• GNU C/C++ 4.2.3
• Ericsson Erlang 5.5.5
• GHC Haskell 6.8.2
• Sun Java 1.5.0_15
• INRIA OCaml 3.10.0
• Perl 5.8.8
• PHP 5.2.4
• Python 2.5.2
• Ruby 1.8.6

I have heard grumblings of a hiring freeze at Google. Apparently the service staff haven't been able to bring on new people and an external company has been "auditing" the company since february. (read: efficiency experts and axe sharpening) While not bringing on new service people might not raise much an alarm, there also seems to be a significant cut in engineering recruiting with qualified candidates not even getting a phone interview.

We're pretty sure that Google is still aggressively courting top talent, and with unemployment up that means they can be even pickier about granting interviews. Don't lash out at Google just because they don't pick up the phone — after all, a 3.49 undergraduate GPA doesn't get you a callback to take care of Googler spawn.

2007 is the year the bubble will probably pop. Not like last time, of course, but still there's money to be made if you're not sucker enough to stick around for the end. Whether you're looking at 2.0 consumer sites, enterprise Ajaxware, or tagging along for the ride in a support role, the coming year is the one to max out your short-term returns. Don't end up like the last bubble's losers, so surprised by wealth they forgot to click Save.

• Take the cash! If the company has already closed Round A , you're too late to get rich off options in an acquisition — the new IPO. Push for a higher salary instead. If you're leaving a big company with great benefits, whip up a spreadsheet that shows the dollar value of each health plan perk you'll be leaving behind. It could score you another ten to twenty grand in salary.
• Aim for the next level up. In a bubble, founders and investors are pressed for time to fill the holes in their org charts. Hiring you from your director job into a VP slot (or from a non-manager to a director) may get them out of a jam. One SVUG reader confessed that only one of his last three employers called his references before hiring him into VP positions. Next year will be even easier.
• Don't buy your options. The big mistake Bubble 1.0 newbies made was purchasing shares long before they planned to flip them. In theory, they should've saved a few thousand on taxes. In practice, Alternative Minimum Tax made them negative millionaires. Spend your upfront cash instead on a personal accountant who'll get you 52 percent of something, instead of 100 percent of nothing.

• A compelling play-by-play of the goings-on at FOO Camp '06. We don't know about you, but starting the day watching Kevin Rose popping a zit at an Addictive Users seminar and ending with Moshe Cohen entertaining the masses with his zany clownish antics is well worth the privilege of being a Friend of O'Reilly. [Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog]
• Pictured: Esther Dyson, who hangs with more bigwigs than the Pope, talks to the men who own about 2.7% of all Lithuanian lifetimes. [Flickr]
• A once-rumored Oracle deal did not happen. Columnist John C. Dvorak now predicts a Sun-Apple deal. Ergo, Dvorak is a nutjob. [Wired]
• Limelight Networks is on the prowl for a new CEO. Apparently, they too missed the FOO Camp '06 invite, perhaps shunned because of that big ol' ugly lawsuit. [GigaOM]
• Don't fuck cell phone providers. Or carry on illicit affairs that are heavily documented by email exchanges. It's tacky, not to mention it'll cost you. [CNN.com]

Co-written with Beth Gottfried

Business 2.0 Magazine thinks you should recruit employees at Burning Man. They're wrong.

1. Her r sum is printed on rolling paper.
2. This is actually how Google hired Eric Schmidt. QED.
3. Burners demand vacation time for Burning Man. If this guy becomes your network administrator, what happens when a hacker convention picks your intranet as a group project in mid-August?
4. When you met him, he was on LSD.
5. When you met him, YOU were on LSD.
6. And naked.
7. Speaking of being naked, just where did you pull your business card from?
8. Burners learn how to build an entire city of creative sculptures, communities, and infrastructure — and then wipe it out after a week.
9. Her career goals include "overthrow of the capitalist hegemony."
10. All your schmoozing is harshing our buzz, dude.

Talent hunting in the counterculture [Business 2.0]
Photo by DogFromSPACE [Flickr]

Job: Google Compete Lead [Microsoft Careers]

But Supr.c.ilio.us blogger Eran Globen (who explains who WOULD want to hire MySpacers) told me, "Now MySpace can double their traffic."

Imitating the Fakesters of yore, MySpace should promote safe-for-work dummy profiles.

How else does a social network grow when everyone's already joined? It tells people with bling-blinging ghetto profiles to make squeaky clean profiles.

And it's easy to keep recruiters out of the loop — just protect the "dirty" profiles with an audio password, using that hot new kids-only ringtone.

Earlier: Because of MySpace, only boring people get jobs [Valleywag]

Ms. Rose said a recruiter had told her he rejected an applicant after searching the name of the student, a chemical engineering major, on Google. Among the things the recruiter found, she said, was this remark: "I like to blow things up."

That's the smoking gun? A chem student who likes to mess with chemicals? At this rate, young phone hacker Steve Jobs would never get a job. Just as well — if all the interesting people get denied jobs at paranoid, stultifying companies, they'll be free to launch kick-ass startups.

For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Résumé [NYT]

I admit that my linked-in job descriptions is minimal, and I don't include any information on my background—all anyone will pick up is that I'm a 'perl lackey' in engineering and the name of my company. I was surprised to get mail-via linked in from a google recruiter, in a kind of g-speak patois, inviting me to show an interest in the company. The original text is below. I sent a message back, she replied with a canned reply and a request to link to her, to make all my friends visible and spammable. She has done this before, as a friend was able to demonstrate.

