Wanted: Dead Or Alive Programmer

March 20, 2015

Like many programmers, my email inbox is filled every day by an assortment of random recruiter emails, many of which are baffling, bizarre and often completely unrelated to anything I've ever done.

Sometimes I wonder how my resume winds up in so many people's hands. I am sure they get sold from place to place like laundered currency.

Today I got an email for job as a registered nurse trainer. At least once a day I get a job for a help desk person. How do these folks come to these conclusions? I wonder if the resumes are not only sold but altered in the process, like some kind of telephone tag process.

Then there are the laundry lists which are pretty obviously not a job, but someone trolling for resumes, presumably to alter and sell to someone else. Need some nurse resumes? Just take these programmers and change Java to Phlebotomy.

This one was pretty amusing:

Job Description:
Experience Job typically requires min. of 5-8 years of directly related job experience in the function or discipline managed, typically including supervisory experience.

  • Requires experience with iOS stack (Objective C, XCode IDE, Interface Builder, and iPhone SDK).

  • Extensive knowledge of app design patterns and best practices

  • Familiarity with build automation tools (Gradle, Ant, Maven)

  • Experience developing custom views and widgets

  • Experience working in Agile methodology and using a workflow tool such as Rally, Jira or similar

Required Skills & Experience

  • Demonstrate architectural and design skills with an emphasis on OOAD and design patterns.

  • Expert programming skills in front end technologies (HTML4/5, CSS/CSS2/CSS3, and JavaScript ) Experience with Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator are required.

  • Experience working jQuery UI, Jquery, Sencha Mobile frameworks

  • Understand iOS UX and work closely with the design team to ensure UI designs are aligned with the current iOS UI guidelines

  • Understand the resource constraints of mobile devices with respect to battery life, CPU and memory.

  • Write and debug multi-threaded code and understand the various issues surrounding asynchronous code on iOS.

  • Design technical specifications, develop and maintain iOS mobile applications, as well as mobile optimized web applications.

  • Integrate analytics tools such as Site Catalyst/Ominiture/Flurry

  • Analyze requirements, determine technical approach & technical design, determine effort, and provide deliverable dates for projects and enhancement requests.

  • Document product functionality, supporting QA and deployment activities, troubleshoot production defects.

  • Build prototypes at tech scoping stage of projects

  • Keep up to date on the latest industry trends in the mobile technologies

  • Explain technologies and solutions to technical and non-technical stakeholders

  • Understand iOS's frameworks Objective C, XCode IDE, Interface Builder, and iPhone SDK

  • Implement authorization protocols (oauth 1.0, oauth 2.0, Facebook Connect, etc)

  • Apply security measures to protect the company's and the customers sensitive data

  • evelop code compatible across different devices and multiple OS versions

  • 10 or more years industry experience.

  • Microsoft Office Suite expertise in documenting test cases and use cases.

Desired Skills & Experience:

Desired Skills and Experience: (Skills considered an added plus but not required.)

  • Extensive experience in large scale Mobile Application Design and Development

  • Object oriented design and methodologies

  • Application Design for communication and mobile devices (pocket pc etc)

  • Must understand and be aware of the latest changes in the technology and new telecommunication products in the market place.

  • Experience managing Health Information Architecture (HIA) and health experience in general will be highly preferred.

What the hell kind of job is this? Clearly it's just a collection of techy sounding phrases that hopefully will fish a few desperate people's resumes which they can package and sell. The phrases aren't even consistent with each other and many are out of date.

If I was a cruel sort of person (which I am not) I'd call them up and tell them I am perfect for the job as I happen to have exactly this skill set, just to see what would happen, or at least to find out what these folks are really trying to do. What kind of business pays people to send out such trash? This one has a real website and the email came from there so it's not totally random.

I guess email is mostly free and you only need a few "employees" and a few "customers" that pay to make it work. But what do the customers get when the "employee" came in via such a quacky email?

Maybe someday I will get an email for a programmer willing to suffer on the beach in Hawaii. Now there's one to reply to!