JakeStone

Tangential alternative real world ending: I was a non-traditional student with industry experience. Took a class where the professor had a record of giving 2-3 A's per semester.

I saw the class was rough for a lot of these kids, started a large study group and taught them, and the class ended up with 10 A's, one of them being from outside the group.

Good on you, Zed.

Well, Hackbright's out. Women only, but you bring up a good idea. I may just go and do what I did when I first started C#. Pick up 4 or 5 good books from Amazon and step through them and code up something.

Phase 2, which I'm implementing tomorrow, consists of basically that. I'm figuring at least Microsoft, Amazon and Google. We'll see what else I can find. Any recommendations?

I'll second that one. I'm actively searching to get me and my family out of TX back to the SF Bay area. I'm a .NET guy, so I know the deck's a little stacked against me, but dealing with recruiters is rapidly becoming mind numbing.

"Must have 2 years of T-SQL." Ok, I've written my share of SQL for ASP.NET and desktop apps on MSSQL Server. Add it up and it's about 4 years, plus the last year or so with EF. Here's my resume.

"We can't send this to our client, you don't have T-SQL." Umm... SQL on MSSQL Server _is_ T-SQL. "Now you're lying to me." Ok, this is where our professional relationship ends. Thanks for your time.

Then there's that job where I pitched in on some Java stuff that needed doing. Similar to C#, I can grok. We got that code out the door, and it's still working. Yay. "Hello! I want to tell you about an opportunity requiring 10 years of J2EE and [insert other Java tech buzzwords]." <sigh> I'm not a Java guru anywhere near that level. Let me rewrite that project so Java isn't on there anymore. Doesn't matter. My resume is now in some resume bank that farms it out to non-perceiving headhunting companies.

Yeah, I'm getting a little cranky now. I'll stop.

Jayzus. That would be as close as possible to actual implementation of the concept of 'thoughtcrime'. Thanks for the shiver.

Well, sure. P.T. Barnum was correct, after all. But we can at least try to spread some inoculation around, can't we?

If you follow the link to read the rest of the article, you'll see it takes you to The Daily Mail. We don't ever believe The Daily Mail, do we boys and girls?