2009/1/9 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
Erik I am glad you are still around and keeping an eye on things.
Thank you, I appreciate that. :-)
I believe that, with the audience the Foundation has access to, it could save a lot of money by hiring people who love Wikipedia and want to work for it. I don't think its true that the only way to get seasoned developers is to wave a large carrot (aka $$$) in front of their face. I believe there exist experienced developers who would gladly give a year of their life, working at a lower wage, to work on Wikipedia.
That is evidently true. In fact, everyone we're hiring accepts that they are going to be paid under market rates. We are also working with remote contractors on specific projects. If you are interested in working as a remote contractor, or you know brilliant people who would be, make a pitch to jobs at wikimedia dot org. We have put a general note on the job openings page that we appreciate hearing from people who are passionate and interested throughout the year, regardless of current openings.
As for advertising this extremely broadly, I think that would be doing a disservice to serious candidates as we simply would be drowning in applications. (Sometimes, we already are.) And, having reviewed CVs for almost every position that we've hired for in 2008, I can tell you that arriving at a reasonable shortlist in a fair and accurate fashion is a lot of work - and with the exception of some sanity filtering, it's not a task you can easily give to someone else. We might try it regardless, but only if we have a process in place to deal with the predictable level of interest.