Frequently Asked Questions
1. Are you willing to relocate?
Almost certainly not.
Even though I grew up elsewhere, Portland is my home. I own a lovely house in a beautiful, central, tree-lined neighborhood with loads of character. My daughter is in a great preschool. My partner and I both have jobs within three miles of our home, and we can comfortably enjoy Portland's world-class food culture on a regular basis.
I could theoretically be talked into working for a year or two in New York City or somewhere in Britain—but I've looked into both options, and it's really hard to make the numbers work. I'd consider a remote job that required at most 10% travel, especially if the company brought my family out with me on trips longer than two nights. Otherwise, I am, a priori, not interested.
2. Are you available for hire as an FTE?
I'm always happy to hear about new opportunities, but I'm very selective. Over the years, I've developed a fairly good idea of the kind of environment where I thrive: small companies, highly capable teammates, and a company doing work I value.
As of this writing, I have a relatively low-stress job in a small company writing mostly Ruby, a decent work computer, a short commute, and—most importantly—smart teammates I enjoy spending time with.
If you want to get my attention, tell me how your team keeps quality high by practicing TDD/BDD/TATFT, how they publish some of their work back to the open-source community, and about the time you regularly set aside for "sharpening the saw." (Bonus points for links to slides or videos of their conference talks.)
3. Are you available for contract work?
No, but I might know someone who is. If it's small enough to do on a moonlighting basis, email me—a friend of mine sometimes has extra bandwidth, but I certainly don't. (I don't even have time for all the fun "hack something out in an evening" ideas I get regularly!)
4. Do you know anyone else who might be available?
Maybe, but probably not (unless it's a small moonlighting contract, as mentioned above).
Since becoming a parent, I haven't been as active in the Portland tech community as I used to be. For the people I do keep in touch with, if I like their work, I've probably tried to get them hired at my current job. (In two cases, I've been successful.) My impression is that there are quite a few more Ruby jobs in Portland than there are geeks to fill them.
My suggestion is to attend the next meeting of the Portland Ruby Brigade, announce that you've got work, and plan on going to beer afterward. (Yes, there's also a mailing list, but I've had a very low response rate most of the times I've posted jobs to it, and others I've talked to have had similar experiences. See above about "more jobs than geeks.") If you're not hiring Rubyists, look for a likely-sounding group on Calagator and try a similar approach.