Ovid

Slashdot is focused on a particular audience, unlike Reddit, thus suggesting that comments may be more targeted and useful than the typical "OP is a fag" idiocy.

On the other hand, checkout http://www.reddit.com/r/depthhub. That subreddit flags many of the deepest, most insightful comments on reddit and is a fascinating trove of information about all sorts of interesting subjects.

For example, here's a brilliant comment that compares and contracts Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and George Orwell's "1984" (both excellent books, I might add): http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1hhrpk/huxley_vs_orwe...

In a sense, Reddit can tend towards a Brave New World style of information by drowning us in so much information, much of which is false or inane, that we can lose sight of what's important, but as a source of entertainment, it's often terrific.

A bunch of "single post" accounts all designed to attack one company? Add in someone impersonating brian d foy, a well known Perl dev (and you use almost exactly the same wording) and it really looks like you're a disgruntled ex-employee who's out to hurt this company.

Allow me to rewrite that first paragraph:

> If I could, I would repeal the assembly line. It is the technological marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. I grant its astonishing capabilities: the instant production of inexpensive goods and the pleasure of knowing your parts are no longer hand-crafted and thus can be replaced with identical parts. But the benefits are relatively modest compared with previous transformative technologies, and it brings with it a terrifying danger: job loss. Amid the controversy over artisans no longer being able to dominate their craft and tightly controlling who can and cannot become an apprentice, this threat to the established, time-honored way of doing things cannot stand!

Lather, rinse, repeat with: the printing press, radio, robotics, or any other new technology. There are ups and downs, but trying to stop progress is like shoveling back the ocean with a fork. You can move with the tides or drown.

If it helps, I'm a real hacker :) Here's some of my open-source code: https://github.com/Ovid

Here's some more of my open-source code: http://search.cpan.org/~ovid/

Here's my tech blog where I give advice to other hackers: http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/

I'm a hacker trying to help other hackers live their dreams and I give freely back to the community.

> This is "Who's hiring" thread and it has always been a place for companies to post their own direct-hire positions.

I realize that you disagree with recruiters being here. The lead paragraph for the "Who is Hiring" threads says the following:

> Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or H1B if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Feel free to post any job that may interest HN readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to CTO.

I've never seen anything which states "no recruiters". We specifically looked for that because we didn't want to violate any TOS or alienate those we are trying to help.

I'm sorry you disagree with how we've handled this, but we honestly do try to help people live anywhere in the world. The fact that I've also been writing a blog helping people do this for years should help back that up.

When candidates contact us with their CV and express an interest in the jobs, we immediately tell them who is hiring and why. It's hard enough for those who dream of living abroad to find companies willing to help them. Why restrict their opportunities?

> edit: now I did downvote it for posting a duplicate where a simple list of countries would have sufficed.

Um, uh, er. Yeah, you're right, darn it. I didn't think about that (duh), but in retrospect, it should have been obvious to me :(

I won't make that mistake again. Thanks for pointing it out!

That's a fair point and a very enlightening post. Thanks for sharing it :)

So far we've not really gotten much direct hate from folks, but it happens from time to time. I suspect the fact that we're trying to help people move to other countries might make us look a bit nicer, but it's tough to say.

Yup, we're a recruitment company (amongst other things). However, we're very specialized. We focus on international IT recruiting where companies are willing to sponsor you for a work permit (or the local equivalent). This is because my wife and I are both serial expats and we believe that people should be able to live anywhere in the world they want (we're not saying it's practical, but it's still our dream).

Thus, since we have a lot of background in this area, I'm moderately well-known in the IT world and I keep getting companies contacting me to help them find people (because of my "how to become an expat" blog http://www.overseas-exile.com/), we decided that we'd create a company to help people live their dreams.

We're proud of the fact that we help people move to other countries. We're particularly happy with one young developer who escaped a violence-filled, high unemployment country. Of course, since we're "just recruiters", we're stereotyped and there's no easy way to shake that, but I'm proud of the work we do.

