Posted by: Alex
I just completed my tax return. Yeah yeah, I know I’m cutting it fine, submissions must be in by Thursday. I really do have to commend the folk at SARS for their eFiling system. It works like a charm. I completed my tax return myself in less time that it would take me to drive to my (former) tax consultant. And I’m slow at these kind of things: I check and recheck everything several times. A good thing too, because I seem to have forgotten how to operate a calculator. I also say 5 at the same time as I write 3. Odd.
This is IT making a difference, and it’s really cool. It almost inspires me to get into IT. Oh wait, I am 
On a related note we interviewed a candidate for a C++ developer role today. When I read her CV I though it odd that she’d want to move from where she was (SAP Admin) into C++ programming. To put it in less tech speak, that would be like moving from car sales into the workshop as a mechanic. Not a change someone would normally make. We went ahead with the interview anyway, she did okay, but she didn’t have any of the skills we needed. That was not surprising because she last did C++ at varsity and hasn’t coded at all in 18 months.
As we were wrapping up the interview she confessed that she thought she was there for a SAP Admin interview (makes sense – that’s what she’s been doing for the last 18 months). Somewhere between our HR department and the agency that submitted her CV they’d mistakenly submitted her CV to us as a C++ resource. The poor woman sat through the whole interview answering as best as she could and trying to sound keen on what we were offering. Considering that, she did a really good job. It doesn’t change the fact that it was a waste of her time and ours though.