On Mon, 13 Nov 1995 08:27:35 -0600 Susan King <[log in to unmask]>
said:
 
>As one of  the mailing lists housed  at eWorld, some of  the features we
>were expecting  from LISTSERV which was  suppose to be available  in the
>3rd Quarter  of 1995,  including INDEX feature  and SEARCH  features and
>FILE  features without  the  need for  the  site.catalog entries...  are
>sorely needed as this list continues to grow at dynamic rates...
>
>Can anyone give  us an update on  when we might be able  to expect these
>features for the HP1 Unix version.
 
The  current  revised estimate  is  1Q96.  The  delay  isn't due  to  any
particular difficulty in porting the code but rather to lack of manpower.
Our  policy is  that customer  support  comes first,  and currently  that
leaves  very little  time for  development  work. We're  hired three  new
people in the last  6 months (the fourth decided at  the last minute that
she preferred to  stay home to take  care of her kids),  and we currently
have six  positions open. They're advertised  on the web and  we post ads
regularly. Every  day we get  5-10 resumes, and  I'm afraid that  all the
stories you hear  about good help being hard to  find nowadays are vastly
optimistic. All  right, let  me check  today's batch.  The names  are all
fictitious  of course.  Joe applied  to the  senior programming  position
based on having worked  as a retail salesman for 5  years and then having
taken  a   computer  course  and   having  had   a  job  as   a  database
programmer/designer  for one  year, which  is  the entire  extent of  his
computer experience.  Being a smart guy,  he figured his years  of retail
sales experience could be counted  towards meeting the required number of
years for the senior programming position  since, after all, he *did* age
during these  years. Jackie is  pretty much the  same except he's  been a
clerk for the  CIA rather than a  retail sales clerk. To  his defense, he
was  only applying  for a  junior position.  James starts  his resume  by
making  a list  of his  many and  superlative skills,  then repeating  it
immediately,  just  in case  we  doubted  that he  knows  how  to copy  a
paragraph  with a  word processor,  then adding  that the  extent of  his
skills goes well beyond  what can be expressed in a  resume, and then for
good measure he  repeats it two more times. That's  assuming his spelling
and grammar mistakes didn't drive you  nuts before you reached the end of
the resume,  for James makes usenet  look like a lecture  hall at Oxford.
And Daniel, well,  having many years of experience as  a COBOL programmer
with accounting  specialization, he  thinks he  is uniquely  qualified to
lead a sales force for a computer company, although he would also enjoy a
support position (which he calls "support situation" in his resume, quite
interestingly), or,  come to think about  it, a programming job  would be
good too. To tell you the truth, a *job* would be good. And, finally, one
potentially  good candidate  for one  of the  programming positions  that
we've decided to interview. So, today was actually a good day :-)
 
I don't  doubt that we'll eventually  fill up the positions,  but this is
taking a lot more time than one would think, especially for the technical
positions for which our clerical staff can't filter the applications. And
the real  work starts  once people  show up  for their  first day  at the
office and you have to set even  more time aside to train them :-( That's
why we're willing to pay a  premium for people who already have extensive
LISTSERV experience and  won't need any training. There's  no shortage of
qualified people who are willing to  learn LISTSERV and the Internet, but
there  simply isn't  enough time  to train  them, at  least not  in large
numbers, and they  won't become operational quickly  enough. Currently we
have the following open positions:
 
- LISTSERV support engineer.
 
- Senior application programmer.
 
- Junior Windows/GUI programmer.
 
- Sales/Marketing (two positions).
 
- Secretary.
 
The first  5 are  needed ASAP and  the secretary in  a few  months, we're
advertising now  to maximize the chance  of getting an applicant  who has
higher  ambitions than  a life  term  of clerical  work :-)  This is  one
position that is actually *very* easy to fill in the DC area. Anyway, you
can find more info on the various positions on:
 
                     http://www.lsoft.com/jobs1.htm
 
Feel free to pass the URL around. The critical positions here (insofar as
the port of the database functions is concerned) are the support engineer
and the senior programmer.
 
  Eric