1. There’s the idea of learning. Working with idiots untangling spaghetti code is a fast way to demotivate a person. I intellectually languish in those kinds of environments.

2. If you find a place that’s intellectually stimulating, where people understand how to deliver high-quality code, there’s a higher probability there won’t be a retention problem or as bad of a pay problem (if any).

3. One good job, coupled with networking, can bootstrap discovery of the next good job. Even if your customers are idiots, you can at least continue to work with people you trust.

4. I completely agree about all your points about gossiping. But gossip doesn’t have to be chaotic noise. I think it can be sifted through to get at more substantiated findings. It’s pretty much the same work as networking, only more directed. I think the problem with gossip is that people don’t do due-diligence to find out the facts. But that doesn’t mean we need to make the same mistake.

The computer industry tends to have short employee retention periods, so the benefits in sacrificing salary for working environment are greatly reduced.

Meeting people socially to discuss technical issues isn’t gossip. When you discuss the work history of people you might hire it becomes gossip.

If someone gives you a review of a potential employee and they aren’t prepared to publicly put their name to it then it’s gossip.

However, I quality networking might be seeded by the gossip network. A likely scenario is that I go to an interest group, and I figure out who someone is, but I haven’t introduced myself. Then later on, I realize we share a lot of contacts on LinkedIn. So that’s a good starter for conversation.

This is not to say that I meet up with people like that terribly regularly, but it’s not something I feel is difficult or inappropriate.

Definitely, software is managed poorly in many different places. One thing I would say to any interviewee, is. . . you’re interviewing the interviewer as much as the interviewer is interviewing you. It’s definitely an option to steer away from employers that seem clueless.

But that gets to the interesting point you made about a company hiring someone for brand new technical competencies. My response is that it’s a harder task, but not impossible. Let’s take your Oracle scenario. Just hiring someone to install a new server for the sake of doing it is unlikely (YAGNI). So there’s got to be some context that motivates the need for a new technology. Those are the issues that should be discussed. Drop the engineer in the context of the problem, and see how he or she swims. If you aren’t following the proposed solutions, probe for explanations. Not only will you identify mentorship traits (which are invaluable), but you also might get them to stumble on their own incompetencies.

As for your Perl story. . . I’m just sorry you had to go through that. I had one job like the one you just described, and that was enough. I don’t have 15 years of experience, but I’m in contact with people that do. And from what I can tell, networking was their gateway to finding a job that suited their needs.

There’s a ton of factors, though. For instance, maybe I just lucked out by being in a great town with better networking opportunities. And who knows, what I have now might be gone tomorrow, and maybe I’ll be my previous cynical self.