Software Developer, Media Nut, and Proud Father of Two

I put a notice of sorts in about two weeks ago that I was looking for another job. I had a few promising leads at the time, but they have ultimately lead to disappointment, and with one, utter frustration. Early in June I was contacted by a job recruiter (on a Saturday of all days) about a six month contract to hire position with Chevron as a front end developer, with a little bit of server side. One of the requirements was that the developer be able to hand code valid XHTML, CSS, ASP and JS code; so they wanted a person that didn't depend on a WYSIWYG editor. This was perfect because I hate using programs that write my code for me and I enjoy doing front end development. By the end of our conversation the job recruiter and I were convinced that I was exactly what Chevron wanted. Or so we thought.

The job description listed items common to most web developer positions; on the tail end of this list was a notation that the person should be skilled in using "Dreamweaver and other popular Web development packages." The remainder of the email entailed comments from the hiring manager, including the following:

Candidate understands the difference between standards mode and quirks mode. Candidate knows what the box model hack is and what versions of IE works for. Candidate may love Firefox and Firebug, but he/she is so good he,/she does not need it. Candidate does not get scared off by scripting markup like Javascript and ASP showing up in the code here and there.

The first thing that caught my eye was that if they wanted a developer to hand code valid code, why bother mentioning Dreamweaver at all? Then there was the Firebug comment. Firebug is a web developers best friend, along with the Web Dev toolbar. Developing without Firebug, after having used it, would be like driving a car that has working air conditioning, but it only blows out of one vent in the entire vehicle; add Firebug and now you have multiple vents, thus giving you greater convenience with the A/C. No developer should be without debugging tools of some sort, so the notion that "they're so good they don't it" is foolish and spoken by a true manager that isn't in touch with developers. In the midst of the conversation I mentioned my Portfolio, which the recruiter said would probably help. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was setting myself up for problems. Anna was born on July 17th and I still hadn't heard anything, so I sent an email asking what was going on. The next day I got a response on what the hiring manager said:

Mixed coding style between tableless and table with some not validating like we'd expect. On his portfolio site, some of the images are missing. Sorry... I tried.

When I read this, I wanted to jump out of my chair, strap on my spandex super hero outfit and go save the day... or in this case, save my integrity as a developer. The hiring manager has reason to be concerned with what they're seeing. After all, I am claiming to be an expert in PHP, XHTML, CSS and JS, so surely they would expect the results to match that claim. Several of the sites they took issue with were made before I became an expert, though, and most are maintained by other people, people who know nothing of web standards or writing HTML code. All of my arguments fell on deaf ears.

Since then, the job recruiter has been trying to get additional feedback from the hiring manager, but they have been ignoring her. Instead, Chevron has gone on an all out blitz by working with many different job recruiters. As of today, I have been contacted by a dozen different recruiters about this one job. I contacted Cathe after this and we tried one last attempt to get their attention on what a great opportunity they were passing on (I'm talking about me!). I sent them a zip file with a graphic designer's mockup, the necessary XHTML and CSS for viewing, and a link to the live site for comparison. The point was to illustrate what I made and what ended up being used and/or modified. This, however, has been ignored as well.

The way I look at this whole debacle is that if God wanted me to drive to the heart of downtown Houston, I would've landed this job weeks ago. I'm moving on from this with the expectation that something bigger and better is waiting. I had one possible job lined up here in Spring, but darn it, it was for a C# developer. I do have two other offers that I'm waiting to hear on: one in The Woodlands that should help diversify my skills, and another as a jQuery developer. I loves me some jQuery! So here's hoping and believing for the best!