PHP programmer required for an exciting opportunity to work directly with another programmer/entrepreneur

Hi,

My name is Svein and I am looking for a long term staff member to help me develop the back-end of various websites.

You need to be proficient in PHP and have a desire to code well, and making things work.

I am looking for someone who wants to do well, who wants to learn more and will take satisfaction in delivering a great service to me and to my clients.

Initially the salary will be fairly industry standard, but as we turn profitable there will be significant bonuses available, for the right candidate.

Who am I?

I am someone who doesn't have enough hours in the day and trying to do too much. I have projects waiting that could be making money, but I haven't got enough hours in the day to get started or to move them forward quickly enough.

I have both a technical background and an MBA - and keen to spend more time on marketing so we can become more profitable and make a good living, both of us.

I am now looking for someone full-time who can help me develop these sites and systems, and share in the success.

I am in the UK timezone, and I typically am available from 6pm to 1am UK time.

Who are you?

You are someone who is keen to do well. If you don't know how to do something, you're willing to search the Internet until you understand how to do it - and then you can implement it well.

You are a tidy person who want to write code that works well. You are keen to perform and make a very good living out of your programming.

You are willing to work hard to achieve this. You certainly must be able to commit 40+ hours a week, I have so much to do that I don't want a part-time employee.

You are conscientious, you can understand instructions and you are intelligent enough to make sensible choices when it's unclear, or ask for guidance.

You of course understand English, particularly everything I am writing here. And you have decent English when you write back to me. Your spelling isn't incredibly important, but your ability to understand is.

And, you are willing to work with another programmer who will sometimes accept your code as it is, at other times will tell you that you are doing it completely wrong and have to start again, and sometimes send you a bonus for doing something really well.

Trust me, we will be working closely together and most likely communicate every single day. (Skype preferred!)

The main technologies I use are:

http://www.smarty.net/
http://doophp.com/
http://jquery.com/
http://www.propelorm.org/
http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/
http://htmlpurifier.org/
http://swiftmailer.org/

If you have any experience with these, great. If not, don't worry, you will have time to learn what you need.

You also need to be able make your code work with existing HTML and CSS templates.

Oh, yeah - if you only have access to an Internet Cafe then I am sorry, this role is not for you. You really, really need to have your own PC or a decent laptop.

The Process

As I need someone I can trust to do a good job, I need to make sure you can deliver what you say you can. I have therefore devised a set of 4 real-world tests. You will have nearly a week to deliver the solutions, so you should have plenty of time to learn anything you need in order to deliver. However, it should take you nowhere near a week to actually develop everything requested in the tests.

You HAVE to agree to go through the test if you want the job. I am willing to pay a small amount for your time, as I realise there is quite a lot involved. For that reason, you really need to convince me that you might be the one. By the way, I will not be using your code for anything, this is purely for you to demonstrate your capabilities. In fact, I have already developed code for all of the tasks, and I want to see your code and compare it with mine.

I am willing to pay you something for your time to do the test to demonstrate that I am very serious about finding the right person to work with me.

Your next step is to apply for the role and tell me a bit about yourself. Where have you come from? What education do you have? Why are you a programmer? How long have you been programming? Why do you want to continue as a programmer? For how long do you think you want to be a programmer?

What are your own circumstances? Single with lots of time on your hands, or a family person? What is important to you?

How do you know you've done a good job?

What do you want to be doing in 12 months? In 5 years?

How much are you willing to work for now? How much would you like to be earning in 12 months? How much in 5 years?

What hours are you able to work during the day? Are you able to communicate in the UK timezone 6pm to 1am, or at least a part of it? Even 1 hour a day? I won't ask you to work all through the night, rest assured, but we must have a little bit of time together if we need it.

What are your capabilities? How much experience do you have with PHP5? How good a programmer are you?

Feel free to send me some code you've written in the past. Telling me you've worked on a particular site doesn't do much for me - I cannot see the code behind it nor can I know what parts of it you have been involved in.

There are no right or wrong answers - just be honest with yourself and with me.

Then, when I have some better understanding of you, and I believe you could be right for working with me, I will invite you to the first test. There will be 4 tests, one after the other. You will have 36 hours to deliver each solution, counted from the time I send you the task.

When I have the results I will ask *some* of you to do a 1 week trial. You will be paid for the trial period, and we will negotiate that separately. During that week you will be asked to deliver some real-world code for sites that I am currently responsible for.

After I have completed trials with several candidates, one of you will be asked to join me as my main programming support.

You will be paid every 2 weeks via Paypal.

Does that sound good to you?