161–170 of 420 posts
It hits the nail on the head, but no one has any interest in changing the status quo.
If they did, it would change.
After encountering a ration of this kind of stuff, I tossed my "Buzzword Bingo" card in the trash, and set up my own gig.
Disappointing, but that's good ol' human nature. As long as folks keep getting A-rounds, there's no incentive to change.
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As someone who uses Github and OSS contribution as a strong hiring signal, I'd like to offer an alternative perspective. People who do a lot of personal projects tend to be very good developers, especially when you can see a demonstrated ability to ship. This is also helpful for people who haven't worked at big name companies or don't have degrees from elite universities. I'd happily hire someone with no experience a…
Please please please P L E A S E keep in mind that a lot of developers literally cannot work on many projects in their free time because the company they work for owns everything they do on and off company time. Even contributing to open source efforts can become an issue because you're expected to ask for permission first and it can become a sticky legal issue of ownership. Companies expect and want people to work o…
Do you have any specific lawsuits in mind?
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I think you are projecting your biases. A developer that has 10 years of experience solving problems, debugging though issues can learn faster the cool language of the day then a 1 year dev can learn the 10 years of experience.
Its not about learning the language. Take a Java developer who is used to Eclipse and tell them from now on they need to write Maven files directly and learn how to build and test from the CLI because thats how your CI works. Same thing with version control. I am always amazed at the number of development shops that still work by emailing around zip files with code in it, or places where the only place you can build…
I am not sure why you would generalize that most Java developers can't use CLI tools or a VCS, there are some bad developers in the world and some of them are also writing shit in cool languages and spam everywhere some toy project like a TODO app and you see it upvoted just because is in Rust/GO or Shiny.js 7.0
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I'm a C# developer at what I think is a really good dev environment. Tons of smart people here and we're highly productive. I like C# and I honestly feel boring software is better. I can't get behind chasing the latest trends. Why should I learn Node instead? Does writing backend Javascript mean you're a better developer?
> Why should I learn Node instead? Node is a gateway to Javascript fluency for people that get a headache dealing with the DOM in the browser. You can write command-line scripts, run them with "node [scriptname]", and learn. Having done that, I've found that Node is great for fast prototyping of servers, even if those are going to be written in C/C++ ultimately. In not-super-formal work environment, you can very quic…
Honestly, to me Node always sounded like the exact opposite of your description: a way for frontend development experience to leak into the backend at least in appearance so that people who were able to hack around DOM updates could argue that they could develop for the backend as well, thus paving the way to pad resumes with "full stack" experience.
One frustration I've had recently is the number of companies encouraging or requiring code in the public sphere. They want to see open-source contributions or an active and impressive personal github page. If your employer is protective of their IP ( mine is ) and/or you are not willing to spend evenings and and weekends on pet projects, you are out of the running. Also >But if you think programmers aren't elitist, t…
One frustration I've had recently is the number of companies encouraging or requiring code in the public sphere. They want to see open-source contributions or an active and impressive personal github page. If your employer is protective of their IP ( mine is ) and/or you are not willing to spend evenings and and weekends on pet projects, you are out of the running. Also >But if you think programmers aren't elitist, t…
As someone who uses Github and OSS contribution as a strong hiring signal, I'd like to offer an alternative perspective. People who do a lot of personal projects tend to be very good developers, especially when you can see a demonstrated ability to ship. This is also helpful for people who haven't worked at big name companies or don't have degrees from elite universities. I'd happily hire someone with no experience a…
There are wizardly devs who stick to a strict 40 hour week. There are equally astounding devs who live, breath, and dream code all day every day. We’d all be lucky to work with both.
I don’t see a way around the fact that a public resume is just an enormously strong and quantifiable signal for hiring managers.
One frustration I've had recently is the number of companies encouraging or requiring code in the public sphere. They want to see open-source contributions or an active and impressive personal github page. If your employer is protective of their IP ( mine is ) and/or you are not willing to spend evenings and and weekends on pet projects, you are out of the running. Also >But if you think programmers aren't elitist, t…
Re: public code, don't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic, but honestly there are very few ways to separate a good programmer from a good bullshitter. The alternative is interview coding tests; suggest that and see how much love you get. (And some don't even know they're bullshitting. They honestly think that being marginally associated with a project means they did the work.) As for suits? Yeah, those are the same people…
( Active job hunting tends to make one grumpy. Take home programming assignments are a current sore spot for me. )
It's a recent job posting that said "Requirement: OSS contributions" that seemed over the top. Maybe it's no less troubling than "Requirement: SQL expertise" - after all, we're all 'discriminated' against to some degree by not having experience in everything a future employer might want.
With the SQL requirement, however, there's an obvious drag on a project if they bring in a new hire who has no SQL knowledge. If a team working on OSS hires someone with no OSS experience - is that going to mean they can't contribute right away?
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Twenty two years ago I wore a suit and tie to my first going-to-graduate-soon interview in the valley. It’s just what I was used to from DC. It happened that my interview was on Halloween so I joked that it was that once I realized what was going on but still, extremely awkward and set the tone of each interview poorly. Every time I go to Defcon or similar conferences, though, I think of that interview and imagine th…
Speaking of Halloween, in the late '90's I wore an Anderson Consulting polo shirt and khakis as my costume to a Halloween party. Multiple people approached me trying to get an inside track to getting hired there. My wife and I still laugh about it.
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If you haven’t seen it, you might be interested in Our Culture of Exclusion (2012): “Let's be clear, I will turn down a beer any day of the week! ” — https://web.archive.org/web/20130413021020/http://ryanfunduk...
wow, I didn't realize the mind blown gif was from 2012 (mind blown)
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Honestly go to any large unicorn or many FANGs and those T-Shirt and jeans are often a $200 "hypebeast" style shirt, $200 raw denim jeans, and $400 sneakers. I mean, I'm guilty of owning more than one of those items but I think it's dumb to claim that wearing t-shirt and jeans is much better in this regard.
> I hate the anti-suit thing in SV. Suits look great, you feel great wearing a good tailored suit... Tailored suit? Seriously? Does that not smell like luxury? Why is that part of the discussion for workplace uniform? A college student wearing a hoodie given for free by TripleByte doesn't look bad at the world's largest software firm. If you wear a t-shirt I cannot tell if you graduated from Stanford. But if you're a…
You can get a suit off the rack for $200 and have it tailored at the time of purchase for maybe $20. Your mileage may vary, but that doesn’t smell like luxury at all to me. It sounds like a reasonable thing to own for people in office jobs. It is de rigueur in many parts of the world, including certain software engineering jobs in the US.
The suit will last longer than your $500 phone, too.
> Wearing a bad suit is embarrassing, and people at the upper echelons of the company almost always have better suits. It is a smell of class.
It doesn’t take much effort or cash to escape from “bad suit” category. I don’t begrudge people wearing better suits, it’s just one of a million ways people use to suss out money or class. Wearing a suit doesn’t make you more of a participant in class warfare than you already are.
Some people also use the suit to escape racial profiling. A white dude can get away with wearing a hoodie and jeans to work, but even though it’s acceptable at work, darker-skinned folk can run into problems with the hoodie-and-jeans outfit on their way to and from the office. Now, you can lay blame for those problems how you like, but think of the suit and tie as:
// FIXME: Temporary, remove suit when problems
// with racial profiling are addressed.