Saturday 22 March 2014

If Software Development Ads Were Like Church Job Vacancies

A group of retail companies in the West End of London are looking for a Business Analyst.

As an experienced Business Analyst, you will be familiar with understanding and developing business opportunities, and translating them into systems requirements. 

You will then need to translate those systems requirements into technical specifications, which you will need to write the code for.

You will have experience of developing HTML, CSS and Java, and be familiar with Agile methodologies (where you will be both Scrum Master and team) and  Prince 2. A strong Project Manager, you should be at home either writing COBOL (one of our companies still has an IBM S/34) or doing presentations to the Institute of Directors. Any experience in rewiring card-punch machines will come in surprisingly handy.

A strong team leader, you will be responsible for the instruction, training, inspiration and development of a group of part-time programmers, with strengths in a variety of different operating systems and programming languages.  Who don't get on. And will expect you to make tea for them.

Also, one of those programmers is an old-school Cobol 1 programmer. You may think you've got everything upgraded to Cobol 2 (i.e. about 1979) but don't worry - the minute your back is turned, it will all be recompiled back to the good old way. END-IF? Who ever needed those in the old days? 

Since the companies operate in a variety of markets, you will be equally inspired by working in supermarkets, fashion or the mobile phone industry. You will be expected to have a working knowledge of modern trends in social media, although you won't use any of it.

You won't get paid, but we can offer you a flat rent-free. 

6 comments :

  1. I would apply but I'm over qualifed - I'm a layman who already has a house for duty.

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  2. Meanwhile, Catholics are still arguing over whether the command "Alter" should have been scrapped in the 1970s.

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    Replies
    1. It should never have been introduced at Vatic-ANSI 2.

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    2. IF Vatic-ANSI-2 2 had been INSPECTed, EXAMINEd and EVALUATEd properly, we would never have got stuck in the deadly embrace of heterodoxy ENDIF

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    3. Back in the 80s, I had to decide which church to GOTO DEPENDING ON whether it was up to date, or stuck in the 1960s.

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  3. Then there's the arguing about the liturgy of the Identification Division, the Environment Division, Data Division and Procedure Division ... and if we should increase variables as 01, 03, 05 etc levels ... Oh, like a badly written COBOL program I could go on, I still get CICS out of this ....

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