I've been chatting with some of my old coworkers recently. The people I wrote about - the ones I miss.

The ex-boss called, too. Made the conversation. Got caught up.

Something we talked about is that he has an open position on his team. He was wondering if I knew anybody who'd be a good fit. I could start suggesting people, but I think it's best if they see what the job is and decide for themselves if it's something they'd want to do.

Very briefly about the job... it's a dev position. Front-end stuff, AJAX stuff, some behind-the-scenes stuff. You'd be working under Duncan Mackenzie - he's done a lot of writing for MSDN - done a lot of everything, actually. And, despite being Canadian, he's a good guy.

I've never worked for him, so I can't comment on his boss-skills, but we were ultimately on the same team, ate lunch together, and argued a lot about whether the plural of "Lego" is just "Lego" or "Legos." Apparently, Canadians think it's inappropriate to pluralize "Lego" with the trailing "s." I think that's crap, but, again, despite this shortcoming, he's a good guy.

Now, about JeffSand Team... JeffSand, if you, like, dunno, is a sort of incidental brand name for Jeff Sandquist and the stuff he does. I didn't think of myself as a Channel 9 employee so much as a JeffSand Team employee.

Jeff has headed up and been involved with some big stuff. Channel 9, if you're into the Microsoft dev stuff, is probably something you already know about. There's also Channel 10 which is more of a tech-enthusiast site, dealing with everything from those nifty surface interface computer things to Xbox 360 games and interviews (there's a lot of dispute over whether to call it "Channel 10" or "On 10" - I prefer "Channel 10," and I suspect another Canadian conspiracy here). A recent project is Channel 8 - it's oriented toward the younger, academic crowd. I haven't visited that one as much, but that's because I had a .86 GPA in high-school before I dropped out, and I'd feel like an imposter if I went and hung around such a site. Still, it might be a way to meet cute freshman undergrad ladies.

If you aren't going through the worst personal problems of your life, JeffSand is the place to be. It wasn't a good fit for me at the time, but I've gone over that already, again and again. I also don't like Redmond or Bellevue or Seattle. Many people dig it, but it's not for me. Point being, my implosion wasn't because of JeffSand Team itself - it was the environment in my head as well as the one in which I was living.

One of the best things about JeffSand Team is that it's well established that it's a creative, rebellious sect within a company that, like all huge companies, tries to keep things under control. But, because of the overwhelming success of sites like 9, JeffSand Team is well shielded against bullshit internal politics. There's a big "Don't Fuck With These People" shield sitting between JeffSand and the rest of the company. People on the outside get upset, but Jeff and the rest of the management team don't let it get beyond their layer. The stress of knowing people are screaming for your head can be horrible, so that protection is a perk in itself.

I had a lot of fun as an MSDN Events speaker, but for the second of the two years I was on the team, politics were a nightmare. The weekly calls from people wanting to fire me got to be a bit much. I didn't have to deal with that at all while working for Jeff, and that's despite my poor performance (again, due to freaky personal stuff). In fact, the first time in my life that I deserved to be fired from a job was on JeffSand Team, but everybody on the team was there for me. They weren't judgmental - probably because the team is composed of all the colors of the weirdbow, and they operated around me with the understanding that people sometimes just lose it for any number of reasons.

All the warm fuzzy stuff aside, working on JeffSand Team is demanding. But, unlike many other demanding positions, you aren't going to be pushed to work fifty, sixty, eighty hours a week. There'll be times when you'll choose to work harder because you recognize that it's a privilege to be where you are. I once sat in my office for thirty-six straight hours to edit a video. Nobody made me do it. I could have worked on it over the period of a week or two, but I wanted to get it done. Had Jeff found out, actually, rather than applaud my marathon, he probably would have sent me home and then to bed without dinner.

It's a team of real people. It's a small dysfunctional family, and that's hard to find. You'll find teams in every company where people are superficially involved with each other, but there's a feeling of solidarity around the team. Half of them acted as my own personal team of shrinks. We'd travel together. We'd get stressed out and yell at each other. When things calmed down, though, we didn't hold stupid grudges.

And, one thing we definitely weren't was a group of backstabbing corporate-ladder climbers.

That's a family.

If you're a coder, and if this sounds like something you'd like to do, then I suggest you look into it. The pay's good, the benefits are amazing, and it'll turn into a dead-end job because you won't want to work on any other team. That's a good thing, by the way. You could totally move on to some lame management position elsewhere in the company, but why would you?

That's probably enough writing for now. The last thing I'll say is not to psych yourself out. I've seen tons of forum postings where people decide before even trying that JeffSand Team is the club you can't get into. It's true that it's an exclusive thing, but it's completely doable if you know your stuff. It's not about who you know. I'm serious about that last part. Jeff has hired many unknowns. He's a little like George Lucas that way, except he doesn't have the budget to insert CGI Ewoks into everything you do.

Goferit. You'll have a demmed hard time topping a position with Jeff.