Sorry, many dynamic languages prevent against this. For example:

    $ perl -Mstrict -E 'say $foo'
    Global symbol "$foo" requires explicit package name at -e line 1.

Also, his comment about properties on objects is very debatable, too. Ignoring that the term "property" is overloaded and not defined, since I use roles (see: http://www.slideshare.net/Ovid/inheritance-versus-roles-1799...), I find out at compile time if my classes are missing an attribute or method (actually it's composition time, but that's splitting a hair that most will never notice). In short, I don't get frantic 2AM phone calls about a batch process trying to call a non-existent method.

Amsterdam, Netherlands. Work permit and relocation assistance provided.

We want developers who like to have fun and socialize outside of work, but care about their jobs, too. We're looking for UX designers, front-end and back-end developers.

UX designer: use Photoshop, Gimp, or whatever makes your socks roll up and down and you know how to make Web and/or mobile applications work for customers. Knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and CSS also needed.

Front-end developer: you can make Web sites do exactly what you want them to do, regardless of the browser or operating system the web site is running on. Knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and CSS required.

Back-end developers: you know what it takes to power the back-end of large web sites. You understand scalability issues and can explain the difference between an inner and outer join. You know what O(log N) is and why it's important. Your programming language history isn't important because you're good enough to learn a new language if needed.

All positions: not looking for rock stars. Looking for competent technical talent who are willing to move to Europe (unless you're already here). We have many expats working here and we'll even help pay for Dutch lessons, if you want them.

We also like people who understand business because you'll be expected to make many of your own decisions without having to ask permission from management for every little thing that you do. You will have the power to get stuff done, work with a great bunch of people and be able to spend your five weeks of vacation time cruising across Europe and discovering why Amsterdam is such a beautiful city.

For more information, see http://www.allaroundtheworld.fr/vacancies.html

Send email to jobs at allaroundtheworld.fr. Please include:

Your name, your timezone (helpful when scheduling interviews!), your CV, where you heard about us and why you want to live in Amsterdam!

Hanover, Germany. Work Permit/Blue Card and Relocation Assistance Provided.

Several positions available:

- Two strong Perl developers with testing, refactoring, and "Modern Perl" experience.

- A DevOps person. As DevOps, not only will you be responsible for keeping their systems up and running, you’ll also have the ability to shape the operations management product all your colleagues are using. You will be there working with the dev team to help them build the right ops management system.

- A front-end developer with a keen eye towards Web site design and implementation. Expert with HTML/CSS/Javascript (jQuery). Also, either knows Perl or isn't afraid to learn it.

We're recruiting for a company in Hanover, Germany. They're stable, profitable and they've been in business for years. Hanover is a beautiful, bike-friendly, mid-sized town in the north of Germany. The cost of living is low and the quality of life is high. It's a green-friendly town and hosts one of the largest Oktoberfests in the world. While we're listing "desired" skills, keep in mind that the company is happy to be flexible on most of this so long as you can convince them that you can help improve their systems.

See http://www.allaroundtheworld.fr/vacancies.html for more information (we don't yet have the front-end developer position listed). You can email us at jobs@allaroundtheworld.fr. Please include:

Your name, your timezone (helpful when scheduling interviews!), your CV, where you heard about us and why you want to live in Germany!

Given that the second paragraph makes factually incorrect claims about what you can detect at compile time in dynamic languages, I think "debatable" is rather kind :)

Of course, sweeping generalizations about static versus dynamic languages tend to fall flat.

You're welcome.

Most Americans back home (we expats often call them "homelanders") have never heard of FATCA. It was a law recently passed which stated that every foreign financial institution (FFI) had to turn over information to the IRS about American customers. Never mind that this was often in violation of their country's privacy laws and expensive as hell to implement. It also had a wide variety of other consequences which have eventually led to many FFIs referring to Americans as "toxic assets" and refusing to do business with us.

I have more background in a variety of articles I've written about it: http://www.overseas-exile.com/search/label/fatca

It's still wonderful to be an expat and see the world, but if you get caught up in the IRS mess, life can become hell.

