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

Today’s Top Tech Skills

hiringlab.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 373 posts

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#271

Post by symplee »

p1esk wrote: post #270
m_alfoy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I come across as stupid but where do you usually look? I’m only in my first role but I’m thinking to start trying to attract offers from elsewhere. UK based if that matters on site recommendations

At first it was all through friends or connections. Then I found a job as the first engineer in a two person startup, posted on Craigslist (that was back in 2009). Eight years later that startup was sold for half a billion dollars. Today I would go directly to websites of companies I’m interested in, then find someone on LinkedIn who works there. But - first you better make sure you’re someone they would want to hire…

How reproducible is this?

There are only so many companies that can make it to that level of success, and only so many pigeons to fill those holes.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#272

Post by pjmlp »

freehunter wrote: post #225
_bxg1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any problem with cloud hosting, as long as there's portability. I wouldn't want to design my architecture to be completely specific to one hosting provider.

It's nothing to do with the hosting or portability and everything to do with talking the language and navigating the interface. You can set up a bare VM and install your own OS and manage everything yourself and avoid any kind of lock-in, but if you don't know how to navigate AWS your entire operations collapses with bad IAM policies, world-readable S3 buckets, and VPCs that let the entire world in. On the other hand…

This is the strange dichotomy on HN, which started as portal for doing business (startups) not FOSS advocacy and getting everything for free.

It feels strange that a community trying to start business has so little understanding from how B2B works.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#273

Post by [deleted] »

p1esk wrote: post #270
m_alfoy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I come across as stupid but where do you usually look? I’m only in my first role but I’m thinking to start trying to attract offers from elsewhere. UK based if that matters on site recommendations

At first it was all through friends or connections. Then I found a job as the first engineer in a two person startup, posted on Craigslist (that was back in 2009). Eight years later that startup was sold for half a billion dollars. Today I would go directly to websites of companies I’m interested in, then find someone on LinkedIn who works there. But - first you better make sure you’re someone they would want to hire…

[deleted]

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#274

Post by pjmlp »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #266
freehunter wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nothing to do with the hosting or portability and everything to do with talking the language and navigating the interface. You can set up a bare VM and install your own OS and manage everything yourself and avoid any kind of lock-in, but if you don't know how to navigate AWS your entire operations collapses with bad IAM policies, world-readable S3 buckets, and VPCs that let the entire world in. On the other hand…

All true. Point is that it used to be that a key piece of intrastructure was based on "open", general tech, and now it's not, and that's regrettable.

Started dealing with computers since the mid-80's, I never remember big corporations being big into any kind of "open", beyond standard specifications like X/Open and similar.

Even Linux's adoption was more with not paying UNIX licenses than caring about any kind of openness.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#275

Post by pjmlp »

Roboprog wrote: post #257
delecti wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your systems are Java, you'll hire people who can work in Java, and if the only thing your devs have in common is experience with Java, your new code will be in Java too.

Sad but true, for the obvious business reasons. I was pleased (somewhat) 20 years ago when Java displaced C++, but now I just wish it would fade away. Thanks for the garbage collector, Java, now retire. This said as someone who is convinced that most of what I want to do could be done with FP vs OOP techniques, and FAR less of it.

Except that .NET is the only actual alternative, regarding eco-system libraries, IDE capabilities and tooling for monitoring production systems.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#276

Post by goatinaboat »

MatekCopatek wrote: post #68
dathinab wrote: post #25

In the recent two or so years I was surprised to see how many people don't _really_ know about SQL. Sure they can write a simple insert and update query and maybe a join, assuming they can just ignore that there actually are different types of joins. But if you ask them about other _still fundamental_ knowledge like a _rough_ idea about what the different transaction isolation level are/mean/imply for you, they fail…

What would you say is the special thing about this particular bit of knowledge that made you point it out? To be perfectly honest, it seems quite arbitrary to me. I could say I'm surprised to see how many people don't know anything about the browser rendering pipeline and consequently produce badly performing interfaces. Someone else would complain about people's inability to do even the most basic Linux administrati…

many people don't know anything about the browser rendering pipeline and consequently produce badly performing interfaces

No one cares about that because the website will be redone in the hottest new framework every few months anyway. Whereas serious databases are around for decades.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#277

Post by [deleted] »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #37
_bxg1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured that was mostly due to legacy code at this point; is it undisputed for new code too?

I can only speak from experience, but I know two large corporate entities that used Java and have over the years dropped it in favor of Go and websites. Edit: i like how my first hand experience is disagreeable and should be hidden. This site gets STRANGE with facts that users just don’t want to see.

[deleted]

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#278

Post by benhurmarcel »

swiley wrote: post #254
smnrchrds wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a mechanical engineer. Mechanical engineering jobs ask for SolidWorks/AutoCAD/CATIA/Creo/etc experience, not just computer-aided design; ANSYS/ABAQUS/NASTRAN/etc expertise, not just finite element method; Fluent/CFX/OpenFOAM/etc knowledge, not just computational fluid dynamics. With the exception of OpenFOAM, all of these software are proprietary, largely non-interoperable, and expensive—like thousands to tens o…

That’s something that’s really bothered me about engineers and engineering students. I feel like if you and your team think a head a little you can avoid a lot of it. Plus a lot of software is pretty similar (Autocad electrical vs Xcircuit for example.)

It's not just about choosing the right tool from the beginning. The open-source options are often not adequate at all.

I'm more comfortable talking about mechanical CAD, and in that space FreeCAD (while amazing for a free tool) doesn't come close to professional tools like Solidworks or Catia. Even for personal 3d printing projects it's really lacking, let alone for professional work.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#279

Post by coldtea »

momokoko wrote: post #190
coldtea wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone on my team was writing a web app and spending time meddling around with transactions outside of whatever abstraction layer we were using on top of the DB without an incredibly good reason, we'd definitely be having a coaching moment, and if it continued, I'd likely help them find a role with another org where they might be a better fit. And most people with knowledge of DBs should run, not walk, away fro…

Because if you are writing a fairly standard web app, you don't need this. There isn't the scale to make it important. Software is a very large field, with a wide variety of use cases. Obviously an exchange trading platform is going to have much more focus on these DB issues than a SaaS web app for business that expects at most 5,000-10,000 users at a time. With very few of those user modifying the same records.

>Because if you are writing a fairly standard web app, you don't need this.

Does the app handle user accounts? Payments? Data editing? Multiple logins into the same account? Then it should handle races and transaction properly...

That said, it's true that they can be rare, and might be less worth it (engineering or time wise) than just letting it go.

For an app with like a few thousands users or internal use, the odds might be small.

But a fairly standard web app might serve 1M, or 10M or 100s of millions of people, and they deserve better.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#280

Post by sidlls »

Roboprog wrote: post #259
sidlls wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that simple. Most "Java + SQL" jobs are run of the mill cost-center type jobs at companies that aren't tech companies. Their salaries, benefits, and locales are generally poor relatively to other software engineering jobs. The demand is high, and so is the supply of labor, but that isn't the whole picture.

Yep. I live in the Sacramento area. Half the salary. Half the price for a house. Half the commute. Seems an even trade.

I thought that, too, before I had the income. Being able to max out my 401k and IRA contribution on 5% of my salary is a huge deal, and more than makes up for the difference in housing cost. I also live 5 minutes from work. People overestimate how much the COL difference really is and underestimate the significant savings advantages that come with living here.
Post reply on HN