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Hire people who aren’t proven

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Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#171

Post by krinchan »

closeparen wrote: post #91
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…

Because CS education is in its infancy and the material changes so fast, we can’t expect college to be comprehensive. Rather than structured learning, we rely on people who are peripherally exposed to various topics to have the “spark” to become curious about them and go deeper. To a first order approximation, someone who has been into computers their whole life has that “spark” as second nature. Someone who sees pro…

Yet a lifelong computer nerd with that structured learning foundation will leave a non-passionate CS degree holder and a degreeless lifelong computer nerd in the dust.

People want to scream about CS degrees being trash and yet all the passion in the world doesn't seem to convey an understanding of memory leaks, garbage collection, and VM/bytecode/etc. hijinks (like JVM, MRI, etc.) to the degreeless people in my team.

A CS degree program worth its salt will dip you into enough low level OS programming that you can bring with you to any language. It also should expose you to multiple programming languages so you can quickly separate universal ideas (pointers, references, pass-by-value, pass-by-reference, various models of multithreading) from syntax.

Meanwhile, degreeless bootcamp people just think Ruby Symbols are nifty immutable strings and have no idea why symbolizing dynamic string keys in hashes results in a memory leak.

I'm not against bootcamps, but polyglot is still my primary requirement for hiring for this exact reason. Bootcamps need to at least integrate a week of Computer Org and a week of doing what they just did in another language into the curriculum to really be a valid way to bypass CS degree programs.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#172

Post by amorphous »

ktta wrote: post #137
amorphous wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone who has 10 years AND cares is rare but pure gold. One way to attract those people: choose to build your product using a rather exotic language (e.g. Clojure or Elixir). You take a substantial risk because the language is rather unproven and you will have a hard time finding experienced developers. BUT if someone with 10+ years experience makes the effort to learn a language that does not have an immediate p…

Not sure if I'm getting the joke here, but this seems to be a great way to spent most time on development rather than actually building a product.

Not meant as a joke at all. I have spoken to a few companies that chose Clojure as their development language. They had problems finding people because it's a new language. When I asked them why didn't they just chose something more established like Java with a seemingly unlimited supply of developers they said that they want to attract a certain type of developer that they are willing to train.

And that goes both ways. I want to work for a company that chooses language X instead of ruby-python-java-and-the-like because they care.

Mind you, this is not meant as a language bashing, not at all

Edit: obviously, those companies chose Clojure first of all because of technical reasons, but the hiring part is another perk

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#173

Post by thrower123 »

namanyayg wrote: post #159
ghaff wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're arguing about a specific example but there are many examples from STEM fields. For example, becoming a mechanical engineer doesn't carry the same expectation (from some) that you have spent your childhood tinkering with automobiles and other mechanical devices. There is some truth that it's more straightforward for kids to work with software than in the case of, say, chemical engineering. But it shouldn't be a…

Again, I don't think any child or teen is going to be allowed near any sort of heavy machinery like automobiles? On the other hand, many students I know who are studying MechE right now did work on lego-kit robotic & Arduino projects while at school. I'm not sure if it'll play a role in their job application, but in my opinion there are genuinely very few fields (only CS comes to my mind) that a teenager can do at th…

Most people I know that became mechanical engineers were tearing apart dirtbikes and snowmobiles and ATVs long before they had drivers licenses.

And if you have family that is in those sorts of heavy equipment fields, chances are good that as soon as you are big enough to hold a flashlight or run and pickup wrenches, you are going to get drafted into helping out.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#174

Post by snowwrestler »

Xylakant wrote: post #107
namanyayg wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing software development in high school requires a computer (even a ~$400 that is shared with the family is sufficient), interest, and time (so one can spend hours required reading tutorials/watching videos). Basically, nothing too much out of the reach of your average teenager -- with the exception of interest/dedication to the art. Doctors, and most other professions, cannot be practiced without a lot more invest…

> and time (so one can spend hours required reading tutorials/watching videos) This is maybe not out of reach for an average teenager, but it is definitely out of reach for quite a substantial portion of the population, the poorest percentile might just not have the time to dabble in programming. They might have to take care of siblings, work for a living or to pay for college later.