Right now, non-US based cloud services are using the PATRIOT Act as a way of selling themselves (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/12/patriot-act-and-p...). As an example from that article:

BAE Systems had ditched Microsoft Office 365 over PATRIOT Act concerns, because Microsoft could not guarantee the company's data wouldn't leave Europe.

Also, you may not have heard of FATCA, but it's hurting business for Americans outside the US. I'm an American living in Paris and I was approached about an executive level position at a company that really wanted me because I'm an expert in my field. However, due to the nature of the position, I'd have signing authority over this company's accounts. This triggers FATCA laws which would compel this European company with no US business to spend a lot of money preparing financial statements to turn over to the IRS. The exposure and cost outweighed the benefits of hiring me. I'm not the only American abroad whose been screwed this way thanks to US laws. The laws are designed to catch rich tax dodgers, but they wind up punishing a bunch of innocent Americans like myself (I'm a very far cry from rich).

On top of that, many Americans abroad are now losing banking services due to FATCA (http://www.overseas-exile.com/2012/07/ing-france-turning-awa...), meaning that for many Americans abroad, it's getting very hard to do any sort of business at all. Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook cofounder who famously gave up his US citizenship strongly hinted that this was blocking his business opportunities, so like some Americans abroad, you're faced with giving up your US citizenship or giving up your business. Not a fun choice.

TL;DR: Americans abroad are getting squeezed out of business opportunities thanks to FATCA and American businesses abroad are losing customers due the PATRIOT Act. If you're in business, it's a rough time to be a US expat and all the business opportunities we lose are going to foreign companies. Thanks, Congress!

papaver, I can understand your being upset and I want to apologize. In going back through our mail queue I can find your email in a backup mailbox I use, but we can't find it in the main mailbox. In fact, you say you received a response, but I can't even find that replied to you! I'm very sorry about this and now we're trying to figure out what happened.

As you can imagine, we get a lot of email for these positions, but to the best of my knowledge, we've never missed one before (but obviously, if we did miss a candidate, we wouldn't know, would we?). Now that I've located your initial April 3rd email, we'll get in touch, but obviously if you're not still interested, we understand.

Again, my sincerest apologies.

I have contacted the real brian d foy and he confirms that this is an imposter.

I have received an email from brian d foy and he confirms that this poster is an imposter.

It's not for freelancers, no. You can go to Germany and stay up there for up to six months while looking for work, but to get a Blue Card, you have to have a contract with an annual salary attached to it. Your Blue Card is good for the length of the contract plus three months. However, as mentioned, if you stay long enough, you can apply for permanent German residency.

Keep in mind that the German government has been tweaking the Blue Card law, so you probably want to reverify what I've said if you go that route. That being said, I just received a PM on Reddit from someone who moved to Germany after seeing a post I made about the Blue Card and they just got a job offer. They're going to sign and apply for their Blue Card with that contract.

brian (if this is indeed the same brian d foy, I don't know since he always uses 'd' with his name, per his style guide: http://www252.pair.com/comdog/style.html), I'm rather surprised to see you writing this.

First, it should be clear that for obvious reasons, I can't identify the company in question. My wife and I are starting a company trying to help people live their dream of living in other countries and that's a very hard thing to do. You (if you're really brian) know that I write http://www.overseas-exile.com/ and I've been writing that for years trying to help people move abroad because I love being an expat. We created this company because now we have a chance to really help people do what I'm so passionate about, but when someone tears down our work it also threatens to take away another chance for people to experience life abroad. The fact that we're doing this with IT companies is almost incidental: it's our background and it's what we know best.

What we don't do is throw CVs at a company without telling the candidate what the location and the company are like because it's important for the candidate to decide for themselves, rather than simply rely on rumors. We get to know the companies we work with so we can make sure that the candidate is happy with the company and the company is happy with the candidate. Everyone we've helped move abroad has thanked us and I don't believe anyone has any illusions that we're promising them a gold-plated Ferrari and a personal masseuse.

