[Gllug] VACANCY: Senior Systems Engineer

[Martyn Drake]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 1:26 PM, John Edwards
<john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk> wrote:

>  Interesting job, but you seem to have forgotten to include salary
>  information.

I was approached by Facebook on LinkedIn last week (oh the irony - one
social networking site using another to find employees).  I decided to
ask them what the job, salary and benefits were like and got told
that: "they hadn't decided yet - but we're going to be very
competitive".   Oh, THAT helps me a lot!

The benefits (sent through as a PDF) were "housing subsidy, transport
reimbursment, the usual health plan (although what the hell is the
National Health plan of London with regards to vision?), and free
laundry, food (breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks to ensure that
you'll never see your loved ones again) and Facebook events.  Wow.
Nice if you're single, I suppose.  All of these were followed by "ask
your recruiter for more details".  That was what I was trying to do in
the first place!  No pension, potential stock options, etc.  Does
anybody do pensions these days?

(If MPC are still doing their pension scheme, it's worth doing.)

So.. I got no further than when I was approached in the first place.
I have no time or patience for any potential employers who can't
explain the basics without having to refer to a PDF or a web site, and
no filling in all the important details.  Besides, I've read that
Facebook has a potential $150 million decifit.  There is also the
issue of what happens if somebody tries to buy them later down the
road.  And will social networking still be as popular in four to five
years time as it is now?

I still think the film/TV/broadcast industry is one of the most stable
industries to be working in at the moment.  I was made redundant
twice, and changed jobs at least five times whilst working for
Internet firms.  I've changed jobs only once in six years here.  And
I've a good feeling about the company I'm working for - unlike one
previous potential employer who was offering £50k for a systems admin
role to head up the technical support/role-out of a remote access PC
technical support service for home/personal users only.  It went out
of business within a year, I believe.

Regards,

Martyn
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