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We created a fake language to root out resume liars

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Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#581

Post by jackTheMan »

jefftk wrote: post #347
falcolas wrote: post #332

So, let me get this straight - you lie about your job requirements, but get all bent out of shape when the candidates lie right back at you? Brilliant. I can’t think of a better example of why hiring is broken; of how unequal the power dynamic is between employers and employees.

You don't list it as a requirement; list it as something that would be nice to have.

I fall victim of this early in my carrier, if something is 'nice to have' they should say so. Requirement != nice to have

i was naive that time, but still angers me.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#582

Post by pradn »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #444
pradn wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been to plenty of interviews where my CV hasn't been given more than a glance. I do technical interviews and I never look at CVs before doing the interview. I do this to avoid bias. I want to treat them the same no matter if they went to Stanford or were not working for 10 years or if this is their first job. Also, people are adaptable, and soft skills matter a lot. So the error bars for recruiting even based…

> I want to treat them the same no matter if they went to Stanford or were not working for 10 years or if this is their first job. I don't agree. If I'm interviewing someone straight out of college there are things I wouldn't expect them to really know and focus on whether they are focused and motivated enough to learn those things on the job. If the person at 15 years experience and doesn't know things which are a n…

Where I work, the interview is based on the level we're hiring for, not their background. If someone's expected to perform as a mid-level engineer, it doesn't matter to me how long they've worked as long as they can solve the technical problem as expected for someone of that level. It's a different philosophy, and has it's pros and cons.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#583

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

jfengel wrote: post #532
908B64B197 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone can't learn a new ecosystem, I have bad news for them in this industry. Also, rejecting someone because they can't rote memorize ecosystem specific incantations is... a pretty big red flag.

The trick isn't memorizing them. The trick is discovering them. I've been emitting various versions of Wingardium Leviosa at Spring Boot for days now, with no effect. Once I've learned the incantation I'll have it and can repeat it in ten seconds, but until I have it I'm producing no actual work. Arguably, I'm more valuable because I have the capacity to eventually figure this out, rather than having already memorize…

I was once backed into a corner to write a web app in some form of Java. So I chose Spring and Angular. After months of frustration, trying to find examples, and put something together, I had gotten just one "show" page and an "edit" form worked out (but not the "update" function side). I put it all aside one day, and wrote what I was working on in Rails. It took me 1 afternoon, including authentication with SAML.

That's when I realized 1) how much Spring and Angular were NOT doing for me (compared to Rails), and 2) how much knowledge lies buried in BOTH stacks. I feel that Rails is by far the better tool for creating CRUD simple web apps, but the ability to be quick with it comes from years and years of living with it, and understanding how 3 or 4 lines of configuration work together to produce the effect of several hundred lines of explicit Java and JS in Spring and Angular.

Disclaimers: YMMV. TACMA. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Et cetera. Et alia. Ad nauseam. E Pluribus Unum. QED.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#584

Post by mike00632 »

faceplanted wrote: post #486
soperj wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gradle & Maven are just build tools. They can be used for other stuff, but that's what they're mostly used for in my experience.

I actually find the things _around_ the languages like build tools and ansible and such by far the more confusing parts of dev work just because I never know which of them I should spend time trying to understand and if I just want a runthrough for someone who can already program I never know where to look.

Gradle, CMake, Python virtual environments...

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#585

Post by BenjiWiebe »

pjmlp wrote: post #536
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had the almost exact same experience, but with Java. I'm a C# developer and although I have some experience with Java, I don't have enough to list it as a skill on my CV. Anyways, in this interview I was being asked about Java and I answered every question by saying I don't really know Java. The interviewers were obviously getting annoyed. So I asked "Sorry, I thought this was a C# job?". No, it was a Java job and ma…

PDFs are as easy to change as any word processing format, it is only a matter of having the right software packages installed. I keep remembering everyone that thinks PDFs are magically safer than Word.

Not as easy, no. OCR is needed if the PDF wasn't saved with embedded text/a document file.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#586

Post by wheybags »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #118
austincheney wrote: post #107

Why even bother with a fake language when so often the industry has devolved into some sick level of honest negligence? For example: rarely do candidates need to know JavaScript anymore or even some unnecessary framework. Now people trade in experience of some tool that says nothing of anything: React Flux Capacitor (or some other bullshit like they want to go back in time to make lots of money without any real skill…

Honestly, the thing I hate the most about IT is how bad it is while no one admits to it. These are problems I've encountered at several companies: * No budget for tooling. Be that software outside the ide or be it for hardware. * Cargo cult is so much bigger than anyone will ever admit. * The lack of caring about other departments. We're a team and we need to work as a team so the company can make money to pay our sa…

I have not once encountered UML since starting my actual career. It sits solidly in the "Java silliness we did in college" category.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#588

Post by tempestn »

chungy wrote: post #573
pjmlp wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother? Apparently everyone keeps forgetting that PDFs are editable.

It's really not made to be and with the exception of an embedded file that's actually editable (eg: LibreOffice optionally keeping an ODT version inside the PDF), "editing" a PDF tends to be a disaster of trying to match the layout with whatever text you are attempting to edit. Certain tools, such as Word and LibreOffice, make it a bit easier as most of the source text is in the document, others like LaTeX end up loo…

Although if you're just trying to add a bullet point to the end of a list that would often be fairly straightforward.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#589

Post by jjeaff »

bluedino wrote: post #547
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something I've noticed over the last 10 years or so as job descriptions get longer. All those new terms like React, Vue, SaaS, Azure, AWS etc. They don't really know what they mean. I was asked if I could code in Azure. This led to a weird conversation where I was trying to explain what Azure was, whilst he wouldn't listen to me and was adamant that it was a programming language.

>> I was asked if I could code in Azure. Sure!

VS Code Remote is very nice. You can deploy your ide right inside a cloud vm and code all day long in Azure.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#590

Post by aidenn0 »

ycombinete wrote: post #561
aidenn0 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad had a recruiter delete his PhD from the education section. During the interview a topic related to his thesis came up, he mentioned his thesis and the interview was over because "we don't hire people with PhDs"

What a bizzare disqualification criteria!

I can think of two reasons:

1. Having interviewed otherwise similarly qualified recent graduates, those with PhDs absolutely were worse on average at writing code[A].

2. Having a PhD raises the salary you can get at other jobs (less true today then 25 years ago when it happened, but still somewhat true), so if the job isn't paying particularly high rates then they either worry about retention or quality (i.e. you can either get a better paying job elsewhere because of the PhD or you can't despite the PhD, neither of which bodes well for the company hiring).

#1 didn't really apply to my dad since he had over 10 years of industry experience at that point, but might be the reason for the policy.

A: I don't know why this is so. I suspect it's a combination of factors; those with good practical skills may be lured away from academia after one of their previous 2 degrees and never get a PhD; the PhDs looking for industry jobs are already those who were disqualified from academia for some reason? I never pursued any education after my B.S. so can really only speculate.

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