After the shakeout, the true believers remain

Tech companies have excavated their job-requisition forms from the depths of the filing cabinet -- and they're brushing up on how to use them. "We had some periods in the last few years where we thought things were getting better," says David Hayes, chief executive of the Cambridge tech-recruiting firm HireMinds. "But this is now several months running of an uptick, with no signs of abatement." Hayes says that he's conducting three times as many candidate searches today compared with a year ago, and that many of his clients are looking to fill multiple positions.

But the violent industry shakeout of the last four years drove a certain kind of tech employee out of the business. In the late 1990s, people gravitated to high-tech and dot-com jobs for the fast pace, the anything-goes atmosphere, and the easy money. (Or at least the idea of easy money.) Now, after the downturn, "only the true believers and diehards are left," says Larry Kahn, vice president at New Dimensions in Technology, a placement firm in Marblehead.

The shakeout has separated the gold rushers from the true believers -- industry veterans and dedicated newcomers who thrive on trying to bring new technologies to market. "It's a much smaller community, but it's people who feel, `This is what we do,' " says Ed Takacs, CEO of the Cambridge recruiting firm High Tech Ventures. "The people who don't have the backgrounds in technology aren't in it anymore."

Are you one of the diehards? Or an especially tenacious gold rusher? The utterly unscientific quiz below will supply the answer. Using Google to research the answers constitutes cheating -- but a very resourceful kind of cheating.

1. You know the name of the first computer software company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, in 1982. It was eventually acquired by Computer Associates in 1989. (Two points.)

2. You have an entertaining anecdote that involves a windy day and a stack of computer punch cards that contained an important program. (Two points.) If not, you sometimes find yourself regaling youngsters with tales of five-and-a-quarter inch floppy disks. (Two points.)

3. Ken Olsen started Digital Equipment in 1957. Two points if can you name the venture capital firm that put $70,000 into Digital (an investment that came to be worth several hundred million). Two more if you can name the founder of that venture capital firm, who was a Harvard Business School professor. (Four points total.)

4. Olsen later made an infamous prediction: "There is no reason for any individual to have a ------------ in his home." (Two points.)

5. Though founders Dick Egan and Roger Marino have never divulged who the third founder of EMC Corp. was -- the person whose last name supplied the `C' in EMC -- you know. (10 points.)

6. You are the shadowy third founder of EMC. (50 points.)

7. You can name the researcher at Bolt, Beranek & Newman in Cambridge who sent the first e-mail from one computer to another over the ARPANET (the forerunner to the Internet), which used the "@" sign to separate the name of the e-mail's recipient from the name of the host computer. (Two points.)

8. You played poker with CMGI chief executive David Wetherell in the late 1990s. (Ten points.)

9. The first computer bug was discovered by Rear Admiral Grace Hopper at Harvard -- literally a 2-inch moth that had gotten trapped in the machine. The year was 1945. You can name the computer. (Four points.)

10. You have strong opinions about 3G wireless, and you know who Bluetooth is named for. (Two points.)

11. You know which Cambridge company, founded by Danny Hillis, was once the market leader in powerful parallel supercomputers. One of this company's "Connection Machines" had a cameo in the Spielberg movie "Jurassic Park." (Two points.)

12. You've swapped life-extension tips with inventor and immortality advocate Ray Kurzweil. (Two points.)

13. Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston created VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, working in Frankston's attic in Arlington. VisiCalc is often referred to as the original "killer app" of the personal computer era. You know what computer VisiCalc originally ran on. (Two points. Bonus point if you once used VisiCalc.)

14. The name of this company springs easily to mind: founded by a former disc jockey and teacher of transcendental meditation, it had revenues of $53 million and went public in 1983, its first year of operations. Eventually acquired by IBM. (Two points.)

15. You've started a technology company in an attic, garage, walk-in closet, or guest bedroom. (Two points.)

16. You've raised venture capital funding. (Four points.)

17. The venture capitalists have ousted you. (Six points.)

18. You regularly post comments on Slashdot.org, the site whose motto is "News for nerds." (Two points. Bonus point if your posts are regularly rated "insightful" or "informative" by other Slashdotters.)

19. Tracy Kidder's Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Soul of a New Machine" chronicled the development of the Eclipse/MV line of minicomputers. You can name the company that made the Eclipse/MV line, which was founded by refugees from Digital Equipment and Fairchild Semiconductor. (Two points.)

20. You've hoisted a beer -- and perhaps found a job -- at the monthly Monday night networking events at the Muddy Charles Pub on MIT's campus. (Two points.)