List of conditions and preferences, for recruiters

If you are a recruiter looking to hire me, i first want to say thank you. This means you are not just blindly select people to contact but you’re doing research on them. I appreciate that.

Below is a list of conditions and preferences that’s good to know before we talk. These are the things i won’t bend in, no matter what.

• I’m a father of two, and with a mother who has a really strict schedule it is i who transport the children between schools and home every now and then. This means that:
  1. i need a really flexible schedule
  2. i work remotely. If that’s not an option for your company/client, stop right now; that’s something i won’t reconsider anytime soon. Occasional visits to HQ is OK, though.
• i use a Fedora Linux workstation for work. I won’t install any corporate spyware on it like activity or time trackers. Corporate-specific apps for things like messaging and VPN might be OK but many of those are suspicious. I’m willing to run different operating systems in virtual machines for testing purposes, but changing my working environment must be my choice, not my employer’s. A company provisioned laptop can relax this rule, but even in that case: spying on me and my home is not an option.
• Python is my main programming language, but i’m happy to learn new ones. I won’t, however, under any circumstances work with Java, PHP, and Perl, unless the job is to migrate away from those languages.
• if i have to do some coding on a whiteboard during the interview, solve problems that are already solved in widely used libraries (like implementing a linked list), or solve some brain teasers i’ll hang up without a warning. That method is plain wrong and no serious interviewer should use it. Not even for hiring beginners. I have a bunch of openly available projects, or you can put my skills to the test in a realistic setting. I guess the work you’re hiring for is not “writing nonsense programs on whiteboards”.
• i will never work for Google/Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Oracle, Meta/Facebook, or most banks and financial institutions. If you are trying to recruit me for one of these, please say so in advance; it might save both of us some time which is probably our most precious resource.
• i do understand that a lot of you recruiters are bound by NDAs and such, but if you find me fit for a position and don’t mention the company who you’re recruiting for, the position is out of question. This way i can’t do my part of the research, to check if i want to work with that company at all. In this case i’ll assume the worst (see the previous point) and decline immediately.
• money is not everything; you definitely can’t change my mind about all the things above by offering more. However, if you’re recruiting in Hungary (or from Hungary hoping that it will be cheap), be prepared that my expectations are probably higher than you might think.

If all the above are OK with you, feel free to contact me. Also, instead of writing me an email, you might want to book a time slot instead.