January Meetup: an evening with Wes McKinney

By popular demand, data analysis and statistics guru Wes McKinney will be speaking on the night of January 10th. He's got the floor the entire evening to answer questions, and discuss pretty much anything he wishes. It promises to be a really interesting evening.

If there is anything specific you wish Wes to speak about, feel free to reach him: wesmckinn@gmail.com

I want to say a word about our awesome hosts as well: Darla Horn and Charles Keinath of FSS/FSO.

So many developers have had unpleasant experiences with recruiters (I certainly have my share of stories, watching tech recruiting d/evolve over the past 20 years). Some present you to companies using your online resume, scraped and entered into their database, without your knowledge or consent. Some take jobs posted to public forums and contact you, pretending to have an exclusive opportunity. Some have no clue what you do, nor do they care; they only learn the buzz words to search for in your resume. Some even attend Meetups with fake sign-in sheets, pretending to be Meetup organizers. It's a nasty world out there.

This is why I was so pleased to meet Charles and Darla. They are different. They understand what we do, and they are geeks like us (Darla is an EE! Yay!). It feels wrong to call them recruiters, since they do so much more. They are informed, experienced consultants who really work to find out what you do, what you want to do, and where you'll best fit. On the other side, they work with companies on-site to help them narrow down their job requirements, and vet developers for the right fit.

They have placed one person from our November Meetup, who contacted me to tell me he's doing the happy dance at his new job. I was really pleased to hear this.

There are so many companies and individuals hiring developers right now. There are so many recent undergrads and grads, people changing professions, hobbyists and enthusiast developers available right now. Proper vetting on both sides is really important, and I honestly admire anyone who takes the time and energy to study this problem and solve it correctly.

If you're hiring or want to be hired, I encourage you to reach out to Darla and Charles in confidence:

Darla Horn

Charles Keinath

They're filling an important niche in this city, doing what they do so well. Good consultants like this are a rare and amazing find.

I also wanted to clearly state that I get no commission by posting this. I do this because our community is in serious need of credible, skilled recruiters and on-site staffing consultants, and we finally have some!

I almost forgot: we are still looking for a pizza sponsor for this meetup.

See you in January!

Gloria