Here’s the advert:
Talofa PHP guys (n gals).
This advert is totally legit. All expenses paid for six weeks in paradise – true! The boss is cool – I reckon he’s a little crazy at times but pretty much onto it actually with some cool ideas. He’s suggested that if I don’t get someone up here to help us out soon, he’ll end up coding the job himself (and believe me, we’re not going to let that happen!)
So, this job is a short-term PHP development contract located onsite with us up here in Samoa. We’re flat out building a new inbound tourism portal for the country (I’ve actually seen it and already I can tell it’s going to rock big time up here!). Your job, is to establish a pretty simple custom PHP-based CMS for the website. We can’t just plug in WordPress or Joomla unfortunately. It’s not too hard a job really, especially for someone who knows what they are doing.
You will be living and working with us up here in Apia, the business centre of this South Pacific paradise recently hit with a massive headline grabbing Tsunami. Throughout your six weeks here, which could be up to eight weeks if we really like you and you really twist our arms, you will be coding some pretty basic PHP (that’s when the Internet is working of course) as well as conducting site visits to Tsunami affected regions, resorts, beaches and tourism attractions (Darn! how did this all get into these job specs?) all the while contributing to a project that will help Samoa tourism recover from an estimated $1b of negative press, September 2009. (True – these guys need all the help they can get putting the country back on the map).
You will be surrounded by lovely friendly Samoan people who all smile at the drop of a hat; who will love you to bits; treat you like a king (or queen), and gently suggest that you must really slow down, enjoy life and take it easy! Your boss is a Palagi however (that’s Samoan for Pakeha BTW) and you will probably be helping upskill some of the local Samoan web developers if that interests you too.
Unfortunately you will be experiencing essentially a third world country, so don’t expect TV, movies, fast Internet nor fast food (actually there’s nothing really fast up here), and so you will be dining on a steady supply of what’s on hand from day to day – Chicken, Yams, Taro, Rice, and a delightful range of tropical fruit such as bananas, pawpaws, coconuts and pineapple. Not too bad really.
The weather is, umm, “lovely” here – a balmy 26 degrees Celsius, sometimes reaching 28 (but unfortunately that’s only at night time. Come to think of it, that’s when most PHP is coded anyway isn’t it?). Unfortunately daytime gets a little warmer – actually something like a constant 30+ degrees with high humidity that sucks all your energy away by midday! But you will be so busy swatting flies and chasing mosquitoes to get to your cold beer on your way to your afternoon siesta that you’ll hardly notice it – promise!
Local pay rates are not that exciting (OK at $5.00 local an hour that’s the understatement of the year!) but hey, with an all expenses paid trip for 6 weeks in Paradise, you really didn’t expect to get rich did you?
Seriously now, you will have a minimum of 2yrs PHP experience; and be pretty comfortable with most PHP/web coding tasks. You will be confident to scope small PHP/CMS projects well, to show initiative and be able to work without close supervision (we really don’t want to check for falling coconuts all the time you know) but most of all you will be able to enjoy life and have fun. (Yup, we do!)
You might even be able to string a few words together too, preferably a tad more than <?php echo $content; ?>. You’ll have plenty to blog about, promise!
If you can code, have a personality slightly more exciting than a paper bag and are generally a delightful person to be around 7/24 drop me a note and I’ll get your CV onto the bosses desk pronto – well sometime when he gets back from the beach or the bush.
So, if that’s you – Talofa, don’t muck around, it’s time that you get your passport ready so we can slip you your airline tickets right away. If you’ve got a mate, and he or she really can’t live six weeks without you, we might be able to find another bunk for them too, but only if they’re a pretty good photographer or journalist or graphics or videographer or a good cook!