Is this the worst programming job ad ever?

[Bar0n]

So again, if I feel that a white male may be suited best for a certain position...

Almost missed this. Can you give me an example of a position you feel only a white male will be suited for, or rather, better suited for?

 

[Devill]

Salary too low, smacks of racism and sexism (you know you ganna be working for a complete mullet), requirements too vague.

Lol, how is that too low?

People work jobs for a lot less while having a lot more experience.

No degree / diploma required, "knows programming" does not seem like you are going to be writing banking systems for the world bank.

 

[House]

Almost missed this. Can you give me an example of a position you feel only a white male will be suited for, or rather, better suited for?

I have a support center dealing with 433 clients of all races. For service delivery purposes I prefer my clients speaking to someone in their own language. Ultimately, I already employ 8 people all speaking different languages - all of different race. Last year I got 89 new clients in Pretoria, almost all of them are white Afrikaans speaking males who contributed more than R750,000 to my business.

I am about appoint two new people, so my decision is white afrikaans speaking males or females. Their sole purpose will be to service these specific new clients (in their own language) I just referred to and any others that may join in future. So, my decision for this was made before I even had interviews. I will advertise for white males or females only. Afrikaans must be spoken fluently as a first language. I also have a small test as part of the interview for people to do.

That will be my reason for choosing a specific race and or gender. It may not only be white, but other races too.

The fact is, why judge any small business who advertises a position for a specific race or gender. There may be many reasons. They should not be forced into employing just anyone. They should not be frowned upon their decisions.

If I do not want my clients to be serviced in another language that is my decision. This far this has worked great for me. I am sure there are many other small businesses employing on the same principles.

 

[Gnome]

I only saw R20k monthly for a "fresh out of varsity" programmer in Sandton a few years back.

Salaries suck bigtime for newcomers to the programming industry. R8000 starting salary seems about right. You'll probably be promoted fairly quickly.

Every single person I've asked who studied with me at UP got 15-20k as first salary. Within a year it should be 25k (1 year exp).

This is within the Java world. Mileage may vary for other languages.

Our companies developer interns earn more than 8k pm.

 

[Bar0n]

I am about appoint two new people, so my decision is white afrikaans speaking males or females .... Afrikaans must be spoken fluently as a first language.

But there are also many coloured people who speak Afrikaans fluently. Not everyone's stuck with some cape flats accent. Hell, I've met several black people who spoke Afrikaans fluently. Again, why not interview a wider range of people? You're still free to appoint whoever you like, but why limit your choice?

EDIT: Just state in the job posting that being fluent in Afrikaans is a necessity.

 

[Swa]

I do not see anything wrong with this advertisement. If a company wants to hire a white male, why can't they? Nobody must complain when 98% of all job ads are looking for AA black males, so why is everything so wrong when a company wants a white male.

This is so wrong on so many levels and people having problems with that are plain common dose. If I want to hire a white male, an indian male or a coloured female, why can I not advertise it like that?

Fu** this, this is just pathetic complaining about this ad.

I would like to see the ads that advertise for a black male. Sure if there was a valid reason for it but otherwise it seems sexist. Black and white seems to fly because the ANC themselves initiated the apartheid. I think it's a good courtesy for them to at least advertise it so someone doesn't needlessly apply. Most will just throw out the applications they don't want behind the scenes. But there are many other reasons I won't work for this company.

I don't see the point of appointing a specific race instead of simply the best person for the job.

Well the ANC decided there is a point. I don't see it myself (or I do but won't go in on it) except in specific circumstances bit with the policies putting an equity in place there can be a valid reason to appoint a white to assure that equity is met.

Companies are required by law to comply with BEE, not always by choice. You'd be shooting yourself in the foot by refusing to appoint BEE candidates on principle and/or thinking that it hurts BEE policies.

Obviously you haven't worked with enough BEE companies. The hoops to go through often makes it not worth it.

 

[cguy]

On the topic of the salary sub-thread: is there any website like Glassdoor.com for SA? How about Salary.com?

For those who don't know, Glassdoor takes a wide variety of voluntary compensation data, and makes it anonymously available to the world. If the number of samples per-position/title are large enough the results are pretty accurate, which means that you can actually get a feeling for which bits of the survey are accurate and which aren't. I expect that Glassdoor itself could be used for SA, but it's not used to great effect. ABSA has 9 salaries for example, each for different positions. It looks like one Software guy is getting R400k there. Microsoft, for example has 27, 402 salaries, so you can see for example that their "senior software engineers" (829 samples) earn ~$122k base + $32k cash/stock bonus with some degree of certainty. There are thousands of other developers at MS with other titles (e.g., 6676 software dev test engineers have responded), so people are taking these sites seriously.

Salary.com collects compensation from a bunch of different sources and compiles distribution charts for every title and position on a regional basis. Their paid services include customized salary reports that closely match your experience, qualifications, geography, age, company characteristics, etc. in order to give you a sense of what your should be earning.

Anyway, it just seems as though local developers would benefit from having some transparency, and having this information public - I wonder why no one has done it (or maybe someone has, but I'm just not in the know). IIRC, there was a fairly loose and poorly sampled survey that was put out by IT Web, but they seem to have stopped a few years ago.