Journal fragmentate's Journal: The Perl Prima Donnas 1

Back in the raucous days of the .com boom (heretofore known as the .bomb) there were many perks for software developers, and especially for perl and PHP programmers. Today, however, I focus on the perl prima donnas.

I'm currently looking to fill two perl positions so I set out on a mission to find some quality perl programmers. I posted the opening to a few boards, and received over 300 responses. Out of that 300+ I eliminated nearly two-thirds. That left me with an ample 100 resumes to go through. I was deceiving myself...

Below are actual excerpts from the various responses I got:

I'm going to need two laptops, and I can only telecommute.

Do you guys offer a company car? It's like 5 miles from me and I cannot take the bus.

I'm an extremely dedicated worker. Once I get in the zone I cannot leave it, so I need there to be an onsite chef, or at least someone ordering meals for me.

If I work 40 hours at the office, then 40 hours from home every week, can I have every other week off?

No signing bonus? QuePasa.com gave me $5k up front.

I can only work 8pm to 5am, I'm demophobic.

I only do design work, not actual coding. I've been doing perl for 10 years now and have progressed far beyond simple coding.

Now, I'm sure this problem isn't specific to perl programmers. However, personally, I haven't run into this with any other discipline (we've hired several Java and PHP programmers).

Seriously guys, the boom is over... welcome to the post .bomb era. You guys just don't want to work. So you can wallow in your own pity, with your angry wives and parents to whom you make countless excuses about how companies don't appreciate your skills.

By the way... both positions are still opened...after 6 months.

(this is a followup to my last journal entry, the quotes in this were taken directly from the emails, the quotes in the last journal entry were taken from memory)