The Whiteboard

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Ampt

8:05 PM

Anyone ever heard of/worked with Multivison inc?

user41796

@Ampt nope / nope.

Ampt

@GlenH7 contacted me and a few of my school buddies for recruitment

user41796

A quick google showed a number of possibilities

user41796

what do they (think they) do?

Ampt

looks shady. First year salary is a hard 50k in DC, but somehow they guarantee that your second anniversary would be 80k minimum. Sounds like they plan on a very high first year turnaround

multivision.cc

good question

Robert Harvey

8:14 PM

Promises, promises.

Ampt

@RobertHarvey right? That had red flags all over it

user41796

@Ampt looks like a B (or C) level pimp shop. 50k is close to poverty wages in DC.

Ampt

We'll have a few laughs at their expense over beers

Robert Harvey

Generally speaking, when I read a job posting as "50K, with a promise of 80K in the second year," I read it as 50K (and nothing follows), unless I can bind them contractually.

user41796

yeah, there's gotta be some sort of catch behind their first year offer as well.

user41796

8:16 PM

That said, let them wine and dine you during the interviewing process

user41796

It's one of the few times that there is a free lunch

Ampt

@GlenH7 as fun as a free trip to DC sounds, I got way to much going on to get distracted

amon

> We have made our referral policy more attractive. We will pay upto US $2000 for each candidate referred by our employees and hired by us. This referral amount will be paid as US $200/month for the first 10 months of the referred candidate’s employment.

nope nope nope, that's adding peer pressure to avoid new hires to quit during their first year.

user41796

Could even net you a free trip to DC for the last round of interviews

user41796

@amon We only wait 30 days before paying out the full referral amount

Ampt

8:17 PM

@GlenH7 you also don't work for a super shady bunch of creeps haha

user41796

@Ampt Consultancies are amongst the best for throwing cash via food & drink & trips at interview candidates. Just saying

Robert Harvey

Website is pretty. Looks like some canned thing out of a design firm.

Ampt

pastebin.com/DBm8mzSc

@RobertHarvey eh, looks too 2009 for my liking

@GlenH7 like I said, my plate is about 11/10 on the full meter these days haha

user41796

And they have grammatical errors in their ~~offer~~ invitation letter.

user41796

My guess: C level body shop looking for warm bodies doing gov't consulting.

user41796

8:21 PM

> We provide furnished housing accommodations while you're in training as well as financial assistance to move to the area.

user41796

> While in training you’ll be provided a weekly stipend for incidentals, food, gas and spending money.

Robert Harvey

Domain is .CC. Some island in the Australian territories.

user41796

Two huge red flags there.

user41796

And you're excluded anyway for failing to meet minimum reqs.

user41796

> Must have basic understanding on SQL.

Ampt

8:22 PM

@GlenH7 lol, hasn't stopped me from getting offers that require SQL yet ;)

Robert Harvey

Linq doesn't count?

Ampt

I know enough to get by in an interview

Robert Harvey

Everything is jQuery anyway.

user41796

Reading the rest of the offer letter doesn't leave me hopeful that they'll throw decent food & drink your way. Run.

user55340

Nah, @Ampt you're young. Just say "REST" and "noSQL" and you're good. They'll think you're a hipster.

Ampt

8:24 PM

@GlenH7 Man you should get your reading comprehension checked

Robert Harvey

If they're based in Washington DC, then why is their website in the Cayman... er, Cocos islands?

Ampt

@MichaelT Nah, I can do basic joins, which is competent enough I guess

user55340

@RobertHarvey The name is .cc, host can be anywhere.

Robert Harvey

What would the point be, when you can just have a .COM and an air of legitimacy to go with it?

amon

@RobertHarvey That may have to do with the .com domain of the same name already being registered. And ".com" and ".cc" only have an edit distance of 2, after all.

user55340

8:31 PM

multivision.com is owned by someone. Multivision-inc.com and multivision.cc are the same.

user41796

The GlassDoor reviews are eye opening.

user41796

glassdoor.com/Interview/… is what I was referring to. Kind of a night & day difference between those reviews and the other ones on the review tab.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa: Have you read Let over Lambda? Did you like it?

user55340

@GlenH7 Standard 'any body we can get body shop' looks to be. Not that thats a good thing. But rather that they're after getting people outsourcing big tedious things to them.

Robert Harvey

Whats the deal with the 50K to 80K jump? Pseudo internship? Long probation period? Burn them out the first year so you don't have to pay them 80K?

user41796

8:45 PM

@MichaelT The number of people mentioning a fishy employment contract caught my eye. Very glaring contrast to the overly glowing reviews on the main review tab.

user41796

Burn 'em out would be my expectation. And put a carrot at the end of a long stick to encourage them to stick.

user55340

If you're the bottom of the barrel programmer, anything is a job. Getting such an offer from anyone is a good thing at that point.

user55340

You've graduated from college with a CS degree that you've just barely squeaked through, or a vocational computer technology degree. You get turned down from game shops that you deampt of. Google and Apple won't even call you for an interview. You need a job, you know you're not the best out there, or even average. But you either need a programming job or work at a gas station.

user55340

That's their target employment pool.

user41796

@MichaelT <heavy sigh> I do believe you're quite right.

user55340

8:51 PM

@GlenH7 Every industry has such. Its just a question of who aims that low. Someone always will.

user41796

So maybe I was too hasty in telling @Ampt to run.

user55340

The first company I worked for would have been that... except that at that time, even the other companies were hiring people with just a pulse. They needed to be more ethical than that to have any chance.

user41796

Are link only answers acceptable on SO? Or should I flag it for mod review & deletion?

Ampt

@GlenH7 aaaaaaalready have a job, but thanks :)

(not that I mentioned it already)

gnat

Q: How important is it to clean up someone else's code when faced with a tight deadline?

(I'm talking about HTML / CSS code (not programming languages) but I think we also face the same issue as with programmers.) I am the senior front-end designer in a team and I often have to re-work my juniors' output in tight deadlines. I am faced with 2 problems: Their coding style is a bi...

Q: Make hot questions with multiple answers age away faster on smaller / subjective-ish sites

Due to extended exposure to wide SE network, hot questions tend to attract certain amount of low quality answers 1 2 3. These answers would better be (and eventually are) removed, but on smaller / subjective-ish sites removal takes quite a lot of time due to limitations in moderation power and in...

feature-request hot-questions answer-quality sidebar

Robert Harvey

9:05 PM

@glenh7: I think we scared Mr. K away.

I suggested that he name his programming language "Bane." It would be the bane of programmers everywhere.

user41796

@RobertHarvey That was a down vote and VTC well spent then. The chutzpah behind that question...

user41796

I'm going to go build a hobby Q&A site that only my friends will know about. I'm going to call it StackOverflow. Do you think that's okay?

user55340

The legality of the name is a question of trademark... which isn't something about our licensing at all. Trademark law is confusing... even compared to copyright.

user55340

And given that the name was developed by a company of Kx systems, it is quite likely they trademarked it.

Robert Harvey

9:38 PM

Stack Overflow is just a parade of suck today. I think all of the logo programmers were let out of their cages.

Ampt

algorithms professor just did a code review on our submissions for lab 1. Man, she chewed people up

user55340

@RobertHarvey I'm going with "a bunch of classes teaching py flavored logo had the first real assignment