Friday 5th October 2007

PH Is Hiring

Junior developer with passion for cars required to join the team

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Want to work for PistonHeads?

We need a junior developer to join the development team at PistonHeads HQ. You will be working on a site that constantly evolves and improves the user experience, reacting quickly to suggestions from its usership of more than 1.5 million uniques a month.

You must have knowledge of multi-user systems and of ASP, relational databases (MS/MySQL), XML, IIS and XHTML/CSS. In addition, experience in object-orientated design/programming, XSL and high contention databases would be a distinct advantage.

It's a rare opportunity to help to shape, and develop a profitable Web site with an excellent future in its new home at Haymarket.

Needless to say, a love of cars would be a real asset -- and there will be plenty of opportunities to join in the fun.

If you are interested in this opportunity please e-mail or send your CV (along with salary expectations) to:

Peter Dignan, PistonHeads

Teddington Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex, TW11 9BE

[e-mail]

[jmatras]

"Junior developer with passion for cars required to join the team."
So, if you happen to be a junior developer and you have a passion for cars...you have to join the team? Or else what? Man, you guys are tough.

[Moose1978]

"You must have knowledge of multi-user systems and of ASP, relational databases (MS/MySQL), XML, IIS and XHTML/CSS. In addition, experience in object-orientated design/programming, XSL and high contention databases would be a distinct advantage."

NO idea what any of that means - but I'm a quick learner!! wink wink

[chrisbr68]

Would have been interested if I hadnt just taken a new job!

Sounds like a golden opportunity to me.

[GrahamNorton]

Am looking to do a course/courses in web design/web development in the near future. Wont be 'qualified' for at least a few months though. Shame does sound like the perfect job! Where is the PistonHeads HQ situated anyway?

[sleepersix]

GrahamNorton said:

Where is the PistonHeads HQ situated anyway?

Erm, not a promising start to your 'interview'. Try reading the advert fully!

[Road_Terrorist]

What does it pay, more importantly do you get a free long term press car to smoke around in like everyone else in PH towers

[mgv8]

Moose1978 said:

"You must have knowledge of multi-user systems and of ASP, relational databases (MS/MySQL), XML, IIS and XHTML/CSS. In addition, experience in object-orientated design/programming, XSL and high contention databases would be a distinct advantage."

NO idea what any of that means -

Nether dose Peter, thats why he is looking for some one

[RacingPete]

Easy... I know what HTML means

As far as pay goes, this is a junior developer position so pay will reflect that, but if you don't ask you never get, so try us!

[NickFRP]

ok 30k and the caparo T1 for 30 mins....

thats all id want

and then for you to pay for me to learn Html, IIS, XML ect

what about any IT support, il do that (only for whats stated above




OK dump the 30k and let me drive the CAPARO T1

[Phil Dicky]

sleepersix said:

GrahamNorton said:

Where is the PistonHeads HQ situated anyway?

Erm, not a promising start to your 'interview'. Try reading the advert fully!

[ScoobieWRX]

Teddington is a lovely part of greater west london, in between Kingston-Upon-Thames and Twickenham, and i think PH ofices are right by the Thames. What a nice place to work...Loverly Jubberly!!

[stuartbuckell]

LOL

You must have knowledge of multi-user systems and of ASP, relational databases (MS/MySQL), XML, IIS and XHTML/CSS. In addition, experience in object-orientated design/programming, XSL and high contention databases would be a distinct advantage.

I don't think that wealth of knowledge can be classified as "Junior developer".
Each of those languages can take months/years to master. You've asked for 5-6.

Only looking for the Windows/Linux, MySQl and SQL, ASP/PHP OO God, who's also good at XHTML/CSS, and let me guess, AJAX/JS?

14k a year?

Edited by stuartbuckell on Friday 5th October 17:32

[Gorvid]

RacingPete said:

As far as pay goes, this is a junior developer position so pay will reflect that, but if you don't ask you never get, so try us!

£2.50/hour

You get a coffe and a biscuit every time to discuss a raise.

[skwdenyer]

stuartbuckell said:

LOL

You must have knowledge of multi-user systems and of ASP, relational databases (MS/MySQL), XML, IIS and XHTML/CSS. In addition, experience in object-orientated design/programming, XSL and high contention databases would be a distinct advantage.

I don't think that wealth of knowledge can be classified as "Junior developer".
Each of those languages can take months/years to master. You've asked for 5-6.

Only looking for the Windows/Linux, MySQl and SQL, ASP/PHP OO God, who's also good at XHTML/CSS, and let me guess, AJAX/JS?

14k a year?

Edited by stuartbuckell on Friday 5th October 17:32

Some contextual links as to experience and pay expectations in the marketplace:

http://www.jobserve.com/W41195658476727EA.job 
http://www.jobserve.com/W6F60F27D319A6BC4.job 
http://www.jobserve.com/W494B7870FFB15477.job 
http://www.jobserve.com/W2AA154371CF17418.job 

More seriously, if the people developing PH.com are trying to juggle that many technical balls in the air I can see why there are few, err, foibles with the interfaces.