Regarding your comments about Booking.com and my reasons for leaving, people have asked and I publicly stated my reasons at http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2011/12/moving-to-paris.htm.... However, I was very cagey about that because much of the reason was intensely personal and nobody's darned business, but since you're attacking me by saying it's a "sad" thing I'm doing, I'll say it now: my wife had just had a baby, was very tired, and wanted to move back to her home country. I love my wife very dearly and I would do anything to help her. So off to France we went. Making a decision to move to another country is very hard and there are always many factors that come into play, but that was the primary reason and I've already told a few people about it privately, but I didn't shout it from the rooftops because it's nobody's business that my wife was tired and wanted to go home. Did I gripe about other issues from time to time? Sure, everyone does. But my primary motivation was my wife and daughter and it worked: my wife is very happy.

There are still plenty of well-known senior Perl developers who are at Booking.com: Yves, Rafael, Ævar, and many others who are known by first name to much of the community. Booking.com isn't a good fit for everyone, and not everyone is good fit for Booking.com -- that describes every business on the planet.

I also see that you linked to that "truth about Booking.com" post. I've never publicly commented on that simply because people have strong feelings about that company and just like vi versus emacs, I saw no point in wading into the debate.

So I'll say this about that post: that was clearly an anonymous disgruntled employee and that should be a warning sign to anyone who read it. Whoever they are, they've never been willing to stand up and take responsibility for their words, though if they're still working there, I could understand why. Their post was a mixture of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. Plus, I felt there was a lot of lying by omission. Note how many Booking employees responded (all but one of whom I know personally). They were honest about the company and generally positive about it. Some people don't understand why so many extremely talented Perl developers are happy to work there, but that alone should give people pause.

By now most people probably know that Booking.com isn't a "modern Perl" shop, but they're not "treating their employees like dogs". They're extremely business-oriented and while I don't always agree with their decisions, the fact that they've managed to become one of the largest internet properties on the planet says something about what they're doing right. And if you work for them and do well, you'll get plenty of advancement opportunities if you want it. And I also know plenty of programmers working for them who have earned fantastic bonuses by producing great results. They pay a fair salary for Amsterdam, bonuses, and if you qualify for the Dutch 30% ruling, you get an extra several hundred euros a month.

TL;DR: They're not for everyone, but the rumor mill is just that: a rumor factory.

Thanks for the kind words :)

For the Blue Card, you can change employers as much as you want because it's attached to the employee rather than the employer. Further, depending on the country, after two or three years, you can then legally take work in any other EEA country (except the UK, Ireland and Denmark, all of whom opted out of the Blue Card program). There are some technicalities involved, but those are the basics.

Germany's program is particularly great because you can get a permanent residency permit after only two years if you learn German (to a B2 level, I think), or after three years if you don't speak German. In other words, it's a permanent entry into the EU. I'm an American living in France and I'm married to a French woman, so I don't have to worry, but otherwise, I'd apply for the Blue Card in a heartbeat!

Hanover, Germany. Work Permit/Blue Card and Relocation Assistance Provided.

Looking for strong Perl developers for a company in Hanover, Germany. They're stable, profitable and they've been in business for years. Hanover is a beautiful, bike-friendly, mid-sized town in the north of Germany. The cost of living is low and the quality of life is high. It's a green-friendly town and hosts one of the largest Oktoberfests in the world. While we're listing "desired" skills, keep in mind that the company is happy to be flexible on most of this so long as you can convince them that you can help improve their systems:

    - You have a strong Perl, testing, and refactoring background. 
      You'll be helping them transform legacy systems into modern ones.
    - You have experience with AJAX, SOAP, REST and other Web technologies.
    - You have good relational database experience, preferably
      MySQL (what a surprise!)
    - You understand that Object Oriented code is more than just using
      Moose or blessing a reference.
    - Familiarity with Linux
    - You speak English. German's a plus, but not mandatory.
    - You don't drool on your t-shirt.

