Can I clarify for potential employers please

I asked for a job spec from a company yesterday, and one of the requirements was as follows...

"Candidate must have 5 years of HTML5 experience"
"Candidate must have 5 years of IPv6 experience"

Those 2 points were under the essential section!

Now I am not sure about you, but this was one of the companies that is globally known and is a very large company, but I would do research about the systems you are asking for people to use, as HTML5 was introduced last year, and IPv6 was introduced into the mainstream I believe in 2010.

This is not a dig at anybody on this forum, but it just surprises me at some of the companies that are recruiting, and they are asking for the impossible. Anybody else seen anything like this?

IPv6 has been around for ages, it was baked right into Vista and avalible before then, it has just not really been implemented many places due to the huge tech inertia.

HTML5 has also been being worked on for some time but unless you were actually involved in writing bits of it 5 years of experience is pushing it in truth, HTML5 is not even finished yet so how could 5 years experience with it even exist. Likewise with IPv6, it is at least possible but very unlikely and more specialist.

It is seemingly standard for these companies to ask for stupid or impossible amounts of experience with it. At least it is a little less glaring than the dropkicks that were demanding 5 years of experience with Server 2000 back in 2002. It is just the standard level of stupidity that is generally employed by the HR crew who have little or no idea about what they actually need so just demand the moon and hope that a compromise will be good enough.

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Originally Posted by nephilim

IPv6 was introduced I believe in 2010.

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IPv6 has been around for over 15 years. It is definitely possible to have 5 years experience depending upon where you have worked.

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The Internet Engineering Task Force adopted the IPng model on 25 July 1994, with the formation of several IPng working groups.[6] By 1996, a series of RFCs was released defining Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), starting with RFC 1883. (Source)

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http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1883.txt (December 1995)
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2460.txt (December 1998)

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Originally Posted by nephilim

HTML5 was introduced last year

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http://s13.postimage.org/v2jyzyah1/H...istory_972.jpg

As mainstream technologies they were introduced recently. When I went to college in 2002 and university in 2004 the tutors knew nothing of IPv6...and it was something that I can't remember being able to do in XP until SP3 at the minimum.

and granted I made an error on HTML5. But be honest...did you know about either 5 years ago?

IPv6 in some form has existed since 1992.

IPv6 - IPng - IP next Generation - Free Computer Science Tutorials - Provided by Laynetworks.com - Lay Networks

The first IPv6 network code was added to the Linux kernel 2.1.8 in November 1996 by Pedro Roque. But it wasn't really usable until 2.6 merged all the patches floating around 2003. At that point distros started shipping it, some even had it enabled as default.

History of IPv6 in Linux

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Originally Posted by nephilim

As mainstream technologies they were introduced recently. When I went to college in 2002 and university in 2004 the tutors knew nothing of IPv6...and it was something that I can't remember being able to do in XP until SP3 at the minimum.

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You had to download install it separately before then, I think it was bundled in SP3, maybe even SP2 as that was Vista age. XP ran on steam and coal anyway so is not a good example :)

The education whole is largely thanks to the inertia I was talking about, its kind of like all those schools running Office 2003 because they can't be assed figuring out the changes in the new version. The hardware is also a big obstacle as 4 is embedded in every level and ripping that out and supporting 6 through the whole stack is a huge undertaking. Several universities had deployied 6 internally ages ago but most companies are generally progress adverse when it means doing work and possibly cutting into their profits for something that will not have visible benefits the next day or sooner.

EDIT:
SP1 of XP was when it became integrated Windows XP - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Still pretty sure it was available as a download before then.

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Originally Posted by SYNACK

SP1 of XP was when it became integrated Windows XP - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Still pretty sure it was available as a download before then..

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More info on the history of IPv6 at Microsoft is here.

IPv6 - Microsoft Research

And as in all things... "must have 5 years" will be treated with a degree of flexibility when experience is taken in conjunction with other experience and training..

They are saying very clearly that this isn't a role for someone fresh out of college, even if they did do their degree in IPv6.

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Originally Posted by nephilim

...This is not a dig at anybody on this forum, but it just surprises me at some of the companies that are recruiting, and they are asking for the impossible. Anybody else seen anything like this?

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Something like that, I came across a company where one of the requirements was the MCSE in 2008 and Windows 7 (this was before the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate and Expert certifications were released).

Out of interest....

Has anyone tried building an IPV6 network for fun...


Oh, and RIPE will no longer allocate IP4V addresses to ISP's Unless they have an IPV6 set and a plan on how to implement it!


Rob

I suppose that's what you get when the job spec is built by the HR dept without input from the post's line manager.
Or it could just be a ruse to sort the wheat from the chaff, and give you a nice talking point at interview. ;)