What is this?
My name is Tom Hartung and this is my original web site.
Come on in!
This started as a place to put my resume, but has turned into a bit more than that. What can I say? Sometimes I start something, and wind up getting carried away. It's my nature.
What's with that image in the corner?
The abstract images in the upper left corner of each page on this site are Spiritual Portraits (aka. GROJAs). You can learn all about GROJAs at the groja.com website. (GROJA© is an acronym for Graphical Representation of Jungian Archetypes.)
The groja.com site is now integrated with PHP Nuke (a Content Management System).
My newest site is
tomhartung.com.
It is powered by
joomla!
and, to a certain extent, has made this site obsolete.
However, building this site was an important training exercise,
particularly with regard to learning about Cascading Style Sheets,
and I do not intend to take it down anytime soon.
I love quotes!
Especially those that articulate ideas that have been on the fringe of my consciousness for years, but which I have not heretofore actually heard or seen published.
Bill Gates has described Microsoft hiring criteria as follows:
We're not looking for any specific knowledge because things change so fast, and it's easy to learn stuff. You've got to have an excitement about software, a certain intelligence.... It's not the specific knowledge that counts.
Jim McCarthy, one of Gates' software development managers at Microsoft, points out,
The biggest mistake I see managers make as they hire people for software development teams is that they overvalue a particular technical skill. To verify this tendency, all you have to do is look at the want ads:Wanted: foobar programmers. Experience with whatsit required.Obviously, conversance with a given technology is a wonderful attribute in a candidate, but in the final analysis it's an extra, not mandatory. After all, most sofware development technologies have a half-life of about one year.
Moreover, as the McCarthy quote above points out, any competent programmer can become productive in a new programming language quickly. Even recruiters have complained that this fact is ignored by HR people. Experimental data also supportsconventional wisdomin this regard.
From
On the Need for Reform of the H-1B Non-Immigrant Work
Visa in Computer-Related Occupations,
by
Dr. Norman Matloff, 2003.
For more of Dr. Matloff's writings, see his web page,
Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage.
Thanks for visiting!
Y'all come back now, y'hear?!?