In return:

    - A competitive salary and strong job security (always profitable,
      very low employee turnover)
    - Top-notch equipment
    - Shared offices to two or three devs -- no open plan
    - Offices in downtown
    - Flexible and fair working hours
    - 30 days vacation!
    - Get sent to conferences (if you want)

Why Hanover?

    - An active local Perl Mongers group.
    - Lots of asparagus!
    - 500k people
    - University town
    - Greenest city in Germany (forest, lake, parks, rivers)
    - Great transportation
    - Low rent and low cost of living!

Your job will not just be to hack Perl. You'll be actively working to help modernize their systems and improve standards. You'll have a high level of responsibility. In return, you get to enjoy a friendly, beautiful city and culture. Take a two week road trip across Europe and still have a month's vacation when you get back to work.

Send email to jobs at allaroundtheworld dot fr.

Amsterdam, Netherlands. Work permit and relocation assistance provided.

We want developers who like to have fun and socialize outside of work, but care about their jobs, too. We're looking for UX designers, front-end and back-end developers.

UX designer: use Photoshop, Gimp, or whatever makes your socks roll up and down and you know how to make Web and/or mobile applications work for customers. Knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and CSS also needed.

Front-end developer: you can make Web sites do exactly what you want them to do, regardless of the browser or operating system the web site is running on. Knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and CSS required.

Back-end developers: you know what it takes to power the back-end of large web sites. You understand scalability issues and can explain the difference between an inner and outer join. You know what O(log N) is and why it's important. Your programming language history isn't important because you're good enough to learn a new language if needed.

All positions: not looking for rock stars. Looking for competent technical talent who are willing to move to Europe (unless you're already here). We have many expats working here and we'll even help pay for Dutch lessons, if you want them.

We also like people who understand business because you'll be expected to make many of your own decisions without having to ask permission from management for every little thing that you do. You will have the power to get stuff done, work with a great bunch of people and be able to spend your five weeks of vacation time cruising across Europe and discovering why Amsterdam is such a beautiful city.

Send email to jobs at allaroundtheworld dot fr.

Much to my surprise, it's https://github.com/Ovid/DB--Color

Screenshot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/publius_ovidius/5208642982/

That's my work to bring syntax highlighting to the Perl debugger. It involves some deep magic with the debugger and still needs more work, but people are very happy with it.

I've been writing a Web-based, multi-player text adventure which is sort of a cross between Firefly and Mad Max, spanning all star systems in a 20 light-year radius around the remains of Sol. I have a lot of the core work done, with a Perl/Postgres/Catalyst/PSGI stack, but then my daughter was born and my wife and I are starting our own company. If you've ever heard of http://www.torn.com/, you have a rough idea about game play. The main difference is, aside from the background, this one is heavily story-based.

My intent was to make it free to play, but given significant advantages to those willing to make a minimal $5 donation per month.

I've always wanted to finish it, but I never found enough volunteers to help.

This is, at best, a first-pass alpha, but a highly promising one. Further, the student apparently understood the reason for the errors and offered an inexpensive way to fix them. What would you have wanted int the title?

"Student takes Google's self-driving car and offers the potential to make it $71,000 cheaper contingent upon correcting a misidentification issue that causes a possible failure rate of 6%"

Yeah, that would be so much better ;)

It's OK to take a little license with a title and try to summarize the main points. Maybe just adding the word "potential" in there would be enough, but some user named lololinternet would come along and claim how misleading the title is because ...

Apple's calling a single digit tax rate a "reasonable rate"? You've got to be kidding me. Apple's profits have astounding for years and it's not like the taxes have hurt it (to be fair, they've been legally sheltering money offshore in low-tax areas). This is a completely self-serving suggestion on Apple's part. This won't benefit the US economy; it will benefit Apple shareholders.

The giveaway is this line:

> The research paper, which hasn’t yet undergone peer review, seems to confirm ...

