[who_would_fardels_bear]

It's one thing to expect a programmer to have some networking skills when looking for a new job, but what about all these people that are layed off and replaced by H1B folks?

Certainly they can prove their worth to their current company if managers judge on the right criteria.

If the government makes it more difficult for foreigners to find permanent work here (like almost every other country on the planet) then managers will be forced to take a harder look at their current employees.

And what ever happened to HR? Are they still expected to be in the Stone Age? Aren't they able to see that the very best programmers might be the very worst interviewees and resume-generators? Haven't they done anything in the last 40 years to address that concern? What about all of the Myers-Briggs tests, etc. that they love to thrust at us during interview time?

What's a lowly little INTJ supposed to do in a world run by ESFP bastards?

[mabelkitty]

Haven't you heard? HR departments have been replaced by attorneys whose sole purpose is to protect management and make sure they can get away with anything they want regardless of the law.

[eno_]

If you meet a company with an HR department and ANY kind of personality test, run FAST.

Try a Microsoft interview sometime. They may be screwed up in some ways, but they do know how to interview engineers.

As for the 10 years of C++ versus 2 years of Java, neither matters. Any good engineer will pick up any language in a month anyway. I hire high IQ high productivity people. I don't care if their last job was coding for TPA70s. (Extra credit if you know what that is. If you actually wrote code for one, I'll buy you dinner.)