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A couple of weeks ago I was contated by a recruiter named Sean
Handforth with a job opening for an "Object Oriented Perl Developer"
in King of Prussia. It looked good at first, but it turned out to be
a dog, and I am sending this message to inform you folks about why I
think it would be better to avoid this position.
After I sent my resume and took the client's weed-out-the-idiots quiz,
Handforth told me the name of the company. It was Health Market Science.
I remembered HMS right away. They used to employ Chip Salzenberg, who
is a longtime contributor to Perl and was the Pumpking (release
manager) for the Perl 5.003 series. He is also a friend of mine.
In 2005 Chip discovered that HMS was engaging in unethical and
probably illegal business practices. He wrote them a letter informing
them that he could not assist them in this, and that unless they
stopped he would have to report it to the authorities.
HMS's response was to go the the authorities first, claiming that Chip
was trying to steal valuable business secrets. The police seized
Chip's computers as evidence. Afterward, the charges were dropped,
but HMS arranged to have the seized computers released not to Chip but
to their own forensic experts, to preserve the evidence for a possible
civil suit.
As soon as I heard from Handforth that the company was HMS, I said I
was not interested in pursuing the position. Completely aside from my
wanting to support Chip, I did not want to get mixed up with this
company.
Handforth told me that the company was sold in 2007 and that the
people responsible for harrassing Chip have gone elsewhere. But Chip
tells me that HMS has not apologized, and his computers have not been
returned. The best interpretation I can put on this is that the new
management is indifferent to the company's previous behavior and does
not consider it worth addressing. (Worse interpretations are
possible, of course.) This is a serious ethical failure.
The computers have been held by the forensic specialists for more than
four years. If there were any evidence worth preserving for a civil
suit, they would have found it long ago. Since no suit has been
filed, the failure to release Chip's property is another serious
ethical failure.
In short, these people are toxic scumbags, and you will probably do
yourself a big favor by staying away from them.
For more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Salzenberg
http://web.archive.org/web/20061025042349/http://geeksunite.net/
Mark Jason Dominus mjd@plover.com
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