[kwlug-disc] Job offer: J2EE Software Development Manager

[Andrew Kohlsmith (lists)]

On March 12, 2009 09:29:18 am Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   at the risk of being slightly contrarian, is it really appropriate
> to allow the kwlug discussion mailing list to be used as a vehicle for
> placement agencies to recruit people?  after all, if a placement is
> made as a result, the recruiting agency gets their commission and
> kwlug gets ... um, what?
>
>   and, yes, i realize that one possible benefit is that a local linux
> person now gets a job, but surely anyone looking for a job is capable
> of scanning the online listings themselves.  perhaps taking an overly
> harsh view of this, but what i see is a recruiting agency asking LUG
> members to do their work for them, reaping the rewards, and giving
> nothing back to the LUG.

I think this has been blown waaaaaaaay out of proportion.

If (and it's a big if) the list becomes flooded with traffic from recruiters 
and impedes the flow of traffic we would like to see on the list, THEN we can 
talk about how we should steer the list back to what we want it to be.

Until then, I feel strongly that the occasional posting about a Linux job is 
beneficial and helpful to everyone on the list. People with jobs may be 
interested in trading up, and people without jobs may see the post here that 
they missed or skipped over when looking at postings in the sea of job banks, 
cragslist and so on. (I know from my own experience that it's very easy to 
miss a good opportunity because of a poor title or body wording in a 
Craigslist post, or because of the sheer volume of crap there. Finally, 
paying Linux jobs can be hard to come by, and local, paying Linux jobs are 
doubly hard to come by.

If we help a recruiter fill a Linux position and they make some money off our 
back, and we didn't break a drop of sweat to help them... what is the 
problem?  Bandwidth for these postings, disk space to store even this 
gigantic discussion and electricity to run the server and router to let us 
complain about it are minute costs which are lost in the normal noise of 
running a server for discussion.

If you really have the ear of the recruiter, you might suggest payment to 
bounce things to the list in the form of pizza for the meetings once in a 
while, or a round of wobbly pops at Zeke's if she fills a position directly 
through the LUG.  I think that would go a long way to smooth out any issues 
that people may have about helping those who may make money off our contacts.

Honestly, this seems like such a trivial non-issue.

-A.