000 hits. Funny that Doostang posts developer jobs on their site. I think it's a condescending attitude -- there are plenty of people in finance and consulting who are coding and providing value.

I'll probably get my profile deleted for posting this, but so what. Doostang isn't going to much a service with ridiculous and illogical rules like this.

No developer jobs on Doostang?

2007-08-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe this is why I got kicked off of Doostang in the past:

Hi John,

I hope that you are well. Please note, Doostang is currently not accepting tech/developer jobs. Since you are a new member, we’ll keep it up for you, however, please do not post such positions in the future. We’ll hopefully be able to handle these in a year or so.
Thanks,
Mareza

I wrote to Mareza to ask why no developer positions (he's the CEO, after all) so hopefully we will find out what the story is.

In case you were curious

2007-08-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

The new job is working out quite well -- smart people and a ton of contacts. Can't ask for anything more.

C++ reading list

2007-08-03T10:05:00.001-07:00

I just created this reading list on Amazon, if anyone has any recommendations on books to add, let me know!

I'm also going to create a list of C# and Java books.

More on the state of the market

2007-08-02T14:41:00.001-07:00

It is strange that I am reassuring people working on trading desks at major wall street firms. But here's how I see the market:

1) Earnings at US companies continue to be strong
2) Consumer confidence is high
3) the housing market is slowly unwinding -- yet there has not been the predicted fall in consumer spending
4) The dollar continues to be weak, which means that US manufacturing still has room to grow
5) Low unemployment
6) The main non-US economies are very strong -- India, China, and to a lesser extent the Euro zone.

What is going to change any of that? The subprime market was made up of 4 people -- people who were poor trying to buy a house; people trying to flip houses; shady loan shops; wall street speculators betting on subprime using MBS.

The first group, it's sad that they are losing houses, but they don't make up a huge percentage of the population and they were poor, so they weren't spending much money in the market in the first place (harsh, but true). The flippers could be more concerning -- markets need flow to keep them operating and that's what housing flippers provide -- a steady stream of inventory for regular buyers to compare and contrast. I wonder how many flippers were in the subprime market. Or how many people are trying to flip right now, flipping goes counter when inventory stays on the shelf (I wonder if we could come up with a metric for that?)

Now, onto wall street. They shady loan shops (american home) are gone, out of business. People are going to lose money on that (like in your 401k) but I think it's a situation where it's dispersed throughout the market -- everyone subtract a nickel from your portfolio for the loss of American Home shares. Now the wall street speculators who were buying up the securitised products, that will be interesting. B/c now we know you won't be getting the cash flow they were expecting in the future. On the other hand, they were booking that for the next 30 years, i.e. say a loan portfolio was worth 30 million. That's 30 million gone, but the owner of the securities would be looking at it as losing one million dollars every year for the next 30 years. So again, that's a drop in the bucket to most banks.

I don't think it will effect the wider market, it's similar to when Amaranth blew up b/c of their natural gas positions.

In fact, we should call these funds -- Amaranth, Sowood, Bear Credit Strat -- anti hedge funds b/c there was no hedge involved! These were guys playing roulette with their funds. Bizarre.

No, I guess I was right

2007-08-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

Nothing to see here

Caxton in trouble

2007-08-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

Maybe I spoke too soon ...

State of the Market

2007-08-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

Everyone is asking me how the market is, I'm not seeing any issues.

Staying Fresh

2007-08-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

Complacency is a terrible temptation and one we deal with every day. You get accustomed to doing things a certain way and then wham, you interview and people are doing things a totally different way and you are caught flat footed. I remember when I knew that I wasn't a great developer -- we were working on an application, spending 12 hours a day coding Java code, trying to optimize our code so that we could get decent response on 56k connection. While we're all trying to cut down the data (to reduce packets), one of the guys on the team said, hey, why don't we do everything with XML/XSL. We were confused, what was that (this is 1999). He'd been reading up on it after hours. Basically, the XSL would be downloaded once and then every subsequent time it would reside on the users cache. Problem solved. That's the mark of a great programmer.

New Job!

2007-07-31T08:14:00.001-07:00

Well, the last week was a bit eventful. I have a new job! Just joined Continuity Partners . I'm very excited as I'm working with some really terrific recruiters (we've already started swapping stories, it is amazing how small the world of finance IT is).

Anyways, it was a really tough decision to move, I can totally empathize with candidates who feel torn in a couple of different directions -- I know I did. I really liked working with the people at OSI overall, but what attracted me to Continuity was more opportunities for my candidates which I think leads someone to being a better recruiter.

I'll write more as I will be better to reflect back on everything.

Frustration regarding great beer

2007-07-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

Ugh. So we went out to Long Island a week ago and I had some sort of allergy attack -- I didn't think it very severe. But then my ears filled up and I woke up with vertigo and I went to the doctor and she said it wasn't an infection, just a fluid buildup and to take Claritin D (well, actually allegra D, but my companies cheap ass plan doesn't do prescription benefit so I'm doing Claritin D instead b/c it has the same amount of Psuedo Epherine) and most importantly no caffeine or alcohol and the worst part is, I went to Fairway a week ago and bought a Flying Dog Sampler and it's been sitting in my house for a week and I haven't been able to drink any of it.

Open letter to Barack Obama

2007-07-19T13:21:00.001-07:00

Dear Barack --

I want to write to you as our country is making a dramatic mistake that future historians will point to as a reason for our decline. No, not the war in Iraq, something much closer to home. Our policy on accepting and welcoming well educated immigrants into our country, the backbone of our financial success as a nation is appalling.