An experiment—if you want to link to me somehow and I accept her link request, you too may get spammed by Neha.

We'll pass on the spam — the Valley's prom queen doesn't need a gossip columnist. After the jump, see Neha's headhunter spam. Conclusion: Google recruiters don't need to pass sixth grade English.

Neha has 6 endorsers
6 endorsers

5 stars
InMail Feedback
Neha Chaudhary(cneha [at] hotmail [dot] com)

Internet recruiter - Looking for Engineers/Software developers/ Sr Software developers/ Technical leads

San Francisco Bay Area | Staffing and Recruiting
Current:

* Engineering Sourcer/Internet Recruiter at Google Inc.

Past:

* Sr. Recruiter/Account Manager at Fortuna Technologies
* Recruiter/Account Manager at Prodex Technologies
* Manager at QAI India

Message:

Hello from Google

Hello [redacted],
How are you?

I am an onsite recruiter at Google focused on hiring software engineers and individual contributor. I wanted to drop you a note to see if you would consider an opportunity with Google? If you are open to that type of conversation, please feel free to circle back with me. If you know anyone else who would be please do forward my contact information.

Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon

Thanks
Neha

Really, if coders have to kill bugs, shouldn't recruiters proofread their pitches?

Earlier: Google's dumb publicist pitch leaked

There are three ways this could go:

• Someone very stupid hires and outs the Slave. Slave sues. Slave wins a million dollars, passes Go.
• Yahoo hires slave as an official blogger of some sort. No one notices because no one reads official bloggers, and Slave happily fades into obscurity.
• Slave gets a job — but, by definition, we'll never know, will we.

Sand Hill Slave Labor [Sand Hill Slave]

• Warner Brothers Records wants a web manager who preferably knows about "del.icio.us, folksonomies, AJAX, semantic HTML or digg," proving that going to all those Web 2.0(TM) parties did build your job skills. [Craigslist]
• Speaking of the job market, Fortune Magazine discovers that tech employers want to hire people with skills. Obvious? Not if you were here in the 90s. [Ask Annie]
• The hiringest tech firm this year, according to Business 2.0, is in Milwaukee (pictured). Mercifully, the magazine omits its "The Wisconsin Coast is Silicon Valley 2.0" article. [Business 2.0]
• Jargon watch: "Unskilled labor" gets a makeover — "Crowdsourcing" is sexy and totally not an idea as old as serfdom! [Crowdsourcing.com]

Requirements for all positions include "a strong tolerance for office tomfoolery (acting like a monkey, etc.)" Thanks, Flickr, for specifying the monkey bit.

Mr. Sarcastic Tipster notes, "Not since Pets.com was headquartered here has San Francisco been so Web-happening!"

Help Wanted [Flickr blog]
Photo: Friday Night Tribute to Flickr [dsevilla on Flickr]

Dude - the google thing? So they sent to me. And my response was..."That's nice, but unfortunately the people you've sent this to are no longer on this particular alias. Good luck with your recruiting efforts, and feel free to forward any resumes you receive onto that alias, as we're hiring right now and are looking for the best and brightest."

SHE FREAKIN CALLED ME TO FOLLOW UP. Totally unclear on the concept, no? Irony is apparently past google these days.

I mean, how'd SHE get through the process?

Click the jump to see Google's e-mail.

From: Diane Hill [mailto:redacted]
Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2006 2:23 PM
To: (redacted)
Subject: corp comm here at Google

(Redacted)-
Your name surfaced across my desk today as I noted I am searching for top talent in Corporate Communications here at Google. I am looking for people with a non traditional background in consulting and crisis management skills and also others in a direct Public Relations or Communications space. Is there anyone of interest whom you think I should be speaking with? I ask people at your level because often we are references for those we have managed in the past. Please feel free to forward my contact info to anyone of particular skill set. I appreciate your time and efforts in my pursuit of finding the right people to grow our organization.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Diane Hill

Staffing Corporate Communications

(e-mail redacted)

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway

Mountain View,CA 94043

(phone redacted)

Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?"

I'm down here in Los Angeles, where the closest that we come to "Silicon Valley" is between the mountains of a wanna-be actress's chest, but MySpace representatives can be found this week on the campuses of MIT and Harvard trying to get some new recruits. From what I hear they have some deep pocket$$ to recruit (with Rupert's Money). I think that they are probably visiting Akamai also.

Far left: Admin assistant Kim Cooper. Far right: assistant Jennifer Austin. Between Sergey and Jennifer might be the third assistant; send an IM to "HeyValleywag" if you know.

A tipster says: "I wonder which of his 3 assistants had to take that robe home and wash it? Hope he was wearing boxers."

Update: Photo reduced, original gallery now password-protected by the owner (who, one assumes, learned a lesson about sharing photos on the Internet.)

Photo: Sergey Brin and others [Shanna Preve on SmugMug]
Earlier: Google seeks high-level leaker [Valleywag]

And the best part? It's a temp job. So if anyone wants to join Google, gather dirt, quit and spill it to the world, Valleywag will cheer you on — all the way to your NDA-violation trial.

Executive Administrator for the Co-Founders of Google (Temporary) - Mountain View [Google Jobs]

A key qualification needed: "Ability to handle highly confidential material in a discreet manner."

Damn. Any readers want to snag this job? Hopefully this assistant will be as discreet as all the other Yahoo gossip sources staffers.

Job Details [Careers at Yahoo]