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Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

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Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#121

Post by sunir »

bleachedsleet wrote: post #43
mattschmulen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why (forgive me for the generalization) blue collar work ethic and blue collar loyalty are so often dismissed in the tech field. Some of the best advice I ever received was 'execute in the seat your in'. Sure there are higher order strategies to work out but grow into it and growth is around growing into the company, not just growing into your specific vertical profession. Kudos on your directness.

A few reasons I can think of off the top of my head: 1) Anything that can be effectively described as "blue collar" will probably be replaced by automation within 3-10 years depending on the job. 2) Creative thinkers should be valued more highly in the tech field than those that can just follow orders blindly. Very few tech fields emulate an assembly line and the ability to think for yourself and develop an alternati…

That seems fatalist to me. The idea of a work ethic is to avoid fatalism and enjoy the present moment.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#122

Post by nkohari »

throwaway95837 wrote: post #18

I am 100% owner of an internet company making 7 figure profits annually. I am extremely secretive of my business, almost to the point that some would consider a pathology. However, I will divulge my hiring strategy, because even if everyone uses my method, there will still be many employees for me to choose from. I look to hire people who just need a job. People who are qualified, but not overly qualified. People I k…

It will also create a company that can't grow past the point where you are the lynchpin. Good leaders find people that will put them out of a job, not lackeys to do whatever they say. If you're happy where you are, then I congratulate you on your success, but when was the last time you took a vacation?

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#123

Post by mullsork »

ryandrake wrote: post #93

Interesting. Lots of picky responses here--people prepared to wait it out and go through tons of candidates looking for perfection: Need this language. And that platform. Must know such and such database. And DevOps. Front end and backend. Full stack. And these four key abilities. And passion. Prepare for the interview. Be ready to explain this and that. Be good at whiteboard coding. Went through 400 candidates. If y…

Though I don't do recruiting myself I have a few friends in tech HR here in Berlin. It is not the total number of developers available that makes the problem, it's the high percentage of incompetence.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#124

Post by mgav »

throwaway95837 wrote: post #18

I am 100% owner of an internet company making 7 figure profits annually. I am extremely secretive of my business, almost to the point that some would consider a pathology. However, I will divulge my hiring strategy, because even if everyone uses my method, there will still be many employees for me to choose from. I look to hire people who just need a job. People who are qualified, but not overly qualified. People I k…

Hmmm. Your "who knows how to take orders without question" requirement (paragraph 3) would discourage every great person I've ever met, while weakening your overall enterprise (what if the Titanic's jr. officers had respectfully asked questions about going full speed at night in waters known to have icebergs?).

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#125

Post by lostboys67 »

bleachedsleet wrote: post #43
mattschmulen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why (forgive me for the generalization) blue collar work ethic and blue collar loyalty are so often dismissed in the tech field. Some of the best advice I ever received was 'execute in the seat your in'. Sure there are higher order strategies to work out but grow into it and growth is around growing into the company, not just growing into your specific vertical profession. Kudos on your directness.

A few reasons I can think of off the top of my head: 1) Anything that can be effectively described as "blue collar" will probably be replaced by automation within 3-10 years depending on the job. 2) Creative thinkers should be valued more highly in the tech field than those that can just follow orders blindly. Very few tech fields emulate an assembly line and the ability to think for yourself and develop an alternati…

And the traditional "blue collar" jobs often have/had "Spanish" Practices designed to game the system - eg postal workers deliberately holding back first class post on a Friday to provide OT at the weekend - or doing a go slow in order to get a bung in a brown envelope.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#126

Post by ergo14 »

raverbashing wrote: post #74
meritt wrote: post #67

Intelligence. Tenacity. Ambition. Judgement. Bonus points for recognizing the bullshit parade that is the current startup world. e.g.: NodeJS has value, but it's mostly the same wheel we've had for 20+ years. Or that MongoDB's changelog has consisted of standard SQL features for the past five years and that pgsql would have been just fine (had people read some boyce-codd anyhow).

> Or that MongoDB's changelog has consisted of standard SQL features Funny, because it's pgsql that added a JSON data type in response to MongoDB and others.

But postgres is still optimized for queries, mongo is optimized for random deletes ;-) Funny indeed.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#127

Post by kornakiewicz »

_xhok wrote: post #12
bsvalley wrote: post #7

People who can be micro-managed and used as resources. People who will do the job.

Are you the guy I overheard on the train today repeating the phrase "...our Java resource says..." during his phone conversation?

They are the worst.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#128

Post by flavor8 »

mullsork wrote: post #123
ryandrake wrote: post #93

Interesting. Lots of picky responses here--people prepared to wait it out and go through tons of candidates looking for perfection: Need this language. And that platform. Must know such and such database. And DevOps. Front end and backend. Full stack. And these four key abilities. And passion. Prepare for the interview. Be ready to explain this and that. Be good at whiteboard coding. Went through 400 candidates. If y…

Though I don't do recruiting myself I have a few friends in tech HR here in Berlin. It is not the total number of developers available that makes the problem, it's the high percentage of incompetence.

That's exactly right. If you are a competent engineer, you have your pick of jobs. And for every one of you, there are 100 others on the market, probably 80 whose resumes I'll throw away after 30s, 15 who won't make it through an initial code screen, and 4 who will fail in final round interviews.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#129

Post by kitd »

reitanqild wrote: post #72
jayajay wrote: post #68

You sound like a very cynical, older person. I'm interested to hear your story and why you have developed strong views on things that make a pretty small difference in the grand scheme of things. Any bad experiences that we could learn from? Thanks in advance. Edit: I'm not trolling, sorry if my post sounds insincere. If there's a good fucking story behind your statements, I want to hear it.

Not op, but: IMO somewhat uninformed opinion (longtime dev on two of the biggest platforms, played a bit with node etc a few times) the Javascript ecosystem has seems to have numerous issues. Here is my impression: - being equally bad or worse than php in a number of ways (I used to write php, the right way ; ) -to: having bad dependency management -to: the complete ecosystem being in a churn, always. Like if php con…

Agree with all of this, apart from Gradle. It has saved my life a few times. Gradle plus the BuildShip plugin [1] for Eclipse is a great combo IMHO.

[1] - https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/tools.buildship

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#130

Post by haikuginger »

teknologist wrote: post #64
dccoolgai wrote: post #6

I hire frontend and mixed web devs. What I'm looking for is a mature understanding of the web platform from devs at all levels. + basic architecture and good practices for mid-level devs. + business and deep architecture for seniors. + for new web platform things like Service Workers, advanced SVG. Could care less about whatever franework is hot this week.

The expression is "could not care less", meaning you're already caring the least possible amount.

"Could care less" is a valid idiom with established semantic meaning disparate from its syntactic meaning.
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