Landing page for recruiters

As a programmer, I’m communicating with recruiters. Sometimes they contact me, sometimes I contact them. And usually, I need to explain where I stand, what I can do for them and what my optimal deal would be. And these explanations are often similar.

So here goes one such explanation, I don’t want to repeat myself that often.

General

Nothing in here is set in stone, it’s description of what I would consider optimal, same as you have some idea what’s optimal for you. I’m open to negotiations. If you see one or two mismatches but otherwise have a feeling it would work, feel free to contact me.

But I hope it also draws some basic expectations and can save time for both sides in case of obvious mismatches.

Also:

• Please, provide some information first, before inviting me to a call. I prefer asynchronous communication over scheduling exact calendar time, so email is optimal. Information means something more than „Modern progressive company with global impact“.
• I’m OK with doing a coding test, extended interview, or something like that. After all, I’m confident about my abilities and this is one way to prove them. But I’ll not invest the time before I know I’m interested - so again, provide some information first. And, of course, everything has its limits (no, Google, I’m not going to go through 10-round interviewing process, you’re not that much better employer than the next company).

My experience & technologies

From the technical point of view, I concentrate on lower-level and performance things. Think about tuning latencies and throughputs of backend servers, fitting functionality that’s not supposed to fit into embedded devices, etc. As languages go, it is Rust, C and C++. I can read and write other languages (Python, Perl, …) but I consider them as support for my main ones ‒ eg. writing tests, generating code, processing logs. I do not do front-end ‒ if you’re looking for JavaScript, then I’m not your person. And I don’t have much aestetical feeling (you probably can tell by these pages).

Nevertheless, my main strength isn’t in merely writing the code. If you’re going to hire me, the added value will be in designing things, discussing with other teams about what actually needs to be done, improving the code quality standards and teaching others about the technologies, understanding the purpose of a feature in the whole product, …

These things are often called „techlead“ (not „teamlead“ ‒ I don’t aspire on leading the personal aspect of a team) or „evangelist“. It’s not as much about how much code I write, but about how much code that doesn’t need writing I discover, or by designing the architecture to solve multiple problems by single solution and identifying dead-ends and problematic areas before they are implemented.

In short, my contribution isn’t about doing more, it is in identifying the right things to do.

Motivation

Every deal needs motivation on both sides. Besides the obvious monetary motivation, there are others and there should be a synergy of these:

• Interesting problems to solve: I want to have something to keep the brain occupied. Hard problems are welcome (not merely easy problems with crazy deadlines). If it’s industry standard solution, then it’s no longer an unsolved problem (combining several „industry standard“ solutions into an unusual package might be).
• Added value of the product I can understand: I want to know what the company produces and why it is useful for the customer. It’s even better if I can use it myself (both for motivation and for improving the product). Specifically, this does not include financial products of any kinds.
• General positive „societal“ impact ‒ for example, renewable energy sources.
• Ability to have an actual impact in the company. This means, big corporations usually have negative points here. Certified development and rule-heavy hierarchical environments are the worst kind for me. Having the trust and autonomy to get the stuff done is much preferred.

It doesn’t mean your company needs to score 100% on all of these, but what’s missing in one might need compensation in something else. This also means you won’t get an answer about salary requirements until I have some idea about the above points.

„Employment“ conditions

Usual full-time employment contract feels a bit restricting and inflexible:

• I don’t want to spend all my time with a single company and prefer some kind of diversity.
• I prefer to use my own computer over company-provided one.
• I don’t want a 9-5 hours and commute to an office every day.
• I’d like to sell my experience and skills, not merely time.

Therefore, you’re more likely to interest me in consulting, teaching, one-offs, designs, etc, than a full-time contract (that is, more of the above motivation is needed for the latter than for the former).

Nevertheless, I believe I’m able to provide the added value within the shorter time allocation. In previous jobs, I spent smaller part of the time doing the actual „techlead“ things and bigger part „just“ coding. If the strong side is the techleading, I can offer it to more companies instead and have bigger overall impact in moving the industry forward.

Contact

I’ll be happy to hear what you need and find some deal that works for both sides. Just drop me an email at vorner@vorner.cz.