How you know it is time to leave your job

This is a great link that will provide food for thought when considering a job change.

How to Write a Thank You Post Interview

This is a great link that outlines the correct etiquette of writing a thank you email.

Damon Carr's Agile Blog

This is a great resource for anyone interested in .NET 3.5 and Agile Development. Damon is a leader in the Agile world.

Bank of America's Acquisition of Countrywide Mortgage

I was not surprised to read this morning that Bank of America (Bofa) agreed to purchase the distressed lender Countrywide. This will make Bofa the largest lending institution in the country. I think that Kenneth Lewis, CEO of Bofa has made yet another brilliant move in engineering the growth of an empire that started as a regional bank. When the market rebounds, (and it will) this will prove to be instrumental in helping to grow Bofa beyond the megalithic retail banking institution into a more full service organization.

I am sure there are men smarter than me working on their expansion plans, but let the Citigroup debacle serve as warning. Bank of America must be careful not to over-extend themselves, as in their promotion of their private banking business. Citigroup managed to tarnish the Salomon Smith Barney brand due to their disconnect with the core constituencies using their services. I liken these conglomerates to the Spanish Armada under Ferndinand and Isabella and the more agile companies who have market share in these various sectors to Sir Francis Drake’s Sea Dogs of Britain’s Navy.
I would love to know what everyone’s thoughts are on this.

Cheers,
Ben

The Market for PHP Developers

Below are a couple of links which will show how much things have changed for PHP Developers over the past one and a half years. The demand for PHP/MySQL Developers with LAMP experience has skyrocketed while the supply has stayed the same or it seems even to have diminished with some developers moving onto other languages (i.e. C#, .Net) or more senior, less-technical roles. The first link is very interesting and points out how incredibly difficult it is to find good PHP Developers and when you do find them, how expensive they are. The second link is for the UK, however NY and London are very similar markets in terms of the supply and demand for finance and IT applicants.

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2004/08/24/php-job-trends/
http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/php%20developer.do
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3697896

It is hard to exactly quantify salaries, but I can at least give you a general idea about what PHP Developers are demanding at different levels in NYC. PHP/MySQL Developers:(1-2 yrs) - $60,000-$70,000(2-4 yrs) - $70,000-$90,000(4+ yrs) - $95,000+ ….and these figures are for good, solid developers with strong communication skills, decent education, etc. Basically these are figures for candidates who are placeable.

Please let me know if you have any other questions about these numbers or if you’d like to discuss specifics. Take a look at these #’s below. The job ads for PHP has “practically doubled” since this time last year……In our world that is amazing!!!

For job ads requesting open source skills, Dice has seen the following growth since Jan ’07, Melde says: • PHP: Practically “doubled since January,” he says. • Python: 72% • MySQL: 50% • Ruby on Rails: 121%. But this category is “still small in absolute terms,” he says. • Perl: 22%. Perl, Melde notes, “is not so sexy, but it makes the Web go ‘round.”

Babajobs/Babalife

Babajobs, a very cool socially conscious job site based in Bangalore. While we are all Capitalists, Sean Blagsvedt (Founder of Babajobs) has shown that there is room in business for humanity. You can see his site to the left.