Particularly for the non-programming roles, I recommend the One Minute Manager (http://www.amazon.com/The-Minute-Manager-Kenneth-Blanchard/d...). This was written long before agile became a "thing", but it was a way of managing effectively with very little effort. It's a bit dated (my copy had advice about briefly putting your hand on the employee's shoulder to let them know you really care about them. Do not do this!)

Aside from that, here was my experience with the book back in the 1980s: I was managing a small family entertainment center and I was working too hard and was on the verge of being fired. I was told to buy the book. When I got done with it, I applied what it said, I dramatically reworked procedures to be clearer and simpler and found myself with too much time on my hands and the center was much easier to run. I wound up going from being on the verge of getting fired to getting multiple promotions and transfers to better locations.

Some people don't like the book, claiming it's too simplistic, but it's short, and both easy to remember and apply.

One interesting thing I noticed here: my wife obtained her Masters in French law for just over €2,000. Many universities here in Europe are free or very low cost (often £150 per semester).

It's the poorly-subsidized, "for profit" nature of the US educational system which has led to the US going from first to twelfth place in the percentage of young people with university degrees (http://completionagenda.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files...) (warning: pdf).

While I applaud what I'm seeing here and I think it's great news, the "low price" of $7000 is only for the Masters program ... you already have to have a Bachelors degree and it's still a far higher price than you'll pay in many parts of the world.

The labor shortages are on both sides. However, the visa system in the US is horribly broken (http://www.overseas-exile.com/2013/04/whos-hiring-h1b-visa-w...). Further, with the introduction of the European Blue Card (http://www.overseas-exile.com/2011/02/european-blue-card.htm...), entry to Europe is getting easier and easier for skilled workers. Both sides have a labor shortage, but the US has traditionally had an advantage with one language and immigration law for 50 states. Now this is changing since Europe is starting to address the issue.

The article was good, but there are a few issues.

My background: I went to uni to be an economist, but I'm now a freelance software consultant/trainer. Also, for years I've written a blog about how to be an expat and on top of that, my wife and I run a company and she handles international IT recruiting. In short: I know a ridiculously large amount about this topic (except for the black-market work).

> Schools and universities are failing to equip young people with the skills that twenty-first century digital businesses need, these people say.

That's not true at the university level. At least here in Europe, increasing amounts of people aren't taking degrees in STEM technologies. If people won't seek the degrees, there's not much the universities can do. At a younger age, public education could be doing more to help here, but aside from interesting ideas like Estonia teaching children to program (http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2012/09/06/why-estoni...), you're going to have to have government support around a wide-spread approach of schools trying to interest students in IT.

> The time and expense that Navarro says is necessary to import a European national to work in the U.K. is not insignificant. The paperwork alone costs $1,000.

That's misleading. It's sort of true if you're a medium or large employer hiring tier 2 workers (http://www.overseas-exile.com/2012/08/we-dont-sponsor-work-p...), but ... that's a one-shot cost for becoming a licensed sponsor. After that it's making a job offer and issuing candidates a sponsorship number (which costs £184 for a tier 2 or £14 for a tier 5). Yes, there are still costs in bringing them over, but not

No, the real issue with the UK is that they currently limit non-EU skilled workers to 20,700 per year (unless you earn over 150K). As a result, you want to import your workers early in the year. Need a specialist in October? Ha! Good 'un, guvnah!

Of course, like the US, UK university graduation rates are dropping as tuitions rise, causing them long-term issues that they can't offset with importing enough skilled labor because both countries are limited said import!

Also, it's disappointing to see the article failing to mention the European Blue Card. That's one of the most exciting opportunities that Europe now has. Designed to fight against the US Green Card, it's a way to allow European countries (minus the UK, Ireland and Denmark) to import skilled workers with very little paperwork or hassle. Stay in your first country for a few years and you have the entire EEA labor market (minus caveats above) open to you! In Germany, for example, it's almost as simple as getting a job offer and moving. It's paying off well for Germany and it's going to be a long-term game changer for the EU if they can overcome their Euro troubles.