Facebook dominated not just the World Wide Web this month, but financial news as well as the company released it's long-awaited Initial Public Offering on NASDAQ. Additional good news for the technologically-savvy is that Facebook has many new positions open. Right now, Facebook has 88 Software Engineering openings, 19 IT & Security positions, 13 Design positions, 25 Analyst positions and many, many more on the Facebook Career page. For a deeper look at Faceebook, locations and culture, take a look at the Facebook Company Profile.

Other News for May

If you're making the transition from full-time employment to becoming a freelancer, here are some tips for a useful Resume Format for Tech Contractors.

Looking for a new contract? CompuCom is hiring contractors across the country. You can find out more about CompuCom and who they're looking for at the CompuCom Company Profile.

If love your job, hate your job, or just thinking of a career change, take a look at how your IT career stacks up against others this year in the Top IT Jobs of 2012.

If you're looking at updating your schools, programmers and web developers might want to check out HTML5.

If you're looking to update your skills, check out this report on Going Back to School in 2012.

It's hard to imagine anyone in a technical position who could not benefit from knowing some basic programming code. Even if you're not in software or web development, if you have a blog or a website, or use a computer, knowing the basics of programming can come in handy - and can add an important line item to your resume.

Codecademy is free website that can take anyone from the first steps of learning programming to advanced concepts and tutorials where you can build your own game or web app.

If you create a free account, you can get a weekly lesson emailed to you - a good reminder to put in some practice on a regular basis - and for a few hours a week you can start from a basic "echo" beginning your path to more advanced lessons. I created an account several weeks ago and have been going through the lessons with my children. Each lesson gives you a sample of code and an explanation of what it does, then asks you to complete several basic tasks based on the sample.

The lessons are in small chunks, and follow a logical transition from one week to the next. I found it a lot more enjoyable than cracking open a text book.

If you run into troubles, the website gives you hints. If you can't get the hints, there are plenty of helpful people in the forums to help get you through the lesson.

So if you ever thought it would be fun to learn a new language, instead of French or German, maybe give JavaScript a try.

Logo courtesy of Codecademy.

Quixey, the Palo Alto software company that creates search engines for apps, is looking for engineers.

Instead of putting out the call for resumes however, Quixey has come up with an original and entertaining way of finding the best talent out there. Engineers are invited to take a challenge solving the kinds of problems that will demonstrate their skills.

To take the challenge, you must first complete a three practice puzzles. These puzzles include finding the shortest path connecting ordered pairs of nodes in a graph, or finding the greatest common divisor in a pair of numbers. Correctly solving the puzzles may get you invited for a Skype call where you can take the Quixey challenge where you might win $100 for fixing a software bug in less than a minute.

Non-technical people can win $50 if they refer someone to the Quixey Challenge website who successfully completes the challenge.

Screenshot courtesy of Quixey

Whether you nod your head in silent understanding or shake your head in anger, there should probably be no surprise which tech jobs were ranked at the bottom of CareerCam's list of the best and worst jobs of 2012.

While the position of Software Engineer was ranked as their overall number one pick of 200 jobs, due to salary, hiring outlook and working conditions, not all of the high tech positions CareerCam listed came in the top half. In fact, two positions were just barely escaped being listed in the bottom quarter.

Both involve long hours, some heavy lifting, mixed appreciation and of course a screwdriver.

The worst tech job, coming in at #148 out of 200 is the Electrical Equipment Repairer.

The second worst tech job, ranked #142 is the Computer Service Technician.

Of course, like all surveys these rankings are generalizations and don't take into account individual workplaces, pay rates, customer appreciation or job satisfaction.

For a complete listing of the best and worst jobs in the IT industry today, including salary comparisons, check out the article at about.com.

Photo © David Weedmark