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Finding new dolphins

For a distributed company like MySQL, finding new people is interesting as well as challenging.

Basically, someone just needs to be capable, and have a decent (usually broadband) Internet connection. So you can live on Antarctica or somewhere in Siberia, and still get hired.
I think that’s pretty cool. By the way, we actually have various people working from Siberia, they’re based in Izhevsk (you can actually find it on a good map!). MySQL’s support of GIS, character sets, and various other nifty things comes from there.

The challenge is, how do you get to know the person you’re hiring? We have these weird stories, internally, about people getting hired without anyone meeting them beforehand. I was actually hired over email myself, not even a phonecall was spent on it. Turned out ok, I suppose 😉

So what we tend to do now is try to meet people at events somewhere, or actually fly them in to whereever there’s a departmental meeting going on… right now we’re looking to recruit a new person for Docs, my old job basically. As it turns out, the top pick so far is someone who lives in Brisbane also. And I wasn’t involved in this, really! Anyway, so the Docs manager already talked with the person over phone and email, but has asked me to meet up with this person live. I’ll try to find out whether they’ll fit into the company.

Hey if you’re interested in a job at MySQL, check it your options: http://www.mysql.com/jobs/
If your dream job is not listed there, don’t be discouraged. Skilled/experienced people get hired all the time, why let such people go to waste by having them work for other companies 😉

Do read Finding an open source programming job at NewsForge: a discussion with Brian “krow” Aker, a cool frood who happens to be Director of Architecture for MySQL AB. He gives some insights into the process.

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