On 7/12/05, Michael Halcrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I heard a quote from the head of a small and successful tech company > in Austin. It went something like: > > ``Every so often I look in the job ads to get a scoop on the local > competition. Whenever I find an ad requiring C, C++, or Java > experience, I can entirely dismiss the company as any kind of > potential threat. When I see Perl, Python, or Ruby, then I keep my eye > on those companies. But when I see a requirement for LISP experience, > then I really know that I had better watch out for that competitor.'' > > Mike
That company wasn't in Austin, it was on the east coast, and the quote is from Paul Graham in his article Beating the Averages (http://store.yahoo.com/paulgraham/avg.html): During the years we worked on Viaweb I read a lot of job descriptions. A new competitor seemed to emerge out of the woodwork every month or so. The first thing I would do, after checking to see if they had a live online demo, was look at their job listings. After a couple years of this I could tell which companies to worry about and which not to. The more of an IT flavor the job descriptions had, the less dangerous the company was. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle experience. You never had to worry about those. You were also safe if they said they wanted C++ or Java developers. If they wanted Perl or Python programmers, that would be a bit frightening-- that's starting to sound like a company where the technical side, at least, is run by real hackers. If I had ever seen a job posting looking for Lisp hackers, I would have been really worried. .===================================. | This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. | | Don't Fear the Penguin. | | IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net | `==================================='
