Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hire people who aren’t proven

leonardofed.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 460 posts

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#41

Post by collyw »

maxxxxx wrote: post #6

I think hiring has become more difficult now that programming has been discovered as a well paying mainstream career. When I started in the 90s most people I worked with had a passion for the craft but now I find we interview a lot of people who have a CS degree just for the career prospects but not out of interest for the craft. I find it much easier to deal with someone who has no relevant experience but cares vs s…

Cares about what though?

Building simple,solid, maintainable software that does what it is supposed to?

Or cares about chasing every new fad, has ten frameworks listed on their resume and is currently midway through the machine learning / blockchain hype?

I care about the former, but plenty of people would see that as having little "passion". For example, I don't have any experience using NoSQL databases on my CV, because I haven't had a use case for them and I could tell that they weren't all that they were hyped up to be 5 years ago when those were peak hype cycle. (I can design a relational database properly and know how to index it and optimize queries).

Ten years is plenty of time for this industry to kill any passion you started with. I still care about producing good work.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#42

Post by fma »

ryandvm wrote: post #30
dalore wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say us old timers learn to be more picky about what we care about. It's a finite resource.

Bingo. As an "old timer", it's not that we don't care; we still love the craft as much as ever. It's just that we are at a point in our careers where we can afford to have a much lower tolerance for bullshit. Manager says "let's have a weekend pizza party hackathon!!!" and the old-timers are the first to recognize and decline the opportunity for unpaid overtime fixing bugs.

In my younger days (I'm only 35 lol) I used to want to apply for jobs that said junk like "fast paced environment". Now I'm like screw that...

I mean every company wants you to work as hard as possible and turn things around...but now I feel the ones publish it want to put you through the ringer.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#43

Post by ghaff »

snowwrestler wrote: post #29
maxxxxx wrote: post #6

I think hiring has become more difficult now that programming has been discovered as a well paying mainstream career. When I started in the 90s most people I worked with had a passion for the craft but now I find we interview a lot of people who have a CS degree just for the career prospects but not out of interest for the craft. I find it much easier to deal with someone who has no relevant experience but cares vs s…

By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in…

CS/programming is almost unique in this regard in that there's a significant school of thought out there that, if you haven't been programming as a hobby since you were a kid, that's a disqualification. As you say, there is pretty much zero expectation in any other STEM field that you did much more than take some science classes in high school and liked them.

(In STEM. Obviously you presumably don't apply to Juilliard because you decided you might want to give this music thing a try.)

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#44

Post by slfnflctd »

My initial interest in programming started before 1990. Due to an insane number and variety of mostly personal factors, the farthest I ever got was a couple ancient javascript/HTML experiments, a few small-to-medium side projects in MS Access and some intermediate router configuration. I've primarily just done tech support. I've performed well in the jobs I've chosen, though, because I get along well with others and tend to be loyal to the organization, even if I know this is sometimes foolish. It's simply how I'm wired.

Despite all the time that's passed and all the things I've dipped my toes into, I feel no closer to choosing a language, framework or tooling. I have no friends who are serious developers. I'm good at learning new things, but it happens slowly. It would probably take me 6 months to a year of dedicated daily time & effort just to ramp up on any one particular sub-technology (which, considering that I'm a rideshare driver to make ends meet, is a challenge)-- and there is no guarantee it would help me find work, since I have no idea who's hiring for what, or what those jobs are actually like.

All that being said, other than 'professional entertainer' (haha), a software developer is all I've really ever wanted to be, and I think with enough time invested the right way, I'd be really, really good at some aspect of it. I built myself a custom checking account database to better predict its future balance, and I'm happy every time I interact with it (except when it crashes for reasons unrelated to my code). The biggest question of all remains, though: Is it even worth the trouble to try, because would anybody even consider hiring someone like me?

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#45

Post by jarsin »

I think tons of experienced people that love programming moved on because of the "Google Interview".

You got all this experience and love making stuff for users, but you don't know the "insert trick of the week" to solve the latest "elite" programming question. Bye Bye. No more jobs for you.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#46

Post by collyw »

ryandvm wrote: post #30
dalore wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say us old timers learn to be more picky about what we care about. It's a finite resource.

Bingo. As an "old timer", it's not that we don't care; we still love the craft as much as ever. It's just that we are at a point in our careers where we can afford to have a much lower tolerance for bullshit. Manager says "let's have a weekend pizza party hackathon!!!" and the old-timers are the first to recognize and decline the opportunity for unpaid overtime fixing bugs.

As I said in another comment caring about producing good work is completely different about caring about every hyped up new trend that our industry comes up with (usually a rehash of something from 20 years ago).

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#48

Post by vorpalhex »

chii wrote: post #24
vorpalhex wrote: post #12

I think this is good advice... for larger companies with well established patterns. One of the issues of a startup is that the founders are breathing down your neck and often don't care a whole lot about "well designed software" (or want to overbuild mvp products). Standing up to management, building best practices, and being agile while still pushing back when needed against founders/sales isn't easy but it's someth…

> It gives newer engineers more opportunity to succeed in areas where they are strong or just gives people who can fit a mould succeed, but doesn't allow someone who is creative and can think outside the box to shine as existing beaurocracy bogs down the smallest of change.

One of the hardest challenges of being an engineer, especially at senior levels, is protecting your peers from bureaucracy - but it is a doable challenge. A corporate structure is like any other social structure and it can be navigated and changed over time with persistent work and buy in from the bottom up.

That being said, larger corporations do have more structure because they don't want you to repeat the mistakes of the past. That can obviously go too far, but if any constraint becomes "You're limiting my creative expression!" then you've missed the goal.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#49

Post by wrs »

ghaff wrote: post #43
snowwrestler wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in…

CS/programming is almost unique in this regard in that there's a significant school of thought out there that, if you haven't been programming as a hobby since you were a kid, that's a disqualification. As you say, there is pretty much zero expectation in any other STEM field that you did much more than take some science classes in high school and liked them. (In STEM. Obviously you presumably don't apply to Juilliar…

It’s messed up in the other direction too, though. There’s no other STEM field where you attend a six week “boot camp” and expect to get a job. Or where people with two years of experience are “senior”.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#50

Post by princekolt »

chrisseaton wrote: post #13

I don't see how 'hire people who aren't proven' can be compatible with 'can this candidate do the job'. You want to know if they can do the job, but you aren't interested in any proof for that?

That is only true if you see the list of things a person can learn how to do as a closed set. For instance, I really disliked maths in school. I've avoided every software job posting that involved any maths (3D, statistics, etc). However, if I was given a job offer to work on a math-related product I deeply connected with, and that I felt I wanted to contribute, I'd probably be more interested in learning the math stuff I dumped from my brain years ago. I'm convinced this applies to most people in this industry.

I think the issue we have nowadays is that most software companies are creating mediocre to shitty software that solves no real problem, but selling themselves as the next Google or Apple. Most engineers can see through the bullshit and thus don't feel connected to the product. Then it just becomes a contest for who can realistically write the code for the shitty product for the least pay.

Post reply on HN