10 years ago, the dot com I was working for went out of business. Even better, I was a PHP developer with all of a couple of years of experience. The dot-com cr

10 years ago, the dot com I was working for went out of business. Even better, I was a PHP developer with all of a couple of years of experience. The dot-com crash was not a good time to be interviewing. The recruitment agent I was using must have been equally desperate. He sent me along to an interview for the position of in-house developer (yup, the only one) with a company based in central London. The interview went well at first, but after the first 15 minutes, I sensed something was amiss. The damned recruitment agent had edited my CV to say that I was a Perl developer with 5 years experience. I explained this to the 5 people interviewing me, and to be honest, they were lovely about it. In fact... a bit too nice about it. They wanted me to inherit their complex Perl-based system, despite me not having a clue about the language. I explained at length why I wouldn't be a good hire, but still they wouldn't end the interview. In desperation I wrote down the phone number of a friend who DID have some Perl knowledge, and practically ran out of the place. It was nice, and I realise that non-techies might not make a distinction, but my they were insistent that I not leave!