Well, for programming, employees without experience generally slow down the existing employees and rarely turn into good workers. Let's examine the typical job applicants to see why: 1) Has experience, resume and portfolio. 2) Has no professional experience, but has worked on open source projects and has a nice portfolio. 3) Has no professional experience and hasn't worked on open source. Has a personal portfolio tha…
What would a programmers portfolio look like?
Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
11–20 of 44 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
#12Well, for programming, employees without experience generally slow down the existing employees and rarely turn into good workers. Let's examine the typical job applicants to see why: 1) Has experience, resume and portfolio. 2) Has no professional experience, but has worked on open source projects and has a nice portfolio. 3) Has no professional experience and hasn't worked on open source. Has a personal portfolio tha…
So you wouldn't hire a new maths PhD for your trading software group if they didn't have C++ experience?
Re: Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would a programmers portfolio look like?
Any publicly accessible repository containing code you've written (e.g. your Github repos), products or websites you've built and exposed to users, technical papers you've published, and technical talks you've given.
Re: Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
#14The lucky handful of geeks with "two years' experience" already under their belt are not going to sit back and let the employer dictate how much, or how little, they are going to get paid. The employer wants to pay them as little as possible - but the candidate can ask whatever the market allows, as much as possible, and if his name's that good, he will be able to gouge the employer for as much as he can get. And if the employer listens long enough, he'll find that all of the others will all seem to be adopting the same gouging tactic, for exactly the same amount - like a cartel structure.
Basically, you're going to end up with a small clique of experienced coders circulating between firms, raking in the money and coming up with the same tired code they've been peddling to the same firms from day one. The incentive to come up with original solutions isn't there - they're not after hiring newbies who might have something new that could knock them off their perch.
In the meantime, businesses find themselves financially in a hole paying for these bloated whales, they're just as much in the dark as they've always been, their programs are just as rubbish, nothing new seems to work - why should it? Working code costs more money, so you might as well just issue new patches - and folding left and right.
There's more money to be made running a cartel of consultants than by opening the jobs market to newcomers, offering them training and keeping the market fresh, competitive, adaptive and, most of all, viable.
Re: Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
#15As far as I'm aware from the economics blogosphere, arguments about "structural unemployment" are popular these days mostly in right wing think tanks. And they only seem popular there because hypothesizing that there are tons of jobs available for the unemployed permits one to reject Keynesian/Monetarist prescriptions for further fiscal/monetary stimulus. I haven't run into any serious economist who believes in the i…
Actually, I heard Bill Clinton talking about the same thing on the Daily Show this past week.
Re: Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
#16Well, for programming, employees without experience generally slow down the existing employees and rarely turn into good workers. Let's examine the typical job applicants to see why: 1) Has experience, resume and portfolio. 2) Has no professional experience, but has worked on open source projects and has a nice portfolio. 3) Has no professional experience and hasn't worked on open source. Has a personal portfolio tha…
Re: Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
#17Well, for programming, employees without experience generally slow down the existing employees and rarely turn into good workers. Let's examine the typical job applicants to see why: 1) Has experience, resume and portfolio. 2) Has no professional experience, but has worked on open source projects and has a nice portfolio. 3) Has no professional experience and hasn't worked on open source. Has a personal portfolio tha…
What would a programmers portfolio look like?
Re: Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
#18Well, for programming, employees without experience generally slow down the existing employees and rarely turn into good workers. Let's examine the typical job applicants to see why: 1) Has experience, resume and portfolio. 2) Has no professional experience, but has worked on open source projects and has a nice portfolio. 3) Has no professional experience and hasn't worked on open source. Has a personal portfolio tha…
>4 ... have shown no ability or drive. So you wouldn't hire a new maths PhD for your trading software group if they didn't have C++ experience?
Of course, there are PhDs who are great coders as well. They are gems.
Re: Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
#19Re: Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore
#20Well, for programming, employees without experience generally slow down the existing employees and rarely turn into good workers. Let's examine the typical job applicants to see why: 1) Has experience, resume and portfolio. 2) Has no professional experience, but has worked on open source projects and has a nice portfolio. 3) Has no professional experience and hasn't worked on open source. Has a personal portfolio tha…
What would a programmers portfolio look like?