Right, looking for signals of "passion" has to be done carefully so it doesn't become just a proxy for socioeconomic class. This is also true when thinking about "cultural fit" within a company.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#175

Post by namanyayg »

AlexandrB wrote: post #144
namanyayg wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing software development in high school requires a computer (even a ~$400 that is shared with the family is sufficient), interest, and time (so one can spend hours required reading tutorials/watching videos). Basically, nothing too much out of the reach of your average teenager -- with the exception of interest/dedication to the art. Doctors, and most other professions, cannot be practiced without a lot more invest…

> Doctors, and most other professions, cannot be practiced without a lot more investment. If we lived in a society where access to resources required for practicing those careers would be easily available to teenagers, we would see young high school students do that too. This is not true at all. I was fascinated by bugs, cells, and other bio stuff as a kid and a decent microscope is not that expensive. The fundamenta…

That is a great point -- maybe my argument should be appended to include the fact that CS makes it ridiculously easy to create and present a portfolio of work (GitHub pages!) which seems to be impossible in other fields. Regardless, it does seem that these few special traits that CS has allows it to be one of the few where it actually makes sense for a high schooler to build up experience & a body of work.

I've seen teenagers submit great projects to HN and get feedback from the knowledgeable crowd here, that really seems to be impossible in any other field (unless you have connections).

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#177

Post by justjash »

freehunter wrote: post #128
daveslash wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but I'd like to add to the "did you treat any diseases in high school". I knew someone in high school who wanted to be a doctor. She didn't cure any diseases or perform surgery, but she did read all that she could and was fascinated by medical-themed tv & movies. She had been inspired by her pediatrician when she was young. She did't treat people before becoming a doctor, but from early on she had t…

On the other hand, it's hard enough to expect 18 year olds to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives, if we only hire people who showed passion in high school now we're pushing that all the way back to 14 years old. I didn't even know my career existed until after my freshman year of college, but no one I work with would say I'm not passionate about what I do.

Yep, I never wrote a line of code until I was 22 and had a couple years of college under my belt.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#178

Post by akiselev »

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…

Medicine may be more mature as an industry where education takes a little longer but it is not much different from software. Many of the best doctors (that I've had and know of) started out helping their parents with labwork as kids or interning at university labs in high school, helping with real research into biology or medicine. Likewise, there is a significant gulf between the doctors who chose the career because they are passionate about helping people and those who do it for the money or because of cultural pressure.

There's so much work to do in both fields and we need all kinds of people, but there is certainly a difference in work environment when the team is dominated by one type or the other.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#179

Post by bvm »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #124
ravenstine wrote: post #34

Why would any company have do hire people and train them? Companies these days don't really come to a hault if they're in need of a few developers, and as the market is saturated, they can hold out indefinitely until they believe they have a "rockstar." According to my experience, a lot fewer companies than even a few years ago are in a hurry to talk to you despite them having a job posting and you having more experi…

> Companies these days don't really come to a hault if they're in need of a few developers My small company has had to put our biggest contract on hold since July after having 2 senior developers leave in quick succession. We're burning through cash and have only just this week managed to find a replacement for one of them. I've almost gone down the agency route (again) but the fees are pretty hefty for a team our si…

I feel your pain. Trying to hire perm in London at the moment is a real challenge, even with a recruiter. Contractor rates are obscene (5-8x perm). Recruiting and retaining is what keeps me awake at night over and above any tech issues that I'm working on.

Re: Hire people who aren’t proven

#180

Post by ttoinou »

6stringmerc wrote: post #90

Unmentioned Important Addition to Headline: ...because if you are trying to hire people that are proven, you will have to pay them a fair market rate.

> fair market rate

Or is it that people that have not been proven before have a lower market rate, justified (so "fair") by this lack of pre-validation ?

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