I just got off the phone with a highly skilled trading systems developer who has been working in the US legally for the last 8 years on an H1B visa. He's looking to return to his native country not because he has a yearning to return home or because he dislikes living in America. Rather it is because he is tired of waiting for his Green Card. Eight years of following all the rules, working hard, saving money and the immigration office tells him that it might be another 2 or 3 years before he will see his Green Card -- that is, if the US doesn't change the law in the meantime.

Many believe that we can supply the needs of our financial and IT industry strictly with people born in the US. This is simply untrue. America does not produce enough graduates each year to supply these firms. As such, firms are offshoring jobs not only to lower cost nations such as India, but also to well developed areas such as the United Kingdom.

The H1B program not only is ineffective in supplying all the needs to America business, it is also vastly unfair. Workers on the H1B program have a myriad of restrictions placed on them which dramatically lowers their labor mobility. Moreover, once the Green Card process has begun, it can take years -- more than 3 years -- to obtain a green card. I know of numerous people who have been legally working in the United States for 9 years who still do not have a green card.

In addition to the H1B program, there are numerous other visa categories that are designed simply to allow employers to keep employees hostage -- the J1 visa, popular among European companies, allows workers to work in the US for a set period of time (generally 1 year) and then not be able to work again for 2 years.

We should be a nation that actively seeks to attract these individuals -- people with Master's and PhD degrees who want to work hard and achieve the American dream.

I suggest a fairer, more efficient process. Why don't we allow anyone with a Master's level degree or higher qualify for a green card. No other restrictions, not on language, on income, no other bureaucratic issues that will further complicate people being able to work in the US. The only catch would be that applicants would have to pay a significant fee for the ability to work in the US -- I would suggest somewhere around $5,000. This would allow people to work for any company thereby eliminating one of the biggest complaints against the H1 program. It would also make the US a vastly more attractive place to work for foreign nationals.

Booted off of Doostang

2007-07-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

For some unknown reason, I was booted off of Doostang today! Ironically, I probably do the least amount of work on that of any social networking site. I still have no idea what obscure policy I broke -- will keep you posted

Length

2007-07-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm too long winded for blogging.

Dealing with irrationality

2007-07-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

So, one of the things I really like about my job is working through people's irrationality. The job search process is obviously very stressful and it is interesting to see how it impacts people -- one would think that developers and Quants would somehow be immune (given the logical nature of their work) but one would be wrong.

What kind of irrational things do people do? Canceling final interviews where they are expected to be given an offer. Choosing lesser groups at lesser firms. Falling prey to unethical recruiter's manipulations.

For example, we were working with an individual who had been out of work for a couple of months. He had done several rounds with our client, a well known bank in NYC. We scheduled a final interview for him to meet with HR.

On the day of the interview, he calls at 7:30 a.m. and leaves a message to cancel the interview. Of course, when I call him back he doesn't answer his phone. I call at least 10 times that day, no response. E-mail, no response.

I postponed the interview with the client and started to think. I reexamined my notes -- he didn't have any other opportunities that sounded really promising, just an opportunity at a software company that had been in the news for some of it's executives being indicted. Why would he cancel the interview at the last moment?

I tried his number for the next 2 weeks (we never give up here :) and still no answer. Hmmm. Maybe he really did start at the other company. Well, I guess I can all the switchboard at the company and ask for him.

Me: Is Vlad K available?
Software company: One minute while I transfer you.

NO WAY! My mind is racing. what am I going to say? don't get angry, anger produces nothing. Don't jump. Walk...

Vlad: Hello, this is Vlad
Me: (trying to sound really chipper) Hey Vlad, this is John Keenan .

Silence

Vlad: How did you get this number?
Me: I know a lot of people at XYZ software (small lie, I "know" the operator)
Vlad: Oh.
Me: I just wanted to touch base b/c I wanted to exit from the Ibank interview process gracefully and I wanted to make sure they did not look at the cancellation of the interview in a negative light, which could stop you from working there in the future.
Vlad: Ok.
Me: Yeah, so, I'm not angry or anything, I just need to give them a good reason for why we canceled the interview. So, the way we left it, you were going in Thursday for the interview and then you called and left me a message to cancel.
Vlad: That was because I decided to take this job.
Me: Right, so here's the thing, the purpose of the meeting was to give you an offer.
Vlad: I know, but I was going to take this job.
Me: I understand, but wouldn't it make sense to have two offers, b/c that way you could evaluate them. Maybe the banks offer would pay more. Maybe a lot more.
Vlad: Well, I had decided on this job.
Me: Hmm. Let me ask you a couple of questions. did the recruiter for XYZ know you were interviewing at this bank.
Vlad: I might have told him, I'm not sure.
Me: Did he know that you had a final interview for Thursday morning?
Vlad: Uh, maybe.
Me: And did he ask you to cancel the meeting b/c he needed to start a background check or something like that.
Vlad: Well, he said I had to fill out paperwork that day or I would lose the job.
Me: ahh.
Vlad: What?
Me: Do you think it is possible that he knew you were interviewing at the bank and that the bank would offer you a better position with more money than XYZ could offer? And do you think maybe he made up the fact that you had to come in THAT DAY so that you would have to cancel the interview with the bank.
Vlad: Ohhhhh
Me: Don't worry Vlad, I've seen this before.
Vlad: Really?
Me: Yes, but it's OK, I told HR you were out of town the last two weeks. So when can you stop by HR?

First Post

2006-07-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

Well, here's my first post, I'll be writting about issues regarding recruiting in New York City in the IT market. I'll use examples from the real world and hopefully this will help people in their job search.