Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
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Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
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Re: Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
#2Maybe I’m reading this wrong but, how do you know?
The whole process looks like a test with no control experiment (i.e. a set of interviews with a more popular stack).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite sure Carlos is an amazing engineer, but I don’t think your stack has much to do with it
Re: Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
#3Maybe I’m reading this wrong but, how do you know? The whole process looks like a test with no control experiment (i.e. a set of interviews with a more popular stack). Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite sure Carlos is an amazing engineer, but I don’t think your stack has much to do with it
I agree, to a point. I've done my fair share of interviews (as an interviewer) with a vast number of candidates, from different backgrounds. With the little data from this experience (on purpose not calling this an "experiment"), I definitely saw a much higher S/R.
Re: Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
#4Maybe I’m reading this wrong but, how do you know? The whole process looks like a test with no control experiment (i.e. a set of interviews with a more popular stack). Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite sure Carlos is an amazing engineer, but I don’t think your stack has much to do with it
Being mostly remote doesn’t hurt, either.
Re: Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
#5Yeah this is an interesting phenomenon. It's counter intuitive but it does make sense, if you think about it. I remember listening to a podcast (changelog I think) with the creator of Elm and he was asked about this - is it a concern if you build your frontend on Elm that you just won't be able to find anyone to hire?
His response was that on the contrary, people who use Elm tend to be enthusiasts by nature and job postings in Elm are rare enough that if you post one, they will seek it out and come to you, because they really, really want to be using Elm in their day job.
The alternative, using an extremely popular language/framework, means that even though the number of enthusiasts out there is absolutely greater, your job post is just one in a sea of similar ones - so it's much less likely any candidate is going to seek you out or come to you, based on that alone.
Re: Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
#6Yeah this is an interesting phenomenon. It's counter intuitive but it does make sense, if you think about it. I remember listening to a podcast (changelog I think) with the creator of Elm and he was asked about this - is it a concern if you build your frontend on Elm that you just won't be able to find anyone to hire? His response was that on the contrary, people who use Elm tend to be enthusiasts by nature and job p…
100% this.
Re: Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
#7I think depending on where you are there is a risk of fewer / not enough candidates if you're on the leading / uncommon edge technology a bit. It does make sense though that enthusiasts might be better candidates.
I do wonder though if this might actually be more of a personality type thing and maybe less "better candidate".
Folks who want to learn something non conventional might be better, but they also may share personality traits that mesh well too.
Re: Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
#8Maybe I’m reading this wrong but, how do you know? The whole process looks like a test with no control experiment (i.e. a set of interviews with a more popular stack). Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite sure Carlos is an amazing engineer, but I don’t think your stack has much to do with it
It's the human condition to think like this. We tried x method and were successful; therefore, method x is the right way to do things. No.. no there are a billion ways to do things and method x just happens to be one of them.
Re: Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
#9PG had an essay about this same subject ~15 years ago about python (which was still up and coming back then). I'm sure you could relate it to a trend graph with early adopters, hitting mainstream, etc
http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
Always excited to see more phoenix/elixir love
Re: Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
#10PG had an essay about this same subject ~15 years ago about python (which was still up and coming back then). I'm sure you could relate it to a trend graph with early adopters, hitting mainstream, etc http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html Always excited to see more phoenix/elixir love
Thanks for the pointer! This definitely should have been a link in the post. Oh, well.