Hire Literally Anyone
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Hire Literally Anyone
1–10 of 78 posts
Re: Hire Literally Anyone
#2I feel like many companies are afraid to do this because there's no guarantee their newly trained people will stay for so long as to make it worthwile. What if instead of "literally anyone" they trained non-technical colleagues that have already proven commitment?
Anecdote: next to my Information Science studies, I worked as a community manager for a few years. This was at a small startup so I was in practice doing more than that (marketing, data analysis, QA, etc). Once I finished my studies my CTO asked me to become a developer - he knew I was dedicated to the mission, knew just a little about coding but had the right personality for it. Sadly, in the end they realised that they didn't have enough time to train me and had to withdraw the offer.
I think it would be great if more CTOs made such offers, though in practice it seems unlikely. Small companies are less likely to have the resources to train and in larger companies perhaps the CTO is less likely to know community managers and such well enough to make such offers.
Re: Hire Literally Anyone
#3"Hire anyone with decent standardized test scores," would be my baseline after managing a large, technical support callcenter where many new hires were simply not able to learn the (imho fairly rudimentary) modem troubleshooting steps after weeks and months of on-the-job training and support.
The people who seemed the sharpest in the first two weeks of training usually excelled, most others didn't. Some were simply unable to learn fairly basic concepts. It mostly came down to raw intellect. I'm sure the same would be true for aspiring developers.
Re: Hire Literally Anyone
#4I feel like many companies are afraid to do this because there's no guarantee their newly trained people will stay for so long as to make it worthwile. What if instead of "literally anyone" they trained non-technical colleagues that have already proven commitment? Anecdote: next to my Information Science studies, I worked as a community manager for a few years. This was at a small startup so I was in practice doing m…
That fear is unfounded and is a good example of short term thinking. My number one goal now is to make sure wherever I work the people I work with "level up" in some way. I'm going to be working with these people at other jobs and if they suck then I'm not doing anyone any favors. Having proper mentoring and training pipelines are indicators of a healthy company. The alternative is companies shuffling mediocre workers amongst themselves which is again not doing anyone any good.
Re: Hire Literally Anyone
#5I feel like many companies are afraid to do this because there's no guarantee their newly trained people will stay for so long as to make it worthwile. What if instead of "literally anyone" they trained non-technical colleagues that have already proven commitment? Anecdote: next to my Information Science studies, I worked as a community manager for a few years. This was at a small startup so I was in practice doing m…
Good developers aren't trained, they are self taught. This can be on the job. I would be happy to pay people who aren't quite yet developers $30k as the article suggests, and then mentor them.
I spent much of the past year helping interns who were college students, some of them freshman, learn a new programming language. I think that isn't ideal for a variety of reasons, but instead of hiring one junior person at $90, hiring 3 near programmers at $30k could work well. (Though that last bit is a dichotomy-- it wouldn't be either or, it would be both-- if there are good people, hire them, whether they can code or not.)
Re: Hire Literally Anyone
#6> we need to value non-code skills much more highly and explicitly
Doesn't this, and most of the other stuff this is talking about really refer to project managers and people managers?
Re: Hire Literally Anyone
#7Teaching people to develop software is hard.
It requires commitment. In the framework author is describing if those people want to succeed they will not be able to do it part time while doing non-technical work for you.
Also rubber ducking with the actual developer takes a lot of developer's time (and it's hard) - so the organization will take a big productivity hit if developers work half time as programming teachers. This is not realistic. Basically - non technical people must work extra hours (not have a life) with people who work full time training them to succeed. And the programming camps do this - but most non technical people feel the effort is not worth it.
Re: Hire Literally Anyone
#8"Hire anyone with decent standardized test scores," would be my baseline after managing a large, technical support callcenter where many new hires were simply not able to learn the (imho fairly rudimentary) modem troubleshooting steps after weeks and months of on-the-job training and support. The people who seemed the sharpest in the first two weeks of training usually excelled, most others didn't. Some were simply u…
Don't count on it. I failed out of college due to my inability to take and pass tests, yet at work, I'm being promoted constantly to higher ranks due to my productivity.
Re: Hire Literally Anyone
#9"Hire anyone with decent standardized test scores," would be my baseline after managing a large, technical support callcenter where many new hires were simply not able to learn the (imho fairly rudimentary) modem troubleshooting steps after weeks and months of on-the-job training and support. The people who seemed the sharpest in the first two weeks of training usually excelled, most others didn't. Some were simply u…
Don't count on it. I failed out of college due to my inability to take and pass tests, yet at work, I'm being promoted constantly to higher ranks due to my productivity.
Considering I managed literally thousands of agents over a period of years, you would statistically be an extremely rare exception to a rather well-examined trend.
Did you ever take the SAT / ACT?
Re: Hire Literally Anyone
#10While I agree with this, and have been training someone in this manner for a while, it does put a drain on the trainer, and you have to take that into account, as Fred Brooks wasn't wrong...