Meanwhile the cynic in me says that, if the ASP stuff (assuming we're talking MS and not, say, ChilliSoft...) and MSSQL was dropped, the need to minimise contention on the SQL transaction might not be such a problem.

For my money, what PH.com really needs is a somebody who really understands how to set up and optimise a proper indexing search system - the current site search is far, far too clunky and prone to extreme slowness (just my two pen'north).

At least, judging by this ad, the team who put together the Autocar sight won't have a chance to pollute the appealling simplicity of PH with their, err, interesting ideas on functionality and usability

[2 sMoKiN bArReLs]

Ooer..can you advertise for a junior anything these days?

I feel a tribunal coming on

[LayZ]

Haha I read the job spec and thought the same thing. We're going to ask for a huge skill set and experience, then call the role 'junior' so we can pay you £19k. Roll up!

[PhantomPH]

I have always disliked the 'pay expectations' thing. Either the job pays XYZ or it does not. The guy is a junior web developer - not a cunning recruitment juggler.

"This job pays X salary in exchange for these basic expectations". You will get a lot better quality of applicant, in my experience. Filters out the chancers. Also fairer on the potential recruit.

To the person who suggests binning ASP - rubbish. I am a senior developer and have found both classic ASP, ASP.net and MSSQL consummately stable - providing you index and structure correctly. Our entire application and DB is going through a re-write and I can tell you that the DB contains 32million rows of data and it is running as smooth as a shaven behind

Horses for courses, tho - I know PHP/Oracle developers who think ASP.Net and MSSQL are the work of the devil. I have good experience of Oracle and can confidently rebut any claims that it is brilliant...it's not.

Interested in looking down the ruby/rails/postgresql avenue in future, tho...

[rabw]

stuartbuckell said:

LOL

You must have knowledge of multi-user systems and of ASP, relational databases (MS/MySQL), XML, IIS and XHTML/CSS. In addition, experience in object-orientated design/programming, XSL and high contention databases would be a distinct advantage.

I don't think that wealth of knowledge can be classified as "Junior developer".
Each of those languages can take months/years to master. You've asked for 5-6.

Only looking for the Windows/Linux, MySQl and SQL, ASP/PHP OO God, who's also good at XHTML/CSS, and let me guess, AJAX/JS?

14k a year?

Edited by stuartbuckell on Friday 5th October 17:32

Hi Stuart... just wondered, what would you expect from a junior developer and how much would you pay them?

[skwdenyer]

PhantomPH said:

I have always disliked the 'pay expectations' thing. Either the job pays XYZ or it does not. The guy is a junior web developer - not a cunning recruitment juggler.

"This job pays X salary in exchange for these basic expectations". You will get a lot better quality of applicant, in my experience. Filters out the chancers. Also fairer on the potential recruit.

In my experience, the pay expectations thing gets you applicants who are clear about what they want to earn. Every CV is different, most are not perfect fits for the role, but getting a spread of experience and cost offers provides a sensible choice, and gets over the problem of people applying for jobs at a salary that's really less than they want and then spending 12 months feeling hard done by because they haven't got a pay rise.

That said, I do always advertise a range of salaries (but in this case it might be 19-29k to get the range of options I want).

But, as you say, horses for courses

PhantomPH said:

To the person who suggests binning ASP - rubbish. I am a senior developer and have found both classic ASP, ASP.net and MSSQL consummately stable - providing you index and structure correctly. Our entire application and DB is going through a re-write and I can tell you that the DB contains 32million rows of data and it is running as smooth as a shaven behind

I wasn't worried about the smoothness (although, lacking intimate knowledge of your behind, I can't comment on your yardstick), more about the performance and scalability.

Despite what MS might claim, their cluster server product doesn't scale very well or meet many needs, and large single-image Windows system aren't renowned for being the best-scaling option either... Whereas Unix (a proper one like Irix - RIP - or perhaps Solaris) will scale beautifully up to very big iron, and Linux has made that leap too (well, certainly up to 100s of processors if needed).

A site like PH with large numbers of users is going to need a lot of "iron" to power it. YMMV but in my experience that does not usually indicate MS products

I found it very interesting that the specific "wishlist" item was "experience in ... high contention databases". I can't help feeling that there are some architectural problems at play if the a site "only" as big and complex as PH has major contention issues.

PhantomPH said:

Interested in looking down the ruby/rails/postgresql avenue in future, tho...

PostgreSQL definitely gets my vote, but you need to understand how it works in order to get the best out of it.

As for Ruby/Rails, I've tried it briefly and didn't have a lot of joy with the model and assumptions. But many do like it so I might persevere!

[mikey_p]

Damn it. I've just graduated from a uni course that covers pretty much all that (especially the object oriented design and programming USDP/SSADM/DSDM Mmmm lovely), and have worked at IBM for a year doing network support and such like. BUT, I am going away to do a season skiing. How about holding the job off until May??